The Secret Life of Jimmy Ethridge : AIDS Carrier’s Computer Records Stir Fear in Texas

MARLIN, Tex. —  Jimmy Ethridge has been dead more than a month now, killed with a .22-caliber rifle shot to the head. Still, no one knows yet the consequences of his secret life in this small central Texas town.

Ethridge, a 38-year-old insurance salesman, had been exposed to AIDS. His landlord thought he was a saint. She did not know that Ethridge preyed on young boys, not only here, but in Louisiana, Mexico, Arkansas, Mississippi and California.

Those are the places officials know about so far. Ethridge kept track on his computer in repugnant detail. And when investigators finally broke his secret computer coding early this week, they found the names of 54 young boys whom he had seduced.

Some or all of them may be at risk of AIDS, and at least 40 other computer discs have yet to be checked by state health officials to see if they contain more names.

Now the grim task begins of trying to track down all those children and test them for the deadly disease that Ethridge may have passed on.

Ten of the 54 youngsters named in the computer files live in Marlin, and six of them have been found and tested thus far, but the results are being kept confidential. None of the children in other states have yet been tested.

“It’s everybody’s nightmare,” said Police Chief John Trousdale. “The town is really shocked at what is going on.”

Marlin, located 30 miles southeast of Waco, is a community of 7,000 people that was once known for the healing qualities of its mineral springs. The spring house closed a couple of years ago, and now many of the residents make the commute to Waco for work. AIDS has not been a hot topic over at the Plantation Inn restaurant--at least not until recently.

Jimmy Ethridge moved here from Waco three years ago, but he had moved around a lot before that. He was a burly, pleasant man who seemed to have a particular fondness for children. At one point, he used to regularly walk into a local convenience store, and if there were young boys playing the pinball machine in back, he would furnish the quarters for dozens of games.

He rented a small, comfortable frame house just a few blocks off the county courthouse square. Neighbors were to tell the police later that there always seemed to be youngsters at his home when he was there. The police would also learn that Ethridge lavished gifts on the children. He gave one two horses, another a television set, a third a car.

This summer, Ethridge went on vacation to Mexico. And when he returned in June, he found a 16-year-old boy at his home. The boy had been living with Ethridge, with the consent of his mother, but the insurance salesman had instructed him to stay away while he was gone.

No Prosecution Planned

An argument ensued. Ethridge and the boy chased each other around the house with .22 rifles. And, according to Trousdale, the boy said Ethridge grew tired and sat on the bed. That is when the rifle the boy was carrying went off--an accident, the boy insisted. Dist. Atty. Tom Sehon has decided not to prosecute. Trousdale thinks the townspeople wouldn’t mind if the boy was given a medal.

After the shooting, the boy fled, and when a house painter found the body an estimated 29 hours later, police who investigated found pornographic magazines and tapes and other paraphernalia scattered about the house. Much of it involved pictures of nude or semi-nude young boys, including a number of them taken on Ethridge’s Mexico trip. The policemen began wearing rubber gloves to examine items in the house.

“I had an office plumb full of it,” said Trousdale.

Ethridge’s body was sent to Dallas for an autopsy.

Debra Coca, the county juvenile officer, wanted to examine the contents of Ethridge’s computer from the first.

“All the signs pointed to the fact that he was a pedophile,” she said. “And almost all pedophiles keep records.”

Knowing the contents of the computer became even more important when the results of the autopsy came back two weeks later. At some point, Ethridge had been exposed to AIDS.

On Monday, Coca, with the aid of a Waco computer expert, broke the coding for two of the computer discs. All of the boys it listed from Marlin were from the black or Latino community. Coca said that although six have now been tested, as a matter of policy she is not releasing the results. She said the parents of the boys, “after the initial shock, were really angry at Jimmy Ethridge.”

The latest turn in the case occurred on Friday, when Dr. Charles R. Webb of the state health department came here to pick up the computer discs and take them to Austin for decoding.

Webb said his people would work quickly to find out as much as they could about the secret life of Jimmy Ethridge including, if possible, any clues about when he was exposed to the virus, such as contact with a mature male, because some of the encounters with the boys may have come before his own exposure to AIDS.

Wants to Calm Fears

“We want to take the heat off the people of Marlin,” he said.

He would not speculate on how many more names might be found on the 40 additional discs.

“All the other discs might be translations of Cicero,” he said.

Dwight Thomas, the editor of the Marlin Daily Democrat, called the events “frightful,” but said he sees no reason for the town to panic.

Still, the other day, six black teen-agers came into Coca’s office and asked her how AIDS is transmitted. They wanted to know if it was safe to drink from a glass someone else had used.

“The kids are going to start asking questions, and the parents are going to start asking questions,” she said.