: October 26, 2016

: CHICAGO (Reuters) - Genes taken from archived blood samples
: show the U.S. AIDS epidemic started in New York in the
: early 1970s, definitively debunking the long-held belief
: that the virus was spread in the early 1980s by a flight
: attendant who became vilified as "Patient Zero"
: for seeding the U.S. outbreak.

Greetings to all our valued readers:

back in the late '70s I had a bartending job in a revamped place in Houston called La Bodega. It had been a corner grocery.

We had the cowboy construction worker crowd in the afternoons;

we had the date night and post-theater crowd after 9:00/pm.

Having been a cab driver for two years before, I knew there were a lot of gay clubs in the area, and our upstairs restaurant was open until 2:00 AM, and 4:00 AM on week-ends.

It was at this time we started hearing from patrons' chatter that there was "a fever of unknown origin" circulating in the gay dance clubs scene. At that time it seemed restricted to the gay, late night clubs, and theater crowd scenes.

By about 1980 it was a real health problem in Houston, and then we discovered it in runaway teen age boys, who 'turned tricks'.

Then we discovered that nine teen boys had been murdered by two [ or three ] gay men who 'rescued them' and then dumped some of the slain boys' bodies in the Ship Channel east of town.

As I recall, one of the murderous guys killed his pal, after he threatened to go to the police [ because he wanted a new car or something like that ]. It was a major scandal ... the police had the missing boys reports ... but no one 'knew about it'.

More and more info' leaked about the murders, but they seemed to be stopped cold by the body count. Maybe another twenty boys reported missing, in that time, were never located or found.

The gay hooker crowd moved to bars and dance clubs by 1981.

Regards to all ... Richard