communicative individual. He knew the minute I walked into the room that I wanted something more from him—more blood, more lymph fluid, more something." He had a tendency to contradict his statements regarding his sexual history; at one point boasting himself as "the stud of all time" and at another point claiming to have only had sexual intercourse once, that being with a young woman from his neighborhood, whom he attributed as the source of his illness. Doctors treating Rayford suspected that he was an underage sex worker and the recipient of receptive anal intercourse, but never considered the possibility of him being a victim of child molestation. Eventually, he was moved to Barnes-Jewish Hospital (then called Barnes Hospital). In late 1968 Rayford's condition seemed to stabilize, but by March 1969 his symptoms reappeared and worsened. He had increased difficulty breathing and his white blood cell count had plummeted. The doctors found that his immune system was dysfunctional. He developed a fever and died of pneumonia at 11:20 pm on May 15, 1969. Autopsy An autopsy of Rayford's body, which was led by William Drake, uncovered several abnormalities. Small purplish lesions were discovered on Rayford's left thigh along with soft tissue. Drake concluded that the lesions were Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare type of cancer which mostly affected elderly men of Mediterranean or Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, but was almost unheard of among black teenagers. Kaposi's sarcoma was later designated an AIDS-defining illness. These findings baffled the attending doctors, and a review of the case was published in the medical journal Lymphology in 1973. Later investigations Tests In 1984, HIV (originally called "lymphadenopathy-associated virus", or LAV) was first discovered and at the time of its discovery, it was rapidly spreading in the gay male communities of New York City and Los Angeles. Marlys Witte, one of the doctors who, like Elvin-Lewis, had cared for Rayford before his death and also assisted in the autopsy, thawed and tested tissue samples that were preserved after Rayford's autopsy, and the test results came back negative. Three years later, in June 1987, Witte decided to test the tissue samples again using Western blot, the most sensitive test then available. The Western blot test found that antibodies against all nine detectable HIV proteins were present in Rayford's blood. An antigen capture assay was also reported to have identified HIV antigens in tissue samples, but not in serum.