18 Test Positive for TB After Disease Is Diagnosed in Judge

Eighteen people have tested positive for tuberculosis after the disease was diagnosed in the judge presiding over a bizarre murder-for-hire trial, authorities said Monday.

Mary Stiles is charged with paying a teen-age neighbor $1,500 to kill her husband, Grady Stiles, a carnival performer known as Lobster Boy because of birth defects that left him with claw-like hands and stub legs.

Her lawyer is using a battered-spouse defense, claiming Stiles’ brutality, brought on by excessive drinking, caused her to hire a killer. The murder occurred in November, 1992.

The trial was interrupted at its mid-point last week by presiding Judge M. William Graybill, who had thought he was battling a cold. During a recess, he yelled into the courtroom from his chambers: “Y’all stay away from me. TB is contagious. I must go to the hospital.”

At that point the trial was adjourned and the defendant, jury, reporters, lawyers, courtroom spectators and scores of county workers lined up for tuberculosis skin tests.

Dr. Luis Miranda, director of the Hillsborough Public Health Unit, said Monday that 18 of the 522 people tested positive for exposure to the disease.

“They will be X-rayed,” he said, explaining that skin tests are not a definite measure of whether one has the disease.

Circuit Judge William Fuente has taken over the case, including allowing the battered-spouse defense that Graybill had denied.

Meanwhile, a videotape of Stiles wrenching his similarly deformed son in a headlock was played for a second time Monday for the jury--only this time, with a soundtrack in which laughter can be heard.

“You’re a wimp,” a woman’s voice says teasingly as the boy’s face reddens and he flails about.

“I am not a wimp,” the boy says.

“You give up too easy,” another woman yells off camera. “Grab him by the seat of the pants and give him a wedgy.”

As the clip ends, the boy shouts “let me up . . . air.”

The defense, which played the video clip without sound for the jury last week, claims it portrays the same kind of abuse that drove Mary Stiles to order her husband killed.

But 17-year-old Grady Stiles III, seen wrestling with his father on the tape, testified that the laughing voices in the background are those of his mother and sister, Donna Miles.

The case is expected to go to the jury today.