Timothy Patrick Murphy

Timothy Patrick Murphy was an American actor, born November 3, 1959, who began his career as a child in television commercials before appearing in the 1978 miniseries Centennial and playing young conman Spencer Langley on the CBS soap Search for Tomorrow (1980). He is best known for playing Mickey Trotter on Dallas (1982), and he starred as series regular Chip Craddock on the drama Glitter (1984) and in the title role's early years in the TV movie Sam's Son (1984), a biography of actor Michael Landon's youth. He was gay and died of AIDS-related complications on December 6, 1988, in Sherman Oaks, California, becoming one of the first notable American television actors to die in the epidemic. He was 29 years old. His death was part of the staggering wave of losses that devastated the entertainment industry in the 1980s, when the AIDS crisis killed an entire generation of LGBTQ+ artists whose identities could rarely be acknowledged publicly even in death.