Dorothy Moore denied the allegations in the suicide note and agreed to its publication. Johnny Morrison had been mentally ill before he died, she said. He’d been involved with another woman—a stripper—and he had probably confused this woman with her when he wrote about the people she’d been hanging around with.

Billy made his peace with his mother.

0n Friday afternoon, March 30, back in the ward, Billy noticed unusual glances, hushed talking and a general sense of uneasiness.

“Did ja see the afternoon paper?” one of the female patients asked, handing it to him. “You’re in the news again.”

He stared at the bold banner headline across the top of the front page of the March 30 Columbus Dispatch:

Doctor Says Rapist Allowed to Roam from Center By John Switzer

William Milligan, the multipersonality rapist who was sent to the Athens Mental Health Center last December, is allowed to roam free and unsupervised daily, The Dispatch has learned …Milligan’s doctor, David Caul, told The Dispatch that Milligan is allowed to leave the hospital grounds to roam Athens and is even given weekend leaves to visit relatives …

Athens Police Chief Ted Jones was quoted as saying that he’d had numerous expressions of concern from the community, and that he was “concerned about the mental patient roaming around the university community/’ The reporter also quoted Judge Flowers, who had found Milligan not guilty, as saying he was “not in favor of Milligan being free to roam at will.” The article ended with reference to “the man who spread terror among women in the OSU area during late 1977.”

The Columbus Dispatch began a series of almost daily follow-up articles deploring that Milligan was allowed to “roam free.” An editorial on April 5, referring to Milligan, was headlined: Legislation Needed to Protect Society.

Frightened readers from Columbus and anxious parents of students at Ohio University in Athens began to call the university president Charles Ping, who then called the hospital requesting clarification.

Two state legislators, Claire “Buzz” Ball, Jr., of Athens, and Mike Stinziano, of Columbus, criticized the hospital and Dr. Caul, and began to press for hearings to reconsider the statute under which Milligan had been sent to Athens in the first place. They also demanded a change in the “not guilty by reason of insanity” laws.

Some of Billy’s enemies on the hospital staff, outraged that he was making money by selling his paintings, leaked stories to the Columbus Dispatch, the Columbus Citizen-Journal and the Dayton Daily News about the large sums of money he had at his disposal. When he used some of the money from the sale of “The Grace of Cathleen” to buy a compact Mazda to help carry his paintings, it hit the headlines.

Representatives Stinziano and Ball demanded an investigative hearing at the Athens hospital. Mounting attacks and criticism stirred up by almost daily articles and front-page headlines forced Dr. Caul and Superintendent Sue Foster to ask Milligan to give up his furloughs and his privilege of leaving the grounds unattended until the furor died down.