“We’re not the ones seeking the publicity,” the writer said.

“I don’t wish to discuss it any further,” Lindner said, and hung up.

When the writer asked to join a group tour of the Lima State Hospital facility the day before the November hearing, it was granted at first by the public relations department. The day before the tour, however, he received a call telling him that his visit had been canceled by Dr. Lindner and Superintendent Hubbard, and that the Security Department had been told the writer was to be barred from the hospital grounds permanently.

When the writer inquired as to the reason, Assistant Attorney General David Belinky said he had been advised by hospital officials that the writer was suspected of having smuggled drugs to Milligan. Later the reason was changed to “not therapeutically advisable.”

(3)

November 30 was cold; the first snow lay on the ground. The Allen County Courthouse in Lima, Ohio, was an old building, and though Courtroom 3 was large enough to seat about fifty people, most of the chairs were empty. The Milligan review hearing had been closed to the public and the media, but the TV cameras were waiting outside.

The Teacher sat, in handcuffs, between his attorneys. In addition to the attorneys, only Dorothy, Del Moore and the writer were admitted as observers by the court. Also present were James O’Grady, assistant prosecutor for Franklin County, William Jan Hans, a representative of the Ohio Adult Parole Authority, and Ann Henldner, an attorney observer for Southwest Community Mental Health Center in Columbus.

Judge David R. Kinworthy, a clean-shaven, handsome young man with sharply chiseled features, reviewed the history of commitment hearings from December 4, 1978, when Milligan had been found not guilty by reason of insanity, through the various re-commitments, to the present day, almost one year later. The hearing, Kinworthy said, was being held in accordance with the statutes of the Ohio Revised Code, paragraph 5122, section 15.

Assistant Attorney General Belinky s motion for separation of witnesses was granted. Attorney Steve Thompsons motion for the court to return Billy Milligan to Athens, considering the procedural defects in the transfer to Lima, was denied.

With preliminary motions over, the commitment review hearings began.

The first witness for the state was sixty-five-year-old Dr. Frederick Milkie, a short, fat psychiatrist with baggy pants and a baggy sweater. His dark hair was slicked down, and he waddled from the table beside Belinky (from which he would later serve as the states technical consultant) to the witness stand.

Dr. Milkie testified that he had seen Milligan twice, once briefly on October 24, 1979, when the patient had been transferred to his care at Lima, and then again on October 30, for review of his treatment plan. He had also been allowed to observe Milligan this morning for a half-hour before the hearing, to see if he had changed since a month ago. Referring to hospital records, Dr. Milkie stated that he had diagnosed Milligan as having a personality disorder, that he was antisocial and suffered from psychoneurotic anxiety with depressive and dissociative features.