Billy and I still talk frequently by phone, and I visit him at Dayton from time to time. Sometimes it’s Tommy, or Allen, or Kevin. At other times he’s the one with no name.

On one of my visits, when I asked who he was, he said, “I don’t know who I am. I feel hollow.”

I asked him to tell me about it.

“When I’m not asleep and not on the spot,” he said, “it’s like I’m lying face down on a sheet of glass that stretches out forever, and I can look down through it. Beyond that, in the farthest ground, it seems like stars of outer space, but then there’s a circle, a beam of light. Its almost as if it’s coming out of my eyes because it’s always in front of me. Around it, some of my people are lying in coffins. The lids aren’t on them because they’re not dead yet. They’re asleep, waiting for something. There are some empty coffins because not everyone has come there. David and the other young ones want a chance at life. The older ones have given up hope.”

“What is this place?” I asked him.

“David named it,” he said, “because he made it. David calls it ‘the Dying Place.”

Afterword

Since first publication of this book, I have received letters from readers all over the country asking what happened to Billy Milligan after Judge Flowers turned down his request to be transferred to Athens.

To sum it up briefly:

In his notes to me, “Allen” described the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane as “a chamber of horrors.” He later referred to the Dayton Forensic Center as an “ultra-clean germ-tank jail.” Daytons superintendent, Allen Vogel, was sympathetic and understanding of Milligans needs, but he was increasingly hampered by his security staff. Though Vogel gave Milligan permission to paint in oils, and “Tommy” and “Allen” ordered art supplies brought in, Vogel was overruled by his security office on the grounds that the linseed oil used in painting could be dangerous. The art supplies were removed from the hospital.

Increasingly depressed, Allen insisted that Mary, his friend and constant visitor, return to graduate school and make a life of her own. “I just can’t keep her in prison with me,” he said.

Several weeks after Mary left Dayton, another young woman entered Milligan’s life. Tanda, a resident df Dayton, who regularly visited her brother at the Dayton Forensic Center, became aware of Milligan in the visitors’ room. Her brother introduced them. Soon she began to do for Milligan some of the things Mary had done for him: typing, bringing in outside food, buying him clothing.

On July 22, 1981, Tanda called me and said she was worried about Billy. He wasn’t changing his clothes, or shaving, or eating. He was withdrawing from all outside contacts. He had, she felt, lost interest in living.

When I went to visit him at the hospital, Tommy told me that Arthur, having given up hope of treatment and cure, had decided to commit suicide.