Later that day, talking to Donna Egar in his room, Billy reached under his bed and pulled out the razor blade Tommy had taped to the slat nearly seven months earlier.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I don’t need this anymore. I want to live.”

There were tears in her eyes as she hugged him.

He told Rosalie, “I don’t want to go to mini-group. I’ve got to prepare myself to be alone. I’ve got to harden myself. No good-bys.”

But the mini-group made farewell cards for him, and when Rosalie brought them to him, he let himself cry.

“For the first time in my life,” he said, “I think I’m having a normal human reaction. I’ve got what I used to hear referred to as ‘mixed emotions.’ I’ve never been able to have them before.”

Friday, October 6, the day he was to be taken away, was Rosalie’s day off, but she came down to the hospital to be with him. She knew she would face raised eyebrows and sarcastic comments from some of the Wakefield staff, but she didn’t care. She walked into the rec room and saw him, dressed in his blue three-piece suit, pacing, waiting, apparently calm and in control.

She and Donna Egar walked with him to the administration building, where a sheriff’s deputy, in dark glasses, waited at the front desk.

When the deputy whipped out the handcuffs, Rosalie stepped in front of Billy and demanded to know if it was really necessary to handcuff him like an animal.

“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said. “It’s the law.”

“Well, for God’s sake,” Donna shouted. “When he was brought over here, he was escorted by two females, and now you’re going to be a big bad cop and handcuff him?”

“That’s the way it has to be, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

Billy held out his wrists, and when the cuffs snapped into place, Rosalie saw him wince. He climbed into the paddy wagon, and they walked beside it as it slowly moved along the curving road toward the stone bridge. They waved good-by, went back to the unit and a had a long, hard cry.

Chapter Four

(1)

When Bemie Yavitch and Terry Sherman read Dr. George Hardings report, they agreed it was one of the most thorough mental examinations they had ever seen. All the things they as prosecutors had been trained to attack in the testimony of psychiatrists, all the positions they might normally object to, were unassailable in Hardings report. It hadn’t been a three-or four-hour checkup. It had been a hospital study of more than seven months. And it was not just Hardings opinion alone, but included consultation with a great many other psychologists and psychiatrists.

On October 6, 1978, Judge Flowers, after holding a brief competency hearing, ruled on the basis of the Harding report that Milligan was now capable of standing trial. He set tne date for December 4.

Schweickart said that was satisfactory, with one proviso: that the trial be conducted under the law that existed at the time of the crimes. (The Ohio law would change on November 1, placing the burden of proof of insanity on the defendant rather than placing the burden of proof of sanity on the prosecution.)