The minds of Billy Milligan

Billy Milligan can be anyone he wants to be … except himself.

Out of control of his own actions, Billy Milligan was a man tormented by twenty-four distinct personalities battling for supremacy over his body—a battle which culminated in late 1977 when he awoke in jail, arrested for the kidnap and rape of three women. In a landmark trial, Billy was acquitted of his crimes by reason of insanity caused by multiple personality—the first such court decision in history—bringing to public light the most remarkable and harrowing case of multiple personality ever recorded.

Daniel Keyes

The minds of Billy Milligan

ePub r1.0

Titivillus 25.09.2021

Original title: The minds of Billy Milligan

Daniel Keyes, 1981

Digital editor: Titivillus

ePub base r2.1

To the victims of child abuse, especially those in hiding …

Acknowledgments

In addition to the hundreds of meetings and conversations with William Stanley Milligan, this book was developed from interviews with sixty-two people whose lives touched his. Although most of these people are clearly identified as they appear in the story, I would like to express my gratitude for their help.

I would like, also, to thank personally the following, whose cooperation played an important part in my research and investigations, and in the beginning, development and publication of this book:

Dr. David Caul, clinical director of the Athens Mental Health Center; Dr. George Harding, Jr., director of Harding Hospital; Dr. Cornelia Wilbur; Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, public defenders; L. Alan Goldsberry and Steve Thompson, attomeys-at-law; Dorothy Moore and Del Moore, Milligans mother and present stepfather; Kathy Morrison, Milligans sister; and Milligans close friend Mary.

I am grateful for the cooperation of the staffs of the following institutions: the Athens Mental Health Center, Harding Hospital (especially Ellie Jones, public relations), the Ohio State University police department, the Ohio prosecutors office, the Columbus police department, the Lancaster police department.

My thanks and respect to two of the Ohio State University rape victims (portrayed by the pseudonyms Carrie Dryer and Donna West), who volunteered to give, in detail, the victims’ point of view.

I should like to thank my agent-attomey, Donald Engel, for his confidence and support in launching the project, and to my editor, Peter Gethers, whose unflagging enthusiasm and critical eye helped me get the material under control.

Although most people were eager to cooperate, several preferred not to talk to me, and I want to make clear the source of my material about them:

Dr. Harold T. Brown of the Fairfield Mental Health Clinic, who treated Milligan when he was fifteen, is represented in his comments, thoughts and insights by quotations and paraphrases from his case notes. Dorothy Turner and Dr. Stella Karolin of the Southwest Community Mental Health Center, who discovered and first diagnosed Milligan s multiple personalities, are described through his clear memory of meetings with them, corroborated by their written reports, their sworn court testimony and descriptions of other psychiatrists and attorneys who knew and spoke with them at the time.

Chalmer Milligan, Williams adoptive father (identified at the trial and by the media as his “stepfather”) refused to discuss the allegations against him, and refused my offer to tell his side of the story. In statements he sent to newspapers and magazines and in publicized interviews, he denied Williams accusations of “threatening, abusing and sodomizing him.” Chalmer Milligan s alleged actions are, therefore, derived from trial transcripts, which were supported by depositions from relatives and neighbors and corroborated in my taped interviews with his daughter, Challa; his adopted daughter, Kathy; his adopted son, Jim; his former wife, Dorothy; and, of course, William Milligan.

I would like to give special recognition and express my appreciation to my daughters, Hillary and Leslie, for their help and understanding during the difficult days of researching this material, and to my wife, Aurea, who in addition to making her usual helpful editorial suggestions listened to hundreds of hours of interview tapes and logged them into a retrieval system so that I could find and cross-check conversations and information. Without her encouragement and help, this book would have taken many more years to write.

Preface

This book is the factual account of the life, up to now, of William Stanley Milligan, the first person in U.S. history to be found not guilty of major crimes, by reason of insanity, because he possessed multiple personalities.

Unlike other multiple personalities in psychiatric and popular literature who were kept anonymous at the outset by the use of fictional names, Milligan became a controversial public figure from the moment he was arrested and indicted. His face appeared on the front pages of newspapers and on the covers of magazines. Results of his mental examinations made evening television news programs and newspaper headlines around the world. He is also the first multiple personality patient to have been carefully examined around the clock as an inpatient in a hospital setting, with findings of multiplicity attested to in sworn testimony by four psychiatrists and a psychologist.

I first met the twenty-three-year-old man at the Athens Mental Health Center in Athens, Ohio, shortly after he had been sent there by the courts. When he asked me to write his story, I told him it would depend on whether or not there was more to it than had been reported extensively in the media. He assured me that the deeper secrets of his inner people had never been revealed to anyone, including his attorneys and the psychiatrists who had examined him. Now he wanted the world to understand his mental illness. I was skeptical but interested.

Several days after I met him, my curiosity was further aroused by the last paragraph of a Newsweek article entitled “The Ten Faces of Billy”:

There remain, however, unanswered questions: How did Milligan learn the Houdini-like escape skill demonstrated by Tommy [one of his personalities]? What about his conversations with his rape victims in which he claimed to be a “guerrilla” and a “hit man”? Doctors think that Milligan may have personalities yet unfathomed—and that some of them may have committed undiscovered crimes.

When I talked with him alone during visiting hours in his room at the mental hospital, I discovered that Billy, as he came to be called, was very different from the poised young man I’d first met. He now spoke hesitantly, his knees jiggling nervously. His memory was poor, with long periods blanked out by amnesia. He could generalize about those portions of his past that he vaguely recalled, his voice often quavering at painful memories, but he could not provide many details. After trying, vainly, to draw out his experiences, I was ready to give it up.

Then one day something startling happened.

Billy Milligan fused completely for the first time, revealing a new individual, an amalgam of all his personalities. The fused Milligan had a clear, almost total recall of all the personalities from their creation—all their thoughts, actions, relationships, tragic experiences and comic adventures.

I mention this at the outset so that the reader will understand how I was able to record Milligans past events, private feelings and solitary conversations. All the material in this book was given to me by the fused Milligan, his other personalities and sixty-two people whose paths crossed his at different stages in his life. Scenes and dialogue are re-created from Milligans recollections. Therapy sessions are taken directly from videotapes. I have invented nothing.

One serious problem we faced as I began to write was developing a chronology. Because Milligan had “lost time” frequently since early childhood, he rarely paid attention to clocks or calendars and was often too embarrassed to admit not knowing the day or month. I was able, finally, to arrange events in time by using bills, receipts, insurance reports, school records, employment records and the many other documents turned over to me by his mother, sister, employers, attorneys and physicians. Though Milligan rarely dated his correspondence, his former girl friend had kept the hundreds of letters he wrote to her during his two years in prison, and I was able to date them by the postmarks on the envelopes.

As we worked, Milligan and I agreed on two basic ground rules:

First, all people, places and institutions would be identified by their real names, except for three groups of individuals whose privacy had to be protected by pseudonyms: other mental patients; unindicted criminals with whom Milligan had been involved, both as a juvenile and as an adult, and whom I was not able to interview directly; and the three Ohio State University rape victims, including the two who agreed to be interviewed by me.

Second, to assure Milligan that he would not incriminate himself in the event some of his personalities revealed crimes for which he might still be indicted, we agreed that I would use “poetic license” in dramatizing these scenes. On the other hand, those crimes for which Milligan has already stood trial are reported in hitherto unrevealed detail.

Of those who have met, worked with or been victimized by Billy Milligan, most have come to accept the diagnosis of his having multiple personalities. Many of these people remembered the thing Milligan said or did that made them finally admit, “He just can’t be faking this.” Others still feel he is a fraud, a brilliant con man using the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity to avoid prison. I sought out as many people in both groups as would talk to me. They gave me their reactions and their reasons.

I, too, maintained an attitude of skepticism. Hardly a day went by when I wasn’t pulled one way and then the other. But during the two years I worked with Milligan on this book, the doubt I felt when his recalled acts and experiences seemed incredible turned to belief when my investigation showed them to be accurate.

That the controversy still absorbs Ohio newspapers can be seen from an article in the Dayton Daily News of January 2, 1981—three years and two months after the last crimes were committed:

Fake or Victim? Either Way,

Milligan Case Illuminating

by Joe Fenley

William Stanley Milligan is a troubled man living a troubled existence.

He is either a con man who has duped society and beaten the rap for violent crimes or he is an authentic victim of a multiple personality disorder. Either way its a bad scene …

Only time will tell whether Milligan has played the world for a fool or is one of its saddest victims …

Perhaps the time is now.

D.K.

Athens, Ohio January 3, 1981

The People Inside

The Ten

The only ones known to psychiatrists, attorneys, police and the media at the time of the trial.

1. William Stanley Milligan (“Billy”), 26. The original, or core, personality, later referred to as “the unfused Billy,” or “Billy-U.” High school dropout. Six feet tall, 190 pounds. Blue eyes, brown hair.

2. Arthur; 22. The Englishman. Rational, emotionless, he speaks with a British accent. Self-taught in physics and chemistry, he studies medical books. Reads and writes fluent Arabic. Though he is staunchly conservative and considers himself a capitalist, he is an avowed atheist. The first to discover the existence of all the others, he dominates in safe places, deciding who in the “family” will come out and hold the consciousness. Wears glasses.

3. Ragen Vadascovinich, 23. The keeper of hate. His name is derived from “rage-again.” Yugoslavian, he speaks English with a noticeable Slavic accent, and reads, writes and speaks Serbo-Croatian. A weapons and munitions authority as well as a karate expert, he displays extraordinary strength, stemming from the ability to control his adrenaline flow. He is a communist and atheist. His charge is to be the protector of the family, and of women and children in general. He dominates the consciousness in dangerous places. Has associated with criminals and drug addicts, and admits to criminal, sometimes violent behavior. Weighs 210 pounds, has enormous arms, black hair and a long, drooping mustache. He sketches in black and white because he is color-blind.

4. Allen, 18. The con man. A manipulator, he is the one who most often deals with outsiders. He is an agnostic, and his attitude is, “Make the best of life on earth.” He plays the drums, paints portraits and is the only one of the personalities who smokes cigarettes. Has a close relationship with Billy’s mother. Same height as William, though he weighs less (165). Hair parted on right, he is the only one who is right-handed.

5. Tommy, 16. The escape artist. Often mistaken for Allen, he is generally belligerent and antisocial. Plays the saxophone and is an electronics specialist and a painter of landscapes. Muddy-blond hair and amber-brown eyes.

6. Danny, 14. The frightened one. Afraid of people, especially men. He was forced to dig his own grave and was then buried alive. Thus he paints only still lifes. Shoulder-length blond hair, blue eyes, short and slender.

7. David, 8. The keeper of pain, or the empath. Absorbs all the hurt and suffering of the other personalities. Highly sensitive and perceptive, but has a short attention span. Confused most of the time. Dark reddish-brown hair, blue eyes, physically small.

8. Christene, 3. The comer child, so called because she was the one to stand in the comer in school. A bright little English girl, she can read and print, but has dyslexia. Likes to draw and color pictures of flowers and butterflies. Blond shoulder-length hair, blue eyes.

9. Christopher, 13. Christenes brother. Speaks with a British accent. Obedient but troubled. Plays the harmonica. Hair brownish-blond like Christenes, but his bangs are shorter.

10. Adalana, 19. The lesbian. Shy, lonely and introverted, she writes poetry, cooks and keeps house for the others. Adalana has long, stringy black hair, and since her brown eyes occasionally drift from side to side with nystagmus, she is said to have “dancing eyes.”

The Undesirables

Suppressed by Arthur because they possessed undesirable traits. Revealed, for the first time, at the Athens Mental Health Center to Dr. David Caul.

11. Philip, 20. The thug. New Yorker, has a strong Brooklyn accent, uses vulgar language. References to “Phil” gave police and media the clue that there were more personalities than the ten known ones. Has committed minor crimes. Curly brown hair, hazel eyes, beak nose.

12. Kevin, 20. The planner. A small-time criminal, he planned the Gray Drug Store robbery. Likes to write. Blond hair, green eyes.

13. Walter, 22. The Australian. Fancies himself a big-game hunter. Has an excellent sense of direction and is often used as a “spotter”. Suppressed emotions. Eccentric. Has a mustache.

14. April, 19. The bitch. Boston accent. She is filled with thoughts and plans of diabolical revenge against Billy’s stepfather. The others say she is insane. Does the sewing and helps with the housekeeping. Black hair, brown eyes.

15. Samuel, 18. The wandering Jew. Orthodox in his religion, he is the only one who believes in God. Sculptor and wood-carver. Black curly hair and beard, brown eyes.

16. Mark, 16. The workhorse. No initiative. Does nothing unless he’s told by the others. Takes care of monotonous labor. If there is nothing to do, he will stare at the wall. Sometimes referred to as “the zombie.”

17. Steve, 21. The perpetual impostor. Laughs at people as he imitates them. An egomaniac, he is the only one of the inner selves who has never accepted the diagnosis of multiple personality. His mocking imitations often cause trouble for the others.