Epilogue

[n the months that followed, I kept in touch with Billy by mail md telephone. He continued to hope that the court of appeals.vould overturn the decision that had sent him to Lima, and bat he would be able to return to Athens to continue his xeatment with Dr. Caul.

On April 14, 1980, at a second review hearing, Judge Kin-vorthy threw out contempt-of-court charges filea by Billy’s awyer against Superintendent Ronald Hubbard and Clinical Director Lewis Lindner for not treating Billy as a multiple personality. The judge ordered that Billy remain at Lima.

During most of 1979, the Ohio legislature had been con-•idering changes in the existing laws regarding persons found lot guilty by reason of insanity. Before such an individual: ould be transferred to a less restrictive environment (as the aw required), the county prosecutor would have the right to lemand a hearing in the jurisdiction in which the crime had ieen committed. The patients right to a review would be banged from every 90 days to every 180 days, and would also)e open to the public, the press and TV. This soon came to be: alled by many, “the Columbus Dispatch law” or “the Milligan aw.”

Bernie Yavitch, who had been the prosecutor on the Milligan case, later told me he had worked on the subcommittee of he Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association that drafted the lew law. Yavitch said: “The group was meeting, I guess, in esponse to the outcry that was going on over the Milligan ituation...”

The new law, Senate Bill 297, was passed, effective May 20,.980. Judge Flowers told me that the new law had been passed pecause of Billy.

* * *

On July 1, 1980, I received a letter postmarked Lima, with the word Urgent printed on the back of the envelope. When I opened it, I discovered a three-page letter written in flowing Arabic script. According to the translator, it was in perfect, fluent Arabic. It read, in part:

Sometimes I do not know who I am or what I am. And sometimes I do not even know the other people surrounding me. The echo of the voices are still in my mind, but they have no meaning at all. Several faces appear to me, as if from a darkness, but I am feeling very fearful because my mind is totally divided.

My [internal] family, in fact, is not in continuous contact with me at all, and have not been for a long time.... The events here in the last weeks were not very good. I am not responsible for it at all. I hate everything that transpires around me, but I can’t stop it, and I can’t alter it....

It was signed “Billy Milligan.” A few days later I received another letter, explaining who had written the first one.

Again I am sorry for the non English letters. It really embarrasses me to do everything wrong. Arthur knows you don’t speak Arabic but he sends you a dumb letter like that.

Arthur has never tried to impress anyone so he must be getting mixed up and just forgot. Samuel was taught by Arthur about Arabic, but he never writes letters. Arthur says it is bad tc boast. I wish he would talk to me. Bad things are happening and I don’t know why.

Arthur also speaks Swahili. Arthur read many books in Lebanor [prison] about the fundamentals of Arabic. He wanted to explore the pyramids and the Egyptian culture. He had to learn their language and to know what they wrote on the wall. I aske< Arthur one day why he was interested in that big pile of tri angled rocks. He told me that he was not as interested in wha was in the tomb, but it might give a key to how the tomb go there. He said something about how it defies a law of physic' and he was looking for the answer. He even made little card board pyramids, but David smashed them.

[signed] Billy U

During this period at the hospital, according to Billy, there was much harassment and beatings of patients by attendants, but besides Ragen, only Kevin, of all the personalities, stood up to the attendants. In recognition of this, Arthur removed him from the list of undesirables.

Kevin wrote to me on March 28, 1980:

Something very bad has happened but I don’t know what. I did know it would be only a matter of time before total unfusion and Billy would go to sleep for good. Arthur said Billy had only a small taste of conscious life but unfortunately the taste was a bitter one. Day by day he grew weaker in this place. He could not understand the hate and jealousy displayed by the authority figures of this institution. They also provoked the patients to hurt him and make Ragen fight, but Billy could hold Ragen back... but not anymore. The doctors say bad things about us, and what hurts the most is they are right.

We, I, am a freak, a misfit, a biological error. We all hate this place but it is where we belong. We weren’t accepted very well, were we?

Ragen is stopping everything for good. He has to. He said if you do not speak, you do no damage to anyone on the outside or inside. No one can blame us for anything. Ragen stopped the hearing. The span of attention will be turned inward and it will enforce the total block.

By shutting out the real world we can live peacefully in ours.

We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling... but a world without feeling is a world without pain.

Kevin

In October 1980, the State Department of Mental Health released the news that Lima was to be phased out as a state hospital for the criminally insane and would become a prison under the Department of Correction.

Once again the issue of where Milligan might be transferred made headlines. The possibility that he might be sent back to ¹ Athens or to another minimum-security hospital led Prosecutor Jim O’Grady to demand that under the new law, Billy be sent back to Columbus for his sanity review hearing. Judge I Flowers agreed to hear his case.

Originally scheduled to take place on October 31, 1980, the hearing was postponed by mutual agreement to November 7, after election day. To avoid having the politicians and the press make the Milligan hearing a political issue, a delay was desirable.

But officials of the state Department of Mental Health used this delay to take action on their own. They informed Prosecutor O’Grady that the decision had been made to send Milligan to the new Dayton Forensic Center, which had opened in April. This new maximum-security facility was surrounded by double fences, topped by rolls of razor-ribbon concertina wire wrapped around barbed wire, and had a security system more stringent than most prisons. The prosecutors office dropped its demand for a hearing.

On November 19, 1980, Billy Milligan was moved to the Dayton Forensic Center. Arthur and Ragen, sensing Billy-U’s despair and afraid he might try to kill himself, put him to sleep again.

When he wasn’t in the visiting room, he spent his time reading, writing and sketching. He was not allowed to paint He had visits from Mary, a young outpatient he had met during his first months in Athens. She moved to Dayton so that she could see him daily. Billy was well behaved, and he told me he looked forward to his 180-day hearing, hoping that Judge Flowers would decide he didn’t need a maximum security institution and would send him back to Athens. He knew that Dr. Caul could treat him, fuse him again and bring back the Teacher. With Billy-U asleep, he said, things were now as they had been before Dr. Cornelia Wilbur wakened him.

I could see that he was deteriorating. Several times during my visits, he would tell me he didn’t know who he was. When there was a partial fusion, he became a person with no name. Ragen, he reported, had lost the ability to speak English. People had stopped communicating with each other. I suggested he keep a daily log so whoever was on the spot could write messages. It worked for a while, but interest flagged and the entries were fewer and fewer.

On April 3, 1981, Billy had his 180-dayhearing. Of the foui psychiatrists and two mental health professionals who testified.

only Dr. Lewis Lindner of Lima, who had not seen him in five months, testified that he should be kept in maximum security.

A letter was introduced by the prosecutor into evidence. In it Milligan was apparently responding to news that another patient at Lima had planned to have Dr. Lindner killed. “Your tactic is completely wrong... Have you considered the fact that not many doctors would consider taking your case, knowing they may be hit for saying the wrong thing? But in fact, if Lindner has damaged you and your case beyond repair and if you feel your life is over because you’re going to spend eternity behind bars, you have my blessing.”

When Milligan was called to the witness stand and asked his name under oath, he said, “Tommy.” Tommy explained that Allen had written the letter in an attempt to talk the other patient out of killing Dr. Lindner. “It’s wrong to go around shooting people just because they testify against you in court. Dr. Lindner testified against me today, but I certainly wouldn’t shoot him for it.”

Judge Flowers deferred his decision. The newspapers ran front-page stories, feature articles and editorials opposing any move to Athens.

While waiting to hear his fate, Allen spent most of his time at Dayton working on a painting for the cover of this book. He planned to send the editor several sketches to choose from, but one morning he awoke to discover that one of the children had come out while he was asleep and scribbed over the sketches with orange crayon. On the morning of the assigned deadline, Allen worked furiously and finished the desired oil painting on time.

On April 21, 1981, the Fourth District Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled on the judgment of the court that had sent Billy to Lima. It found that removing him from a less restrictive setting to the maximum-security mental health facility in Ohio, the Lima State Hospital, “without notice to that person or his family, without allowing the patient to be present, to consult with counsel, to call witnesses, or to in general advise him of or allow him the rights of a full hearing... is a fatal violation... and must result in the reversal of the transfer order and the replacement of the patient in his position prior to the unlawful transfer proceeding.”

Although the appeals court found this judicial error, they decided that the error was not prejudicial, since Milligan had

had a hearing in Allen County that “found upon what we must presume to be sufficient and adequate evidence that appellant, due to his mental illness, was a danger to himself and others...”

The appeals court, therefore, disagreed with Judge Jones’ actions, but would not return Billy to Athens. Goldsberry and Thompson have since appealed this decision to the supreme court of Ohio.

On May 20, 1981, six and a half weeks after the 180-day hearing, Judge Flowers handed down his decision. His court entry gives two explanations: First, “the Court in its decision weighs heavily upon States Exhibit #1 [the letter] and its interpretation by Dr. Lewis Lindners testimony. The Court finds this persuasive by a clear and convincing standard that William S. Milligan presently lacks accepted moral restraints, shows familiarity with the criminal sub-culture, and shows a disregard for human life.” Second, the judge found that Dr. David Cauls testimony, given in a deposition, “that he would be unwilling to accept Court imposed limitations” made the Athens Mental Health Center “less than adequate.”

Making no references to the other psychologists and psychiatrists who had testified that Milligan was not dangerous, Judge Flowers ordered continued treatment at the Dayton Forensic Hospital “as the least restrictive alternative available consistent with the treatment goals of the defendant and with the public safety.” Judge Flowers further authorized Milligan to submit to treatment by a Dayton psychologist (who had informed the judge earlier that she had no experience in the treatment of multiple personality)—“at his [Milligans] own expense.” This decision was handed down three and a half years from the time Billy Milligan had been arrested and brought before Judge Flowers; two years and five months after Judge Flowers had found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

Alan Goldsberry immediately filed an appeal and brief with the 10th Appellate District in Franklin County, Ohio, challenging Senate Bill 297 (the Milligan law) as a denial of equal protection of the law and a denial of due process, and therefore unconstitutional. He also argued that its application to Billy Milligan “retroactively” was a violation of the Ohio constitution’s protection against retroactive laws.

' * * *

Billy did not seem bitter at the appeals court ruling against him, or at Judge Flowers’ decision. I had the impression he was weary of it all.

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. ’ ”