Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan (2021) s01e01 Episode Script

I do things and I don't remember them.
Because I'm asleep.
And people tell me I do things
bad things.
What kind of things
do they tell you that you do?
Criminal stuff.
In Columbus, Ohio,
the doctors told a court,
the defendant in a rape charge,
is a psychiatric curiosity,
He's been in
what's called a psychological coma,
unable to control his own emotions.
He is charged with
rape, robbery and kidnapping.
The rape of three women
on the Ohio State campus.
He was the infamous "campus rapist."
I wouldn't say arrested, I'd say rescued.
They started
bringing in doctor after doctor
and discovered what was wrong with me.
Well, among the physical,
there was emotional abuse.
And it's so hard to describe.
It was just It was like living in horror.
The Billy Milligan case
is a one-in-a-million outcome, I think.
Didn't even realize
what was going on at the time.
Somebody trying to talk to me.
What are they trying to say?
I can't really understand them.
I can't hear them now.
Well, I can hear and know they're there.
Is it a hoax? Has he been faking it?
He should have an Academy Award.
- For what?
- For the performance he's put on.
I don't believe he's a con man.
He should not be out.
He is a menace to women.
He should be in prison
where rapists belong.
A lot of people did see
Billy Milligan as a monster,
and he probably did
have monsters inside of him.
- Brilliant.
- Talented.
- Disturbed.
- Damaged.
Manipulative. Dangerous.
You don't know the real Billy Milligan.
Milligan ran away on Friday.
He is now searched all over the state.
When that medication runs out,
he could, uh, fragment
and then become very dangerous.
He was the most creative criminal.
What about the victims?
So much attention on him,
but what about them?
Billy had no feelings
for any other person.
Is that the people
that lady told me was inside of me?
What are they doing in there?
In the dark side, I am waiting ♪
Even sane, I am waiting ♪
As a child, I remember ♪
Daddy, daddy, all alone ♪
Geographically,
Ohio State campus is a sprawling place.
There are several ovals,
lots of buildings,
and in the mid-70s, looked like a campus
just coming out from the Vietnam War.
People were trying
to grapple with all of those topics
and the fairness.
There were a lot of
social justice equality issues,
not only for men but for minorities.
And justice for women,
especially at that time,
not being objects of fear
and having the ability to walk freely
around campus and feel safe.
I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear
that I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States.
She and three accomplices,
known as the Gang of Four
or the Shanghai Mafia,
tried to stage a coup
against Chairman Hua after Mao's Death.
Baby, I want you
Come ♪
Star Wars is simply
a cosmic comic book movie.
There was considerable attention
given earlier this year to the charges
A twenty-three-year-old
Columbus, Ohio man
Sexual assaults on four women
in the Ohio State University area.
October '77
was when the incidents occurred.
There was a series of rapes
in a short period of time
related to the Ohio State campus.
The victims
were all, obviously, females.
They were all young.
They were all good-looking.
Rumors were running rampant
about the number of rapes
and where they were occurring,
time of day, time of night,
different descriptions.
There were sketches of the perpetrator.
We saw this person everywhere.
People wore caps, glasses.
A lot of the young men
tried to wear beards.
People were really afraid,
especially the women.
A sense of anxiety,
people looking over their shoulder.
When was this person going to strike next?
The rapes happened
in such quick succession.
This lasted only 12 days.
There wasn't much time between them
for people to catch their breath
or reflect.
People were genuinely afraid.
The first victim was parked
in one of the university parking areas
and was approached by the individual.
Usually, victims in that circumstance
try and listen to their, uh, kidnapper
and avoid doing anything
that might cause their death.
There was a nurse, similarly
in and around October, as well,
who was exiting, uh,
her shift, going to her car.
And again, he kidnapped her
and assaulted her sexually.
The third rape occurred
about a block behind the dormitory
that I was living in.
And I believe that the first two rapes
happened by the medical center,
which was quite a ways away
from where we were,
and there was somewhat of
a false sense of security
until it happened a block from us,
and it lent to the feeling
that this could happen
anywhere, anytime to anyone.
The fourth victim was
an office worker here, downtown Columbus.
He did not take her anywhere.
The sexual act occurred
in that parking lot.
In each case, he was trying to,
you know, get money from them too.
So, it was rape and a robbery
at the same time.
The "campus rapist"
attracted a lot of attention
because, it wasn't that
he was the most prolific serial rapist,
but that he was
a little bit idiosyncratic.
He had to have some charm.
I think one of his victims
he persuaded that he needed a ride.
So, the guy had something about him
that was disarming to some extent.
May have been trying to establish
a relationship of some sort,
in a kind of a twisted way.
The so-called "campus rapist"
terrified that area of town.
Women of Ohio, be warned that
there is a rapist free on the streets.
The campus organized volunteers
to walk women from libraries,
or from the dorms to eat, or other points,
night classes, for instance, and back
so that people felt safe.
Often, the physical description you get
is close and as honest
as it can possibly be,
but because of the emotion,
you know, that's involved,
there are variations from time to time.
We were convinced from the information
and the method of operation,
if you will, the MO,
that we were dealing with one person.
Fortunately, the women
were able to take the police
to some of the locations
where these things occurred
and they were able
to dig up various evidence.
He left fingerprints
in one of the vehicles.
There were fingerprints
on the inside windshield of the car.
The Identification Bureau
at the Columbus Police Department
was able to make
a check and identification
with a suspect
whose fingerprint was on file with them.
The pieces came together,
actually, fairly well when you
think of the evidence that was available.
And so, because of
a previous criminal experience
where fingerprints were taken,
there was a record of,
you know, the identity.
The name came out to be Billy Milligan.
He had a record
with the Columbus Police Department,
uh, because he had
done time in Ohio prison,
and he actually had done some time
in the Ohio Youth Commission,
which is
a juvenile correction system here in Ohio.
There were some previous
mug shots or pictures taken.
Some of the victims verified, in fact,
that this was the person.
We had fingerprint evidence.
We had identification.
We had, um, statements from the witnesses.
They executed a search warrant
at Mr. Milligan's residence.
And we went to that address,
which is on the far east side of Columbus.
He said something like,
"Look out for the bomb."
Well, that obviously
gets your immediate attention.
I was working
night police beat on that night,
I believe it was October 26th, 1977, um
and I picked up on the police scanner
a bomb threat.
So, we called the fire department
to ensure that there was nothing there,
and, obviously, it was a housing area
and there were other people,
so we don't want anything to happen.
Then the fire department responded.
No device was found.
Nothing nothing that was explosive.
They said the bomb was a fake bomb,
which was pretty simple,
wires and batteries, like in a shoe box.
It wasn't going to fool anybody.
They were able to find in the apartment
driver's licenses.
Trophies, as it were,
from some of the victims.1
The first thing that caught my eye
were the number of paintings.
Excellent, just really first-class art.
And the first thought as an investigator:
Are they his or are they stolen?
It seemed like he was fairly submissive
and it was not, like, a difficult arrest.
Never said a word.
Nothing that it was a denial,
nothing that it was a claim of,
"You got the wrong person."
Nothing, just silence.
They were confident they had their man.
I'm sure they didn't realize
the complexities of the case
as it would unfold.
The first time
we heard about Milligan
was the night he was arrested.
The next day it made front page news,
and there was
a great sigh of relief in Columbus,
especially in the university area.
This guy had been
taken off the streets, finally,
after terrorizing that whole neighborhood
about a mile north of the downtown area.
When a suspect was arrested,
there was an audible sigh
throughout campus.
People felt that it went very quickly
and they were grateful,
but I also know
that some people were a little suspicious,
like, "Is this the right person?"
A 23-year-old Columbus, Ohio man
William Milligan
had been charged with rape
robbery and kidnapping.
My mother called me and said,
"Your brother has been arrested
for being the Ohio State campus rapist."
I probably didn't believe it as well.
I think I said, "There's got to be
some kind of a mistake here."
Nobody's family wants to admit
their child
or their husband or their brother
could do such a thing.
I think it's
a natural reaction of families
to not want to believe that.
The reaction in the community, I think,
was shock more than anything else.
Something that happened
in their little town
and things like that didn't happen.
I was in utter shock
because I knew Billy Milligan growing up
and I knew he was not
capable of any of this.
I knew in my heart
that they had to be wrong.
I think
my brother is in trouble,
but I didn't
I didn't know what to do.
I was a kid, you know,
I was just a young adult.
I had no idea how to deal with it.
The arraignment was, like,
really soon after the arrest.
So, I went to the arraignment
and they brought him in
and he was just so messed up.
He was just that, "I don't have a clue
about what's going on here."
You could see it in his face.
He was absolutely clueless
about what was happening.
Under Ohio law,
nobody can be prosecuted for a felony
unless they're indicted by the grand jury.
And the grand jury is a body of people.
They meet in secret,
and their job is to determine
whether or not there's enough evidence
to charge somebody.
When a defendant is charged by indictment,
he will either retain a lawyer
or lawyers will be appointed for him.
In this case,
I believe he was found indigent,
which means he had no money,
and by law he was
entitled to representation.
Judy Stevenson and Gary Schweickart
were the public defenders
assigned to his case.
Judy Stevenson and Gary Schweickart
were two of the best attorneys
I've ever met.
Not only their compassion
and their intelligence,
they were so well respected.
Gary was a very unique individual.
He had a knowledge
of how you could look at your case
and how you could find something in it,
no matter how difficult it appears.
He would find something
and he could turn that case around
to where he could talk a jury
into accepting that his client
was not guilty,
no matter what it looked like.
And Judy, uh, we did call her "Sweet Judy"
because one thing that she could do
was go talk to a judge,
and before you know it,
her client's on probation.
He's not going to prison.
She was very low-key but very effective.
She and she had a great presence.
She was an attractive woman
who was very effective in front of jurors.
Together they made a very good team.
Everyone knew
that when they said something
that it could be trusted
and taken to the bank.
Gary then went over to the jail,
met Billy, I think, for the first time,
and advised him
not to answer any questions
because he expected some police
to be down there and try to question him.
And as a good
criminal defense lawyer, he told him,
"Don't talk to the people,
don't waive your rights."
He was extraordinarily confused.
He had no idea what he had done
and doesn't understand what's going on,
doesn't know from day to day
what's happening.
Gary went over and talked to him
and became convinced
that there was something there.
Judy and Gary
spent a lot of time with Billy.
They didn't understand
what was happening,
but they knew that
they had seen something odd.
They were dealing with a person
that was not typical.
I was then an employee of
Southwest Community Mental Health Center
in the forensic psychiatry department
and we were a group
that did competency evaluations
and sanity evaluations
for the criminal court.
We also were called upon if there
was an emergency down at the jail.
So, we did get a call from the jail
and the call involved
Billy having pulled a urinal,
I believe it was,
off of the wall of his cell,
using the porcelain slivers
to try and slash his wrists.
And he was so scared.
It was like this little boy was cross
across the screen from me.
And he said, "I don't know why they're
saying I've done all these things."
Judy and Gary told me and taught me
that you remain open
to all possibilities on a criminal case,
that no two are the same,
even if it's the same charge.
You have different defendants
with different backgrounds
and experiences.
And most cases in criminal court,
they're not black and white.
There's a big gray area
where people's experiences
and abilities come into play.
Whenever he had
pencil and paper available, he would draw.
All of the drawings that he made
when he was in the Franklin County Jail
were different in subject matter
and very different in skill levels.
Some of his artwork
started coming out
with the rag doll.
Hanging rag doll.
Because no one understood what is that.
That alerted the public defenders
that this person is likely to be suicidal
and doesn't understand what's going on.
And that's when I think
they were starting to try to figure out
this person may not be capable
to participate in his own defense.
To be competent to stand trial,
you had to meet certain criteria.
And one was you had
to understand the nature of the crime.
You had to understand
the difference between right and wrong,
and you had to be able
to cooperate with your attorney
in the preparation of your own defense.
It was assigned to a particular judge.
In this case,
it was assigned to Judge Flowers.
He was the judge who
basically would handle the case.
He was strict
in the way he ran a courtroom,
but he wasn't unduly strict.
I had a great admiration
for Judge Flowers.
He would enforce the rules of evidence,
the rules of procedure,
but he would let you try your case.
And he treated everybody,
whether whoever you were,
whether you were a prosecution witness
or defendant witness,
he would treat you fairly.
And they were able to talk Judge Flowers,
Judge Jay Flowers,
uh, into having
a psychological evaluation done of him,
and Dorothy Turner
was the forensic psychologist
from Southwest Mental Health
that went over to see Billy.
Spent considerable time with him.
So, she went down and talked to him
and Dorothy Turner came back
and was very puzzled by what she had seen,
and went back
several more times to talk with him.
I believe she attempted
to give him a Rorschach test,
which she was an expert in,
and found the results
to be so disjointed and so confusing
that it rendered it unusable.
He went through, um, several tests,
physical and psychological tests
that revealed significant differences
in his IQ on any given day.
And the results went from
absolute borderline
intellectual functioning
that was almost at a level
of what was then called retardation,
all the way up to being
off the charts in terms of genius level.
One time they had
taken Billy to run some tests on him.
And I think it's called an EEG machine,
that they test the brain waves.
Up until this time, I did not know,
but theoretically, I guess,
there's three different types
of brain waves we have throughout our life
and they change typically by your age.
They'd taken Billy to run some tests
and it showed that
the person that was being tested
was much younger than what Billy was.
And that's when they started saying like
there either something's
wrong with the machine
or this person's brain is doing
different things at different times.
It still bugs me when they call me Billy,
but I don't say much.
I don't say anything really.
But I'm not Billy.
When Dorothy was finished on that session,
she went over and talked to Judy
and she said,
"You've got to talk to your client."
"There's something really,
seriously wrong here."
Judy and Gary
spent a lot of time with Billy.
And I remember him saying,
"I've never seen anything like this.
I'm not sure I ever will again."
Because believe it or not,
different personalities, um,
had different mannerisms
and they would walk differently.
They would hold themselves
differently when they sat.
Um, some had accents.
Once you understood this somewhat
and saw him,
you knew after a while
who you were talking to.
There were obvious times of switching
and changing of personalities
in a very dramatic way.
There was nothing subtle
about what happened when it would happen.
When he would switch,
his eyes would roll back in his head
and then he would
show evidence of nystagmus,
the fluttering of the eyes,
and then suddenly you would find yourself
talking with someone
who seemed completely different.
My mother was not at all surprised.
She was not skeptical.
She had always,
even prior to this, made the comment,
"That's not him. There's two Billys."
"There's this Billy
who does all these bad things
and then there's this Billy."
She's always said that.
There was one time, we were
having something going on downstairs
and the other children
were all the way downstairs
in a kind of a party room.
And Billy was here, and then he came up
and he stood behind the table there.
And Billy asked me why I call him Billy.
And I said, "Well, that was the name
I gave you at birth."
Sometimes it gets frustrating
because they gotta
call your name two or three times
and you're not paying any attention
to what they're saying,
and then it's, "Oh, yeah, I'm Billy."
Dorothy Turner said
she thought there was a possibility
that this individual might be
a multiple personality disorder.
This disorder, multiple personality,
which is also now known as
Dissociative Identity Disorder,
has been around
in modern psychiatry
since the 1800s or earlier.
The best way I can describe it
is to say that we all have
different aspects of our personalities.
And we're pretty familiar with them.
In the case of a multiple,
those aspects have splintered out.
And they've not only
become separate entities,
but they don't necessarily
know about the existence of the others.
So, one of the things
that makes a person with DID
different from most other people
is the discontinuities
that they live with,
that they find themselves places
and they don't remember what they did.
They find that they've done things
and they have no recollection of that.
Whereas most people remember
what they do from place to place to place.
And so, they have a sense
of continuity of existence.
Whereas, the people with DID
often feel like they exist,
and then time goes by
and then suddenly they
find themselves someplace else.
Most people don't understand this disorder
and they think it's
too fantastic to be real.
When Gary Schweickart told me
about these multiple personalities,
I thought it was a joke.
Nobody's more skeptical
than prosecutors, right?
I thought he was desperate,
he was grasping at straws.
Multiple personalities.
Have you ever
seen someone change personalities
right in front of your eyes?
Tonight. Multiple personalities.
Jay!
Seventy-six?
Z-H-A-Y. Zhay.
I still to this day have a hard time
understanding multiple personalities.
How our minds can split like that
and we can have
different characters in our mind
and not understand what we're doing
or know what one is doing.
Usually, if someone
has mental health issues,
they also are examined
for a second, uh, part of a defense
and that would be
"not guilty by reason of insanity."
And so, I think Mr. Milligan
raised both competency to stand trial
and the fact he asked for an examination
to determine whether or not
he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Judge Flowers had appointed
a well-known,
well-respected doctor, George Harding,
who actually was
associated with the Harding Hospital.
Dr. Harding and Harding Hospital
was the premier mental health hospital
here in this county.
He was highly respected
in the psychiatric, psychological,
mental health community.
Gary Schweickart had been to see me
and had asked if I would be
interested and willing to, uh,
participate in the evaluation.
Gary said that he felt that he was
showing some symptoms of a mental illness
and I indicated that I
would want to see the patient
and evaluate first
before making a decision,
but that I would be willing to do that.
How are you feeling?
I feel nervous.
During the time I was evaluating him,
I, uh, noted
that his behavior, uh, his voice,
his, uh, accent
changed on many occasions.
I presume
that he was under the assumption
he was coming to see a physician,
not a psychiatrist.
She never liked
it before, why should she want it now?
I just feel so damn guilty.
Oh, probably.
In 1978, when I first saw him,
the diagnosis of multiple personality
was not a commonly made diagnosis.
So, it, uh, was something
that I was skeptical about,
and I saw him the first time
with very much of a need
to be shown that this is
this was really a psychiatric disorder.
Dr. George Harding asked me
if I would please interview Billy Milligan
and tell him if I had any opinions
as to whether or not
he met the legal requirements for insanity
at the time of the alleged offenses.
The first time
I heard about Billy Milligan
was from Dr. George Harding
who wanted to know
if I would be willing, uh,
to be the psychotherapist for Billy.
I have to say, at that point,
I was not a hundred percent convinced
of the correctness of that diagnosis.
I had an open mind,
but I wanted to see what would emerge
in the clinical work.
And, so, there was some question:
Was he attempting to, um
make a case
for the multiple personality diagnosis
in order to, um, have an excuse
or to exculpate himself
from the charges that he faced?
Dr. Harding was very adamant
that if I'm manifesting
some kind of thing to avoid trouble,
that he'd be the first one to
to nail me.
I think the skepticism
regarding that diagnosis
involved both the medical
and including the psychiatric community,
certainly also the legal community,
and I believe
with the general public also.
The first important growth
of multiple personality disorder
in the 20th century
happened after The Three Faces of Eve
starring Joanne Woodward.
She won an Academy Award.
And its sequel, in effect,
was the book Sybil,
written by an author,
but in collaboration
with a psychoanalyst and a patient.
There is a rare psychological disorder
called multiple personality.
The book and the movie Sybil
were based on one such case.
I had no knowledge
of multiple personality
or anything before that.
So, I bought myself a copy of Sybil
and started reading
and, um, learned a lot
by reading the book.
I think Judy Stevenson was the one
who indicated to me what it was.
And there was a, uh,
TV show involving Sally Field,
and she said, "If you don't understand
what this is about
you should watch it to see it
to get an idea what we're talking about."
Sybil?
People. The The people
They're everywhere,
they're they're they're everywhere!
None of us had ever diagnosed or treated
a multiple personality disorder before.
We felt like we needed confirmation
by someone who was more familiar
with that diagnosis than we were.
We came to Lexington, Kentucky
to talk with a leading expert
on multiple personalities,
Dr. Cornelia Wilbur.
You may remember Dr. Wilbur
from the widely publicized case
of her patient called Sybil.
- Dr. Wilbur.
- Cornelia Wilbur.
- Cornelia Wilbur.
- She's the doctor for Sybil.
Dr. Cornelia Wilbur,
who is the nationally known psychiatrist
who successfully treated Sybil.
And by successfully treating Sybil,
she was able
to integrate the 16 personalities
into one personality.
We did talk with her
and, uh, she shared with us her experience
treating the one she calls Sybil.
It is so unusual and kind of crazy
to think about someone
having multiple personalities,
that Judy told me
that they allowed the prosecutors
to spend some time with Billy.
On March 12th 1978,
it was a Sunday morning.
We met over at the county jail
and it was myself, Gary Schweickart,
Judy Stevenson, Dr. George Harding
and Dr. Wilbur was there.
The Sheriff's Office was nice enough
to give us their break room
and open it up for us
and, um, they brought Mr. Milligan in.
Billy came in and sat down
and we asked a few questions.
It seemed that, uh,
he was driven by feelings
that he did not fully understand.
I mean, it was probably
like a couple of seconds of stuff
but then all of a sudden
maybe he'd sit differently
or talk with a British accent.
His body language, his posture, his voice,
everything was just spot-on.
Up until that time,
I thought it was a joke,
uh, a charade, it was
I didn't know,
but this was so very convincing to me,
and I came away
with the impression
that if it was fake,
it was a very, very good fake.
I couldn't tell that it was.
Well, it wasn't, uh, something
that was your run-of-the-mill
psychiatric problem.
But we felt that here was a problem,
it was something
that needed to be understood better,
and we felt that, uh,
we had a responsibility
to take the tough cases
as well as the easy ones.
So to speak, he had to give an opinion,
but according to Ohio law
and the way that
psychiatrists and psychologists testified,
Dr. Harding could not say
he was legally insane
or he was not legally insane.
He was asked to determine whether or not
Billy at the time of the offenses
knew right from wrong
and then Dr. Harding
would so report that to the court.
And the court would decide
whether or not to conclude
that he was legally insane
at the time of the offenses.
And so, Dr. Harding
agreed to take him as a patient
and do the psychiatric evaluations,
um, for a period of, like, three months.
Going to Harding Hospital
to be restored to competency
was not normal.
Normally, if people were
to be restored to competency,
they were sent to Lima,
Lima State Hospital
For the Criminally Insane.
But it was felt that Harding
was a safer environment for him.
I think it was Gary and Judy
who were able to say,
"We need to have this guy"
"We need to have our client here
and not clear up in Lima."
And because it was known
as the hell hole here in Ohio.
It was a horrible place.
Evaluating the symptoms
that were presented
made us feel that
it would be worthwhile
to do a thorough evaluation.
So, Dr. Wilbur came to the hospital
and, uh, evaluated Billy Milligan.
Who am I talking to?
- Danny.
- Oh.
How old are you?
- Fourteen.
- Mm-hmm.
Who is around most of the time?
Allen and Tommy.
How old is Allen?
- Eighteen.
- Mm-hmm.
- And how old is Tommy?
- Sixteen
Nobody had the sense
to ask the three questions:
Has anybody ever told you
that you did something
you didn't remember doing?
Have you ever found yourself someplace
and didn't know how you got there?
And have you ever been aware of the fact
that the clock hands
seemed to have gone around
and you didn't know what happened
during that period of time?
Bill Milligan's answers
to those questions were all
Yes.
I felt like she knew what she was doing
and I felt like she knew
how to confirm the diagnosis
that we were looking to get confirmed.
How soon
did you know Billy was a multiple?
Um, oh, I would guess
20 minutes after
the start of the interview,
because by this time I had
talked to three different people
and they had come spontaneously.
But he didn't know.
He didn't know that he was a multiple.
If we're talking about Billy,
the core personality,
did not know that he was a multiple
at that point in time,
and it wasn't easy to reveal at all.
You hearing them now?
I can't hear them now.
Well, I can hear and know they're there.
Is that is that the people that
that lady told me was inside me?
It could be.
What are they doing in there?
Nobody said why these people are here.
Well, one of the skeptical attitudes
is that the DID doesn't exist
until you get into therapy,
then the therapist
asks a whole bunch of questions
and you go,
"Oh, yes. I have people inside."
Well, I think we're a long ways
from really knowing how this works
because it is not under the control
of the individual
or any of the alternates.
By definition, in DID,
there has to be amnesia
and parts that don't know each other.
And when one part comes out,
the other part has no memory
of what happened.
All of the drawings that he made
were different
depending on who was doing the drawing,
which personality was doing the drawing.
And it did help
to understand the different personalities
and what each of those entities was like.
He tended to describe some of the alters.
Some were male, some were female,
some were as young as three or four.
Many were in his age group.
Initially, the person
who was in charge the most was Arthur.
He was the one who dealt
with any situation that seemed safe.
When I arrived,
there was quite a bit of confusion.
And Arthur spoke with a British accent,
but he was very unemotional,
and he seemed to be the one
who controlled
which of the other personalities
were allowed to come forward and talk.
I control the spot completely.
I say who is on and who is off.
He took a long time
before he let us meet with Ragen,
who was the personality
that was most angry and most violent.
If you look at "Ragen" it is "Rage Again."
And Ragen was the personality
that spoke in a Yugoslavian accent.
I know how to pay for a crime.
I've been in prison before.
Tommy was the escape artist.
When he was at Harding Hospital,
he got out of the locked unit he was in
and walked around to the front door,
not because he was trying to escape,
but just to see if he could.
And he could get out of a straitjacket,
he could get out of a door lock
You are the Houdini, aren't you?
You're the one that got
out of the straitjacket, aren't you?
Yeah.
Not all of the personalities
were spectacular.
Christene was a frightened little girl
who would hide in the corner
and wouldn't look at you.
Through specific personalities
identifiable by tone of voice,
facial expression, body image,
uh, they were ones
that we became knowledgeable about
so that we could identify
with whom we were talking.
I believe it was Dr. Harding
that actually gave us the information of,
"This is what
we think is going on with him."
"We think this is
a multiple personality disorder
and that's why he has
these episodes of amnesia
where he says this
but this has happened."
"And you clearly know what is the truth,
but his reality is that distorted."
"And so, we started to understand,
and then things started falling in place."
Now, I have to admit,
my very first gut reaction was, "What?"
"Are you serious?"
But that was not there very long at all
because just as soon
as they started talking about,
"There's one that's English
uh, it it just started to make sense
because I had spent time,
I'd seen this firsthand.
I know this person as Billy,
but I know what they're talking about.
To me, he always
seemed a little different.
A little a little unusual.
And one of the interesting things
that came about in the early days
of observing my brother
is that he had a knack for accents.
I remember times when we'd be driving
and he would start all of a sudden,
"Oh, I've got to stop for petrol,"
you know, in his British accent, and
I was like,
"We didn't call gas 'petrol.'
We called gas 'gas.'"
You know, I just thought it was just Billy
trying to be funny,
trying to be hilarious, but
he was just dead serious.
I'm not really sure
where these accents came from
because I don't recall
seeing them on television.
The only other show I remember
Well, Star Trek came out
in the 60s, the late 60s,
and maybe The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Those were the only things
I remember him, um, being interested in.
Name is Napoleon Solo.
I'm an enforcement agent
in Section Two here.
That's Operations and Enforcement.
I am Illya Kuryakin.
I'm also an enforcement agent.
Like my friend Napoleon,
I go and I do whatever I am told to.
Arthur was with me quite frequently.
And then along came Ragen.
And had different
you know, speaking voices.
Spoke in a foreign language.
I couldn't understand a word.
I had to pretend I had understood,
because there was no way
I could explain to him.
But he was talking to me as his mother,
and he thought
I was supposed to understand this.
In the state that I was in, I thought
I felt everyone in the world was like me.
On many incidences,
because the way people's moods
would change in front of me,
it would be to me
as they went to sleep
and somebody else had came.
Billy was 14 when he was first sent
to, um, the very first
psychiatric hospital.
Billy was having some problems
and that the doctors want to examine him
and check out and see how he's doing
and give him some tests.
The first doctor that I recall
said that his, um
that he had states of amnesia.
And then maybe they'd call me from school.
I would go get him, I'd bring him home
and I'd say, "How about going in,
lay down and rest?"
He would go in there.
When he would awake
then he was completely bewildered.
He didn't know how
he got from the school to his bed
and what he was doing home.
I was in a classroom,
and all of a sudden, I went to sleep
and I woke up on top of a fire escape.
On top of a building.
And my mother had found me up there.
Billy's asleep.
What was it that made him go to sleep?
We had talked to a variety
of these other personalities,
but Billy had not been
allowed to "wake up," as they say.
We put him to sleep
during a suicide attempt
at the age of 16.
The host personality
being gone for five years is not common,
but it's also not rare.
I've seen many cases like that.
And if you just think about this
as a survival strategy,
let's say that
he would have killed himself,
but because he was put inside,
the body didn't die.
It's a defense mechanism,
a coping strategy,
a survival strategy.
But it's basically, "This is too much.
I can't deal with all this."
"I have to break it into pieces
so I don't feel
and know the whole picture."
Now, what about the suicidal business?
Has he been
No.
So, he's not suicidal now.
No. Um
I'd like to see what does he feel like.
I talked as persuasively as possible
with the alternates
and said, "Let Billy come out,"
because they said
they'd been keeping him asleep
because every time he came to,
he'd want to kill himself,
and they didn't want to die.
And I said, "Well, you know,
there are a lot of people here and
Let him come out,
so at least I can see what he's like."
Are you scared? What's wrong?
You remember me?
Billy?
You remember me? No need to be scared.
It's perfectly safe.
To me, I guess sleep was like death
because it was an escape.
And when Dr. Wilbur woke me up,
it scared me to death
because I had no idea
where I was, what was going on.
And I just seen
all these people around me.
I saw my first miracle.
I saw my son again.
The core, Billy.
When did everybody start
knowing about everybody else?
When you came around.
I think it was
hard for him to believe it at first,
but after explaining the fact
that he couldn't remember
things that he had done,
then I think he had to
come to the conclusion
that what they were telling him
was correct.
How did I get here in this hospital?
Mrs. Turner, Dr. Wilbur felt
that perhaps if you came to the hospital
that you would be able
to learn how to deal with problems,
and deal with frightening experiences
and that you wouldn't go to sleep
and then when you wake up
find something had happened
that got you into trouble.
And you guys can do that?
We certainly would
like to try to help you do that.
Would you like us to try
to help you do that?
You mean you'll get
these people out of me?
What are the things
that are hardest for you to deal with?
If somebody gonna hurt me.
That makes me go to sleep.
That would make you go to sleep?
In order to escape from that person?
Yeah.
If I go to sleep, I don't get hurt.
The dissociation defense
is an altered state of consciousness
and it occurs because the individual
is put in a position of terrible trauma
that is unbearable
to think about in the present,
and so they dissociate.
They go into a kind of altered state
to mentally leave the traumatic situation
in which they have found themselves.
Why am I that way?
There must have been things
that frightened you terribly
when you were very small.
The development of a multiple personality
was the direct result of extreme trauma.
And when I say extreme trauma,
I'm not just talking about child abuse
in the way that
we normally describe child abuse.
I'm talking about child abuse
that borders on torture.
Does he know I'm here?
Does he know you're here?
Yeah.
You're talking about?
I'm not supposed to tell things.
If I did something wrong,
he's going to kill me
and bury me in the barn.
Billy, I'm going
to tell all of our stories.
I'm going to tell
all the secrets that I know.
They need to understand this.
They need to know this
or this is going to keep
happening the rest of your life,
and I can't live like that either.
And you can't do that to people.
I'm grabbing your heart ♪
I'm getting to you ♪
All this pain, all the same ♪
I don't know who's right was wrong ♪
I'm strumming my heart ♪
I'm getting to you ♪
I'm feeling the pain ♪
I'm gonna hide away ♪
You're gonna stay without me ♪
Strange girl, strangle me ♪
Strange girl, strangle me ♪