Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan (2021) s01e04 Episode Script

First, I would like to make it very clear
that I'm not a danger
or a threat to society or anyone else.
I left in self-defense.
I have a genuine fear
for my personal safety.
And all I can do is wait until
the legal system works itself out,
I'm a victim of their politics.
In the dark side, I am waiting ♪
Even sane, I am waiting ♪
As a child, I remember ♪
Daddy, daddy, all alone ♪
Mr. Gorbachev
and the Prime Minister
appeared to get on well together.
Big smiles today.
Downrange distance,
seven nautical miles.
The nuclear disaster
in the heart of Soviet farmland
For Milligan, this change
in his treatment at the hospital
is a ploy to keep him institutionalized.
Billy Milligan's escape was
reported to the, uh, state highway patrol,
and then it was handled locally
through the local troopers
and I got involved, I think, the next day.
Milligan ran away on Friday,
he is now searched all over the state.
It was over a July 4th period of time
where there would be fewer staff.
And that Dr. Lindner
decided that he was going to
adjust Billy's medications'
back to the stuff
the psychotropics that were not good.
I mean, and he's under Dr. Lindner again.
The person who was
responsible for the Thorazine
and everything that happened in Lima.
I just thought he would be gone for,
you know, a couple days at the most.
Uh, there was
considerable media attention.
He had a lot of attorneys.
He had a lot of doctors.
In my gut, ever since
the beginning of time with this case,
I've I've sensed a tragic ending
and I hope my gut feelings are wrong.
And we have to get him back.
I have been informed
by his treating psychiatrist
that if and when that medication runs out,
he could fragment
and then become very dangerous.
No one needs to be afraid of Billy
because if any one
of these personalities are out,
you really have to know Billy
to detect the personalities.
They can be out,
but they're not dangerous.
I'm not concerned for public safety at all
because even
he's learned to deal with that before
in a few states and he's not violent,
but I am very concerned about himself
as far as getting very depressed,
maybe doing something to himself.
Being a friend of Billy Milligan
was always putting yourself
into a moral dilemma.
Not always, but many, many times I felt,
"Should I cross the state line or not?"
His escape was well-planned.
He had assistance from Mr. Murray.
He'd been in
communication with his attorneys,
with the State public defender.
Billy He was just going away
from the hospital for the weekend.
So my feeling was that
he was probably going
to go back on Monday or Tuesday.
You know, soon.
I suggested that he make a video
and I would record it
and have him explain
why he had left the hospital.
And that he had not escaped.
He did not hold anybody prisoner.
He just simply walked out,
which he always did.
It seems that my treatment,
that my commitment
and everything else to the institution
has become an issue of politics.
I don't think they really care
what is best for me or society
or the individual
at the institution at this point.
And then I called each of the news media
and told them that there
was a videotape from Billy Milligan
in locker number 28.
It seemed like
the Billy Milligan story would never end.
When interest started to die on him,
he would do some crazy thing
that would put him in the headlines again.
There is concern
that one of his 24 separate personalities
takes control of him.
And what if this personality
is not a peaceful person
but a violent one?
It came to a point
that I, also in addition to
being with Billy and protecting him,
I was in touch with people
who wanted to bring him back.
And Billy had two main lawyers.
One was Randy Dana
and his boss was Gary Schweickart,
but it had to be done in a way
that was satisfactory to everyone.
Billy wanted his treatment team
to have charge of his medications.
He wanted a judge to rule on that.
He had conditions he started setting up
as to when and why
he would choose to come back,
but that wasn't happening very quickly.
He called me
to let me know that he was okay
and that he just could not
take the pressure from the media
and the fighting of the doctors
and the discrepancies
in all the medications.
It was making him crazy.
And I don't know
who came up with this idea.
Probably maybe me.
I realized that, you know
it might be better if Billy
were outside the state right now.
So, the plan, I think
Originally, it was I rented a car
and we were going to
just drive outside of state
so that we were safer.
So, I thought, "Well, we could
drive towards Colorado
and at any point turn right back around
and be back in Ohio."
On the trip to Colorado,
Billy was in great shape.
He had no stress.
I just remember we had a really good time
driving through two or three states.
I left him in Aspen.
I flew back and left the car with him
and then he eventually
left it at the airport.
Once we found out that,
okay, there's a car in Denver
with his personal belongings,
then the FBI got involved
then that became a national issue.
Well, I had never heard of Billy Milligan
until he became a fugitive in 1986.
He would've been
considered armed and dangerous.
We also found out that he had a relative
in British Columbia in Canada.
The very next time
I heard my brother's voice
was July 16th, 1986.
He told me that he was doing well,
that he had been
brought out to Colorado by Jim.
He told me that he was
painting on the sidewalk.
He was making good money
and up to that point that day,
he'd made about $1,000
and was doing okay.
I asked him, "What are your plans?"
He said, "I don't have any plans."
He called me later that evening, the 16th,
and told me that he would
be on a plane that night
and he would be coming to Seattle
and I would see him
the morning of the 17th.
He was in good spirits. He seemed
This was the first time
I had seen him in years.
I mean years, literally.
We talked a little bit.
I said, "I can't take you
to British Columbia."
"But there's a town just
south of the border called Bellingham."
"You're going to love it.
It's just like Athens."
Next morning, I went down there,
we had breakfast, we talked about it.
He said, "I walked around town a little.
I like it here. It's really cute."
"I like it."
And that was the start of him
being in Bellingham.
We drove around until we found
a "For Rent" sign on a house,
a little house on a hill.
He went in, talked to the people inside.
He came back out said,
"I've got a place. It's rented."
I said, "Great."
He already had a new name.
"Christopher Carr." He told me about that.
I gave Billy Milligan
a social security number,
a card for Christopher Carr,
and then he used those to apparently get
either a driver's license
or some sort of state ID,
and then he took it from there.
So, he became Christopher Carr.
And I'm not sure
if the FBI knew at that point
that Chris Carr was Billy Milligan.
I started seeing my brother
on an every-couple-of-day basis,
at the very minimum.
Weekends and things like that.
He wanted to get out of Bellingham,
wanted to see some things.
So, I took the chance
and brought him to Canada.
I got him across the border.
We didn't have to lie.
They didn't ask who he was.
He stayed at my house,
wanted some artwork,
wanted to do some art.
So I went out and bought some art canvases
and art supplies, everything,
and he sat on the floor
and did some of
the greatest art I've ever seen.
Inside of an hour
he did an unbelievable art scene,
an unbelievable piece.
He wanted to go flying.
So, I went out to the airplane,
took him flying.
I took him flying up in the mountains
and flew him around the Expo.
And then the next day
we went to Expo and he walked around,
and I figured it was safe
because it was a lot of people
and nobody in Canada
would know who he was.
I began to think, you know,
"harboring a fugitive,"
but I didn't really know
what the consequences were.
We had immediately let Seattle know
because of his brother being in Vancouver.
So, we immediately let Seattle know
and I remember, for a fact, Seattle
We specifically asked them to, uh
at port of entries or anything else
to provide the photographs
in case he went
back and forth and they'd spot him.
It's not like it is now.
Now everything is computerized.
And it's very easy
to spot somebody coming in and out.
Back then it wasn't.
Thirty-five years ago, it was not.
Nobody ever contacted me. Nobody.
None of the police officers in Ohio.
Nobody in Washington state.
Nobody ever contacted me.
I was certain they knew who I was.
I kept a journal of all of this.
Day by day, all of my conversations,
in many cases, even recorded
conversations with my brother.
I was terribly nervous.
As a matter of fact,
when I left him in Bellingham,
I I called Gary Schweickart.
That didn't go well at all.
He said, "Everybody here in Ohio's
upset with Billy right now."
"He has really
messed this up for himself."
And he said, "Listen,
he could just walk out in the woods
and commit suicide and get it over with
and save us all a lot of problems."
I hung up the phone and went,
"I can't believe this."
This is a person that was his defender.
I I was beside myself.
I didn't know what to do.
I called Jim Murray.
And from that point on,
Jim Murray and I
almost had a daily correspondence
either by phone, mail, whatever.
At some point, his brother was worried
because of these disturbing paintings
that Billy had dropped off.
Also, all this stuff
that he had suddenly acquired
um, with with no money.
And he knew right away
that Billy needed help,
psychological help,
that he was coming apart.
I think Jim felt a sense
that perhaps he could help
get Billy situated into a new life.
Whereas we haven't been able
to do that here in central Ohio.
But he didn't know Billy well enough
to really know how to help Billy.
He didn't he didn't know Billy.
October 31st.
I'd become very very nervous then.
I called Jim Murray
and we had an hour-long discussion
about Billy's condition.
Well, I think he's probably
out now handling his money situation
He gets panicky when he gets left
with a couple of thousand dollars.
He does.
And so, if he's down
to a few hundred dollars
he is desperate, in his mind.
He's falling apart really quick.
I do have some phone calls later
where I ask Billy,
I said, "Are you losing time?"
And he said, "Yeah, a little."
Which means a lot, probably.
Then things started to break down.
There came a time that he told me
that, um, there was a guy
in his apartment complex
that went missing.
Because of that, he said,
you know, there's a lot
of police activity around there.
He needs to move.
"Too many police are gonna ask questions.
I'm gonna get discovered."
"They'll know who I am."
And I said, "Why didn't you talk
to me about this? We could've figured"
"I can make decisions for myself."
And it started getting kind of chaotic.
Before he even left Bellingham,
I knew that his brother was scared
of what Billy could have done.
Next thing I know,
he's staying at this house.
He's sharing it,
the house, with some people.
And now, he's part of a company
that he and two guys started
that's a hot tub company.
"How you doing this with these guys?"
He goes, "I'm their marketing manager."
So, he knew that he needed help
and his brother knew he needed help.
So, I was able to do
three-way conference calls,
and I could call Dr. Caul
on the other line
and push a button
and we all three could talk.
I care about Billy.
I've been worried about him
ever since he left.
Now, the best solution of all for Billy
is for him to agree to turn himself in
in the town where Dr. Allison is.
And he recommended
a doctor named Ralph Allison
who was down in California,
a well-known therapist
for multiple personality.
The only thing is, Billy has mostly,
throughout our relationship,
tried to insist
that the treatment go along his lines
and not the therapist's.
Yeah.
And my advice is that Billy,
if he won't try
to get Dr. Allison to treat him
with no deals, no strings,
I suggest you back off
and leave him to God.
I called Dr. Allison and asked
if he'd be willing to see my brother.
And he said, "If he'll come
and see me, I will see him."
Billy called me and said
he was north of Sacramento
and wanted me
to mail him some, um, marijuana,
which I had access to.
- Hello? Hi.
- Jim?
Hi, how's it going?
Not bad. How are you?
Uh, pretty good.
I just wanted to know
if you sent that to that number
that you got straightened out.
Yeah, I straightened it out, I think.
- Okay.
- I mean, I hope I straightened it out.
It was the same place we had
talked about at some point.
Yeah.
It was a place you had
already mentioned once before, right?
Okay.
Okay, because
I checked today and it was just, you know
Being a friend
of Billy Milligan's
constantly puts you
in a stressful situation.
I had promised Booker,
the highway patrol, and other people,
that I would let them know
if I knew where Billy was.
So, should I send him this medicine?
But I decided it would be the worst thing
for him not to have medicine
and to fall apart
and then somebody tries to arrest him
and then violence occurs.
So, my feeling was
to send him the medicine,
not tell anyone
and hope that he got
to see Ralph Allison a few days later.
It turns out that the address
was inside of a state prison.
And then he called me up that night
and he was really upset.
He goes, "You set me up."
"You tried to get me
to walk into a prison."
I said, "I did not try
to get you to walk into a prison."
"I don't know where he is.
You have his phone number."
"You were supposed to call him. Did you?"
"No."
So, Billy had no intention
of going inside of a prison
to meet Dr. Allison.
I said, "Where are you at now?"
He says, "Well, I'm in Florida."
He says,
"I've contacted Aunt Jo."
And I said, "Are you kidding me?
You're in Florida and
you're calling people that you know?
Are you trying to get caught?"
He says, "In many ways,
I'm already caught."
"I am in a hotel conference room."
"There is a law enforcement
convention going on."
"All the state prosecutors
are having a convention here."
And I went,
"Are you reaching out to Randy?"
He says,
"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do."
"I'm going to go
sit down in the cafeteria
and I'm going
to have the upper hand on them."
And I said, "Billy, are you serious?"
And he said, "Yes."
He called Randy Dana
the night before
he left for the convention,
and so, he put out
enough word that I felt that
he's just making it easy
for them to come pick him up.
I called the FBI.
And I said to them,
"This is going to sound bizarre
because it is bizarre."
"There's a gentleman
by the name of Billy Milligan
who's been on the lam since July
from a mental institution in Ohio."
"I've had some interaction with him
over a period of time
and I know that
he's in Florida right now."
Well, I was sitting in the office
in mid-November of 1986
and I got a phone call
from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
which was unusual.
I got a direct phone call.
The second they called,
I knew something was up.
And this one corporal said,
"We know where Billy is."
Billy was currently
down in Miami with his aunt,
that he had been residing
in Bellingham, Washington
under a certain name.
A couple hours later,
I get a phone call from FBI Miami,
and they're laughing.
I said, "What happened? What's so funny?"
He said,
"Well, we're sitting at his aunt's house
and his aunt is being cooperative
and says, 'Yeah, he's in town.'
And the phone rings and it's Billy."
"And Billy says,
'Hey, I'm down at the so-and-so Hotel
and I'll be home in a bit.'"
I don't know
what his condition is at this point.
I don't know if he's armed.
I would hope he's not,
but he told me
he would never be taken back alive.
He didn't want to surrender.
Well, the agents
went down to the hotel, walk in,
and there Mr. Milligan is sitting
with State Public Defender, Randall Dana.
As we arrested Billy,
Billy stood up and pointed at Dana
and Dana said,
"It wasn't me, Billy. It wasn't me."
"Don't say anything. Don't say anything."
That was big news. Again, Billy Milligan,
nine years after his arrest,
make headlines again.
Anytime I'm not
at the hospital, I'm accused of crimes.
I didn't
I didn't steal anybody's jewelry.
I didn't smuggle no dope,
and I didn't kill nobody,
and I didn't rape nobody,
and I didn't hurt anybody.
But subsequent to that,
talking to the agents in Seattle,
I found out about a man missing,
Michael Pierce Madden.
The only other thing
that happened in that whole time
was at one point in time
after Billy had left,
I had a knock on my door
and it was the RCMP.
That's the federal police agency
in Canada.
They said, "We believe
you've had some interaction with him
over the past few months."
And I said, "What's the problem here?"
And they said, "We believe that
your brother has done something harmful
to Mike Madden and he is now missing."
Michael Madden
was reported as a missing person.
This would have been in September of 1986.
That was the start of him
being in Bellingham.
Michael Madden was
in his early 30s when he disappeared.
Michael Madden's father reported
that he hadn't seen his son for some time.
He made a report to the Bellingham
Police Department on September 27th.
So, they went out immediately
and went to the apartment
and talked to friends
and talked to people that knew him.
Uh, they talked to an individual who
identified himself as Christopher Carr.
They talked to neighbors.
They talked to the landlord,
a woman who was the landlord
of the apartment that he was staying in.
And the landlady said she had last
seen Michael Madden on September 15th.
She came there to collect the rent
from the two of them
and she saw both of them
outside the apartment complex.
And they seemed to be arguing.
Every time Milligan would say something,
Michael Madden would question him.
He didn't believe what he was saying.
And finally, Milligan got mad
and, uh, went inside his apartment.
And that's the last time anybody
had ever reported seeing Michael Madden.
The girl that went and cleaned
Chris Carr's apartment,
found Mike Madden's checkbook,
bank statements
and personal things like that.
You know, his check register
under Chris Carr's bed.
What did we know about Christopher Carr?
Basically nothing.
He was new to the area.
Uh, he was not employed that we knew of.
Detective Ziebell got to interview him.
I knocked on the door at 901,
where Christopher Carr was living
and nobody answered the door.
And then pretty soon,
I heard a noise behind me
and this voice said, "Can I help you?"
And it was Billy Milligan,
also known as Christopher Carr.
I told him I needed to talk to him
about the disappearance of Michael Madden
and he said, "I gotta go."
He said, "I have to go on a business deal
and I'll be gone for three days.
I'll call you when I get back."
And so, he, as time went on,
certainly became
the focus of the investigation,
uh, and it was believed that he
may have done something to Michael Madden.
Mike Madden was receiving a check
for disability from the armed services.
And so these checks,
we discovered, were forged
and actually put into
a joint account that Mr. Carr,
Billy Milligan, had opened up
a joint account with Mr. Madden.
So, he pretty well had control over him.
And I think that when Michael Madden
came back from vacation
on the 14th of September
and then he was observed by the landlady
on the 15th of September,
they were arguing.
And I can just about bet
what they were arguing about.
It's that Madden all of sudden realizes,
"Hey, where's my government check?"
And I think that's
probably what precipitated
Christopher Carr's
decision to get rid of him.
If he'd just killed somebody,
why would he stay around?
Unless he wanted
to wait for the next check.
Christopher Carr also, on September 18th,
three days
after Michael Madden was last seen,
cashed Michael Madden's
September government check.
I think Christopher Carr
was pretty well the boss
in that relationship.
And Michael Madden
was the more subdued person.
This is exactly like Billy.
It was Billy's MO
to hook up with someone like that.
That that he could take a leadership role
and a protector role and
and use them.
There was some of
the sociopathic-like behavior there
where he kind of viewed people as,
"What can I get from this person?"
Billy, uh, told me once
that he was a sociopath,
a narcissistic sociopath.
I think that's probably true.
Billy was as friendly and affable
and charismatic as he was,
Billy seemed to have
no feelings for any other person.
So, even though it was probably stupid
for him to kill someone
and then stay there
and spend the money
and drive the car and all that,
that alter may not
have been thinking that way.
Milligan's basically setting up
a post office box in his name,
collecting and cashing Madden's
Social Security checks.
Milligan's selling his car.
That's a pretty good indicator
that he did away with him.
Billy was falling apart.
So, it's hard to know from here
what was happening inside of his head
and how desperate he was,
because each personality
needed to do what they wanted to do
and have their own life.
We always
have to look through that prism,
that context of the strong possibility
that he was a multiple.
I believe it.
Tommy could have been driving the car.
Danny could have been driving the car.
Who drove the car?
If he was as smart as people say he was,
to pull the world's biggest hoax,
he wouldn't make that stupid mistake.
The man who
called himself Christopher Carr
said he worked here
at Western Washington University.
What he said he did here
changed all the time.
Sometimes he claimed to be a professor
of Computer Sciences.
Other times,
he said he was a professor of Art.
People here who knew him said,
for him, lying was a way of life.
I discovered that Christopher Carr
was really Billy Milligan
when FBI Agent Cochran
had a flyer
with Billy Milligan's face on it,
showing that he was Christopher Carr
and then they called me
and told me about that.
We started checking in
to try to find out how he got his ID,
where he was from.
We went to Billy Milligan's cousin's place
and he advised us
that Milligan and a friend
had stayed there for a couple days
and Milligan was not there at this time.
He said Milligan
did leave his personal property
in his cousin's house,
a couple suitcases and some boxes.
Sometimes we know
that people will keep things
because they're sort of, uh
It reminds them
and they're trophies, you know.
And whether that had
anything to do here, I don't know,
but I've seen that in some of my cases.
And sometimes that occurs with homicides.
There was a fishing tackle box
that I opened up.
It was full of paint supplies.
Another box was looked through,
it had some gold jewelry.
And in that box, we found two lenses
that seemed to match
the particular frames.
And there were specks
of what appeared to be blood
on the lenses and also on the frame.
And this was pre-DNA days. We had
DNA, really, we started using in 1989,
but we did not have DNA at that point.
The only thing we had
was blood on the glasses
and it still would not
give us enough answers.
We found no evidence where pathologists
could say that
there was enough blood there
that the person is dead.
We had nothing to show
that anybody had passed away.
Well, we had a strong belief
that Mr. Madden was killed.
And we believe that Mr. Milligan
was extremely involved in it,
but we really did not
have sufficient evidence
nor sufficient answers to those elements
that I would have to prove,
uh, to actually bring a case.
They don't have a body.
You can assume.
It's a good circumstantial case,
but they didn't have enough.
Today, police are
looking into Milligan's role
in the disappearance of Mike Madden.
We don't have any body.
We don't have any criminal
or any evidence of a crime
having been committed.
Again, it's a very suspicious
set of circumstances.
I certainly could have.
I could have charged him
with forgery and theft,
and he'd probably
serve 30 to 60 days in jail,
because that would be
the sentence for that type of a theft.
And then he might end up living here
which would have been
the worst of all worlds for us.
Someone that can do these things
and really not be held back
by any feelings of empathy
or feelings that
you're doing something wrong.
And which makes these people
the most dangerous people we deal with.
This case is frustrating to all of us,
mostly because I had to
keep talking with Michael Madden's father.
And he would always ask us,
"Is there anything new?
Is there anything new?"
And he always felt
that Milligan had killed his son.
I would love to believe
that he did not kill him.
I cannot say he did not kill him.
He was desperate for money.
He was desperate for medication.
He knew he needed treatment.
He was falling apart.
It was a completely different
Billy Milligan
than the one I left in Colorado.
So, I think he killed Mike Madden.
He may not remember it.
Yes. I think he could have.
I think there's
a strong possibility he could have.
He had gone to a party
of 300-and-some people,
someplace down on the lake.
And the entire weekend,
I was not able to get a hold of him,
do not know where he was at.
Never ever could tell me where he was at.
From what I understand from the police,
that's the weekend they think
Mike Madden went missing.
So, I don't know what happened.
And then Jim told me that, um,
Billy gave him back
all of his diving equipment
and everything except a weight belt.
He probably dumped the body in a lake.
In the state of Washington,
as most states,
unless you have a body,
you don't really have a murder.
Billy Milligan may yet be
going to the state of Washington
to face murder charges,
but for now, at least,
he'll soon be on his way
from Florida back to Columbus.
Mr. Milligan.
I waive.
He waives.
No bond.
And a waiver.
So, he waived extradition
and Milligan will be
brought back to Columbus within ten days.
Billy Milligan was
arrested in November of '86,
about four months after he escaped.
He was brought back to Columbus, Ohio
and Billy Milligan was incarcerated
at the Timothy Moritz Forensic Center.
Once Billy was
put back under the care of Dr. Lindner,
he just gave up.
Go back to jail and rot.
That's what I figured I was doing anyway.
Are you going to eat?
Probably not.
I mean, what have I got to live for?
What have I got to look forward to?
Every time I come back in this courtroom,
the judge is going to say,
"Well, you committed crimes 10 years ago,
so you're dangerous to society."
So, I think
that the hunger strike
was a way to get attention,
maybe media attention as well,
and also to just feel in control.
It was around day 34, if I recall,
he ended the hunger strike.
Um, so close to death, he was
I didn't think he was
going to make it through that one.
The hospital brought in
another doctor, Dr. Porter.
After seeing him for a period of time
at the Timothy B. Moritz Forensic Center,
I had his attorneys
petition the court for his release.
So, there was a court hearing
where his attorneys petitioned
to have him released
from the Forensic Center
to continue treatment
on an outpatient basis.
And the judge at that time
wanted an outside evaluation,
an outside expert.
He was taken to Boston
to be admitted into
Dr. Chu's unit in McLean Hospital.
Dr. Chu wanted him on his unit for a week
so that he could
observe him day in and day out.
Billy was cooperative.
He was interested
in having this evaluation,
but he also very strongly
wanted to give me the impression
that he was stable
and, in a very subtle way,
I felt slightly manipulated by him.
My sense was that
since he had rather stably fused
and was no longer dissociative,
he was not likely
to be particularly dangerous to others.
Dr. Chu concluded
that he could be released.
I just want
to be normal and like anybody else
and live a normal life,
but I got a lot more to prove
than the average person now.
He didn't feel that he in any way
could live a normal life here
with the publicity
that had followed him for 20 years.
At first, the Department of Corrections
gave him a job, actually,
doing computer programming.
I think that was a 90-day contract
to help him make a transition.
I even clipped the article
and sent it to the Bureau in 1988
where they gave him responsibility
with some type
of computer systems in Ohio,
which I thought was outrageous. And
So, here we have a guy
that led us on a wild goose chase,
possibly killed an individual,
and it's all forgotten.
And there Billy is, back again.
And that that aggravated me.
But they didn't tell me
that it was going to be like this.
They didn't tell me that,
"Now that you're so famous,
no one's gonna want
anything to do with you.
No one's going to care about you
because you were branded."
In people buying into
his multiple personality story,
true or not, people do forget the victims.
There were at least
four young women that were raped.
And Mr. Madden, who is
I believe he killed him.
People, they forget about it.
They
The the idea that he was
a multiple personality individual
trumps it all.
It's over everything.
March of 1990,
I received a call from Tracy,
Billy Milligan's girlfriend,
and she was having trouble with Milligan.
He had threatened to kill her.
And Tracy called me
and she was scared to death
and I said, "What's going on?"
She said, "Billy's threatened to kill me."
"Will you come up and spend the night?"
I said, "Absolutely."
So, I drove to Columbus,
and about two o'clock
in the morning, Billy called her.
And, you know, I didn't answer the phone.
I didn't say anything.
I was just listening.
He said, "I know Rob's there.
Let me talk to him."
"You realize that I can
come over there and kill all of you
and there's nothing they can
do about it because I'm mentally ill."
But the most significant thing
that Billy Milligan told Tracy was,
"Those cops
were so stupid and incompetent,
they didn't realize that
when I was in Florida and arrested
that I had
Michael Madden's glasses with me
and there were specks
of Michael Madden's blood
on those glasses."
And he also told Tracy that
he had killed a Black man in Logan, Ohio.
And that was a particularly brutal murder.
One weekend,
Dwaun Cox's mother came to my house
and she started asking me
about her missing son,
and she told me his name was Dwaun
and he hadn't come home
a couple nights ago.
And they were concerned
because that wasn't like him,
and they found his car
abandoned in the Logan area.
I asked Billy if he knew Dwaun
and he said, "Yeah, I knew Dwaun."
And I said,
"Do you know that he's missing?"
He said,
"Well, we ran around Old Man's Cave
and we smoked some pot and stuff,
but I really don't know."
And I don't remember
if it was before that or after that,
Billy came riding up on a motorcycle.
And Kathy and I looked at him
and said, "Where did you get that?"
He goes, "Oh, I bought it."
And he gave Kathy a large amount of money.
I have no idea how much it was,
but it was a substantial amount of money.
When I heard about this young man
being murdered,
or not
disappearing,
it kind of made me wonder
if maybe that's where he got the money.
And I don't think
that he's ever been found.
I don't know if he
I don't I don't know.
How much control does this person have?
What's really being manifest here?
Most psychiatrists,
psychologists, social workers,
have not, uh, seen such a person.
Some doctors even doubt
that the illness exists
as a separate disorder.
Don't call me Mr. Milligan anymore.
Didn't I tell you that once?
Billy Milligan's answer
to all the crimes he could commit
is to say, "It wasn't me who did that."
It makes things more confusing
to say, "It's not me, it's the others."
He got off from going to jail
with this stupid excuse
about multiple personality disorder.
Nobody knows about
multiple personalities, quite frankly.
People don't even agree if they exist.
I believe that at that time,
psychiatrists were in such awe
that we put a label on him
of 24 personalities
because he was a master manipulator
and, in the end, it makes us
talk more about him than the real victims.
He didn't learn different ways
of dealing with people
because his fundamental
underlying character
was this really self-centered, impulsive,
narcissistic, acting-out individual
who didn't care about other people.
All of it was about Billy
and what Billy wanted.
Here, we enter into a perverse logic
of someone who has no empathy.
The other doesn't exist for Milligan.
Is he a danger?
Yeah, I think he was a dangerous person.
But that's just the nature
of what I think he was.
That is true psychosis.
Psychopathy is this moment when a person
is capable of doing something
while feeling absolutely nothing.
Thus, they will act very badly.
But his sense of perverse pleasure
is beyond his control
and he can't stop himself.
I think that Dr. Brown's
1970 diagnosis was fair enough.
We are dealing with
a fairly serious hysterical neurosis,
with features
that might be called antisocial.
It was very hard for me
because of who I was.
I've always been controversy.
Who is the real Billy Milligan?
Which one is the real personality?
Billy himself was probably
a very, very, very intelligent human being
from the beginning.
Only a certain kind of person
can become a multiple personality.
He should have an Academy Award.
- For what?
- For the performance he's put on.
Is it a hoax? Has he been faking it?
I don't think that society
has given him a chance
to even begin to get well.
Nobody said why these people are here.
One of the things
that a multiple personality does
is to conceal the fact
that there are multiple personalities.
When I saw Billy Milligan,
he knew nothing about Ragen,
Allen, Tommy, David and so on.
Connie Wilbur was a pioneer.
She was out there fighting
and defending this diagnosis,
trying to convince people
about this diagnosis.
Is that Is that the people that
that lady told me was inside me?
How should we
account for Billy Milligan?
Was he, um, someone
faking multiple personality disorder?
He was good in his previous crimes
at making up excuses.
He used the mental health system
and the diagnosis popular at the time
and the gullibility of his therapists,
and I don't see anything in his life
that would say that
he should be considered mentally ill,
should be given
the privileges of a sick role.
He's acting like a very ambivalent,
indecisive, contradictory person.
You're dealing
with somebody who's been traumatized,
who's learned to exist in a world
where people are abusive
and they become manipulative
because it's a survival skill.
It is a defense, of course,
against intolerable situations.
Why am I that way?
Multiple personality had this brief,
amazing epidemic spread in America
occurring around this time in the mid-70s.
It becomes a kind of mass hysteria.
So you have to be very careful
with them not to suggest things.
There is a hardcore skeptic group
who doesn't believe in this diagnosis,
who sees it as either, um,
malingering or faking, acting
And for the multiple,
that they have a good therapist
that knows what they're doing
and doesn't say, "This is a fakey thing,"
or, "They're trying to manipulate people,"
or "I don't believe in this condition."
Which these kinds of attitudes and ideas
are all over the place
and it's a shame
because these are brilliant people.
And we're losing a lot of brains
and ability when we lose the multiples.
The whole multiple
personality thing was a bit excessive.
They preferred to refocus everything
on Dissociation Identity Disorder.
We should realize
that multiple personality
died in the mid-90s.
If this was really
a deeply ingrained part of human nature,
it wouldn't disappear that quickly.
It's a creation of charismatic therapists
and imaginative, suggestive patients
to create these epidemics.
We can see how the symptoms
and the diagnosis are also induced
by the way in which
doctors and psychologists
take care of these patients.
And I think that the Billy Milligan case,
like the Sibyl case or others,
is like saying the moon
is made of green cheese,
and believing that the state
of having multiple personalities
is having real people
that haunt the body of an individual.
¸People formed opinions
about him based on the assumption
that he didn't have problems
and and he does.
But he became so involved
in his own story, I think,
that his life became
living all those roles.
Milligan's problem is that even people
who believe in rehabilitation
become uneasy when someone like Billy
is released in the neighborhood.
No matter what the doctors say,
many here are convinced
that he's dangerous.
We're faced with chameleons,
we're faced with people who are capable
of metamorphosing their state of mind
depending on their needs or situation.
And we can obviously see
the interest of the press and the media.
This duality is really
the Hollywood style, par excellence.
The Minds of Billy Milligan,
it is a fascinating book.
Some people wanted to
explore Billy's case to make a movie
because that's what was hot at the time.
The life of Billy Milligan
contained all the elements
that Hollywood craves.
The story of his life
became a cause célèbre.
It was
it was what they call a "hot property."
According
to Entertainment Weekly,
Leonardo DiCaprio
is set to play Billy Milligan
in a true story film
about a man with 24 personalities.
You have the aspects
of psychology and schizophrenia.
This is high drama that Hollywood adores.
He was living in Heliard at the time,
um, and he told me that James Cameron
was interested in making a movie
and that he was talking
with people out in California.
James Cameron had
interacted with Billy Milligan.
Uh, he actually went with Milligan to Ohio
because he wanted to see and witness
where the alleged
rape and crimes were committed.
After Billy Milligan and James Cameron
agreed to make the story
of his life together,
Billy Milligan was
brought out to Los Angeles
by the studios.
When I went to California to visit Billy,
he was definitely high rolling, um,
you know, the LA lifestyle, I guess.
All the weed
and anything you could want was available
and took us out to dinner,
fancy restaurants
And took us out to dinner,
fancy restaurants,
and throwing money around like crazy.
Billy Milligan really was
given the Hollywood treatment.
He was put up in hotels
with swimming pools.
There were nights out,
uh, with drugs and alcohol.
Yes, there was
a lot of marijuana, a lot of cocaine.
He had a condo. We'd end up back at that
and try to get girls
to come back to the hot tub.
And my friends and their girlfriends
and we'd all hang out.
It was pretty interesting.
Billy did have a taste
of the Hollywood lifestyle
and, um, I'm sure
he found it fascinating and exciting.
Going on some motorcycle rides
with some celebrities that he had met.
He'd met Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Danny DeVito
but it's very temporal.
When James Cameron
started pursuing the story,
the life story of Billy Milligan,
he found out
that a woman named Sandy Arcara
apparently owned the rights
to Billy Milligan's life story.
The Minds of Billy Milligan.
Billy might have offered the rights
to his story to numerous people.
I didn't know about it and the same
contract that I have with him,
I was supposed to get
all the royalties from that book.
Uh, in the contract,
it stated that I would get,
I think it was 75% of the royalties
from the first book
and 100% of the royalties
from the second book
if a second book was ever made,
and royalties
from any movies that would be made.
Billy Milligan may have given the rights
to his life story to countless people.
You know, he did have
multiple personalities after all.
At this stage, Sandy Arcara said,
"Well, hang on.
He gave you the rights to this story
for a lot less than should be granted."
And so, she sued James Cameron
to increase her salary from $250,000
to 1.5 million dollars.
And James Cameron took that to Fox.
Fox said no.
James Cameron said,
"Sandy, sorry, see you later,"
and the project collapsed.
Also, at the same time,
the state was hounding him
for money, for paying back.
Ohio was billing him
for every day he had ever spent
in a mental health facility
or hospital or prison in Ohio.
And Lavelle, which was Allan Goldsberry,
the original attorney, back in '78,
um, his law firm sued him for, um
geez, it was close to $100,000.
He had no money,
so he, uh, declared bankruptcy.
But the William Morris Agency
was starting to receive
large sums of royalties
from sales of the books overseas.
Couple, three million dollars
or thereabouts,
and they became aware
of competing claims to that money,
mostly by the state of Ohio.
So, again people were envious.
They were jealous.
They didn't like the idea that this guy
is getting away with something
and he's also making money.
They actually passed a law
called the Milligan Law
because they didn't like the idea
that he had made money
from selling his book.
So, that bankruptcy court
ultimately took jurisdiction
and would receive the book royalties
and pay the state of Ohio
and pay the other creditors.
So, he was living in LA at the time
and he moved to Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is a city
of gambling and drinking and partying
and he could win.
And I was like, "Why don't we go pay
a year's worth of your rent so you never"
"Nope, that is not what
gambling's about," he would say.
When we were kids,
Billy was just always the fun uncle,
so he was always really full of life.
Wanted to spoil us all the time.
Wanted to give us tons of stuff.
He would tell me about certain games
where he won like $10,000, $20,000,
playing different games
with blackjack and stuff.
He was okay there for a good long while
until he had episodes of mental decline.
He would get very agitated
and belligerent and threaten people.
He's always threatening people.
I'll sue you, or I'll kill you,
or I'll have you killed.
So, he was arrested a couple times
for misdemeanors
or for these kinds of things.
He was so totally broken
and so totally crushed
that he called me and said,
"Can I come back to Ohio?"
I bought a mobile home out in the field
where he could quietly paint
and just live a very quiet life.
He was diagnosed in 2012 with cancer.
He was very scared.
He was still drinking very heavily.
He couldn't really care for himself.
Towards the end of his life,
I was more of a caretaker
and he had called me
to come visit him at the facility.
So, I came, and he was asking me,
"Do you think that God
could ever forgive me
for the things that I've done in my life?"
And so, I tell him, "Of course,
I think God can forgive you
for anything that you've done."
And he says,
"I've been a terrible person,"
and, like,
"You don't even know what I've done."
I say, "I think God can forgive
whatever it is that you've done."
And then he told me,
"Well, I've killed people."
"Can he even forgive me for that?"
I do things and don't remember them
because I'm asleep.
And people tell me I do things
bad things.
How will we ever know
what is real in this case?
I've never met
anybody as extraordinary,
or as smart,
or as fun to be around
as Billy Milligan was.
He had some charms.
He had some creative ability.
He was very creative.
He was the most creative criminal.
Certainly a sociopath.
Billy Milligan was very manipulative.
- Billy was
- Interesting.
Talented
- Extremely intelligent
- Unusual.
He was a very persuasive person.
He was very much in control.
Dangerous.
Fragile.
Damaged.
Is he a con man?
He seemed to be a very intelligent person.
Bright con man.
He was desperate
desperately crying for help at all times
and I don't think he knew
how to ask for that help.
Who is he?
He's he was a brilliant artist
that was insane all his life.
Billy was Billy.
What about the victims? What about them?
The victims
were forgotten in all this.
I never, ever excuse,
even with a mental illness, that issue.
I felt upset that I didn't
say something and go to the police.
Then Chalmer wouldn't have
got away with saying he didn't do anything
when I know
he had to have done something to him.
So
In the morning ♪
I want blood ♪
In the evening ♪
I want blood ♪
The devil inside me ♪
I need blood ♪
It's all right, I need blood ♪
Feel all right ♪
I want blood
I want blood ♪
It's all right, I need blood ♪