01x02 - The Monsters Inside Me

[bunniefuu]

[static buzzing]

[Dr. Harding] What are the things
that are hardest for you to deal with?

If somebody gonna hurt me.

That makes me go to sleep.

[Harding] That would make you go to sleep?

In order to...

escape from that person?

Yeah.

Well, if I go to sleep, I don't get hurt.

[Harding] And what happens?

I don't know.

[rock music playing]

♪ In the dark side, I am waiting ♪

♪ Even sane, I am waiting ♪

♪ As a child, I remember ♪

♪ Daddy, daddy, all alone ♪

[siren wailing in distance]

[reporter 1]
Concorde's final approach to New York.

[man 1] A black and white monitor.

In 1977, police in Columbus
arrested Milligan

for the r*pe of three women
on the Ohio State campus.

The doctors told a court
the defendant is a psychiatric curiosity.

Does he know I'm here?

- [Harding] Does he know you're here?
- Yeah.

[Harding] You're talking about...

I'm not supposed to tell things.

[Harding] Billy would, at times, uh...

express overwhelming fear.

He didn't like little boys.

[Harding] Why not?

I don't know.

[Harding] Was he afraid of little boys?

No, he always hurt little boys.

Uh, people that have
multiple personalities

have overwhelming trauma as children.

If I did something wrong,
he's going to k*ll me.

[Harding] Like what? What kind
of wrong things do you mean?

Anything.

We attempted to interview the family

and see what kind
of a family he was coming from

and they could help us
to understand better his symptomatology.

[country instrumental playing]

My mother, um, grew up in Ohio.

Her name was Dorothy Sands.

[Kathy Preston] She was abandoned
when she was eight years old

by her own father after her mother died.

And then she was raised
by very strict Catholic grandparents.

So, her first escape was at 18

where she married
her high school sweetheart,

a gentleman named d*ck Jonas.

But, of course, that's never good.

He was an alcoholic,
they were strapped for money,

and Mom had the desire to sing.

So, she escaped him,

and she decided
to try to sing in the nightclub circuit.

So, she joined my Aunt Jo in Miami.

[newsreel announcer] Millions
of America's fighting men and women

joined voices in the happy shouting.

[reporter 2] Monroe invades frozen Korea.

[upbeat rock music playing]

My mother met my father,

he was already much more established

as a comedian
and a master of ceremonies and a musician.

My mother was very attractive.

[Preston] They ended up having an affair

and then she ended up pregnant
with my brother Jim, who was born in 1953.

After Jim was born, my brother Billy
was born on Valentine's Day of 1955.

He was about a month old
and he stopped breathing.

So, they rushed him to the hospital

and it turned out
that he had a growth in his throat.

When she handed him to the intern,

the intern said,
"I'm sorry. He's already dead."

And she screamed at the intern,

"No, he's not! You have to do something!"

And so, they took him back
and somehow he was revived.

As my mother told me, he almost died.

They thought a number of times
that he wouldn't survive it.

Nurses and doctors,
after his first birthday,

sent him a card saying, you know,
"You gave everybody quite a scare."

Then in December of 1956,
I was born on New Year's Eve.

[children laughing]

My father did
have trouble with depression.

I... I hesitate to use schizophrenia

because that was just
such the popular term of the time.

His demons were, I think,

his gambling habit,
his drinking, the drugs.

He was incredibly jealous
of my mother, too.

Talking to anybody or...

and she was a very...
like I said, very attractive.

A very, very pretty woman.

My earliest memory of any trouble was

I walked in,
I heard some noises in the bedroom,

and my father was...

I don't know if he was using his fist,

but he was certainly hitting my mother.

I didn't know
it was my mother until she sat up

and she said, "Jimbo, everything's okay."

"Mom's okay. Go ahead and leave."

At some point, my mother decided
that he could no longer stay at the house

because she felt
that he was dangerous to us,

and she asked him to leave.

It was one of the last times,
uh, that we saw our father.

And it was shortly after that
that he committed suicide.

It was early January.

[Preston] He did commit suicide
at a hotel where he was staying.

[Morrison]
And basically asphyxiated himself.

And there was a suicide note,

and in the suicide note,
he alluded to the fact

that my mother was driving him crazy.

I didn't know that until many years later.

I had, uh, been told he had had problems

that had contributed to his poor health

and died of a cerebral hemorrhage

is what she told us when we were younger,

and I didn't really know what that meant.

But that was how
it was left with us as children.

It was what we were told.

When we left,
we moved back to Amanda, Ohio

and we stayed on the farm
that my mother grew up on.

[Preston] I remember playing
outside in the yard with the boys.

Billy had a wonderful sense of humor.

[Morrison] He was not as outgoing, maybe,
as Kathy and I were with our friends.

Billy was lonely. Billy didn't
play in groups when we were around.

When we were down
playing team-type sports,

like kickball and stuff,

he didn't seem like he participated.

I don't know if he wasn't allowed,

or if he was busy doing something else,

but he wasn't out with
the group of kids it didn't seem like.

He was remarkably close
to his sister Kathy.

They had a great bond.

I can remember thinking
how wonderful it was

to be that close to your siblings.

[Preston]
Billy and I played together a lot.

There's an age of almost
five years between Jim and I,

so he probably had
less patience for me, you know,

but Billy and I played together often.

[Morrison] We laughed, we played,
we had a great time.

I never had any...

any reason to think he was any different.

[Preston] My mother came back
to Ohio, I think, for a couple reasons.

She couldn't
manage financially by herself.

She needed a man in her life.

When we got to Ohio,

I remember d*ck Jonas
coming into our life.

[Preston] And he was willing
to take her back with her three children

in Circleville on Pontius Lane,
close to Amanda.

You have to remember, this is the 60s.

It was very difficult
for her as a single parent.

And so she remarried right away.

He was a truck driver
and had the language of a truck driver

and drank a lot.

And the marriage
went south pretty quickly.

[crossing bell ringing]

[Preston] After that marriage dissolved,

she took a job in Circleville
at the DuPont Factory.

And she decided she also
still wanted to go back and sing.

And so she would come up here to Columbus

at the Clock Restaurant
and other nightclubs up here.

And that's where Chalmer
comes into the picture.

Chalmer was, when she first met him, um...

charming.

He was very, um,
interesting at the beginning.

He seemed like a very nice man.

He had a daughter.

He was very protective of his daughter.

His daughter's name was Challa.

So when they married,

Challa was the same age
as Billy just by a few months

and so they decided
to adopt each other's kids.

We didn't have
any choice in that... obviously.

It wasn't even presented to us
as an option.

Chalmer officially
adopted Billy, Jim and I.

And Mom officially adopted Challa.

So, that's how
we became the Milligan family.

[Morrison]
He seemed to care a lot for my mother.

He seemed to care a lot for us kids,

but he became very controlling very quick.

She thought was a pretty decent guy.
She married him.

He was going to support the family,
father her children.

She had great hopes in him
and then he instantly became a nightmare.

I remember once
there was a very violent argument

about the fact
that she was seen at work by him.

She was talking to a Black man.

And he's screaming
and he gets on top of her

and he's banging her head on the tile.

And we're... we're standing in the hallway

and he looks over and
he screams at us to go to the bedrooms.

Billy was...

He was not there.

I mean he was there, but he was not there.

And he was in a kind of a hunched position

and he was buzzing.

I call it buzzing. He's... [buzzes]

And he had this little character.

He called himself "Little Bee."

"But everything's gonna be all right.
Don't worry. It's gonna be all right."

"It's gonna be all right," she would say.

And I was like, "Okay."

You know, I was seven.

[with British accent]
He doesn't even remember.

[Harding]
Billy doesn't remember his mother?

Not as he is now.

He remembers his mother
sprawled on the floor bleeding.

That's how he remembers his mother.

It now turned from slapping,
to actually punching,

to dragging my mother around by her hair.

Um, it just continued to escalate.

[Lansing] He hung out at the bar
night after night after night.

[Morrison] I don't think he ever passed
The Dog House without stopping, ever.

Going or coming.

And if he was drinking
and he continued home and drank some more,

it was almost a guarantee
it was going to be a violent night.

We would know when he was coming home
because his truck was real loud.

And you could hear him coming up
around the corner to go home,

and he woke everybody
in the neighborhood up with his truck.

You train your brain to know
the difference in how he's driving,

how he flips the light switch on,

what kind of mood can you read
from upstairs in the dark

to know whether or not,

is he going to go to bed or is he going
to just sit there for a few moments?

Or is he going to come
and jerk you out of bed

and beat you for something stupid?

He was, uh...

kind of like a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

You just never knew.

And so, um, when he would explode,

usually there was no one around.

[Billy on tape]
I remember when I was at home,

I lost all respect for police authority.

When the police were called to my house,

my stepfather had
beaten my mother mercilessly,

and I mean she had blood all over her
and her hair was ripped out.

And there were two officers in the house

and I was yelling at this officer.

I said, "Look what he did to my mother!"

I said, "Why don't you
take him out of here

so he doesn't hurt anybody?"

And the officer
looked down at me and said,

"Well, if she'd be a better wife,

she wouldn't get
knocked around now, would she?"

[ironic chuckle]

The punching on Billy and I
happened someplace else.

Never in the house.

There was a garage
that they built behind the house

and behind that garage was a room.

That's where Chalmer
would beat on Billy and me.

He would use a phone book

or something thick

that he could put up against
our chest or the side of our head

and that's what he would hit.

It would not leave a mark,
it would not draw blood,

but it would sure stun you.

It would hurt.

Then he would say,

"If you talk to your mother
or your sisters about this

then they're gonna suffer for it as well."

There was a lot of violence in this house.

A lot of violence.

And Billy was subject
to a lot of that violence.

Along with seeing me subject,
the other children saw it.

But Billy, the core Billy,

is very tender and very sweet.

Wouldn't hurt anybody.

He took on him my pain.

He was a horrible a*usive man,

but it was like Billy was his target.

[Chalmer] It was hard
to get anything done out of him.

He wouldn't do anything he was asked.

So...

it was just a big hassle all the time.

Chalmer hated Billy,
it felt like, all the time.

This was, um...

Chalmer seemed to go out of his way

to make his life miserable.

[Morrison] I think it affected Billy
more than me or my sister.

He picked on him, every little thing.

Everything.

Billy didn't do anything right.

She helplessly watched him
abuse all of his children

and t*rture Billy for years.

No one even questioned
why she tolerated that.

Maybe 30 years later,

I would have wanted to ask her
why she allowed that,

but I almost wouldn't
have had to ask her because I know.

Where we were raised
and how we were raised

was that you needed
a father for your children.

You needed someone
who would work and support your family

and you did
whatever it took to make that happen.

And no one just questioned
why or how she chose this man,

and why or how he ended up staying there
long enough to cause this kind of damage.

[Morrison]
We lived on Pontius Lane in Circleville.

We moved to Spring Street
in Lancaster, Ohio.

Chalmer's father
owned a farm in Bremen, Ohio.

Eighty-eight acres.

I think it became a place where Chalmer

could reprimand, punish, and discipline us

more than he could
probably around the house.

But I could tell that things never...

Things never went right at the farm,
especially if he went alone.

[static buzzing]

Does he know I'm here?

[Harding] You're talking about...

My dad.

[Preston] When Billy was at Harding

is when he started to actually
talk about what was going on in the barn.

I know that he used to go there,
used to take the children there,

and that a lot of abuse
towards Billy happened in that barn.

If I did something wrong,
he's going to k*ll me.

[Harding] If you did something wrong,
he's going to k*ll you?

Like what? What kind
of wrong things do you mean?

I'm not supposed to tell things.

He didn't like little boys.

[Harding] Was he afraid of little boys?

No, he always hurt little boys.

One day we were outside playing,
we could hear some crying and screaming.

We sat on the bank
along the road for a while.

And then finally we got enough nerve
that we went over toward the barn

because that's where
the noise was coming from.

Billy was tied up.

He had his hands behind his back

and he had his shirt unbuttoned

and he was crying.

And then he came out
and he raised his shirt up in the air

and hit the ground with it
and he was really mad

and then he walked away.

The only person that was
there with him that day was Chalmer.

I can still hear him crying.

[Milligan] I was, uh... beat around.

I got tied up and different things.

Billy's asleep.

[Harding]
What was it that made him go to sleep?

I think it's making him
remember too much stuff.

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...

[sobs]

You don't have words
for that kind of stuff.

They don't have words for...
for r*pe and sodomy.

They don't... they don't have those words.

They don't have the vocabulary.

He talked about being r*ped three times

or four times.

And he related being forced
to dig a grave and lay in that grave,

and having a metal pipe
put over his face with an opening.

And having the grave filled in
so he was almost buried alive,

and having Chalmers
urinate down the opening of the pipe

onto his face.

David is the one who remembers
only the pain of the abuses

and the abuses,

the beatings and the sexual abuses.

And being tied up
in uncomfortable positions

and being threatened with being k*lled
and buried in the barn and so on.

He remembers all of this with terror.

I would say that multiple personality
is both a shield and an escape.

So, it protects you, because one part
cannot remember the abuse,

which is an escape.

But the escape is the shield.

It's a disorder
that starts very early in life

when the child is putting together
a sense of self.

So, if you're a child,
you can't fight back,

you can't run away.

So, you go away in your mind.

Children are born
with the potential to be multiple

and it is the quality of the parenting
and the early experiences

that either integrate that personality

or lead to
the fragmentation of the personality.

[Ross] Typically in DID,
there's very distinct parts

with very distinct roles.

This part does that,
this part has this age.

So, there can be a very
large degree of structure and order,

and also a large degree
of chaos at the same time.

And when you grow up
in these very dysfunctional families,

you learn how to be dysfunctional.

The accusations he's put on me...

It would have come out
a long, long time ago were they true.

That's how I feel about it.

[Billy] For many years,
I lived with a constant guilt.

I mean, I beat my head in the wall.

Um, I've done... I've attempted suicide.

I lived with so much guilt
that I just wanted to die.

[Preston] He just got
to a point where he couldn't...

Uh, he just couldn't
stand Chalmer anymore.

He was just tired of living in...

in the fear and the trauma
of that existence.

You mean they put me to sleep
when I try to k*ll myself?

[Harding] I think that
could be a time when they would feel

that you weren't
able to deal with the issue.

Have you felt sometimes
that you just didn't know what else to do?

Yeah.

[Harding]
That's a pretty drastic thing to do.

Well, I didn't think
nobody'd ever be able to help.

Billy had made a plan.

Uh, he was 14 or 15.

He totally planned on k*lling Chalmer.

He was going to stab him in his sleep.

And he talked to me about this.

And then the next morning,
I said, "What happened?"

I mean, I was like... [sighs]

"We talked about this.
You were going to do this.

What happened? You were
going to k*ll him." You know?

He said, "What are you talking about?"

I said, "You were going to k*ll Chalmer."

"You were going to k*ll him.
You were going to k*ll him in his sleep."

And he's like...

"No! I would never do that."

And I'm like, "What? You planned it.
The knife is still under your pillow!"

You know?

He had no recollection at all

of the conversation we had
the day prior to that.

Is he dead?

Is who dead?

I don't know that he's dead,

but I think your mother divorced him,

so he's out of your life.

[Preston] There was still
violence all the way till Chalmer left.

There was still violence clear through
till the time Billy was big enough

to try to start to fight back.

I... I was about 16 years old.

We were, uh, having dinner.

All I remember was like a flash.

And they were yelling
and they were screaming.

Chalmer had stood up,
reached in front of me,

grabs my brother sitting to my right,

and dragged him
across the table in front of me

and threw him across the room.

And started choking him,

physically choking him,

and he couldn't get his breath.

And I, um...

I don't know what happened.
I ran over and I grabbed him.

And... and he kind of stood up

and I turned him and
I slammed him against the 'frigerator

and I saw the knives on the counter...

and I...

I picked up one of the knives

and, uh...

I grabbed him by his right shoulder

and I put the knife up against his neck.

And he kind of stood up

and he looked at me, unbelieving,

not knowing what was going on.

And I walked him
with that knife point right to his neck.

I walked him straight to the back door...

I pushed him
against the door and I said, "Get out."

"If you come back in this house,

I promise you I will k*ll you."

He did not come back that night.

I think that was
the end of the relationship

in terms of the household
and everything and, um...

that was probably
the most traumatic event.

You mean he really can't hurt me anymore?

That's right. He can't hurt you anymore.

Before he was an adult,

as his behavior started to escalate
more toward a criminal aspect,

he started doing some drugs,
some mild drugs, pot and smoking.

[Lynn] It was the 70s.

The season of drugs,
sex, and rock and roll,

I guess is what they called it.

I was never ever aware
of Billy doing anything criminal

when we were running around together.

If he did,
I was completely oblivious to it.

He clearly was
going down a path, it looked like,

in little petty criminal aspects,

but he seemed to not really
understand what was the big deal.

I do things and I don't remember them.

'cause I'm asleep.

People tell me I do things...

bad things.

[Preston] So, yes, it got worse.

[car horn honks]

In 1972, he was
arrested in Circleville, Ohio

for, um, an alleged kidnapping and r*pe.

He and a friend picked up a couple girls.

They were gonna go out drinking.

The other guy went off
with one of the girls and they had sex,

but he told me,
"All we were doing was drinking.

I wouldn't... I wouldn't do that."

People would say you've done
these things that he didn't remember.

[Harding] What kind of things
do they tell you that you do?

Criminal stuff.

[Preston] His body did,
but he had no recollection of doing.

I guess every time I wake up,
somebody says I did something bad.

[Preston] In the Ohio area,

there were several roadside rests
where gays would meet

and it was
a real easy place to go rob people,

because there they were,

and they didn't want
to be found out either.

He needed money to pay his rent

or to supply his need
for drugs or alcohol.

How... How can I not know that other side?

Another side of me.

[Preston]
Then shortly after that, in 1975,

he was arrested and charged
with robbing the Gray Drugstore.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Preston] His lawyer plea bargained him.

His plea bargain
gave him a lesser sentence

and that's when he went to Lebanon.

He was there from 1975 to 1977.

He was mentally ill.

He wasn't getting any treatment.

He just existed as a prisoner there
like anyone else and he ate...

When Billy got out of Lebanon, he was...

Well, I remember the day we picked him up.

He was very happy. [laughs]

He was in a very good mood.

He was excited to get out.

And I think
he really, really was trying for a while.

But I think it was too hard
because he could not manage

living a life that he
didn't know how to live,

and didn't have the skills to live.

Why am I that way?

That's when I also started to realize
when things were going wrong.

[crows cawing]

With Billy, um...

we have this intuition between each other.

I know how he behaves

and I know in...

I know in my mind that something's wrong.

I just knew.

[Tom Brokaw]
Police in Columbus arrested Milligan.

A 23-year-old Columbus, Ohio man...

...charged with sexual assaults on four
women in the Ohio State University area.

He was the infamous "campus r*pist."

Having read Dr. Harding's reports,

I have no doubt that his past criminal
and mental health history,

throughout a great portion of his life,

had a great deal of bearing.

We, of course, began to carefully, uh...

evaluate the, uh, alters...

that, uh, were a part
of the symptomatology that he exhibited.

What was happening

during the time immediately preceding

the events in October?

[with a drawl]
I don't remember a whole lot.

Memory was very distorted

and memory was very fragmented,

as well as the personalities.

People were getting knocked off the spot.

And nobody knew why.

And Ragen started meeting bad people.

He started...

taking speed and drinking.

"On the spot."

That was the term they...

He would say that
whoever it was that was talking to me

was quotes "on the spot."

Last summer in July and August
and September and so on,

were you aware of things
being mixed up during that time?

Were you on the spot part of the time?

[with Yugoslavian accent] Parts of
the time, I was on the spot. I will...

[Harding] When did you begin
to plan to go out and get money?

[Milligan as Ragen]
After the last job was lost.

[Harding]
And how did you select the women?

[Milligan as Ragen]
They were just there, in place.

But I don't remember so much,

Adalana was stealing time.

I don't like her very well.

[Wilbur] Why?

Well, you know, she just does weird stuff.

[Wilbur] What kind of weird stuff?

She likes girls.

[Wilbur] Mm-hmm.

When they started having conversations

about Billy's body
being used by someone else,

it became quite real.

[with Yugoslavian accent]
I committed robbery.

I did not commit crime
of sexual misconduct.

I will not be accused of r*pe.

I don't want to go through this again.

Miss Turner, would you please
tell him that?

I don't want to go through this again.

[Wilbur] But we need to talk with you
in order to help all of you.

But they just don't understand...

what love is.

What the need for love is.

To be held by somebody,

just to feel warm.

I don't know why I did it.

I was just so lonely.

I ruined their lives,

I ruined the boys' lives.

Well, it appears from the best evidence
we've been able to assemble

that Ragen, the Yugoslavian,

is the one who set out
to commit some crimes

set out to commit some robberies.

It also appears that Adalana, the l*sbian,

is the one that actually
committed the sexual act.

But the question is,
how do you prosecute Ragen

when your indictment
charges Billy Milligan?

Gary's Schweickart was in my office

and he says,
"By the way, on Billy Milligan,

he has multiple personalities,"
and dah-dah-dah-dah.

I said, "Well, I don't care which
personality he wants to go to prison,

but one of them's going to prison."

What are they going to do with Adalana?

Put her in women's prison? Impossible.

The reason why
multiple personality disorder, or DID,

is not a good fit with
contemporary standards of legal insanity

is really more
of a philosophical question, if you will.

Which is,
what does it mean to be a person?

What does it mean to have responsibility?

What does it mean when,
perhaps, one part of a person's persona

doesn't realize there's
another part of a person's persona?

Um, these are very hard concepts to prove,

but they are also difficult concepts
to understand how to handle legally.

The question was whether Billy
knew that what he was doing

was legally incorrect,

and another part
of the insanity statute at the time

was to determine whether or not Billy

could refrain from the wrongful behavior.

[Harding]
What about the question of responsibility

for the acts that were
committed last October

when he was fragmented?

He may, on the other hand,
have been very intact

and not fragmented at all at that time.

I just don't understand how
you could say that he is not fragmented

when we know that Ragen
performed part of it,

we know that Adalana did,
we know that Tommy comes on the spot...

What do you...
No, no, from a more legal point of view,

why are you talking
about these different people?

That guy, his name is Bill Milligan.

I don't care what he calls himself.

He's Bill Milligan.
He can deny that up and down

and he's the one that r*ped them.

[Milligan]
I can't really distinct between memories

to realities...

because my emotions split so far apart:

love, hate and fear.

It was obvious at that point

that he was not capable
at that instant of standing trial.

[Harding] We tried to find ways
that he could deal with the stress.

A way that, uh...

that he would
not be so inclined to split apart.

[Wilbur] When you get fused,

then everybody "hears" from everybody else

and knows all about everybody else,

then you won't be confused.

Wouldn't it be nice
to bring all of you together

into one person?

Yeah, but that
seems like it'd be a little weird.

[Wilbur] No, it wouldn't be a little weird

because you all got born
from the same person originally.

What fusion means
is that the personalities

have melded back together.

That doesn't mean
that they aren't influential.

It just means that the core personality

is acting as one.

[on tape] This is a very talented
and very bright young man,

and not to be able to save him
is, I think, a real tragedy.

They feel sorry for him
because if he goes to prison,

he's not going to get any therapy there.

That's probably gonna be
the end of it, in a sense, okay?

Now, so the psychiatrists, the healers

are coming into it
with that kind of attitude.

And "anything we can do to help him."

And I think what they're doing
is then they're mucking it up,

they're getting very confused.

Uh, "It's wrong to send him to prison.
He won't get treatment."

"Isn't it awful?"

Multiple personality disorder
creates a kind of excitement

in therapists and in patients
that made it remarkably popular.

Dr. Wilbur, who's a famous person now

because of the book and the movie Sybil,

creating with the defense attorneys
a plausible excuse for his three r*pes.

But I think we need
to work toward fusion.

We don't take him to court
until they're fused.

And you can fuse them very early

and take them to court
and get the court thing over with.

She's a very dramatic woman.

She would say, "I want you
to fuse Ragen and Billy."

"Fuse!"

I don't think that's the way
the mind operates.

[Wilbur] You and Allen...

fuse together.

- You become Danny Allen.
- Danny Allen?

[Wilbur] Yeah. You become Danny Allen.

I'm not Danny.

- I'm sorry. You're Tommy. Yeah.
- I'm Tommy.

You become Tommy Allen, all in one person.

Do it right now.

I can't do that for a reason.

Why?

Because some of the things
that Allen likes I can't stand.

[Wilbur] Like what?

Baseball.

[with Yugoslovian accent] I don't know.
The possibility seem ridiculous.

I'm trying to figure out
how this fusion occurs.

[Harding] And, uh,
it seemed that he did make progress

during that time.

And that, uh, he did grow in his therapy.

[Wilbur] Are you going to try the fusion?

Arthur says he's doing the best he can do.

- [Wilbur] Yeah, what about Ragen?
- Yeah, but he's going to fuse with Arthur.

[Wilbur]
So, you're all going to be fused together?

Oh, I'll try.

[Wilbur] Okay, fine. That's all we ask.

I haven't seen Billy
for a couple of weeks, maybe more

and I do see progress.

Yes, I think the comment that we...
We've done a lot today.

He had been rendered
competent to stand trial

because the psychiatrists said that
they fused the personalities all into one

and, therefore, the real Billy Milligan

was the person
that was there, available for trial.

[Sherman] Insanity defense is very rare,
very hard to... hard to win.

I'll bet in the years...

if you went back
ten years in this courthouse,

maybe you'll find two or three
insanity defenses that work.

What I've learned about
the law and mental illness

is that the many people
in the legal system

see that as an excuse for behavior

and they're not going to support it.

They think the person is faking,
think the person is playing a victim.

I don't think
that he's multiple personality.

I don't really believe that that exists.

Seems to me, it'd be
an awful easy thing to fake.

There was a lot of discussion
from people who really believed that this

was what Billy Milligan
was suffering from,

to those that believe that he was actually

trying to pull the wool
over the criminal justice system.

In the newsroom, for instance,

most of the reporters
were skeptical of it.

I knew a lot of local prosecutors
and police officers

and most of them were skeptical of it too.

Now the psychiatrists,

they were the ones that, uh, believed him.

Only a tiny minority
of therapists were believers.

This was not something
that spread to the field at large,

but that tiny minority
were in a very powerful position.

[reporter 3]
Dr. Martin Orne, a respected psychiatrist

who believes multiple personalities exist,

is worried that a doctor may actually

plant the idea in the patient's head.

Great care must be taken in the use
of hypnosis with these individuals

so that you don't create the problems,
which you think you're curing.

[reporter 3] Orne is worried
about the power of suggestion.

He says the impact
of the best-selling book and movie Sybil

cannot be overlooked.

Sybil mobilized the people
who most believed in hypnosis

and most believed in
multiple personality disorder,

gave them legitimacy,

and they began
talking to large groups of therapists,

giving weekend workshops
all around the country.

And that increased
the tremendous excitement

about multiple personality disorder.

We approached this case with care,

some skepticism,

and we have, uh,
we have studied him very carefully.

We believe that we've documented
a definable psychiatric syndrome here,

a real illness, and we think
that's a significant thing.

Gary and Judy and I

talked before the trial date.

We stipulated
that the written reports from Dr. Harding

would be their testimony.

The prosecution
did not even contest the case.

It was done not before a jury,
but before a judge.

They all believed the psychiatrists

and so involved in this
belief in multiple personality disorder

that they didn't
see all the biases involved.

You don't know how many years
that we'd do in prison, then?

[Wilbur] You might not
have to go to prison at all.

Well, last time we got in trouble.

[Wilbur] Yeah, but they didn't know then
that you had this the matter with you.

Together, Wilbur and, uh, Milligan,

maybe sincerely on her part, who knows?

Probably not sincerely on his part,

we're able to create a narrative
of multiple personalities

that would explain to the public

and excuse to the legal system
the terrible crimes he committed.

Milligan's court-appointed psychiatrist
says he is mentally ill.

Nevertheless, he has been
found competent to stand trial.

It will begin in December.

[Schmerbeck]
Judge Flowers was really well-liked

by both prosecution and defense attorneys.

They felt he was a fair judge.

[Porter] He was not one of these people
who didn't believe in the diagnosis

or had any preconceived ideas.

And so that was good for Billy Milligan

because Gary and Judy
knew that he would listen

to what they had to say

and would consider
all of the information that was there.

Billy didn't do this. Billy wasn't here.

Billy was someplace else at the time.

The person being tried
did not commit any crimes.

He was not there.

It was undisputed he committed the crimes.

The question is
whether he was insane or not.

All the evidence conclusively established

he was insane at the time.

Billy Milligan's defense team,
with the help of Wilbur,

took advantage of that,

and having several psychiatrists write
that he wasn't responsible for the crime

because it was done
by one of his multiples

that he could not control

and was not even aware of,

worked as a defense

but only because it was a period
where the insanity defense was liberal.

It was a period in which
the, um, multiple personality disorder

has been popular
only in very brief periods

in very special places.

[reporter 4] Mental experts
say 23-year-old William Milligan

has possessed ten different
and conflicting personalities

for most of his life.

Since Milligan
waived his right to a jury trial,

statements by psychiatrists
were presented to Judge Jay Flowers.

Today, Milligan went on trial for r*pe,
kidnap and aggravated as*ault.

At some point,
when that victim as a child,

becomes a perpetrator as an adult,

I really sort of switch allegiances

and I feel like society needs
to be safe from the perpetrator.

r*pe, at the time, was a crime

with a maximum penalty
of ten to 25 for each count.

He faced nine counts, that would be what?

Seventy-five to 200 and some years.

[reporter 5] During the trial,
he was described as a victim

of severe child abuse.

[reporter 6] A report
from a psychiatric hospital

says he was abused as a child,

beaten and even sodomized
by his stepfather several times a week.

To flee from this abuse,
doctors say, he split his real self

into ten different people.

One of Billy Milligan's victims
was engaged to be married.

All of that fell apart after her r*pe.

I remember that testimony to this day.

It was chilling.

I never doubted that it was true.

I wanted to convict him.

I wanted to send him to prison.

It's very hard
to make an insanity defense.

And again, I'm not so sure that's even
in the best interest of the client.

You know? [chuckles]

The medical data
that I had without exception

was to the effect that he did
have this multiple personality

and that he, in effect, qualified
as being insane under our statute.

[reporter 7] Today, he was found
not guilty for reasons of insanity.

He was found innocent
by reason of insanity.

...of r*pe, kidnapping and robbery.

This court hearing today
wasn't to sell any type of sob story.

And I hope that someday
somebody will have it in their heart

to make sure this doesn't
happen to somebody else.

Uh, disappointed, in a sense.

I mean, this was a case
that I felt strongly I could make,

and these were women who were assaulted

and deserved to have the person
who assaulted them punished for it.

I was a little bit disturbed by it

because, you know, what about
the people that were actually harmed?

You think about victims, victims' rights...

and I didn't know what the repercussions
were going to be after that.

I would never ever
want a victim of r*pe to think,

or in particular his victims,

to think that I excuse his behavior
because he was mentally ill.

It doesn't change what he did.

It can never be undone.

[dramatic music playing]

[Frances] It happened
this one time, with this one judge,

with this one prosecuting attorney.

It's never happened
anywhere else in the world.

It's a kind of temporary insanity.

Not of Billy Milligan, but of the system.

Being found not guilty
by reason of insanity is no great deal

because you're still locked up,
you're still confined, still watched.

The worst thing to hear from anybody
is the truth about yourself,

and I don't want to escape anymore.

I want to stay right where I'm at.

It might not be
a very nice world out there,

but it's the best I've got
and I want to keep it.

Is it a hoax? Has he been faking it?

Whether he was a slick con artist

or whether he was the victim
of child abuse...

To me, he was probably more of a con man

who was able to use a rising tide
to surf away from criminal responsibility.

- He should have an Academy Award.
- For what?

For the performance he's put on.

Billy Milligan was a very bright young man

and was not just a, uh, clever con man.

I really didn't ever
doubt the veracity of this

and clearly it had also
convinced the prosecuting attorneys.

Even the victims felt
there was something unusual about him.

I mean, it was a really strange...
the whole thing, and it made sense.

[Preston] Nobody's going
to be faking it for that many years

or in front of that many people,
and that consistently.

[man 2] A lot of arguments back and forth
as to whether he really was faking it,

or was he cured and was he safe
to put out into the community?

[Putnam] He had committed what normally
would be considered very serious crimes

and was potentially capable
of doing others.

People became extremely concerned.

Women became terrified.

He should not be out.

He is a menace to women.

He should be in prison
where rapists belong.

They were pissed off.

[reporter 8] Doctors say
he needs further treatment

and that without it,
he could easily snap again

and become dominated
by a variety of different personalities.

Now what did that mean?

Did that mean he was
going to be in psychiatric wards

for the rest of his life?

I knew that he was
turned over to psychiatric care,

but how are they going to help him?

[Putnam] There were a number of incidents
that Billy got into significant problems.

[Preston] All it was doing
was making him fracture more.

I personally feel very strongly

that there is at least
another personality out there

that nobody has identified yet.

Just a few others.

You know, I've heard those names before.

A group of other personalities
that allegedly came forward,

not good people.

[Milligan]
That ring out in my head when I hear them.

[man 3]
We discovered that others had been hidden

and called the Undesirables,

and the total now is 24.

[drum beats]

[country music playing]