1980

1980 marked a turn from Billy Milligan’s hope of resuming treatment in Athens toward further restriction and institutional transfer. A court order kept him at Lima State Hospital, a new law altered the process governing reviews and transfers, and the state’s decision to phase out Lima culminated in Billy Milligan’s move to the Dayton Forensic Center. By the end of the year, he was describing a loss of communication and identity among the personalities whose treatment had shaped the case.

The year’s starting point

Billy Milligan entered 1980 already confined at Lima State Hospital, after his transfer there from Harding Hospital in October 1979. That transfer followed a period in which treatment and legal status had repeatedly intersected. In 1978, psychologist Willis C. Driscoll had diagnosed acute schizophrenia and judged Billy Milligan unable to understand events or assist adequately in his own defense at that time. The diagnosis of multiple personality later became central to his treatment and legal proceedings.

The personalities’ public and clinical recognition had not been straightforward. Allen explained that the personalities all answered to Billy’s name to protect their secret, and that Billy had been asleep for a long time. During the period at Harding, staff struggled with Billy Milligan’s denials that he had performed acts they had witnessed, and the nursing plan sought to have him accept responsibility while staff treated him as Billy rather than discussing the other names. Earlier, prosecutors and the public defenders had tried to keep the multiple-personality diagnosis from becoming public, fearing the effects of a media story on treatment and the case.

The contrast between hospital settings also framed the year. At Harding Hospital, Billy Milligan had been placed in Wakefield Cottage, a locked unit for patients requiring constant observation, with staff and his advocates present as treatment began. After his trial, Dr. David Caul had presented Athens as a chance for a new life and a setting in which Billy Milligan could work toward bringing himself together. By 1980, that therapeutic prospect had become a hope attached to a court review rather than his current circumstances.

The April review and the new law

On April 14, Judge David R. Kinworthy rejected contempt-of-court charges that Billy Milligan’s lawyer had brought against Lima Superintendent Ronald Hubbard and Clinical Director Lewis Lindner over their failure to treat Billy Milligan as a person with multiple personalities. The judge nevertheless ordered him to remain at Lima. The decision frustrated Billy Milligan’s hope that the courts would overturn the transfer and return him to Athens for continued work with Dr. Caul.

A wider legal change followed. Senate Bill 297 took effect on May 20, 1980, after the legislature had considered changes to the laws governing people found not guilty by reason of insanity. Under the changes described in the account, a county prosecutor could demand a hearing in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred before such a person was transferred to a less restrictive setting. Reviews that had taken place every 90 days would instead occur every 180 days, and the hearings would be open to the public and the press. Bernie Yavitch, the prosecutor in Billy Milligan’s case, had worked on the prosecutors’ association subcommittee that drafted the law. Judge Jay Flowers later told the author that it had been passed because of Billy Milligan. The case had thus become more than an individual dispute over treatment and placement: it was associated with a change in the rules governing other patients as well.

Lima’s closure and transfer to Dayton

In October, the state Department of Mental Health announced that Lima would be phased out as a state hospital for the criminally insane and converted into a prison under the Department of Correction. The announcement revived the question of where Billy Milligan would go. A possible return to Athens, or transfer to another minimum-security hospital, prompted prosecutor Jim O’Grady to seek a sanity-review hearing in Columbus under the new law. Judge Jay Flowers agreed to hear the case.

The hearing, initially set for October 31, was postponed by mutual agreement until November 7, after election day, to avoid turning the case into a political issue. During the delay, state mental-health officials informed Jim O’Grady that they had decided to send Billy Milligan to the new Dayton Forensic Center, which had opened in April. The center was a maximum-security facility enclosed by double fences topped with razor-ribbon concertina wire wrapped around barbed wire, with security more stringent than that of most prisons. Once officials chose Dayton, the prosecutor’s office dropped its demand for a hearing.

On November 19, Billy Milligan was moved to Dayton. Arthur and Ragen, sensing his despair and fearing he might try to kill himself, put him to sleep again. The transfer therefore changed more than the institution around him: as the prospect of another restrictive placement weighed on him, the internal personalities responded by withdrawing Billy Milligan from consciousness.

Life and deterioration at Dayton

At Dayton, Billy Milligan spent time reading, writing, and sketching when he was not in the visiting room; he was not allowed to paint. Mary, a young outpatient he had met during his first months in Athens, moved to Dayton so she could visit him daily. He behaved well and looked toward his next review, hoping Judge Jay Flowers would find that he no longer needed maximum security and send him back to Athens. He believed Dr. Caul could treat him, fuse the personalities again, and bring back the Teacher. With Billy-U asleep, he told the author, conditions inside were as they had been before Dr. Cornelia Wilbur had awakened him.

The apparent order of daily life did not mean that the internal system was holding together. The author observed that Billy Milligan was deteriorating. During several visits, he said he did not know who he was. Partial fusion left him as a person without a name; Ragen, he reported, had lost the ability to speak English, and the personalities had stopped communicating with one another. The author suggested a daily log so that whoever occupied the spot could leave messages for the others. It helped for a time, but interest faded and the entries grew less frequent.

The year thus closed without the return to Athens that Billy Milligan had hoped for. The new law made review possible on a different timetable and under public scrutiny, but the immediate institutional outcome was a move from Lima to a more secure facility. At Dayton, restricted activity, continued confinement, and the weakening of communication among the personalities made the hoped-for treatment and renewed fusion feel increasingly distant.