Donna West

Donna West, a nurse who worked at a university psychiatric hospital, is the second victim in the Ohio State University assault series and one of the book’s most important eyewitnesses. Her account follows an encounter that began as an ordinary offer to help a stranger and became an abduction and sexual assault. She later identified William S. Milligan from a mug shot, supplying investigators with a concrete lead; the narrative also returns to her experience when competing accounts of the crimes threaten to recast fear and compliance as cooperation.

Identity and Introduction

West is introduced as a short, plump nurse finishing an overnight shift. On the morning of the assault, she was exhausted after working late and wanted to leave the hospital. She had planned to call her fiancé and meet him for breakfast, but decided she would contact him after returning to her apartment. As she crossed the parking lot, a friend greeted her; she then headed for her car, which she habitually parked in the first row facing Upham Hall.

The narrative gives West a routine and immediate context before the crime: the end of a difficult shift, a postponed call, and a familiar walk to her car. That ordinary sequence matters because the stranger approaches her not by force at first, but by asking for directions to the main parking lot. West offers to drive him around. Once he is in the passenger seat, he produces a gun and orders her to drive, making clear that resistance could be dangerous. Her account records the change from a seemingly manageable favor to a situation in which her safety is under another person’s control.

The Abduction and Assault

West initially tries to interpret the man’s threats through the language he supplies. Because he speaks as if connected to a militant group, and because he directs her north on Interstate 71, she assumes he may be an urban guerrilla escaping toward Cleveland. When he instead directs her off the highway into a back road in Delaware County, she notices that he seems familiar with the area. Once they are away from other cars, the political explanation no longer fits: West understands that she faces a personal assault and fears she may be raped or shot.

The man tells her he needs a moment to compose himself. West remains in the driver’s seat, thinking about her fiancé and her life as she waits to learn what will happen. When he challenges her about being afraid of rape, she acknowledges that she is. The book presents this exchange within the threat and confinement already established: West is alone with an armed abductor in an isolated place, and her responses take place under that pressure. The assault follows. The account does not turn her fear, stillness, or efforts to manage the danger into evidence of consent.

Afterward, West is surprised by how quickly the assault is over. The man makes an apologetic and affectionate gesture, then directs her to drive back toward where he first approached her. Near the campus, he insists on leaving her five dollars for gasoline. When she does not take the money, he places it beneath the visor, embraces her, and runs away. The gestures of apology, payment, and affection sit uneasily beside the abduction and assault; they do not undo the coercion that defines the encounter. West’s account preserves that contradiction without allowing the assailant’s behavior afterward to replace what he did.

Identification and Investigative Importance

West described an assailant who carried an automatic pistol, wore brown-tinted sunglasses, and had an oily stain on his hands. She did not see his eyes behind the glasses. He used the name Phil and threatened harm to her or her relatives if she identified him, invoking a supposed brotherhood that West and investigators initially understood as a possible criminal or political organization. He also took names of relatives. These details gave the investigation more than a general description: they recorded the disguise, the threats, and the attempt to extend intimidation beyond the immediate encounter.

When investigators compared her description with that of Carrie Dryer, they found several points of convergence, including the brown jogging clothes, jeans, and white sneakers, alongside an apparent difference in facial hair. The contrast initially looked like an inconsistency; one investigator joked that the man could simply have shaved between attacks. The book thus shows how a detail that might have weakened an identification could also be reconciled with a changing appearance.

At the Detective Bureau, Eliot Boxerbaum brought West in to review mug shots while keeping an optometry student in reserve for a possible lineup if the photographic evidence proved insufficient. West examined the pictures with frustration, even recognizing a former classmate among the photographs and discovering that he had been arrested for indecent exposure. Halfway through a tray, she stopped at an old image of a youth with muttonchop whiskers and staring eyes, rose abruptly, and identified him with certainty. Nikki Miller recorded the identification and checked the photograph’s number against the record, which named William S. Milligan. West’s recognition became a crucial investigative link between the reported assault and Milligan.

Conflicting Accounts and Narrative Role

The book later places West’s experience beside a radically different account from within Milligan’s inner system. During a discussion of trial strategy, Arthur says that, according to Adalana, the women cooperated, had opportunities to leave, and received some money back. Judy Stevenson and Gary Schweickart reject that characterization; they understand that Arthur is describing Adalana’s perception, not an account they accept as the women’s experience. West’s detailed description of being abducted at gunpoint, taken to an isolated road, and threatened gives the reader grounds to assess the claim against the circumstances she reported rather than treating the assailant’s interpretation as fact.

West also volunteered to speak with the book’s author, who identifies her under a pseudonym. That decision gives her account a place beyond the investigative file: the narrative explicitly acknowledges her willingness to describe events from the victim’s point of view. Her role is therefore not limited to identifying a photograph. Her recollection establishes the human circumstances behind the crime, while the later dispute over cooperation exposes how easily a perpetrator’s explanation can obscure the difference between a victim’s constrained choices and genuine consent. In the book’s structure, West’s account remains a counterweight to the internal personalities’ competing stories and to any attempt to make the victims disappear behind the case against Milligan.