The March 12, 1978 psychiatric examination of William Stanley Milligan at the Franklin County Jail became a pivotal demonstration in the dispute over whether he could assist in his own defense. In front of lawyers and mental-health professionals, the person answering questions appeared to change from Danny to Allen, Arthur, and Ragen; later, Billy surfaced in acute distress, and Tommy was identified after the others had left the room. For prosecutor Bernie Yavitch, the examination transformed an account he had regarded as implausible into something he could no longer dismiss as an act. It did not, however, produce an immediate consensus: Dr. George Harding reserved judgment and said he would report to the judge the following day.

Legal and Clinical Background

The examination followed an earlier evaluation by clinical psychologist Dr. Willis C. Driscoll. On January 8 and 13, 1978, Dr. Driscoll had administered psychological tests to Milligan. The intelligence testing produced a score of 68, which Dr. Driscoll considered depressed by Milligan’s depression, and his report diagnosed acute schizophrenia. He described severe difficulty distinguishing self from surroundings, voices experienced as commanding and tormenting him, and an inability at that time to understand events or counsel adequately in his own defense. He recommended hospitalization for further examination and possible treatment.

On January 19, Judy Stevenson and Gary Schweickart presented Dr. Driscoll’s report to Judge Jay C. Flowers as evidence that Milligan could not assist in his defense. Judge Flowers proposed an examination by the forensic psychiatry unit of Southwest Community Mental Health Center in Columbus. That prospect troubled Stevenson and Schweickart because they regarded the center as usually aligned with the prosecution. Schweickart insisted that anything Milligan disclosed during the examination be protected from use against him. The prosecutors objected, and the dispute came close to a contempt finding before the parties reached a compromise: questioning about incriminating statements would be permitted only if Milligan later took the stand in his own defense. The defense ultimately allowed the interview to proceed on those terms.

The March examination therefore took place amid both clinical uncertainty and legal caution. Yavitch had reread the Southwest report and the police reports, but he did not know what he would encounter. He doubted that multiple personalities could explain Milligan’s condition. Dr. Cornelia Wilbur’s willingness to take that possibility seriously did not persuade him; the opinion he especially awaited was that of Dr. Harding, whose standing Yavitch respected. The scene was not simply a private consultation: the range of professionals present, and the lawyers’ concern about what the examination might establish or disclose, made the encounter consequential to the defense as well as to treatment.

The Examination at the Jail

March 12 was a bright, cold Sunday. Yavitch entered the Franklin County Jail knowing it was the first time he had attended a psychiatric examination of a defendant as a prosecutor. Once the others arrived, the interview was arranged in the lower-level sheriffs’ squad room, a large workroom with folding chairs, blackboards, and a desk used by officers at shift changes. Dr. Stella Karolin, Sheila Karolin, social worker Sheila Porter, Dr. Wilbur, and Dr. Harding were among those introduced there.

Milligan arrived with Judy Stevenson beside him, holding his hand; Dorothy Turner walked ahead, and Schweickart followed behind. Faced with the assembled group, he hesitated. Turner introduced those present and seated him near Dr. Wilbur, identifying him as Danny. Wilbur addressed him reassuringly and began asking questions. Danny spoke about Arthur, Ragen, and Allen, but not about what had happened to him. Wilbur explained to Yavitch that this pattern—speaking about the experiences of others while avoiding his own—was characteristic, in her view, of multiple personality. She later described what she was seeing to Dr. Harding as a dissociative state of the hysterical neurotic.

When the discussion turned to Billy, Danny said he could not bring him out: Billy was asleep, and only Arthur and Ragen could wake him. The distinction mattered in the room. The request was not followed by an ordinary answer from the same speaker; instead, observers watched Milligan’s eyes go blank, his lips move, and his body jerk upright. He looked dazed and asked for a cigarette. Stevenson told Yavitch that Allen was the only one who smoked cigarettes.

Allen then answered questions in a manner that Yavitch perceived as markedly different from Danny’s shy, boyish presentation. He was relaxed and outgoing, and spoke fluently about playing piano and drums, painting portraits, being eighteen, and liking baseball—a preference that contrasted with Tommy’s dislike of the game. Allen also took several quick puffs from the cigarette before yielding the foreground. The small act became part of the examination’s accumulating evidence for Yavitch: it connected a concrete preference to the person who had just displayed it, while the next change brought a contrasting speaker who did not smoke.

The Changes in the Room

After Allen, Milligan’s eyes went blank again. He leaned back, joined his fingertips into a pyramid, and began speaking with an upper-class British accent. This was Arthur. Yavitch registered more than a change of voice: Arthur’s eye contact and body language also differed from Allen’s. Yavitch compared the accent with that of a British accountant he knew and was struck by its resemblance to an authentic speech pattern. Arthur said he had not met the people in the room, treating them as strangers rather than as participants in an interview already under way.

The examination then turned toward Ragen. Wilbur pressed Arthur to persuade Ragen to let Billy speak with the group. Milligan’s face went blank once more; his eyes stared ahead, his lips moved as if in an unheard exchange, and his jaw tightened. The next voice was deep and Slavic. Ragen refused. The sequence made the limits of the gathering plain: the clinicians could ask for Billy, but, as the people presenting themselves in the room described it, access to him depended on other personalities’ willingness to allow it.

Yavitch and Schweickart stepped into the corridor while the examination continued. Schweickart said he had never met the core personality and did not know whether Billy would appear. Yavitch acknowledged that he had begun as a skeptic; by then, he no longer thought the presentation was an act, although he still did not know what to make of it. His change was an evidentiary response to what he had watched, not a settled clinical diagnosis. Dr. Harding, for his part, remained noncommittal and took time to consider what he had seen and heard.

Billy’s Appearance and the Examination’s Aftermath

Those remaining in the room watched Milligan grow pale and turn his gaze inward. His lips twitched, as if he were speaking in his sleep. When his eyes opened, he cried out that he thought he was dead. Seeing the people around him, he leapt from his chair onto the floor, moved on all fours to the far side of the room, squeezed between the armrests of two chairs, and cowered and sobbed. He asked what he had done. The scene was a sharp break from the fluent, socially responsive Allen and the controlled, formal Arthur: Billy’s return was accompanied by fear, confusion, and no apparent recognition of the preceding exchange.

Dr. Wilbur identified the speaker as the original Billy, also called the host or core personality, and asked who he was. The answer came from Tommy, who said he had not known Billy was allowed out and that no one had told him. Gary Schweickart and Yavitch were then permitted back into the room. Tommy was introduced, asked a few questions, and returned to his cell. Yavitch heard what had happened while he was out and remained astonished, but he told Stevenson and Schweickart that Milligan did not seem to be faking. The examination had not made the personalities’ existence a unanimous medical conclusion; it had changed what one previously skeptical prosecutor was prepared to believe.

Dr. Harding alone explicitly withheld judgment. He said he needed to think about the encounter and would give Judge Flowers his opinion the next day. Two days after the examination, on March 16, Milligan was transferred ahead of schedule from the jail to Harding Hospital, where Dr. Harding had assembled a therapy team. The examination thus stood between the earlier dispute over Milligan’s ability to participate in his defense and a new period of hospital observation and treatment. Its lasting force lay in the contrast between the legal question asked of the experts and the event they had witnessed: not a single, continuous interview, but a succession of sharply differentiated presentations, ending with Billy’s frightened return.