Polly Newton’s abduction and attempted rape began as Ragen’s third armed search for money and became an episode in which Adalana commandeered his time. The sequence exposes the distance between Ragen’s stated purpose and the danger Polly faced, while showing how control of the shared consciousness could alter the course of an unfolding crime.

The Abduction and Change of Control

In the early hours of October 26, Ragen set out across Columbus toward Ohio State University, believing he had to obtain money for the children. At an intersection he noticed a police cruiser and briefly considered approaching the officers, but they drove away when the light changed. On East Woodruff Avenue, he saw Polly Newton arriving in a blue Corvette at a brick apartment building marked Gemini. Desperate for money, he followed her toward the rear parking area and ordered her to take him somewhere, displaying guns after getting into the passenger seat.

The encounter changed when Adalana pushed Ragen away from the consciousness’s foreground. She feared Arthur would discover that she had been taking Ragen’s time, and reasoned that if Ragen were caught, his visible weapons and intention to rob someone would make him appear responsible for the whole episode. Adalana then identified the driver as Polly Newton and directed her to stop for gasoline. She paid for five gallons, told Polly to take Interstate 71 north, and continued with her to Worthington, where they stopped at a Friendly ice cream store. What had begun as an armed demand for transportation was now being directed by a different personality, while Polly remained under the control of the person carrying the guns.

The Attempt and Its Abrupt Reversal

On a deserted country road, Adalana directed Polly across a ditch and through an overgrown field near a pond, then said she wanted to wait before being dropped off. She next told Polly that she intended to have sex with her. Polly began to cry. Adalana claimed that she would not hurt her, but also made clear that Polly had no choice. The contradiction was central to the episode: assurances of gentleness did not make the encounter consensual or remove the threat created by the guns and the abduction.

As the assault began, Polly pleaded with Adalana not to rape her. The word brought to mind what had happened to David, Danny, and Billy. Adalana stopped, moved away, and spoke aloud to Bill, asking what was wrong with him and urging him to get himself together. The attempted rape ended at that point. The sudden reversal did not undo Polly’s captivity, but it interrupted the sexual assault and exposed the conflict between Adalana’s conduct and the memories she had just recalled.

Adalana then put the towels back in the car and tried to fire one of the guns at a beer bottle in the pond, missing. As they drove away, she fired twice toward a telephone pole and searched Polly’s handbag for money, explaining that she needed about two hundred dollars for someone else. She directed Polly through a series of attempts to cash checks: a Kroger office cashed one for $150, while the State Savings Bank and several drive-in bank windows refused. At the Union store at Graceland Shopping Center, Polly was able to cash another check for $50. Adalana suggested that they could cash one more and that Polly could keep the money, but this offer came within an encounter Polly had not freely chosen and did not change its coercive character.

The episode shifted briefly into an apparently personal gesture when Adalana began writing Polly a poem on a check. She then refused to give it to her, concerned that police might match the handwriting, destroyed it, and tore a page from Polly’s address book. Adalana kept the page and threatened to send it to the Weathermen group if Polly reported her or gave the police an accurate description, saying Polly’s family would be killed. When Adalana noticed a police car passing, she slipped away. The threat turned a stolen address-book page into leverage against both Polly and her family; the passing patrol car, rather than any resolution between the two women, marked the abrupt end of Adalana’s control of the scene.

Disputed Testimony and the Larger Case

The Polly Newton episode later entered a larger dispute over what the women had experienced and how the events should be characterized. When Arthur discussed trial strategy, he said Ragen would accept punishment for three robberies but would not plead guilty to rape, even though four of the ten indictment counts included rape. Arthur relied on what he called Adalana’s account: that each woman had cooperated, none had been injured, each could have escaped, and each had received some of the money back so she would benefit from an insurance payment. These were claims about the women’s conduct, not evidence that Polly had freely agreed to the abduction or the sexual threat; the account of her episode instead records that she was taken at gunpoint and told she had no choice.

Judy rejected Arthur’s version, and neither she nor Gary accepted the suggestion that the victims had cooperated. They understood, however, that Arthur was describing Adalana’s perception of events. When Gary asked whether they could speak with her, Arthur said she had been banished from The spot forever because of what she had done, with no further exceptions. The exchange left a consequential gap: the personality whose viewpoint Arthur invoked could not be questioned, while the victims’ accounts contradicted his interpretation. In the wider case, the episode thus stands not only as an interrupted assault and coerced robbery, but also as part of a contested effort to distinguish an offender’s account of apparent cooperation from the circumstances of threat and control in which Polly was placed.

Public Narrative and Institutional Consequences

The episode also belonged to a larger public and legal controversy over the offenses attributed to William Stanley Milligan and the conditions of his treatment. On March 30, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Milligan, described in the headline as a rapist, could leave the Athens Mental Health Center without supervision and take weekend visits. The article cited concern from Athens’s police chief and Judge Jay Flowers; follow-up coverage repeatedly criticized his freedom to leave. These reports presented the October attacks as a public-safety issue and turned the question of his treatment into a dispute involving the hospital, local officials, and the press.

The coverage intensified after an April 7 headline reported that Milligan had been placed in a security ward following a drug overdose the newspaper characterized as faked. Its criticism extended to the Athens Mental Health Center and Dr. David Caul, who received threatening calls. Superintendent Sue Foster later said that press attention had compromised treatment, while Mike Stinziano objected to blaming reporters for publishing the facts. After Stinziano and Claire “Buzz” Ball, Jr. sought an outside evaluation, Cornelia Wilbur reviewed the program and praised Caul’s treatment, noting that setbacks could occur with multiple personalities. The controversy formed part of the political climate surrounding Ohio Senate Bill 297, passed in 1980 after legislators considered changes to the law governing people found not guilty by reason of insanity. The available account connects the legislation to public outcry over Milligan’s situation, not to Polly Newton’s episode alone; the case’s wider significance lay in how accounts of the attacks became entangled with arguments about treatment, liberty, and public risk.