Ohio State Highway Patrol

The Ohio State Highway Patrol enters the narrative not as a treatment provider or hospital authority, but as an outside investigative body called upon when serious allegations arose at two institutions. Its role is documented in separate episodes: an inquiry into accusations concerning two women at the Athens hospital in 1979, and a later investigation, together with the FBI, after Billy Milligan was reported injured at Lima State Hospital. The account establishes when the Patrol was summoned and what information was publicly available, while leaving the eventual investigative findings unresolved.

Investigations at the Athens hospital

The first episode began after two young women were found outside on a hill, drunk and unconscious. Reports circulating through the hospital differed about whether a rape had occurred; suspicion fell on Milligan and fellow patient Gus Holston because they had been out walking at the same time. Staff members were reluctant to believe that an assault had occurred, but their assumptions did not settle the question. The Ohio State Highway Patrol was called to investigate.

The response affected the hospital’s immediate routine. At the Patrol’s request, the Admissions and Intensive Treatment ward was temporarily locked so that the men on the unit would be available for questioning. The decision reflected the practical overlap between an outside criminal inquiry and a psychiatric ward’s control of residents’ movement: investigators needed access to potential witnesses, while hospital staff had to manage the unit and communicate the accusations to Milligan and Holston. The account describes the temporary restriction and the men being told what they were accused of; it does not describe the Patrol conducting interviews or establish what either man told investigators.

The allegations remained contested in public accounts. A later report attributed to Lieutenant Richard Wilcox, head of the Patrol’s investigation section, said that tests intended to determine whether the women had been raped or intoxicated were incomplete. Their results, he said, would not be made public until the investigation was over. This statement marks a limit on what could responsibly be concluded at that point: rumors and competing accounts had circulated, but the investigation had not yet produced publicly disclosed test results. The book supplies no final Patrol finding, and its account should not be read as resolving the allegations.

A separate inquiry at Lima

The Patrol appears again after Milligan had been transferred to Lima State Hospital. On December 18, 1979, he contacted the writer and reported that a hospital employee had badly beaten him. An attorney appointed as guardian ad litem had also taken photographs of his injuries. The hospital administration initially told the press that Milligan had no injuries other than those it described as self-inflicted. The next day, following a visit by attorney Steve Thompson, the administration reversed its position and confirmed that Milligan had been seriously injured.

After that reversal, both the FBI and the Ohio State Highway Patrol were called to investigate, with possible submission of their findings to a grand jury in view. Their involvement thus followed a dispute between Milligan’s account and the hospital’s initial public statement, followed by the hospital’s acknowledgment that he had been injured. The sequence matters: the narrative does not report that the Patrol had established who was responsible, nor does it give the outcome of its inquiry. It records an investigation being opened as the matter moved beyond the hospital’s own account and toward possible grand-jury review.

Scope and significance

These episodes show the Patrol functioning at the boundary between institutional care and public investigation. At Athens, the inquiry concerned allegations involving patients and prompted a temporary restriction on a ward so that men could be questioned. At Lima, the Patrol was called alongside the FBI after a hospital’s account of an injury changed. In neither case does the book present the Patrol as deciding Milligan’s treatment, diagnosis, or legal status.

The distinction between investigative roles is important in the account of Milligan’s transfer from Athens. At the later court hearing, the testimony quoted in the narrative came from Russell Cremeans, the Athens hospital’s chief of Security and Safety, concerning an escape attempt and the institution’s ability to contain Milligan. The book does not identify the Ohio State Highway Patrol as the source of that testimony. Keeping the proceedings separate prevents the Patrol’s documented investigative appearances from being mistaken for participation in the hospital’s security case or the court’s transfer decision.

The narrative therefore gives the Ohio State Highway Patrol a limited but consequential presence. Its arrival could alter hospital access and bring unresolved allegations into a formal investigative process; its public statements could also define what was known at a particular moment. Yet the account stops short of supplying final results. The Patrol’s role is documented through the calls for investigation, the temporary ward restriction, the statement about incomplete tests, and the later inquiry at Lima—not through a reported verdict on either episode.