Chilling story of rapist Billy Milligan who had ‘24 personalities’ & was CLEARED of sick crimes – but was it all an act? | The Sun

Matthew McConaughey, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn have all been touted as the lead in a later Warner Bros version and, in 2016, a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Milligan was announced but never surfaced.

As Crowded Room finally gets its release, we look at the horrifying true story behind the TV drama.

'Raped by stepdad'

Born in Miami in 1955, Billy faced tragedy at an early age when dad John Morrison, an alcoholic gambler, took his own life a month before his son’s fourth birthday. 

Mum Dorothy – who also had son Jim, born 1953, and daughter Kathy, born 1956 – moved back to her native Ohio where she married divorcee and dad-of-two Chalmer Milligan, who adopted her three children and legally changed their name to his own.

In later conversations with psychiatrists and in his trial, Billy claimed his stepfather raped him, beat him, hung him by his toes and fingers, and buried him alive. 

Chalmer, who died in 1988, denied the allegations against him and was never charged, but siblings Kathy and Jim, and their mother Dorothy, testified to Chalmer’s alleged abusive behaviour at Billy’s trial, with Kathy describing life with him as “a horror”. 

In a 2021 Netflix docuseries, Jim says Chalmer regularly beat him and Billy and would threaten to hurt their mother and sisters if they mentioned the abuse. 

Psychiatrists claimed the abuse was the cause of Milligan’s disorder, but author Keyes claimed Billy had multiple personalities from a much earlier age with his first three alter egos – no-name boy, Christene, and Shawn – appearing by the time he was five.

Arrested at 17

As a teenager Billy was sent to a mental institution where he was diagnosed with hysterical neurosis, but released after a few months because of his disruptive behaviour.

He was also expelled from high school and, shortly after joining the Navy at 17, in 1972, he was dismissed because he struggled to adapt. 

The same year Milligan and a friend were found guilty of rape, kidnap and assault and he served six months in a Zanesville youth camp. 

Three years later he was imprisoned for rape and armed robbery but was released on bail in April 1977 — after less than two years.

Campus rapist

On October 14, 1977, Milligan approached a female optometry student in the campus car park before taking her to the woods, where he raped her. 

He then forced her to write a cheque and cash it for him.   

Over the next two weeks he struck again, raping two more victims after threatening them at gunpoint on the campus.

Milligan’s victims’ account of their attacker revealed an odd twist. 

He called himself Phil, claimed to be Jewish, and told one woman he was a member of the Weathermen — a far-left militant organisation that claimed credit for 25 bombings in the 1970s. 

One of the women told investigators that the rapist had a German accent, while another said he acted like a child. 

On October 27, the day after his third attack, one of the women was able to identify him from a group of mug shots.

His fingerprints, on file from the 1975 conviction, matched a set found on one of the victim’s cars, and Milligan was arrested once again.

He was a charged with three counts of kidnapping, three counts of aggravated robbery and four counts of rape but investigators found interrogation was not straightforward.

“I couldn’t tell you what was going on, but it felt like I was talking to different people at different times,” Ohio police investigations supervisor Elliot Boxerbaum later recalled. 

24 alter egos

In chilling footage from the 2021 documentary, Milligan claims he has no recollection of any crime, adding: “I guess every time I wake up, somebody said I did something bad.”

As they developed his defence Milligan's lawyers had him evaluated by psychiatrists who initially found 10 distinct personalities. 

Addressed as Billy by the first psychiatrist, he responded: “Billy’s asleep. I’m David.”

Specialist psychiatrist George T. Harding and psychoanalyst Cornelia Wilbur were called in and found that Milligan’s psyche had fractured into at least 10 different personalities – eight male and two female. 

They included Christene, a three-year-old girl, Arthur, a prim and proper English scientist who was tasked with cleaning up the mess of the other personalities, and Tommy, an escape artist.

But the crimes, it was claimed, were committed by '23-year-old Yugoslavian communist Ragen Vadascovinich', who was behind the robberies, and '19-year-old lesbian Adalana', who craved affection and took over his body to rape the women. 

“Core personality” Billy, it reported, had largely been asleep for seven years, unaware of the heinous crimes of his alter egos.

Cornelia Wilbur was already noted for her work with a woman named Sybil, one of the first people diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) who was thought to have 16 personalities.

The case was later turned into a book and a TV movie, although Sybil later admitted she had made up her alter egos.

Many slammed the findings as “fraud” and “good acting”, with one expert, professor of psychiatry Thomas Szasz, telling Columbus Monthly: “Multiple personality is just a figure of speech.

"It’s nothing but a hoax. How many faces does Laurence Olivier or Elizabeth Taylor have?

"We are all actors. But there is only one person.”

Murder suspect

Despite widespread scepticism, a judge ruled that Milligan was “not guilty by reason of insanity” and had him committed to the Athens Mental Health Center. 

There Milligan met psychiatrist David Caul, who identified a further 14 personalities, The Undesirables, which emerged under stress and made him too dangerous for the hospital.

In 1980 Milligan was transferred to the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane which he described as a “chamber of horrors”.

After almost a decade in psychiatric institutions, Milligan escaped from the Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital on July 4, 1986, obtaining fake documents under the name Christopher Carr and moving to Washington. 

Two months later his roommate, Michael Madden, disappeared and Milligan fled the state, eventually being recaptured by cops in Florida.

Although Milligan had been cashing Madden’s disability cheques in a shared bank account and still had many of his roommate’s possessions, he was never charged in connection with his disappearance.

In 1988 a psychiatric assessment declared his personalities had been successfully 'fused' and he was no longer a danger to society.

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Milligan was released and eventually moved back to Columbus, Ohio, where sister Kathy bought him a mobile home. 

He spent the remainder of his life there painting until he died of cancer in 2014, aged 59.

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