Billy Milligan

William Stanley Milligan (February 13, 1955 – December 12, 2014), known as Billy Milligan, was an American citizen who was the subject of a highly publicized court case in Ohio in the late 1970s. After having committed several felonies including armed robbery, he was arrested for three rapes on the campus of the Ohio State University. In the course of preparing his defense, psychologists diagnosed Milligan with multiple personality disorder. His lawyers pleaded insanity, claiming that two of his alternate personalities committed the crimes without Milligan being aware of it. He was the first person diagnosed with multiple personality disorder to raise such a defense, and the first acquitted of a major crime for this reason, instead spending a decade in mental hospitals. Milligan's life story was popularized by Daniel Keyes's award-winning non-fiction novel The Minds of Billy Milligan (1981, available in fourteen languages).

Milligan's mother, Dorothy Milligan, grew up in Ohio farm country, and lived in Lancaster, with her husband. They divorced, and Dorothy eventually moved to the Miami, Florida area, where she worked as a singer. There she began living with Johnny Morrison, a historian who was still unmarried.

Dorothy and Johnny had a son, Jim Milligan, in October 1953. In February 1955, in Miami Beach, they had a second son, William Stanley Milligan, later known as Billy Milligan. Dorothy and Johnny had a third child together, Kathy Jo Milligan, born in December 1956.

At this time, Johnny was 36 years old. According to biographer Daniel Keyes, "Meeting the medical expenses overwhelmed Johnny. He borrowed more, gambled more, drank more [...]. [He] was hospitalized for acute alcoholism and depression in [...] 1958 [...]." In what appeared to be an unsuccessful suicide attempt, according to Keyes, "[Dorothy] found him slumped over the table, half a bottle of Scotch and an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the floor." A few months after this attempt, on January 17, 1959, Johnny committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

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