William Stanley Milligan, also known as The Campus Rapist, was an American who became popular during a widely publicized court case in Ohio in the late 1970s. Before being apprehended for three ra*pes at Ohio State University, William Milligan had committed multiple serious crimes, including armed robbery.
Early Life and Background
William Stanley Milligan, later identified as Billy Milligan, was born on February 14, 1955, in Miami Beach, Florida, under the name William Stanley Morrison. During his turbulent childhood, he endured maltreatment and instability.
Johnny Morrison, Milligan’s father, had problems with alcoholism and depression. He killed himself when Milligan was only five years old. Dorothy, his mother, moved the family back to Ohio and married Chalmer Milligan again. This is when William Stanley Morrison changed his name to William Stanley Milligan.
After the fact, psychiatrists said that Milligan’s personality became fragmented at a young age because of the abuse he received from his stepfather, Chalmer. Milligan was said to have had three different personalities by the time he was five years old.
The Cr*imes
Billy Milligan did a horrible thing on October 14, 1977. He approached an optometry student in a parking lot on the Ohio State University campus, threatened her with a gun, and then made her go with him to a remote area in the woods, where he rap*ed her.
He made her write and cash a check for him after the attack. It’s shoc*king that Milligan ra*ped two more women in the next eight days. He stopped committing cri*mes, though, when one of his victims recognized him from a set of mug shots.
It was interesting to find out that Milligan had been arrested before for ra*pe and armed robbery in 1975. His fingerprints were found on one of the victims’ cars.
As the investigations went on, the police started to notice some things about Milligan. His victims said he spoke with different accents and told them different stories about who he was.
Investigators also noticed that Milligan seemed to have more than one personality. He called himself Phil, said he was Jewish, and even told one victim he was a member of the Weather Underground, a far-left militant group.
He would even talk with an accent sometimes. In the end, a psychiatric evaluation would explain why Milligan was acting so strangely.
The Trial and the Finding
Milligan had psychological tests done while he was getting ready for his defense. At first, the doctor said he had acute schizophrenia. Later, psychologist Dorothy Turner said he had dissociative identity disorder.
At the time, this diagnosis was very new because Milligan was the first person with dissociative identity disorder to make such a case.
His lawyers pleaded insanity, claiming that two of his alternate personalities committed the c*rimes without Milligan being aware of it. This led to Milligan being acquitted of a major cr*ime for this reason, instead spending a decade in psychiatric hospitals.
Life After Release
Milligan was released from psychiatric hospitals in 1988, after being there for ten years. It was 1991 before he was let out of the Ohio courts and mental health system. After that, he moved to California and ran Stormy Life Productions. He had plans to make a short film there.
Dan Keyes wrote the non-fiction book “The Minds of Billy Milligan” and the fiction book “The Milligan Wars” about Milligan’s life. His story made people more aware of how complicated dissociative identity disorder is and how mental health and the criminal justice system are linked.
She died on December 12, 2014, at a nursing home in Columbus, Ohio, of cancer.
Tom Holland Played Milligan
Tom Holland said that his part in The Crowded Room was so bad for his mental health that he is not going to act for a year. From August to December, he played a part based on the notorious serial rapist Billy Milligan, who was 22 years old.
Tom Holland said that playing this part made him feel very bad, and he still had trouble getting rid of the sadness even after the show was over.
At one point, he said he truly lost it because he began to recognize parts of himself in the character. He tried shaving his head to get rid of him but failed.
