How did Billy Milligan die? Tom Holland's 'The Crowded Room' is based on notorious insanity acquitta

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Danny Sullivan, Tom Holland's character in ‘The Crowded Room’, appears to have ignited some serious interest among viewers. The villainous character is inspired by the real-life criminal Billy Milligan, who was notoriously acquitted of rape charges on insanity grounds. While he was charged in 1978 and released in 1988, Billy Milligan spent most of his life under state supervision.

Milligan, who allegedly had 24 split personalities, was charged with three counts of kidnapping, three counts of aggravated robbery, and four counts of rape. After his arrest in 1977, his defense lawyers argued that he was not responsible for the crimes he committed as he suffered from dissociative identity disorder. One of his personalities, a 19-year-old shy lesbian named Adalana, was said to have committed the rapes. 

After his acquittal, he spent ten years in several Ohio mental health facilities until being released in 1988. He died of cancer in 2014 in Ohio, while not serving any prison sentence. 

'People are not as compassionate as we would like to believe'

According to the Ohio newspaper The Columbus Dispatch, Milligan's sister Kathy sent an email to a WBNS-TV (Channel 10) reporter after his death on Friday, December 12, 2014, saying, “He died last Friday of cancer. I believe he is finally at peace.” Milligan was 59 at the time of his death in a Columbus hospital. 

In 2007, an embittered Kathy wrote a letter to the Dispatch. “People are not as caring and compassionate as we would like to believe,” she said about her brother who, after his acquittal and release from the mental facility, went to California in search of work. 

Kathy, even though she remained in touch with her brother throughout his life, did not condone the crimes. According to Olivier Megaton, the director of the four-part Netflix series, Kathy said that she has been supporting Milligan’s rape victims throughout her life. Megaton said, “The interesting thing is that his sister, the first time we met, the first thing that she told me was that she was caring about the victims all the time, every day," as per MovieMaker.

Milligan’s life after acquittal

Milligan was acquitted in 1978 after the court found he was suffering from acute schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder. However, he was ordered to be under the supervision of state-run mental health facilities where he remained till 1988. 

Milligan was said to be exhibiting 24 different personalities during this time, out of which 14 were labeled ‘The Undesirables’ by him. He escaped from Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital in July 1986 and took up the identity of one Christopher Carr. Even though he ran off to Washington, he was captured from Florida and later brought back to Ohio where he spent another two years in prison. He was later ruled safe to the society by an independent journalist, as per The Columbus Dispatch. Though he was released in 1988, he was kept under the supervision of the state. 

He then moved to California and opened a production company through which he wanted to make a short film, but the project never materialized. After returning to Ohio, his sister bought him a mobile van where he lived till his death in 2014. 

According to The Net Line, he was an avid painter in the later stages of his life and vowed to pay back the $450,000 that the government had spent on his treatment. He also managed to pay $170,000 before his death. 

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