The summer's darkest drama, The Crowded Room, starring Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried begins on Apple TV+ today. But we regret to inform you that if you're watching this psychological thriller and telling yourself it's not real.unfortunately, it is.
Holland plays a character called Danny Sullivan who is arrested on the night of a shooting in New York in 1979, but he is actually based on a real-life person called Billy Milligan who was also arrested around this same time in history, and his story became the basis for the 1981 book by Daniel Keyes, The Minds Of Billy Milligan.
But who was Billy Milligan, what crimes did he commit and where did he end up?
William Stanley Morrison was born in 1955 in Miami Beach. His father died by suicide when he was four, then his mother remarried (Morrison's surname was changed to Milligan) and moved the family to Ohio. While living here, Milligan was physically and sexually abused by his step-father.
In 1975, when Billy was 20, he served three years in Lebanon Correctional Institution, Ohio, for rape and armed robbery. On his release in 1977, he reoffended and was arrested for the kidnapping, robbing and rape of three women on the Ohio State University Campus.
But while he was in Ohio State Penitentiary pending trial, he began to claim that it was not him who had committed the crimes, that it was somebody called Ragen who had stolen the money and Adalana who had raped the women.
Milligan went under psychological examination and he was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia, and later with dissociative identity disorder. His legal defence, Gary Schweickart and Judy Stevenson, pleaded an insanity defence, and in the first case of its kind, Milligan was the first person diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder to raise such a defence and to later be acquitted of a major crime for this reason.
Milligan was admitted to state-run psychiatric hospitals "until such time as he regains sanity", as the judge ruled at the time. While in these institutions, it was revealed that because of his abusive upbringing, he had splintered into up to 24 personalities, known as The Undesirables, which included Arthur, an English scientist; Allen, a manipulator and Tommy, an escape artist.
In July 1989, when he was being held in Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital, Milligan escaped. During this time, Milligan fled to Bellingham, Washington and began living life as a man named Christopher Carr. But his roommate, Michael Madden went missing, and Milligan was the main suspect in his disappearance, due to the fact his belongings were found in his apartment, and because Milligan had been cashing in his benefit cheques. But Milligan was never charged with any crimes as the body of Madden has never been found, and there was not enough evidence to link Milligan with any crime.
However, when he was caught, Milligan was admitted again to a psychiatric hospital, where he resided until 1988, when he was deemed "no longer a danger" to society.
Following his release, Milligan spent time in LA and Las Vegas, before returning to live in Ohio again with his sister. In December 2014, aged 59, in an Ohio nursing home, he died of cancer.
The Crowded Room begins on Apple TV+ on 9 June.