COLUMBUS, Ohio -- William Milligan, a multiple-personality patient charged with leaving a mental institution without permission, was being held in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital after being returned from Florida.
Milligan, 31, who has been diagnosed as having 24 personalities, was returned to Columbus Tuesday night, five months after he walked away from the Central Ohio Psychiatric Hospital, a minimum security facility.
After being processed at the Franklin County jail Tuesday night, Milligan was taken to the Timothy B. Moritz Forensic Center, a maximum-security facility in Columbus.
He is scheduled to undergo at least 30 days of treatment and evaluation at the Moritz center before appearing in Common Pleas Court on charges of leaving a state mental institution without permission and violating parole on a 1975 theft conviction.
He was arrested in a suburban Miami hotel Nov. 20.
Milligan was found innocent by reason of insanity of three rapes on the Ohio State University campus in 1978 and has been housed in various mental institutions since then.
Milligan claimed, in a videotape left for the Columbus media after he escaped July 4, that he fled for his life. He criticized the administrator of Central Ohio Psychiatric Center for overruling his doctor on the drugs used in his treatment.
Police in Bellingham, Wash., want to question Milligan about the disappearance of a 33-year-old Bellingham man they believe has been killed. According to witnesses, Milligan was acquainted with the missing man and lived near him for a time last summer.
