[imagesource: Netflix]

Like many true-crime docuseries out there, Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan comes with more chilling questions than comforting answers.

This four-part Netflix documentary series covers the story of an accused serial rapist in the 1970s who claimed that multiple personalities controlled his behaviour.

Thus, the biggest question of them all is:

Did Billy Milligan fake 24 personalities in order to avoid going to jail?

Milligan was diagnosed with what was referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder in the 1970s, and is now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

But there is no way of really knowing if that was the case.

His conversations with police detectives and psychiatrists after he was acquitted of the major crime left the American legal system scrambling for the truth.

That’s because, as Collider puts it, the more he talked, the more complicated it became to determine if he really had a psychiatric disorder or was just faking his condition extremely well.

Here’s the full synopsis:

In 1977, a serial rapist struck Ohio State University. Overwhelming evidence quickly led investigators to Billy Milligan, an aimless young man with a traumatic childhood and a criminal record.

Yet upon his arrest, Billy had no memory of the assaults, and his mannerisms seemed to change on the spot. A parade of psychiatrists diagnosed him with multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder), eventually determining that as many as 24 distinct “multiples” existed within his mind.

In a case that captivated the nation, their analysis anchored a first-of-its-kind legal defense strategy, and Billy was found innocent by reason of insanity. His trials, however, were far from over.

Olivier Megaton (The Last Days of American Crime) directs the docuseries, which includes interviews with the Milligan family, Milligan’s former friends, doctors, and law enforcement professionals.

Milligan died on December 12, 2014 at the age of 59.

The official trailer asks, “Have you ever seen someone change personalities right in front of your eyes?”

Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan will be on Netflix from September 22.

[source:rollingstone]