Post by CCADP on Aug 28, 2005 8:32:31 GMT -5
In diary, 'monster' describes a life adrift
By IAN DEMSKY
Staff Writer
Trembling with fear, the fortune-teller refused to tell 25-year-old Garland Ray Milam what she saw in his palm, he wrote in his diary in 1989.
"She was speechless & couldn't answer," wrote Milam, who was hitchhiking across the American desert writing a book he hoped would bring mystical enlightenment to the world. "That was when my path began."
One can imagine that palmist was gazing a decade and a half down the road to the circumstances that led Milam, now 40, to a Nashville jail on two murder charges and that have police in other parts of the country scouring unsolved case files for a connection to him.
A longtime drifter, Milam admitted to strangling two homeless men in July. He killed one over a perceived slight and the other, the next day, over beer money, Metro police said. Then he walked down to an Antioch grocery store and told a clerk that he wanted to be arrested.
"I know that I'm a monster," Milam said during an appearance in Night Court. "I got addicted to sucking the souls out of the people I was killing. And I'm going to do it again if I don't get the death penalty."
The diary, provided to The Tennessean by relatives, offers a glimpse into the life and mind of a man whose adult life has been almost a complete cipher to his closest relatives.
During a brief stay in Florida about a decade ago, Milam was able to describe some of his travels to his younger brother but couldn't put his life into a coherent, chronological order.
"He told me he had done some pretty hardcore stuff," his brother said.
The aunt who raised him said that Milam talked of having traveled the country from Alaska to New York.
Milam told her he was approached in New York City by a man who told him he was either extremely brave or totally crazy to be in such a rough neighborhood at night.
"He said, 'Well, maybe I'm both,' " she said. "But it just showed me his lack of good judgment."
Relatives believe drugs were a big factor in the course that eventually led Milam to Nashville and, ultimately, to kill.
The diary
The journal he kept during the first few months of 1989 is largely divided into episodes in which he shares what he describes as his cosmic wisdom with a cast of characters who give him rides across California, Arizona and New Mexico.
In it, Milam waxes of doing battle with an "evil entity" released from a crystal ball, pursuing knowledge from the hallucinogenic cactus peyote, and projecting his body into the astral plane.
"So, now the path becomes clearer each and every day as my knowledge grows & strengthens my powers and abilities," he wrote.
But the diary entries also reveal a very real and human side of Milam in which he struggles to find a job, wrestles with the loneliness of the road and dreams of saving up for a motorcycle.
The title "Quest for the Cross of Roses" is written on the first page of the yellowed pocketsize notebook. At times articulately written, the diary details his quest for metaphysical truths and a purpose for his life.
He makes references to the Holy Grail, King Arthur's mythic sword Excalibur, and a "Cross of Roses."
If he finds the Holy Grail, Milam imagines, "Then I will be able to perform magic in front of people with great power and strength. And they will see with mortal eyes the God in me and its power and then will also see the God in them and their power."
Arizona-based psychiatrist Lauro Amezcua-Patino, who consults in criminal cases, reviewed Milam's journal for The Tennessean.
Its significance is difficult to judge without more information, he explained, but it shows Milam had a grandiose opinion of himself and a preoccupation with religion.
"He describes himself as above the rest, with powers and abilities other people don't have," he said. "He writes pretty nicely, actually. That speaks against any serious cognitive disorder."
It's also unclear whether Milam really believed in the fantasies he wrote about, was making them up for effect or was under the influence of an intoxicant, said Amezcua-Patino, who also sits on a state board that reviews criminal insanity cases.
On the advice of his lawyer, Milam declined an interview with The Tennessean. But, in a letter to a reporter, he said that he was writing a book about his experiences called "The History of the Hickory Hollow Strangler."
"Or should I call it, 'The Making of a Monster?' "he wrote.
A strange trip
One typical entry in the 1989 diary shows Milam's belief he was plugged into the supernatural.
Milam writes of being picked up by a motorist on Interstate 10 in New Mexico who told him he stopped because he felt a "warm feeling in my heart" and knew Milam was "sending vibes" to make him pull over.
"Who or what are you?" the driver asked Milam.
When they parted, the driver gave Milam $20 and thanked him for telling him that life was "really all an illusion."
Milam spent $15 on food and lodging, leaving $5 on the nightstand before going to sleep. When he woke up the money had "vanished into thin air."
"Then the realization came to me: it dematerialized into nothingness so I had to rely on my ability to make happen what I wanted to happen."
The ability to change reality through positive thinking is a constant theme in Milam's journal. When the arthritis he's had since childhood made walking unbearable, he wrote that he was able to summon a ride with the power of his mind.
"Just a simple thought brought all this about. Wow! What a powerful mind I have!" he exclaims.
In another passage, he describes contemplating his "dream girl/woman" and then meeting a waitress in Yuma, Ariz., who takes him into her home.
To survive, Milam appears to have resorted to, in addition to the kindness of strangers, stealing.
"Money hasn't been too much of a problem, but at times, my old self still comes in and I'm then able to find a means of satisfying my needs," he wrote. "My wants, now that's another story."
But the talk of an "old self" also indicates that, at least on paper, Milam was struggling with his troubled past.
Part of his reinvention included sharing his vision of reality with the world.
"I must finish this book and get it published so that I can enlighten as many people as possible," he wrote.
Other killings?
During a recent television interview with Nashville's WTVF-Channel 5, Milam admitted to a killing in Tucson, Ariz., saying he had thrown the body onto train tracks to make it look like an accident. He also claimed to have severely beaten a man with a baseball bat in Topeka, Kan.
Police in Topeka said the description given to them by Metro police didn't match any of their unsolved cases and said if the story was true, it was possible the man lived. Topeka police do not plan to visit Nashville to interview Milam, a spokeswoman said.
Tucson police also said Milam's description did not seem to match any case in their jurisdiction, but they continue to investigate.
Metro police officials don't have any proof that Milam has ever killed before, but say they remain open to the possibility.
"We haven't been able to confirm anything, but he's definitely not above it," said Detective Roy Dunaway.
Relatives react
Relatives didn't learn of Milam's arrest until contacted by a reporter.
When told about his admission of guilt and request for the death penalty, Jo Johnston, the aunt who raised Milam from age 3, agreed he should be put to death.
"As a Christian I would have to say, if he indeed has done this, he deserves the death penalty," she said. "He needs to be sent to the Father for judgment. We can't allow people running around killing other people. The Bible's very clear on capital punishment."
Johnston and other family members said Milam had always been the "black sheep" of the family, disappearing for long stretches in between phone calls, infrequent visits and occasional requests for money.
As a child, they said, he was not especially troubled, but bridled at all forms of authority.
"From the get-go, he never wanted to mind," Johnston said. "He wasn't a wimp, but he was more apt to promote a good time rather than something violent."
Milam, the second youngest of four children, told his aunt he felt like he had a terrible childhood in which he was passed around from home to home.
But she says he never appreciated the ways in which his relatives reached out to him and tried to help him.
"Half the time we were breaking our backs to get him down the straight and narrow and he would take it a different way," she said.
One time, Milam called saying his car had broken down an hour and a half away and he needed money to get the rest of the way home. Relatives wired the money to him, but he never showed up.
Other travels
In recent years, Milam had used the Tucson address of Jesse Bottineau as his "home base," where he received mail and sometimes slept on the couch.
Bottineau said he met the drifter through a friend and later sold a van to him.
"He seemed like a nice enough guy," he said. "Kept to himself mostly."
Milam was a quiet person, who didn't talk about his past or his travels, Bottineau said.
"He liked to smoke crack, though," he said. "I told him, 'If you do that stuff, go somewhere else and do it.' "
Bottineau said Milam refrained from using drugs at his home and that he had never seen any violent tendencies in the drifter.
Milam's family often went for years without knowing where he was or what he was doing. Every once in a while he'd pass along a new address.
Public records dating back to 1987 show addresses for Milam in Salt Lake City, Utah, Bisbee, Ariz., Slidell, La., Yuma, Ariz., Addison, Texas, Staunton, Va., Tickfaw, La., West Palm Beach, Fla., Castle Rock, Colo., and Topeka, Kan.
Relatives heard he had been working as a tow truck driver in Castle Rock, and in December 2002, he gave them the address of the Topeka Rescue Mission.
The last call they received from Milam was several months ago when he told them he was living with a woman in an apartment in Albuquerque, N.M.
A brother reaches out
Milam took off on the road for good about the age of 16, said his younger brother, Tom Johnston, who was roughly 8 at the time.
"He was a real missing part of my life," his brother said in a recent phone interview from Florida. "I really wanted to find him."
In 1995, Tom Johnston had prayed to God that he would be reunited with his brother. About two weeks later the call he had been waiting for came.
He sent his brother a bus ticket and invited him into his life once more. Tom Johnston found Milam a job as a maintenance worker, but it didn't last long.
"He just couldn't deal with day-to-day issues," said Johnston, who is now the Internet sales manager at a luxury car dealership. "He couldn't handle conflict. One day, some guy had taken his Weed Eater and he was ready to kill him. He really hated the guy. He was just so angry."
Milam told his brother he had post traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that causes people to repeatedly relive traumatic events such as rape or wartime combat. It's unclear where that diagnosis came from or what caused it, but Milam told his brother the PTSD kept him from holding down a job.
A few months after Milam moved to Florida, he asked his brother to take him to a local mental health services office.
But when Tom Johnston arrived the next day, he found a note on the door saying Milam had traded his bicycle for a crack rock and given up on settling down. Milam also had confessed to his brother that he had been addicted to crystal methamphetamine.
Tom Johnston didn't hear from his brother again for a couple years. Then, out of the blue, he got a call from Milam saying he was living in Kansas, had met a nice woman and was preparing to get married.
"I called one day to check on him and (his fiancée) said he'd taken off again," he said.
Tom Johnston said he doesn't regret trying to help his brother.
"Before that, he was just a question mark," he said. "I always wondered, 'Was he in jail? Was he dead?' "
Even though he found out his brother was "an absolute loser drug addict," Tom Johnston said he no longer feels that there is a piece missing from his life.
"At least I know I tried to help him."
During a recent television interview with WTVF-Channel 5, Garland Ray Milam admitted to a killing in Tucson, Ariz. Tucson police said they are continuing to investigate Milam's claim.
WTVF TV / FROM VIDEO
As a child, relatives said, Milam was not especially troubled but bridled at all forms of authority.
At 20 years old, Milam had already been living on his own for several years.
Milam admitted to killing two homeless men in July.
The camp site where murder suspect Garland Milam lived in Nashville.
IAN DEMSKY / STAFF
By IAN DEMSKY
Staff Writer
Trembling with fear, the fortune-teller refused to tell 25-year-old Garland Ray Milam what she saw in his palm, he wrote in his diary in 1989.
"She was speechless & couldn't answer," wrote Milam, who was hitchhiking across the American desert writing a book he hoped would bring mystical enlightenment to the world. "That was when my path began."
One can imagine that palmist was gazing a decade and a half down the road to the circumstances that led Milam, now 40, to a Nashville jail on two murder charges and that have police in other parts of the country scouring unsolved case files for a connection to him.
A longtime drifter, Milam admitted to strangling two homeless men in July. He killed one over a perceived slight and the other, the next day, over beer money, Metro police said. Then he walked down to an Antioch grocery store and told a clerk that he wanted to be arrested.
"I know that I'm a monster," Milam said during an appearance in Night Court. "I got addicted to sucking the souls out of the people I was killing. And I'm going to do it again if I don't get the death penalty."
The diary, provided to The Tennessean by relatives, offers a glimpse into the life and mind of a man whose adult life has been almost a complete cipher to his closest relatives.
During a brief stay in Florida about a decade ago, Milam was able to describe some of his travels to his younger brother but couldn't put his life into a coherent, chronological order.
"He told me he had done some pretty hardcore stuff," his brother said.
The aunt who raised him said that Milam talked of having traveled the country from Alaska to New York.
Milam told her he was approached in New York City by a man who told him he was either extremely brave or totally crazy to be in such a rough neighborhood at night.
"He said, 'Well, maybe I'm both,' " she said. "But it just showed me his lack of good judgment."
Relatives believe drugs were a big factor in the course that eventually led Milam to Nashville and, ultimately, to kill.
The diary
The journal he kept during the first few months of 1989 is largely divided into episodes in which he shares what he describes as his cosmic wisdom with a cast of characters who give him rides across California, Arizona and New Mexico.
In it, Milam waxes of doing battle with an "evil entity" released from a crystal ball, pursuing knowledge from the hallucinogenic cactus peyote, and projecting his body into the astral plane.
"So, now the path becomes clearer each and every day as my knowledge grows & strengthens my powers and abilities," he wrote.
But the diary entries also reveal a very real and human side of Milam in which he struggles to find a job, wrestles with the loneliness of the road and dreams of saving up for a motorcycle.
The title "Quest for the Cross of Roses" is written on the first page of the yellowed pocketsize notebook. At times articulately written, the diary details his quest for metaphysical truths and a purpose for his life.
He makes references to the Holy Grail, King Arthur's mythic sword Excalibur, and a "Cross of Roses."
If he finds the Holy Grail, Milam imagines, "Then I will be able to perform magic in front of people with great power and strength. And they will see with mortal eyes the God in me and its power and then will also see the God in them and their power."
Arizona-based psychiatrist Lauro Amezcua-Patino, who consults in criminal cases, reviewed Milam's journal for The Tennessean.
Its significance is difficult to judge without more information, he explained, but it shows Milam had a grandiose opinion of himself and a preoccupation with religion.
"He describes himself as above the rest, with powers and abilities other people don't have," he said. "He writes pretty nicely, actually. That speaks against any serious cognitive disorder."
It's also unclear whether Milam really believed in the fantasies he wrote about, was making them up for effect or was under the influence of an intoxicant, said Amezcua-Patino, who also sits on a state board that reviews criminal insanity cases.
On the advice of his lawyer, Milam declined an interview with The Tennessean. But, in a letter to a reporter, he said that he was writing a book about his experiences called "The History of the Hickory Hollow Strangler."
"Or should I call it, 'The Making of a Monster?' "he wrote.
A strange trip
One typical entry in the 1989 diary shows Milam's belief he was plugged into the supernatural.
Milam writes of being picked up by a motorist on Interstate 10 in New Mexico who told him he stopped because he felt a "warm feeling in my heart" and knew Milam was "sending vibes" to make him pull over.
"Who or what are you?" the driver asked Milam.
When they parted, the driver gave Milam $20 and thanked him for telling him that life was "really all an illusion."
Milam spent $15 on food and lodging, leaving $5 on the nightstand before going to sleep. When he woke up the money had "vanished into thin air."
"Then the realization came to me: it dematerialized into nothingness so I had to rely on my ability to make happen what I wanted to happen."
The ability to change reality through positive thinking is a constant theme in Milam's journal. When the arthritis he's had since childhood made walking unbearable, he wrote that he was able to summon a ride with the power of his mind.
"Just a simple thought brought all this about. Wow! What a powerful mind I have!" he exclaims.
In another passage, he describes contemplating his "dream girl/woman" and then meeting a waitress in Yuma, Ariz., who takes him into her home.
To survive, Milam appears to have resorted to, in addition to the kindness of strangers, stealing.
"Money hasn't been too much of a problem, but at times, my old self still comes in and I'm then able to find a means of satisfying my needs," he wrote. "My wants, now that's another story."
But the talk of an "old self" also indicates that, at least on paper, Milam was struggling with his troubled past.
Part of his reinvention included sharing his vision of reality with the world.
"I must finish this book and get it published so that I can enlighten as many people as possible," he wrote.
Other killings?
During a recent television interview with Nashville's WTVF-Channel 5, Milam admitted to a killing in Tucson, Ariz., saying he had thrown the body onto train tracks to make it look like an accident. He also claimed to have severely beaten a man with a baseball bat in Topeka, Kan.
Police in Topeka said the description given to them by Metro police didn't match any of their unsolved cases and said if the story was true, it was possible the man lived. Topeka police do not plan to visit Nashville to interview Milam, a spokeswoman said.
Tucson police also said Milam's description did not seem to match any case in their jurisdiction, but they continue to investigate.
Metro police officials don't have any proof that Milam has ever killed before, but say they remain open to the possibility.
"We haven't been able to confirm anything, but he's definitely not above it," said Detective Roy Dunaway.
Relatives react
Relatives didn't learn of Milam's arrest until contacted by a reporter.
When told about his admission of guilt and request for the death penalty, Jo Johnston, the aunt who raised Milam from age 3, agreed he should be put to death.
"As a Christian I would have to say, if he indeed has done this, he deserves the death penalty," she said. "He needs to be sent to the Father for judgment. We can't allow people running around killing other people. The Bible's very clear on capital punishment."
Johnston and other family members said Milam had always been the "black sheep" of the family, disappearing for long stretches in between phone calls, infrequent visits and occasional requests for money.
As a child, they said, he was not especially troubled, but bridled at all forms of authority.
"From the get-go, he never wanted to mind," Johnston said. "He wasn't a wimp, but he was more apt to promote a good time rather than something violent."
Milam, the second youngest of four children, told his aunt he felt like he had a terrible childhood in which he was passed around from home to home.
But she says he never appreciated the ways in which his relatives reached out to him and tried to help him.
"Half the time we were breaking our backs to get him down the straight and narrow and he would take it a different way," she said.
One time, Milam called saying his car had broken down an hour and a half away and he needed money to get the rest of the way home. Relatives wired the money to him, but he never showed up.
Other travels
In recent years, Milam had used the Tucson address of Jesse Bottineau as his "home base," where he received mail and sometimes slept on the couch.
Bottineau said he met the drifter through a friend and later sold a van to him.
"He seemed like a nice enough guy," he said. "Kept to himself mostly."
Milam was a quiet person, who didn't talk about his past or his travels, Bottineau said.
"He liked to smoke crack, though," he said. "I told him, 'If you do that stuff, go somewhere else and do it.' "
Bottineau said Milam refrained from using drugs at his home and that he had never seen any violent tendencies in the drifter.
Milam's family often went for years without knowing where he was or what he was doing. Every once in a while he'd pass along a new address.
Public records dating back to 1987 show addresses for Milam in Salt Lake City, Utah, Bisbee, Ariz., Slidell, La., Yuma, Ariz., Addison, Texas, Staunton, Va., Tickfaw, La., West Palm Beach, Fla., Castle Rock, Colo., and Topeka, Kan.
Relatives heard he had been working as a tow truck driver in Castle Rock, and in December 2002, he gave them the address of the Topeka Rescue Mission.
The last call they received from Milam was several months ago when he told them he was living with a woman in an apartment in Albuquerque, N.M.
A brother reaches out
Milam took off on the road for good about the age of 16, said his younger brother, Tom Johnston, who was roughly 8 at the time.
"He was a real missing part of my life," his brother said in a recent phone interview from Florida. "I really wanted to find him."
In 1995, Tom Johnston had prayed to God that he would be reunited with his brother. About two weeks later the call he had been waiting for came.
He sent his brother a bus ticket and invited him into his life once more. Tom Johnston found Milam a job as a maintenance worker, but it didn't last long.
"He just couldn't deal with day-to-day issues," said Johnston, who is now the Internet sales manager at a luxury car dealership. "He couldn't handle conflict. One day, some guy had taken his Weed Eater and he was ready to kill him. He really hated the guy. He was just so angry."
Milam told his brother he had post traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that causes people to repeatedly relive traumatic events such as rape or wartime combat. It's unclear where that diagnosis came from or what caused it, but Milam told his brother the PTSD kept him from holding down a job.
A few months after Milam moved to Florida, he asked his brother to take him to a local mental health services office.
But when Tom Johnston arrived the next day, he found a note on the door saying Milam had traded his bicycle for a crack rock and given up on settling down. Milam also had confessed to his brother that he had been addicted to crystal methamphetamine.
Tom Johnston didn't hear from his brother again for a couple years. Then, out of the blue, he got a call from Milam saying he was living in Kansas, had met a nice woman and was preparing to get married.
"I called one day to check on him and (his fiancée) said he'd taken off again," he said.
Tom Johnston said he doesn't regret trying to help his brother.
"Before that, he was just a question mark," he said. "I always wondered, 'Was he in jail? Was he dead?' "
Even though he found out his brother was "an absolute loser drug addict," Tom Johnston said he no longer feels that there is a piece missing from his life.
"At least I know I tried to help him."
During a recent television interview with WTVF-Channel 5, Garland Ray Milam admitted to a killing in Tucson, Ariz. Tucson police said they are continuing to investigate Milam's claim.
WTVF TV / FROM VIDEO
As a child, relatives said, Milam was not especially troubled but bridled at all forms of authority.
At 20 years old, Milam had already been living on his own for several years.
Milam admitted to killing two homeless men in July.
The camp site where murder suspect Garland Milam lived in Nashville.
IAN DEMSKY / STAFF