Tales of twin terrors as rivalries drive identical siblings to KILL each other
When family tensions run high and the sibling bond is put to the test, some twins have turned on each other... with fatal consequences
The bond between identical twins is undeniable - but sometimes sibling rivalry and a lack of personal identity get so severe, they bubble over into murder.
Passers-by got more than they bargained for when they stopped to watch a cat fight between identical twins on the Hana Highway in Maui, Hawaii last month.
Sisters Anastasia and Alexandria Duval were seen arguing in a car pulled over by the side of the road, cross words escalated and Anastasia was seen pulling Alexandria’s hair and screaming.
Witnesses saw the vehicle “accelerate forward and then take a sharp left over the cliff” plunging 200ft onto rocks.
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The passenger, Anastasia, was pronounced dead at the scene while Alexandria, the driver, was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
The 37-year-old has now appeared in court, charged with the second-degree murder of her sister.
Prosecutors allege she intentionally drove off the cliff.
This story is particularly shocking as we’re often told the almost magical bond between twins is “unbreakable”.
The tale of Alexandria and Anastasia is the latest twin murder to make headlines, but there have been a number over the years.
In 1998, San Diego student Gina Han masterminded a plot against her identical twin sister Sunny.
The twins had become estranged in recent years after Gina was convinced that Sunny had taken some of her belongings.
Gina and two friends hatched a plan to kill Sunny but it was botched when police burst into the apartment to rescue Sunny and her flatmate who were found bound and gagged.
Gina was branded the “evil twin” in the press and was sentenced to 26 years to life.
In 2014 British twin Robert Cerqua, was found guilty of murdering his identical brother Christopher during a New Year’s Eve brawl.
After stabbing Christopher in the torso with a kitchen knife Robert left the house barefoot and continued to party until 2.20am when he was arrested. He passed out drunk in the police car.
You may assume that this “twin bond” would add to the sense of grief. However, this isn’t always the case.
When Robert Cerqua woke up drunk in the back of the police car he said: “Is he dead? You are lying, he cannot be.”
On being charged the next day he allegedly said: “I killed my f****** brother. I don’t want to be here anymore.
“Nine times out of 10 it would be all right. [That’s] just my luck, he had to die on me.”
Twin loss expert Mary R. Morgan says that guilt often follows relief.
“Relief can also surface at the end of a complex relationship, especially when there is a conflicted ‘personal identity versus twin bond’ issue.”
So could murdering a twin be seen as an act of liberation?
“Some twin pairs — not all — become disillusioned about their twinship because they struggle to be known, not just noticed,” twin expert and The Same but Different author Dr Joan A. Friedman explains.
“Since outsiders relate to them as a unit, they expectedly have conflicts with their twin in an attempt to define their individual selves.”
She says that most twin pairs eventually find ways to define their identity, but some twins aren’t so lucky.
Take the case of Welsh twins June and Jennifer Gibbons, dubbed the "Silent Twins" due to their secret twin language and selective mutism.
After a crime spree of arson and theft, the then 18 year olds were sent to Broadmoor, the UK’s highest security psychiatric hospital, where they both became convinced that in order to experience true freedom, one had to die.
In her diary June wrote: “Nobody suffers the way I do ... This sister of mine, a dark shadow robbing me of sunlight, is my one and only torment.”
Jennifer agreed, writing in her own diary: “We have become fatal enemies in each other’s eyes.”
One day, they told their only friend journalist Marjorie Wallace that one of them wouldn’t make it out of the hospital alive.
Jennifer looked at Wallace and said, “I’m going to die. We’ve decided.”
Eleven years on, just hours after the twins were released from Boardmoor, Jennifer, age 29, died on her sister’s shoulder from a sudden inflammation of the heart muscle.
The cause remains a mystery.