The incredible and tragic history of triplets separated by secret study

Robert Shafran (left), Eddy Galland (half) and David Kellman after the reunion: ‘No one thought why we were separated for all this time. Everything was joy ‘. Getty Images via BBC The identical twins Robert, David and Eddy were born in a New York suburb in July 1961 and were delivered for adoption still babies for different families. They grew up without knowing that they had biological siblings – in fact, not even the adoptive parents knew. ✅ Click here to follow the G1 international news channel on WhatsApp when they met, totally by chance, the story became news and had great repercussion. But what seemed like a happy ending story turned out to be much more complex and dark, when it came to light that the twins had been separated as part of a psychological experiment. This amazing case is told in an episode of the fourth season of BBC News Brazil’s Podcast, which can be heard on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer and other streaming platforms. Their history of their reunion begins in 1980, when Robert “Bobby” Shafran, 19, arrives on the first day of school at college, the Sullivan Community College in the American state of New York. “When I arrived at college, everyone was greeting me. ‘Hi, Eddie’. ‘Welcome back, Eddie.’ ‘Eddie, what are you doing here?’… “And there were a lot of people. And it was like one after another. Eddie Galland had studied in the Sullivan Community College the year before, but had given up on the course. As soon as he started attending college, Bobby caught the attention of the people who knew Eddie, including a close friend of him, named Michael Domnitz ,. “I was in college the year before with Eddie,” said Michael, “and knew he wouldn’t come back.” “But Bobby had the same smile, the same hair, the same expressions. It was his double. The first thing that came out of my mouth was: ‘You were adopted?’. And he said yes. Then I asked, ‘Your birthday is on July 12?’ And he answered ‘yes! July 1961’. ‘My God!’, I said, ‘you won’t believe it. Fantastic. “” We started asking all kinds of question to each other. Trivian things like ‘Do you get very bad lips every winter?’ And the answer was ‘yes, always, every year’. And almost everything about us, even these small details, was the same. It was very crazy. No one thought why we were separated for all this time. Everything was joy. We were experiencing an adventure. “Eddie Galland, David Kellman and Bobby Shafran (from the left) inaugurated a restaurant together in New York in 1987, called Triplets. Kellman, who had the same birthday date. “Someone showed me an article from a newspaper entitled ‘identical twins gathered after more than 19 years,” David told Outlook. There was a resemblance, but it seemed very exaggerated. And I kind of discarded the whole thing. “But the same day, a little later, I found a friend who had another newspaper, the New York Post, who had a much clearer picture. This friend knew me very well and he immediately said they were my face. There was no discarding this. “” When I got home, my mother was waiting for me. He had another newspaper in his hands. He had no photo, but the article mentioned the adoption agency, their hospital and their birthday. That were equal to mine. And we learned that I was a third twin. “Through the telephone information service, David managed to find Eddie’s number and called his house.” He wasn’t home, but I spoke to his mother. ‘Who are you?’, She asked, and looked a little annoyed, I think at that moment she was being flooded by press calls. “Read: Brazilian accused of killing the 5 poisoned children is arrested in Portugal in the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima, atomic weapons are in high Trump allowed Russia to reactive armed forces and prolong war in Ukraine, said Democratic senators.” In newspapers, and that Eddie and Bobby were the same on me. ‘I think I’m the third’, I said. I remember her dropping the phone. “The same night, David and her foster parents went to meet Eddie’s family, who lived in half an hour by car. A few minutes after meeting, Eddie and David called Bobby, who was in college.” Eddie had Bobby on her phone, and didn’t let me talk to him! He kept saying, ‘yes, it’s all the same thing,’ it’s all the same ‘. That we had the same musical taste, the same taste in clothes and food, what we were doing, in the way, the way we walked, the way we talked, in everything. “David reported. Videos on the G1″ When I finally talked to Bobby over the phone, it was a very short conversation because Eddie had already told him! ” Bunch of dog puppies playing together. We rolled on the floor. These were moments of pure joy and happiness, “said David.” It was as if we knew each other all our lives. There was a confidence there that did not need to be built. “They approached so much and so quickly that they decided to live together and attend the same college. At this time, they were celebrities in the country, from appearing on TV shows to tell their story. Bobby, Eddie and David opened a restaurant called Triplets (trigem) to capitalize on the enormous interest in them. Bobby decided to leave the restaurant business. Relationships were tense. Eddie, who had been facing mental health problems, entered a profound phase of depression and, in 1995, suicide. Getty Images via BBC when they learned of their children’s biological brothers, the first reaction of Bobby, David and Eddie adopted parents was to share their enthusiasm. But then they went to take satisfaction with the adoption agency. The three brothers. At that time, the three couples had already adopted a child – a daughter in each case. They were waiting for the chance to adopt another baby, and when she appeared, about two and a half years later, she was associated with a condition: that the baby would need to be accompanied and observed, as part of a study of the development of children adopted. They conducted a series of tests. “We were filmed by testing with objects, letters or numbers, or reciting back phrases,” recalls Bobby. Then, again, they would put us to solve puzzles, tests and answer questions on various subjects. “These visits lasted until the boys were 10 years old, and the study would have fallen into oblivion, it was not a discovery done, much later, by a journalist named Lawrence Wright. In an investigation on studies with twins, he found a scientific article that made a reference to a secret study in which brothers had been identical. Separated shortly after birth as part of a scientific experiment. Shortly after Eddie’s death, when David and Bobby tried to fix their relationship, they were sought by Wright, who put them aware of their discoveries. Genetics and the environment in the way each one developed. In other words, research sought to answer a very common question in science: human beings are shaped by the environment in which they live or is the DNA that determines who they are and who will be? We were treated like laboratory rats, “said Bobby.” But now we know the names of the people who did it. “” How would you feel if you found out that someone deliberately just made a decision about your life to collect data about it? And not only us, but there were other people involved in the study, “David added. For both, they also began to make sense some of the childhood memories and things their parents told them about their behavior when they were small.” We all had problems at the same time when we were babies, “David reported. They started talking about how we were when babies and children, they saw that we had this same behavior. Our parents had consulted pediatricians to try to know why we had this kind of behavior. Not knowing that we were separate twins and could be suffering from separation anxiety. “Bobby (left) and David regret that they will not know if the study of the twins – sealed until 2065 – produced some kind of scientific knowledge: ‘It would be good to know if some conclusions were useful. They were involved in the study of Neubauer, but at least four pairs of identical twins that were part of it were identified. They had been adopted by the same New York agency, the now extinct Louise Wise Services. of 2065. Bobby and David lament that they will not know if the study produced any kind of scientific knowledge. “It would be good to know if some conclusions were useful. So that all this had not been in vain. If you produced something that helped children who need additional help to get this help. We would like to see something positive to get out of it, “Bobby told BBC. In 2019, a documentary was released telling their extraordinary story, called Three Idental Strangers (‘Three identical strangers’), directed by Tim Wardle.

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