The kids were sent for adoption to different families. It was a cynical experience for a dubious scientific discovery.
Back in 1980, 19-year-old Robert went to college. He was very surprised at how he was met there: the guys patted him on the back in a friendly way, the girls hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. It was all very nice and great. Except for one thing: everyone called Robert Eddie. When he tried to explain that his name was not that, the students only laughed.
Later, Robert found out: last year Eddie really studied here, like two peas in a pod similar to him. It was not only about hair color, eyes, height and physique. They were the same, right down to facial expressions. And then it turned out that the boys’ birthdays fall on the same day – July 12, 1961. Both were adopted children. Robert took up the search for his double. And I found it.
Left to right: David, Eddie and Robert
When the guys met, they were just shocked. Literally everything in their appearance coincided, even the location of the moles. They spoke the same way, they had a similar laugh. They have the same IQ – 148. Very high, by the way. Both were fond of wrestling, preferred the same techniques. Robert and Eddie loved the same films, reciting the same moments from them by heart. And they even lost their virginity at the same time.
“That was incredible. Some kind of surrealism, ”they later said to reporters .
The hospital birth records of Ed and Robert confirmed that they are twins. But this was not the last discovery that awaited them. Soon, a phone call rang at Ed’s house: “I think I’m your third brother.” It was David – the guy saw Eddie and Robert on TV and was shocked at how much they looked like him.
As a result, it turned out that there were even three boys, but four. Their fourth twin died in childbirth.
Immediately after the birth of the children, they were sent to an adoption agency that collaborated with Dr. Peter Neubauer, a psychoanalyst and director of the Child Development Center in Manhattan. This same doctor conducted a secret study, in the center of which the surviving triplets were caught. Neubauer wanted to find out what influences the formation of personality more – genes or environment. Therefore, the children were scattered among different families, which were forbidden even to mention that the boys have blood relatives.
Robert was more fortunate than the rest. His adoptive father was a doctor, his mother was a lawyer. They lived in a prestigious area, the family was well provided for. Eddie’s family was middle-class. And David grew up in Queens in a working class family.
Every month for 12 years, the researchers visited the boys, watched them play, communicate, talk to their foster parents and sisters, and did tests. In general, they behaved with them as with experimental animals.
The brothers even opened a restaurant together, but burned out
What comes first – heredity or habitat? In this dispute, the study did not put the final point. Robert, although he was brought up in a prosperous family, almost thundered into prison: he participated in a robbery, during which an elderly woman was killed. But we remember that Robert’s mother is a lawyer. The young man managed to get off with correctional labor in an orphanage.
Young people had a lot in common besides appearance: they loved the same dishes, they all liked older women. Everyone had strange seizures as children when they banged their heads on the bed.
David, the youngest of the trinity, was the most emotionally stable. And the middle one, Eddie, is the most nervous. He committed suicide at the age of 33, leaving his wife a widow and his daughter an orphan. Whether or not this propensity for depression was hereditary remains a mystery.
The brothers, having learned the truth, hated Dr. Neubauer. However, he insisted until his death that he had done the right thing: “Otherwise, the children would have to compete for the attention of their parents.” Robert called the experiment Nazi, and Neubauer himself compared with Dr. Mengele. Before the brothers, no one ever apologized for their fate, which could have turned out completely differently.
“They called us participants in the experiment,” David said. – But we were not participants. We were his victims. “