If you're looking for a fascinating documentary, check out Three Identical Strangers. Originally a Channel 4 documentary in the UK, this is the story of triplets separated at birth in 1961. It's an incredible story that begins in 1980 when Bobby Shafran heads to Community College. It quickly becomes clear that he is constantly being mistaken for somebody else and in one whirlwind day discovers that he is possibly one half of an identical set of twins. The two meet and soon Bobby Shafran and Eddy Galland are on the front page of the newspaper, the subjects of an amazing story.
That's when David Kellman sees the story and the penny drops that he is also related. In fact, Eddy and Bobby are not twins, but with David, are triplets. The story was a worldwide sensation. The three boys were on every newspaper and chat show at the time. The similarities were uncanny. From smoking the same brand of cigarettes to all having played the same sports in school, their amazing reunion became a global sensation. And they loved every minute of it.
However, behind the scenes their families were furious. How could a set of triplets be separated at birth and nobody know about it? How were the parents not told? They wanted answers and headed to the Louise Wise adoption agency that had arranged the three adoptions. Fobbed off with some nonsense about not thinking anybody would adopt the three siblings together, the parents of the triplets were at a dead end.
But then an investigative journalist from the New Yorker, Lawrence Wright, came across an unpublished study about twins conducted in New York. It was The Neubauer twin experiment where identical siblings were deliberately separated at birth for the purposes of science. They had specifically been placed with certain families and monitored for years. The point was to determine if it was nature or nurture that ultimately determines a person's fate in life.
The revelations stunned the triplets and their families. Not least because they also believed that the information about their background could have helped prevent tragedy along the way. Three Identical Strangers is an incredible documentary about the lives of Bobby, Eddy and David and the circumstances around their adoptions and it's impact on them for the rest of their lives. Well worth watching.
