Identical triplets become separated at birth and adopted by three different families. Years later, their amazing reunion becomes a global sensation but also unearths an unimaginable secret that has radical repercussions.
When two of the brothers Eddy and David first met at the age of 19, it spread like a wildfire all over the news. Everyone was shocked about how they found each other and how shockingly identical they were. When that reunion got out, the two brothers found out that there was another one; Bobby. Bobby first found out about his triplets from his adopted sister. She had said that when she first saw the news, she looked at their hands. She said that Bobby has those big hands. Together, they called the newspaper and told them about Bobby.
When the three twins first reunited, they became inseparable. They spent all their time together for months. They went viral, and were all over the news and television. Though they’d been separated at birth, David Kellman, Bobby Shafran and Eddy Galland had all individually grown up loving many of the same things, like Marlboro cigarettes, wrestling, and even the same type of woman. Later, the men opened up a restaurant called Triplet’s, which attracted scores of tourists.
The three twins were adopted by three different families from the Jewish adoption agency in New York, through Louise Wise Services. Soon enough, the twins found out about a secret study, conducted in the 1960s and ’70s by psychologist Peter Neubauer. The triplets were one of many sets of twins. The study caused the siblings to be separated from one another, without informing the birth parents or the adoptive families, all of whom had used Louise Wise Services. The people working on the study came to the families and made the kids take a series of tests. The triplets started taking them at a very young age and took them until the age of 8 or 9. No one really knows what those test were supposed to determine, but the triplets were on it.
After they started to realize what was happening, one of the triplets, Bobby, left the restaurant business. A few months later, the triplets found out that Eddy had been struggling with a mental illness. In 1995, after struggling with the illness, he committed suicide. That same year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright published an article in the New Yorker shedding light on the disturbing psychological study.
“Three Identical Strangers,” is a documentary released on June 29, 2018. They brought two of the triplets together and asked them about their story. This story that reached out to many and has inspired lots of people. There are still sets of twins and triplets that have still not found each other, but the story of the three brothers, Bobby, David, and Eddy, has definitely inspired them to.
Olivia Fedida, 2023- News/ Feature
Photo Credit: The Belcourt Theatre, IMDb, & Los Angeles Times
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