Accidental Brothers

by Dr. Nancy L. Segal

  The three small boys were sent to Geneva’s Cantonal Hospital for extensive medical testing to determine their relatedness to each other and to their parents. Blood group analyses were inconclusive, and modern DNA tests that compare twins across about fifteen DNA markers or sequences were not yet available, so the physicians performed a series of reciprocal skin grafts, an idea that was truly novel for the time and the first time the procedure was used to establish identity. Autografts involve the surgical removal of skin from one part of the body for placement on another part of the same body, as in the case of burn victims. Allografts involve the grafting of skin between individuals of the same species who are not genetically identical. Barring infection, autografts do not carry the risk of rejection because the skin donor and recipient are the same. However, medical treatment sometimes requires allografts, but these grafts usually last only seven to ten days because their genetic incompatibility causes the immune system to reject them.20 Clearly, the idea of performing allografts among the three children to identify the real twins was a groundbreaking first. More recently, researchers have found that skin transplants between fraternal twins can work if their different blood groups were exchanged prenatally, an event called chimerism.21

  Skin samples exchanged between the identical-looking boys (Philippe and Ernstli) healed perfectly, whereas those between the other pairs did not. Here was the solid proof that Philippe and Ernstli were identical twins, and Paul was really the child of Berthe Vatter.22

  On June 19, 1948, a judge decided that Paul and Ernstli, by then nearly seven, should be returned to their biological families within two weeks. The emotional traumas experienced by the loving parents and contented children were heartbreaking—Madeleine Joye and her husband worked hard to make Ernstli feel happy and welcome in his new home.23 Their task was daunting because Ernstli cried constantly, and no wonder. The young boy was confused about why he was there; he spoke a different language and wanted to return to his familiar home with his mother and big sister. And Berthe Vatter, forced to relinquish Ernstli, the unrelated son whom she adored, could feel no affection for her biological son Paul when he was returned. She left him in the care of foster homes and boarding schools.24

  Missing from the picture was Philippe, the only child raised in the right place, the Joyes’ home. Philippe’s experience reminded me of the Colombian twins Jorge and Wilber, each of whom was raised where he was supposed to be. Strange as it may seem, Philippe, the twin boy raised where he belonged, suffered horribly from the exchange, feeling unloved and overlooked. His sadness was palpable, triggered by his jealousy at the attention his parents lavished on his new twin. The family’s revised situation was beyond the comprehension of such a young child.25 Twenty-five-year-olds like the Colombian twins can better understand that extreme circumstances can alter the behaviors and obligations of their loved ones, but they have insecurities too. Perhaps Jorge and Wilber, like Philippe, would feel dejected or depressed if family and friends directed disproportionate attention to their exchanged brother. Carlos and William were too old to be switched back, but they were not too old to become the new favorites of a mother or an aunt. Jorge and Wilber would also have to watch and see how their relatives reacted to their newly found identical brother.

  * * *

  A different set of worries consumed Carroll Tremblay and her husband, Jim, a Canadian couple who had raised two adopted sons, fourteen-year-old Wade and twenty-year-old Brent. Their story began in 1991 when Brent Tremblay, a student at Carlton University in Ottawa and a member of its Strategy Club, was mistaken for a fellow named George Holmes. George was not enrolled at Carlton, but his interests in cards, chess, and other board games attracted him to the same club. When a perplexed friend of George’s brought the look-alikes together, Brent and George delighted in their shared tastes in music, film, and sports statistics. After they’d been close friends for about a year, one conversation turned to their birth.26

  It seemed more than coincidental that Brent and George had shared the same foster home for two months, placed there by the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa on behalf of their parents. Their unwed mother and father had left them there temporarily until they could marry and manage a home suitable for raising two newborns. The twins shared their foster home with a third newborn named Marcus, who was destined for adoption. But when the elderly couple in charge found it too strenuous to care for three babies at once, they moved the twins to a different home but sent the wrong pair by mistake, separating the twins. As a result Brent was adopted by the Tremblays in place of Marcus.

  DNA testing performed when the young men were twenty-two confirmed that a switch had occurred and that Brent and George were the true twins. Brent’s mother, Carroll Tremblay, was grief stricken because, rather than gaining a son, she felt she had lost one. Her adopted son, Brent, was instantly at ease in his twin’s more relaxed, slightly disorganized home, so different from the regimented, perfectly ordered household that the Tremblays maintained.27 I wondered to what extent William would embrace Jorge’s lifestyle and if William would leave behind his life in La Paz. And would Carlos opt to spend more time with his biological parents in the countryside? How would their families feel if this were to happen? Abandoned? Accepting? I sensed that both William and Carlos would slowly insert themselves into their new families, never forsaking the ones that raised them, and I couldn’t wait to find out if I was right. I thought about other twin sets to gain insight.

  Lech Kaczyński, the former president of Poland (2005–2010), and his identical twin brother, Jarosław Kaczyński, the prime minister (2006–2007) are the only known identical twins to have held their nation’s top governing positions, and at the same time. But these twins were famous long before the twenty-first century, as childhood stars of the 1962 film The Two Who Stole the Moon, a fantasy tale of twin troublemakers who try to make money by stealing the moon and selling it. Their twinship came to a sudden and tragic end when Lech was killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010, and the cause of the crash has never been determined. The plane was carrying a large number of Polish government officials and military personnel.28

  Poland has other twins of interest, most recently the fraternal twins George Skrzynecky and Lucian Poznanski, who met for the first time in 2015, when they were sixty-nine. Their mother, who had been in a forced labor camp during World War II, gave birth to them in Germany after she was liberated but was too weak to care for them. They were taken to Poland by the Polish Red Cross, which arranged for their separate adoptions. George knew he had a twin and in the 1960s had asked the Red Cross to find his brother, but it could not; Lucian had no idea he had a twin brother. The Red Cross Restoring Family Links Program brought them together in a poignant taped reunion that went viral in 2015. Embracing just moments after meeting, one twin gently cradled his brother’s head, holding him close. Life histories cannot be rewritten, but the twins say that the best part of everything that happened to them is that they found each other after so many years.29

  Another case of reunited Polish twins seemed to go well at first but ended sadly. I never met Kasia and Edyta, the switched Polish twins who met in June 2000 when they were seventeen, after a friend of Kasia’s encountered her spitting image on the far side of Warsaw. However, I interviewed three of their four parents when I visited Poland in October 2011. Their story adds a new twist to how and why one identical twin could be replaced by a nontwin, sending two babies home with the wrong family.30

  Both families brought the right children home from the different hospitals in which they had been born. But two weeks later all three babies were referred to the Saskiej Kępie Clinic for treatment of lung infections. No one knows exactly when the switch took place, but in the early 1980s hospital procedures were lax. Nurses removed the babies’ identification tags for bathing, the newborn nursery was overcrowded, and all four parents could only peek at their babies through a small glass window. Communist policies strongly discouraged people from asking questions, s
o no one did, even after the twins’ mother learned that the club foot of one of her twins had miraculously disappeared, and the other mother became newly aware of this defect in her baby. One infant twin had been released two weeks ahead of the nontwin.

  The exchange was uncovered after Kasia’s friend thought she saw her on the opposite side of Warsaw from her home, but in fact the friend had seen Edyta. This was not the first time people had confused the twins—earlier that year a young man Edyta didn’t know had approached her at a concert and planted a friendly kiss on her cheek. The twins met for the first time at Zygmunt’s Column, a famous landmark in Warsaw’s Castle Square. When Kasia told her parents about meeting her identical twin, her father dismissed the news as the notions of a crazy teenager. But when Kasia invited Edyta to her home, Kasia’s parents were stunned by the girls’ identical looks and realized what undoubtedly had happened. Their mother grew deeply depressed and required medication, while their father was furious with the physicians, brought a lawsuit against the hospital, and won.

  At first Edyta seemed to enjoy her biological parents and twin, celebrating her birthday with both families when the twins turned eighteen. In actuality she was severely traumatized by knowing that she had grown up with the wrong parents. No one knows why she distanced herself from her family, her friends, and her twin sister, and to this day no one knows where or how she is living. Friends of the twins’ mother disparaged her because she had not known who her baby was, but she should not be faulted: studies have shown that newborn recognition is not built into the behavioral repertoire of human mothers. Based on even limited exposure to a baby’s smell, touch, sound, and sight, most women can pick out their own infants from two or three other infants in research laboratories. However, like Ana and Luz, mothers rarely question the identity of an infant brought to them by nursing staff.31

  Based on the information I had, I did not anticipate that the Colombian twins or their families would register negative reactions. According to Ray Williams, professor of Hispanic studies at the University of California, the pervasiveness in Colombian culture of convivencia (variously translated as “tolerance,” “togetherness,” “coexistence,” and “cohabitation”) may have softened the twins’ and their families’ attitudes and eased acceptance of their revised relationships.32 Williams also observes that in Colombia “family raises family,” largely replacing social services. But some of the Bogotá twins’ personal struggles could affect their relationships with their accidental twins, either now or in the future. Perhaps one would blame the other for living the life he should have led, even though his twin was not responsible. Maybe one twin would resent the closeness developing between his accidental brother and the brother’s newfound twin. Or maybe some or all the twins would turn against the aunt who had brought the wrong baby back to La Paz. These relationships, in turn, might affect how these young men would get along with their real twins and with both sets of their relatives.

  * * *

  Since I learned about the Bogotá twins, I have thought about chance encounters a lot. Whenever I walk into a clothing store in a mall, I recall the switched twins, Begoña and Delia, and Begoña’s unrelated “twin” sister, Beatriz, in Gran Canaria.33

  All of us have made choices that have led to chance encounters, unexpected wealth, personal harm, or other life-changing moments. We pick one restaurant over another and happily run into a long-lost friend. Or we accept one job offer over another and find interesting opportunities we had not anticipated. These decisions usually do not seem to change our lives significantly, but we really cannot know. If Begoña’s T-shirt had fit her well, she would not have returned to the store to exchange it and might never have known of Delia’s existence. Under these alternative scenarios, everyone’s lives might have gone on as before. Think about that the next time someone calls you by the wrong name.

  Chapter 4

  The Friends Investigate

  Mysteries Deepen

  Walking into a butcher shop to order meat for a summer barbeque is usually a pretty uneventful transaction. Millions of people do this every year when the weather is warm and the sky is light. If your guest list is long, you want to get the best deal you can and that takes connections.1

  * * *

  Carnes Finas de Colombia, where William and Wilber worked, is tucked at the back of La Gran Manzana, a small market in the densely populated, low-income Kennedy district of Bogotá, named in honor of the late US president John F. Kennedy. Large crates of oranges, bananas, guavas, papayas, and other glorious tropical produce surround the entrance to the market, giving it the appearance of a fruitarian paradise. But Laura Vega Garzón, an attractive mechanical engineering student in her midtwenties, knew that it also sold quality beef and chicken because her best friend, Yaneth Páez, was dating a student named Brian who worked part time at the shop. Laura had never visited this particular market, which is far from the city’s center, but this hot Saturday afternoon in July 2013 was an exception. Laura was hosting a barbeque at her home the next day and hoped to get a good deal on some meat.

  Laura and Yaneth sauntered past the fruit stands and headed toward the back of the store. As they approached the counter, Laura was stunned to see a familiar figure on the other side. “Huh?” she asked herself. Then, in a flash of recognition, she turned to Yaneth and shouted, “It’s Jorge! He works in my office at Strycon, in mechanical engineering.”2 But even as she said this, her mind started sprinting at record speeds—what was Jorge doing here, far from the Bogotá neighborhoods where he lived and worked? Her first thought was that he was moonlighting as a butcher to pick up extra money—she reasoned that he was embarrassed to be seen cutting up meat and poultry and, therefore, chose a place far from his usual haunts. Fully convinced that this young man was her coworker, Laura gave him a friendly wave, but he did not react. As the young man came over to greet them, Laura expected a hug and a kiss, but none came. Instead, Yaneth was the one who received these gestures of affection.

  Turning to Laura and thinking she was crazy, Yaneth explained, “This is William, my boyfriend’s cousin. He works here.” Then Laura and Yaneth went back and forth—he’s Jorge, no, William; he’s Jorge, no, William—and started giggling. Their half-hilarious, half-serious repartee ended when William confirmed that he was, in fact, Brian’s cousin William Cañas Velasco, the manager of Carnes Finas. When he said he had never worked at Strycon or even heard of it, Laura couldn’t believe it.

  * * *

  By the time Laura left the butcher shop, she had secured a good deal on meat for her barbeque but was puzzling over a mystery that would take more than a year to solve. The strange encounter with the young man who had sold her the meat haunted her. Who was this person if not Jorge? Was it possible that two people could look so much alike? Her mistaking of William for Jorge would begin a CSI-like mission of inquiry, uncertainty, heartache, and ultimate resolution that would occupy her and her friend Yaneth for the next fourteen months. Laura was determined that, come Monday, she would jokingly tell Jorge that he has a brother who looks exactly like him.

  WhatsApp?

  Laura and Yaneth’s verbal back-and-forth on that 2013 summer day in the butcher shop eventually turned them from confused onlookers into single-minded detectives desperate to identify the source of the confusion. At first their joint venture was fun and exciting as they shared new bits of information and determined their next steps. They began with basic facts, such as the brothers’ dates and places of birth, then turned to more specific information, such as Facebook photographs and blood types. One set of clues led to another as pieces of the story fell into place. It was a heady feeling, a world that they concealed from everyone but their closest partners, and it was addictive. New findings sometimes made them fearful about where their efforts might lead, but they couldn’t stop as their curiosity, combined with coincidence, gave way to obsession and certainty. Ultimately, they would have to reveal the hard truth that they had learned.

  A strang
e aspect of this story is that the critical events occurred at two specific points, within the first few days after Laura mistook William for Jorge and again a full fourteen months later. The complete record of Laura and Yaneth’s investigation is preserved in their lively WhatsApp exchanges, beginning on September 9, 2013, and ending on September 12, 2014. Their greetings, questions, comments, and exclamations are sprinkled liberally with hahahas, LOLs, OMGs, jajajas, noooos, and various emoticons. Collectively, their messages read like a spy novel, but one that goes beyond pure entertainment. Embedded within the lines is an informed, well-reasoned dialog between two people as they piece together information and decide where to look next (see appendix B for excerpts of their WhatsApp exchanges).

  Chance Encounters

  Laura could not forget about William’s likeness to Jorge. The following Monday morning, as planned, she approached Jorge in his office at Strycon. “You have a twin brother!” she announced, at once jokingly, seriously, and hesitantly, as though testing his reaction. To her surprise he said he did have a twin, adding that his brother, Carlos, didn’t look anything like him. Laura insisted that the person she had met looked a lot like him and described the strange encounter. He asked her exactly where she saw this person, and she said that it was at a butcher shop in Bogotá’s Kennedy district, about ten miles from the apartment Jorge and his brother shared in the popular middle-class Barrio Bachué. Jorge rarely went there, not just because the trip takes thirty minutes by car (which the brothers didn’t own) and even longer during the city’s frequent rush hours, but mostly because that neighborhood had nothing special to offer. At any rate, Laura now knew that her coworker was not the closet butcher she had suspected he was, but an explanation for the incredible likeness of the two young men eluded her.