The cruel history of separated triplets at birth as part of a scientific experiment

There were three. Robert, David and Eddy. They were born one summer night in 1961, in the suburbs of New York, but they did not know the existence of their brothers until several years later, when they had already been 19 years old. Then they also discovered that they had been separated for some cruel reason: conducting a secret social experiment. The incredible story has become a documentary – "Three Identical Aliens" – which is currently on the agenda in the United States.

The meeting between the three was pure luck. Robert Shafran attended his first day of classes at the university and his classmates confused him with another student Eddy Galland. They told him that they were the same and insisted so much that he eventually got to know them.

"His eyes were my eyes and my eyes were his, that was true," says Robert to the BBC

But there was still missing a piece of the puzzle. David Kellman read in a newspaper the story of the meeting of two brothers and was also recognized in those looks and in those unruly hair.

His early days were like recovering a lost time, childhood that they did not share.

"Everything was new, everything was a celebration, for the first time we were swimming together in the ocean or climbing a roller coaster," said Kellmann.

The triplets became sensational and even played in a movie with Madonna. But it would be a blow: to discover how and why they had been separated. After several investigations, they learned that they had involuntarily participated in an experiment designed between the Louise Wise adoption agency and the Child Development Center.

The reason? Investigate the influence of genetics and parenting as they grow up in different socio-economic environments. The Austrian psychologist Peter Neubauer was responsible for the studies, the results of which are in the archives of Yale University, with restricted access until 2065.

The brothers called the study "cruel" and "Nazi" and Eddy, l & rsquo; One of them, ended up committing suicide in the nineties.

"I do not know why they decided to do that, I can not see it as something human, you can not play with human lives, we have to be together and they separate us for scientific reasons. "