Hi, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. We're bringing you more 2020 each week with the 2020 true crime vault. That's right. You're going to hear a story pulled from our archives, shows that we just can't seem to get out of our heads, and we think you're going to be drawn in too. Thanks for listening. Coming up. She just called me. She said, Are you sitting down? You have an identical twin brother? I literally almost drove off the roof. A scandal unfolded. Identical twins and triplets separated as babies, but none of them knew it. I was in shock that I have an identical twin. I needed to find her. That is my mission, and life is to find her. A prominent adoption agency deliberately splitting apart twin babies. This is wrong. What they did was really, really wrong. They didn't give a damn for anybody. We're screwing people's lives. The only thing more shocking, it was all part of a secret decades-long study. It was weird, and I hated it. They say poked and prodded, filmed in tests like these. Like lab rats. They didn't care. They're literally like lab rats. Pieces of their childhoods hidden from them in '71 boxes under lock and key.

Families coming face-to-face with some of the early players, demanding answers. You knew that she was a twin, and you never mentioned it. I'm sorry. How many other twins from the study are still out there, still in the dark? He stole a childhood that can't get that back. Somebody has to own up to this. They have to. I'm John Quineones. Identical twins. There are a few relationships that hold so much fascination and mystery. But what happens when their bond is broken at a tender age? In the 1960s, two psychiatrists set out to explore that question, but they did it in a secretive and most would say cruel manner, separating adopted twins without telling their birthmother or adoptive parents. And it would be decades before the truth would come out. In 2018, Elizabeth Vargas first brought us this story about a search for truth and ties that are never really broken. Adorable identical twins, Gracie and Audrey, born and separated in China and then adopted by different families in the United States. They reunited on Good Morning America when they were 10 years old. Audrey, are you ready? Yeah. You want to do this? I'm ready. -there you go.

-come over. Come over here. All right, Gracey, come on out and meet your sister. Yeah! (theme music plays) (audience murmur)Oh, no. Can I just touch you? Oh, no. Oh, no. You're doing good. Now meet Howard Burek, who surprisingly has a lot in common with those little girls. We always knew you were adopted. I did. I was adopted, and grew up in a nice middle-class, upper-middle-class family in a nice suburban area north of New York City in Rockland County, and normal childhood, normal, whatever, great parents. -you went to the Louise Wise agency? -yes. But in 1998, when he was 35 years old, Howard became increasingly curious about his biological mother. He wrote to the Louise Wise agency to ask for information. Someone at the agency called back with news that hit like a bolt of lightning. She said, You have an identical twin brother. And I'm like, Well, thanks for telling me that after I was shocked. But just how do I find that person? Because that's what I wanted to do. I can't imagine hearing that news. Yeah, not too many people get to hear something like that, I guess. Did you ever remember any feelings of loneliness or feeling something was missing?

I've had that a little bit. -something was missing. And definitely, I've had that feeling over the years, for sure. What does it feel like? Just feel like you're missing something. Just don't know what it was. I said, You can't touch it. You can't feel it. It's something that was there. But this exciting news was bittersweet because Louise Y services told Howard New York Law did not allow the agency to reveal the identity of his identical twin. I spent about two years every day thinking about this. It never left. Did you start doing that thing where you start looking at people on the train? I did. -looking at faces for a face that look like you? Yeah. And I tell people, I'm like, if you ever see a person that looks like me- Stop them and get their name. Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like you were haunted by it. No, it was pretty disturbing. I mean, it's just an unknown. It's like, how could I find this person? Am I ever going to find this person? Itstill… How did you find this person alive? Howard's story is part of a documentary by Laurie Schinsecchi. Her film uncoveres a secret scandal hidden for decades.

How many twins are there and how many are aware that they're twins and how many are not? The shocking story of an adoption outrage. Babies placed with families who were deceived about their origins. My parents always used to tell me that I was more special because they chose me as opposed to just a cat. They decided to separate these twins and triplets, but place them in different families and never told the families that they had adopted a half of a twin set or a third of a triplet set. Shinseki titled her film The Twinning Reaction. The easiest way to explain the twinning reaction is that it is the twin bond that's so obvious to us today. The womb together and their crib together is touching and holding each other, looking to each other, interacting from a very, very young age. Twins, triplets, and other multiples hold a special fascination for those of us born alone. Hollywood loves twins too. Come play with us, Danny. Whether by a precious fluke of biology or Mother Nature, purposefully and exquisitely repeating herself, twins are considered by some to have a mystical bond, an unbreakable connection, begun in the womb.

Lawrence Wright has written about twins for the New Yorker magazine and published a book on the subject. We have sibling relationships, we have kinship relationships. But of all of those relationships, the most unusual and rare is the identical twin relationship. You are closer emotionally to your twin than anyone else you will ever meet. It's a clone. It's a replicate of you. It's precious in a way. So here's where we told the world that you have arrived. Sharon Morella was born in 1966 and was adopted through Louise Wise services, then an eminent adoption agency for Jewish children. In the '60s, Louise Wise was the place to go if you were a Jewish family looking to adopt a Jewish baby. That's right. It was apparently the most prominent Jewish adoption agency in New York City. It was very well respected. Researching her documentary, Laurie Schinsecchi, now a consultant for ABC News, dug up life-changing surprises, including a stunning secret about which, even at age 48, Sharon had no clue. Laurie called Sharon's adoptive mother. And then my mother calls me and says, Some lady just called me to say she's doing a documentary and that you have an identical twin sister.

And I said, Excuse me, and I hung up the phone. Are you serious? And I was in shock. I just couldn't. It took me hours to call her back to say, All right, what's going on? She was never told you were a twin. Nope. Itried to be like her. I feel like she was so betrayed, and that just hurts me. Would she have adopted twins? Oh, she said she would have definitely. Still ahead, the search for Sharon and Howard's missing twins and disturbing childhood memories of strangers in the house. We never understood why they were really coming. It was weird, and I hated it. I'm like, This is not cool. Stay with us. Howard Burek was dumbstruck to learn he had an identical twin, the brother he never knew he had is Doug Rauch. Doug found out he had a twin in 2004, when the adoption service that split them up was going out of business. When Louise Wise was shutting down, there was a woman there who had cancer and who knew she was dying. And before she left and before this place closed down, she called Doug. Guilty conscience? Yeah. She couldn't go to her grave without letting some of these kids know that they had identical twins.

She even told me, because I'm not supposed to do this. I can get a lot of trouble, but I'm going to do it anyway. So I appreciate that. Her conscience took over at that point. But if someone had one, exactly. She said, Are you sitting down? And she said, Well, I have some news for you. You have an identical twin brother. And I was like, I literally almost drove off the roof. It's not something you'd ever expect to hear. Doug gave the agency his number and waited anxiously to hear from his identical twin brother that he had never known he had. After making contact on the phone, the brothers agreed to meet in person. I would get nervous really easy or rattled. And I still remember sitting on that plane, dripping sweat and just being so nervous about meeting this person. And It that looked like me that I had no connection with. Arriving at the airport in Columbus, Ohio, a long delayed reunion. Hi. Oh, my God. How are you doing? -oh, man. -oh, man. Two years after finding out his brother existed, Howard is finally getting to meet him in person. I don't think so.

You're looking at yourself in the mirror. Yeah, definitely here. I just trying to look at you. I just want to find out the mind they're going to tell you. The mind they're going to tell you. It's just like you're looking at yourself in the mirror. And I think we hit it off right away and instant connection. I felt like I knew Doug my whole life. Their lives began as a single cell that split into two. They share almost identical DNA. As they compared the lives they have led separate and apart, they noticed patterns. He is very laid back, and he's very sincere. Doug is very laid back. I always make the joke that sometimes we have to check his pulse to make sure he's still living. Howard's ideal date night is going to a five-star restaurant and getting Prime rib. Steak is his favorite food. When they first met each other, it was just like they always knew each other. Doug would always look at me and say, Wouldn't it be cool to be twins? A twin? I always thought it would be cool to be a twin. We live parallel lives, essentially. You both have three kids.

Yeah, similar ages too. Get right in the middle. Watch where he's going. Niddle. Maddie, Steve. You guys both coach hockey? Yeah, our kids both started playing, and I never played growing up. I never did either. You both hold your wallet in your front pocket. I don't know how much is that, is like genetic or just... I don't know. I don't know how to do that, though. So you got married the same year? What year? '92. Oh, my God. You guys both had to think about it? I knew. I was just looking to see if he could. I was just slow. They both don't use any condiments at all. It's not just ketchup and mustard. It's condiments in general. It was the first question Diane asked. Does Doug use condiments? And I'm like, He has no use for them. Doug and Howard's ketchup and mustard-hating, fitting like a puzzle piece reunion, that's what Sharon Morella wanted too. She was obsessed with finding her identical twin. That's all she did, live and breathe it. Why that obsessive need? It was fascinating and cool and what would have been like growing up? Would we have been Beth's friends?

Would we have hated each other? Would we have shared everything? Like, so many different things, but we never had that chance. Sharon was determined not to let this chance slip by. I found her on Facebook, and I sent her a little message. We instantly bonded, I mean, from that first email, it's just like we just clicked. We even named our younger ones the same name. Are you kidding? So now we both have a Joshua. So that was like the first thing like, No way. What was it like the first time you met her? Oh, it was definitely weird. Getting out of that car and just seeing her, it was like, I think, we just we just stare for a minute and hugged. And again, it was like we never lost contact. News of identical twins and triplets secretly separated by Louise Y services have been leaking out for decades. In 1980, three 19-year-old men from the New York City area, Robert Schaffron, Eddie Galland, and David Kalman, total strangers, discovered they were identical triplets who'd been separated at birth by Louise Y services. They became folk heroes, making the rounds on national TV. What cigarettes do you smoke?

Marl-ball. Do you all smoke the same brand? Yes. I'm just curious. How is their taste of women? Is it similar? Yes. Making a movie with Madonna and a stop here at ABC on Nightline in 1989. Did you laugh as much before you knew one another? I don't think so. I don't think whatever is happy iscurious. I don't think we were ever this happy. Oh, and this is a magic moment, guys. We're the violin. This magic moment. It really completed our lives. But as all these identical siblings get reacquainted, they all discover they had one more thing in common, something strange, something uncomfortable. Do you ever remember having people come over to the house to observe you? I do remember just a person coming, and I remember looking at books. They would show me different pictures. I would have to say, What did I think that picture was? Each of them has vague, unsettling memories of intrusive strangers coming to visit throughout their early childhood. People would come to my house and they would film me and they would make me ride my bike and they would do this test and that test. What did they ask you to do?

All kinds of psychology tests and drawing and just looking at things and ink blocks and drawings and talking to you and asking questions. I was a shy kid. You had people asking you questions and asking you to do stuff. It was a little bit horrifying. It turns out after the twins and triplets were secretly separated, they were then enrolled in a mysterious psychological study without so much as a word of it, whispered to their unsuspecting adoptive families. They made it sound like this was to everybody's benefit to see how smart this kid is because I don't know him. Here, we're adopting a child. We don't know him. We don't know his background. But he's never dawned on me. Why are they coming back so many times? Still ahead, the secret so-called adoption study. What were they really after? Stay with us. Yeah! Little lookalikes, Audrey and Gracey, the identical twins separated in China, adopted in the US, and reunited on GMA, now getting to know each other again. Hi. Hi. We talked the same and like a lot the same. Yeah, a lot the same. Yeah. Chinese adoption officials separated the girls and allowed them to be adopted to unsuspecting families.

Not surprising in some parts of the world, but the same thing was happening right here. This brick building in New York City housed Louise Wise Services in the 1960s. The adoption agency acted on the advice of its consulting psychiatrist, Dr. Viola Bernard. Define conventional wisdom about the special bond between twins, she claimed they were better off apart. Dr. Viola Bernard was a respected doctor in her time. She was very well respecteddid and did many good things, but she believed that she was right and that she had the right to separate these twins. Without telling anybody. Right. Twins were purposely being separated because of a misguided, unproven notion on the part of Viola Bernard that twins are better off being in separate families. There is nothing, no basis to ever support that. And then Dr. Bernard doubled down. She enabled a friend, another psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Neubauer, to begin a long-term study of some of the separated children. They did not tell the adoptive parents that the children were twins, nor did they tell them about the true nature of the study. You never study people without their full knowledge. They were misinformation that it was a child development study, and that is hiding basic facts.

Larry Perlman was a young graduate student when he was hired to work as a research assistant on the twin study. He says what Neubauer was after was nothing less than the holy grail of science of human development. An answer to the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Is biology, destiny? Or would identical children raised by different parents grow up to live very different lives? We wanted to see if we could tease out some of the subtleties of these processes and how that might affect the development of these two individuals who are genetically identical but are being raised by totally different families. There is reason to believe that Neubauer purposely arranged for some of them to be placed in homes of various economic status to see how those differences affected children. Sharon says it led to a difficult conversation when she and her sister first met. What did she tell you about her life story? Unfortunately, that was one of her first quotes was, You had the better life. And that still hurts me. And it was always, You had a better life. You had more. Like a scene in these old science films, Merlman says researchers visited the separated twins in their adoptive homes several times a year when they were babies, up until the time they were 10 or even 12 years old.

There'd be some initial rapport building, meeting the kid, he'd show me around, show me his toys, and whatever. They administered developmental, psychological, and IQ tests. There would be some arithmetic questions, just doing your head. They would make home movies. The filming is just a behavior sample. Maybe the kid playing, writing his bike, might have been some interaction with the mother. They weren't only interested in the children. Researchers scrutinized the adoptive parents as well, especially the mothers. House in a state of chaos, dolls, clothes and clothes on the floor. The furniture is stained and unattractive and tastlessly arranged. A lot of excruciating detail about the mother herself. Did the mothers know this was written about them? I don't know if they understood they were under so much scrutiny. While the mothers might not have known they were being studied, Howard and Doug remember how their parents reacted to the strange visitors. It was fairly stressful in the house when they would come because your parents are worried. You don't know why they're coming. What are they going to do? Are they going to judge us? Are they going to take the kids? Who knows? Both Neubauer and Dr.

Bernard are dead now. Before Neubauer died, Lawrence Wright asked him about the study. Have there been ethical questions raised about this study? Yeah, there have been questions raised by a number of people. I don't think he ever really acknowledged the damage that they might have done to the twins themselves, and that they had been deprived of that relationship their entire lives by scientists who wanted to study them. The requirement that scientists get the informed consent of anyone subjected to human research would not become law until 1974. So that study done today would be illegal. But in the 1960s, the doctors involved in separating and studying the twins had to have known that if the public found out what they were doing, the consequences could be explosive. Neubauer talks about the reaction he got when he tried to convince another adoption agency to separate twins for his study. And she said, How can we separate what God has united to put together? How can we do that? I said to her, But you are in the field of adoption. You separate mother and child all of you. This research may contain amazing discoveries about nature versus nurture, but the twins will never know.

After years of testing them and decades of sitting on the data, in the end, Dr. Neubauer never published his study. Why wouldn't they publish? I would like to know the answer to that. So what happened to all this research? Peter Neubauer's data is controlled by the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services, and that is sealed until the year 2066. That's right. Neubauer buried the study until 2066, likely long after any of the twins will still be alive. Even if the study had provided some serious intelligence about behavior and so forth. Even then it would be bad. But nothing came of it. There's no study, no anything. Bunch of locked files. 2011, Doug and Howard wrote a letter to the Jewish board requesting their twin study data. They received a letter back stating that they were not in the study. Therefore, they were not entitled to access this information. It's just not true. If they wanted those home movies and detailed notes about themselves, they would have to find a way to prove they had been in the study. A tall order, nearly half a century later. Zephae had just looked at me and said, Sorry, we shouldn't have done that.

Here's your stuff. I think that would have been more than enough, and I would have been satisfied with that. But the fact that they tried to hide it and cover it up just made it 10 times worse. When we come back, the sibling saga takes a tragic turn. His wife says that he was never able to get over the separation in the last years. Stay with us. Decades after being separated, some of the twins and triplets placed by the Louise Ys Adoption Agency have reunited with their siblings. But at least two of those twins want more. Once again, here's Elizabeth Vargas. Doug Rausch and Howard Bureau still want access to the mountains of data gathered about them when they were children, and at the very least, they want an apology. I'm aggravated that people are continuing to deny and Stonewall and not accept the responsibility for what they did. Done. Oh, my gosh. Documentary filmmaker Laurie Schinsecchi, along with attorney Barry Coburn, took up their cause. I think it's incumbent on all of us to take a good, hard, honest look at what happened, and to the extent possible, try to make it right. In 2013, with the help of that former researcher, Larry Perlman, and after two years of battles, they broke through the Jewish board's resistance and got some of the records released.

All right, let's see what happens. I'll break the disk before I even do anything. There we go. It says film sequence, date of visit 110.68. Most of this film sequence is powered being tested as Mrs. David. What did you read in those records? It's amazing to read some of the stuff about what you were thinking or saying when you were a little kid. It's strange. Dr. Bernard, the consultant who advised breaking up twins for adoption, told journalist Lawrence Wright in the 1990s she only favored separating twins who had not had time to develop a strong attachment to each other. Because then we would be traumatically separating those who had the opportunity to be attached to each other. So even the doctor who was saying twins are better if they're raised separately was saying if they've had this thing called the twinning reaction, don't separate them because it's traumatic. Yes, in her own words. But as they sift through their records, Doug and Howard discovered Dr. Bernard didn't even follow her own rule. It turns out Doug and Howard were together for six months before being separated and adopted to different families. For the first six months of your life, the only consistent thing in either of your lives was each other.

What they did was really, really wrong. And the more stuff I read, the more wrong it seems, and the more upsetting it gets. In page after page, Doug and Howard's records reveal harrowing details of the stress and trauma they endured after their separation. It's pretty disturbing. People sitting around dissecting your life. One researcher wrote about Doug and Howard, clinically referred to as C5 and C6. Following adoption, both boys show a decline in motor dexterity. Both also begin rocking after adoption, with C5 rocking for a longer period of time than C6. C5 also shows headbanging, which continues until his second birthday. It's upsetting to know that these people were able to affect our lives in a way that I didn't even understand. I don't know why I get emotional about it, but it's not really my nature, but it's just hard to… I'm not really introspective. When you start looking, you start going, Wow, if that didn't happen, maybe some of the hard spots wouldn't have been hard. I don't know. They didn't give a damn for anybody. Only what they were doing, their work. These are unconscionable people. He stole a childhood on some levels.

Not that I wouldn't trade my life for anything, but he can't give back. He can't get that back. There is fallout on Sharon's side as well. Disappointingly, her relationship with her newfound identical twin has soured. What happened? I mean, there was so much promise in that first visit. She knew I want this story out there, and she didn't want that. So that started, I think, tearing us apart. And now you don't speak? No, we do not speak any longer, which is very, very sad. And it gets worse. Among the 15 children known to have been separated, there are reports of serious mental health issues. It appears at least three separated siblings committed suicide, including one of those famous triplets, Eddie, who in 1995, 15 years after reuniting with his brothers, took his own life. His wife says that he was never able to get over the separation in the lost years of the 19 years that he didn't have with his brothers. Is this because of the separation? This twinning reaction that may have happened and then they were pulled apart? It's their belief that it at least had some impact. The separations had some impact on their feelings of sadness and loneliness and depression as children.

When Louise Wise services went out of business in 2004, and the Spence and Chapin's records came here to the Spence and Chapin agency in New York. It now has the answer to a haunting question. Of the thousands of Louise Wise adoptions, how many other twins or triplets were separated? We contacted Spence and repeatedly. It's Elizabeth Bargess calling from 2020 ABC News. We have left several messages with you over the last week. They have refused to return our calls. Adoptive records remain very difficult to access. Part of the promises made in the adoptive process involve assuring confidentiality to biological parents, and potentially to others involved. Adoption is a sensitive topic, and as a result, even today, adoption records are very jealousy protected. As for the study data gathered by Dr. Neubauer, currently under SEAL, only the Jewish board has the authority to release it. In a statement, it tells 2020 in part, it is committed to providing individuals identified as part of the study, access to their records in a timely and transparent manner. Adding, we do not endorse Dr. Neubauer's study, and we deeply regret it took place. This is just a lame statement, I think since they have these records, they should actually send them to all the people that they have records for.

So that's bull crap right there. Screws my French. Because of that secrecy, it's impossible to know just how many other babies may have been separated. And as adults, still might not to this day. They have a twin. I guess the debate is, whose data is it? It seems to be my information. It was about me. I don't know. Why is that? Do you have any right to it? Just because someone in their will or their state said this stuff should be locked up and no one gets to see it. -it's your information. -it's our information. They're not only that, but they have tained it by lying to everybody. Still ahead, the twins come face to face with some of the people who prodded and poked and filmed them as babies, the people who helped keep the secrets of the twin study. -sianette, hi. -hi. And surprising justification for splitting up babies. It was a time, as we were saying that it was hard to get white babies. And so this was an opportunity for two families to have a baby. Watch what happens next. It was Dr. Viola Bernard's idea to separate twins. It was Dr.

Peter Neubauer's idea to study them. And they both agreed not to tell the adoptive families a secret they would need help keeping. Help from research assistants like Larry Perlman, who took a jober to be working on the twin study as a young graduate student. They didn't believe that the infants would register the separation, would register the knowledge that they had a twin in the first few months. -i thought he's done what? -well, it was speculation because nobody had studied infants. Filmmaker Laurie Schinsecchi informed the reunited twins, Doug and Howard that Perlman had studied them in their separate adoptive homes when they were just six years old. More than 40 years later, the twins visited him at his home. Hi. Hi. How are you doing? Howard Purak. Hi, Larry Perlman. Nice to meet you. Doug Roach. Nice to meet you too, Doug Roach. It's been a while, Doug. Yeah, 44 years. Exactly, yeah. Was that where you were six when you-Yes, I actually pulled out the testing I did on you guys when you were exactly six. So I know that there were ten twins at that time. Ten sets or ten? Ten altogether. We're doing five sets.

You guys researching it as a job, but for the people that were in it- That's their life. -it's people making decisions about your life that you have no control, where some of them actively just lied to you outright, lied to my parents anyway. It got me thinking about the damage that was done to the families, to the parents who were kept in the dark about the fact that they had adopted twins. And that was a piece that I had never really thought through very much. That made me sad and it really made me think how much of an injustice has been done to all of these twins who were subjects to this experiment. Laurie Schinsecchi tracked down another researcher who made house calls studying the unknowingly separated twins and their families. Her name is Janet David. As a researcher, she had made a home visit to Sharon Morella when she was a little girl. As Janet David arrived for the home visit, however, she realized she knew Sharon's adoptive mother, Vivian. They had met in college. Still, even with that personal connection, Janet kept the secret. Janet got out of her car that day and went inside that house and studied that family and that twin and never told that her baby was an identical twin.

No. No? No. Wow. More than 40 years after Janet and other researchers studied Sharon, the former research assistant agreed to meet Sharon and her mother. And you might remember this woman, professional people finder and ABC news consultant Pam Slayton. Pam first brought the story to 2020's attention. Janet? Hi. Hi, I'm Sharon. Nice to see you. I was a research assistant on the study that Sharon was in. And Vivian and I actually went to college together by one of those small world, incredible coincidences. But if Janet expected a happy reunion, that's not what happened. Things quickly get tense. You knew that she was a twin. Yeah. And you never mentioned it. I can't answer the question. I don't know. We were told that this was the way the study was set up, that the families didn't know that they had a twin. And that's how it was. Because it's something that I would have really liked to know. Yeah. And so would she. Yeah. Even when the study was over, while you never call to say, By the way, there's a twin out there if you ever want to find her. Well, I left the study shortly after I met your family, but I was low on the totem pole.

I was just barely starting graduate school. I had no authority, no clout, no nothing. You feel like it was wrong what they did? The study? Doing the study? I don't. It was a time, as we were saying that it was hard to get white babies. And so this was an opportunity for two families. It's their choice to have a baby. What a terrible explanation for why they were doing this. The idea that, well, we wanted to make sure there were enough white babies to go around. So if there were two or three, why would you keep them together when you can spread the bounty? We knew that the families were competent parents. It was like there's no harm here. We're not experimenting. That part never struck me as wrong. It looked like the babies are going to good families. I think they were hoping for an apology in some way, shape or form. I would if... I'm sorry about it, but I was not responsible. Unfortunately, the people who created the study and who designed the study are probably not alive. After the meeting, Sharon and Vivian were about their disappointment. She didn't seem sorry.

She didn't seem to understand that what she did caused pain. Undaunted by the falling out with the twin sister, she hadn't known or had not been able to talk to her mother. But as soon as Sharon Morello has existed, Sharon Morello decides to search for her biological mother. Hi. How are you? This time she brings in a professional, Pam Slayton. I have been busy. Family reunions are her specialty. So now I went back to your DNA. And sure enough, whose family tree did that end up in? -your twin sister. -that's nice. Okay. So I'm like, okay, so now we're onto something. So I found your birth mom. Okay. Pam uses DNA, social media, and her gut instinct to track down Sharon's biological mother. But it's Sharon's nerves that are the issue today. I'm afraid she doesn't know that we were split, and that's going to crush her. And I don't want to put that pain on her, you know? It's the type of call nobody is prepared to make or receive. The nerves. Oh, my gosh. Hi, my name is Sharon. If you can, please give me a callback. The message worked. Sharon and her birthmother began communicating on email and Facebook.

Her mother says she's never forgotten her twins. The mother shared the baby picture she got from the adoption agency with Sharon and her sister. She had held on to those pictures all those years. She tells Sharon she was not told in advance that her twins would be separated. And then when she called back to say, Did you find a home for them? She was told, Yeah, we found homes for them. They're being split. She was heartbroken. Absolutely heartbroken. One day, they may meet in person. Meanwhile, Hi. Nice to meet you. Sharon, Doug, and Howard, and their families all attended a screening of Laurie Schinsecchi's film. She proceeded to tell me that I have an identical twin brother. At least one member of the audience offered what none of the architects of the study ever has an apology. On behalf of humanity, I am so sorry for what happened. It's a horrible thing. I would never have forgiven those people for what they did to you guys. I think that there is a cautionary tale there that you can never look at people like data, that humans are not data. The twins Laurie discovered are grateful to her for restoring the truth about their birth.

It's part of my life. I have a brother now. We're happy that we met each other. Pretty fortunate. They are adamant such a study should never, ever be undertaken again, holding out their own lives as a warning to science, proof that the quest for knowledge should never come at the expense of our humanity. I'm Jebra Roberts. That does it for this episode of the 2020 True Crime Vault. Tune in on Friday nights at 9:00 PM for all new broadcast episodes of 2020 on ABC. Thanks for listening.