Identical triplets separated at birth didn’t know they were part of twisted study

A dark backstory

In July 1961, Robert Shafran, Edward Galland and David Kellman were born to a teen mum in New York before being put up for adoption.

The trio were split up and adopted by three different families but they were unaware that they were actually part of an experiment.

They only learnt of each other’s existence thanks to a chance encounter when they were teenagers.

Robert and Edward began studying at Sullivan Community College and it was there that a mutual friend noticed the similarities between the pair.

Realising they had both been adopted they put two and two together and discovered they were brothers.

Their story made headlines which caught David’s attention. He called Edward’s home and spoke to his mum and discovered that he too was related to the pair.

They soon became inseparable but their backstory had a dark twist. The study of nature vs nurture conducted by Dr Peter Neubauer meant that the three brothers were adopted by families of different social classes.

David went to a working-class family, Edward to a middle-class family and Robert to an upper-class family.

The Dr visited the boys every year for the first ten years of their lives to observe them but never let on to the boys that they were triplets.

Tragically all three boys suffered with mental health problems with Edward taking his life in 1995 at the age of 33.

Their story is told in the 2018 documentary 'Three Identical Strangers'.