Bittersweet Infamy - #13 - Flowers in Hell

Episode Date: April 18, 2021

Taylor tells Josie about June and Jennifer Gibbons, the infamous "silent twins." Plus: why the number 13 is so unlucky.

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The subject matter must be infamous. Taylor, this, this, right now is our 13th episode. Our spookiest episode. Spookiest episode, our Bar Mitzvah episode. Nothing scarier than becoming a man. That's very true. How do you feel? This is, this is your story. You're gonna tell me a story. No, I, I like that I got 13.

13 episode. I know you do. But you get, you're even, so you'll get like our, you'll get 20, you'll get 50 if we make it that high. You know what I mean? So you've got some good ones coming if you're patient. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we might, you know, like, we shoot it out. That's true. That's true. With the odds. You're over this podcast already, hey? No, I'm not. Why would you say that?

I thought you have a pen in between your figures and I thought it was a cigarette. So it's like, oh, she's, she just lit a dart in, in her bedroom. This is not going well. I don't know, that might be a sign that bittersweet empathy is going well. That's true. That's true. We just become Tarantino characters. Yeah. Everyone would love to listen to that. Great. So dude, 13. Yes. Do you know the history of this numeral?

I don't know. I don't know why it's so unlucky. I know that the, I know that it's the Italians like 13 maybe, but I don't know. Yeah. There's a lot of like shooby shoes. It's a number, right? What is it going to do? Right. But it's a number. What can it not do? You nailed it. So typically it's usually in Western, Western culture that 13 is really unlucky. Yeah. I think that's very helpful to base that.

And so it's like, it's based in more like Judeo-Christian belief and that kind of stuff. But you know who the 13th member to the last supper was? Judas. Judas. Poor Judas. Really? None of us is irredeemable. That's true.

It's funny because I think that's very much a part of my ethos towards the world is looking for compassion and looking for forgiveness and thinking that we're all better than our worst moments and whatever. But I don't necessarily know that that comes across in a setting like this where we're constantly talking about people doing really, really heinous things. Yeah. Do you think maybe we're just trying to make ourselves feel better? Maybe. I didn't murder 12 kids, so I'm doing okay. Listen, there's always time. We're young yet. Yes, we are young yet.

But 13, my dude, it is unlucky reportedly because it breaks a very like Western understanding of order. So we like our 12 months. Right. We like our two 12 hour periods during a day. Yeah. Any time that you bump up to 13, the whole system is just like ugh, really? Yeah, it's a prime. We don't really, we don't accommodate 13 so much in our day to day dealings, do we?

No, no, not really. And like even within music, like within an octave, there's still 12 notes, like a 12 pattern to choose from. So 13, you break it, or you've just started over again, right? It just becomes one again. Interesting. But that's 13 is so unlucky that there are in the Western world. We miss out on, I think it's something like $800 million because of its unluckiness. So people don't plan their weddings on the 13th.

Right. They buy on the 13th if they have like a big meeting. Some people won't even work on the date of the 13th or whatever, you know, anything that's associated with 13. Right. Buildings, high rises are built from the 12th floor and then you just go straight to the 12th or to the 14th. Right. And just skip the 13th. In Vancouver, missing fours is really common too because four is unlucky in Chinese culture and obviously there's like a big Chinese Canadian population in Vancouver.

Yeah. And I think that's so interesting because I believe 13 is not an issue, but four is like, ooh. Four is death, I think. Yeah, it sounds, I think it's like a tone away from the word for death. Right, right. Interesting. Yeah. So either this show is going to break the fucking mold and be number one or just a shittastic disaster.

Let's find out. But I don't know. I'm prepared for that too. See, I'm not because I had to write the story. Oh, right, yeah. So it's, me personally, I have a vested interest in this not being shittacular. I'm glad you're already lit your cigarette. You're fine.

I'm chill. I am chill beans. Nice. I'm 13 chill beans. Love that. But 13 can be, there are some positive things with 13. Okay. Don't forget your bar bat mitzvah.

Yep. Very important. Yep. A baker's dozen dude. An extra muffin. Extra delicious muffin donut bagel. Right. So maybe this is just our baker's dozen episode.

Nice. I'm happy to go along with that. Okay. What's your story? Right. Okay. I suppose I do have to do that. So this is the story of the silent twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons.

So silent. Very silent. Heard of them. Okay. Okay. So the street continues. Okay. June and Jennifer.

June and Jennifer Gibbons. So in preparing for the story, I used two sources, which was nice to just have to use two sources. Twins, if you will. Twin sources, yes. The first was a book called The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace. And it was written by a journalist who came to know these girls. Okay. I recommend the book.

I think it's a pretty nuanced and compassionate portrait of two incredibly interesting individuals and their relationship with each other. One slight asterisk. The twins are black. Marjorie Wallace is a white woman writing about them in the 1980s, which can kind of come through at times. Once she describes them as being like carved African bookends, for example. Oh, rough. That's rough.

Yeah, not great. But by and large, despite that, I feel like she takes care and depicts them with a lot of humanity. Nice. And then obviously I felt like getting a black journalist lens on the story. So I read an article in The New Yorker called We Too Made One by a journalist named Hilton Owls. Oh, I love Hilton Owls. Oh, there you go. Cool.

Yeah. Also a really good, compassionate take that impacts a lot of the racism embedded in this story. Nice. Nice. Should we dedicate this episode to my friend Amanda, who's going to have twins any day now? Wait till you hear the story. Okay. Amanda is on hold.

Okay. So June and Jennifer Gibbons are born April 11, 1963. What are you doing in 1963? Smoking cigarette in my bedroom. Fair enough. Lots of eyeliner. Nice. Good for you.

That's as it should be. Nice center part going on. June is older than Jennifer by 10 minutes. Which? That's a lot. Maybe. I don't. I've never had twins.

Okay. Another row. I don't know. Okay. It's some minutes. It's more than nine. It's less than 11. And it's less than 13.

Yeah. Pipes are unclogging. Sorry about that. They have three siblings, Greta, David, youngest sister Rosie. The family is originally from Barbados, but due to Aubrey's work in the Air Force, they move around the world. This is the British Air Force. Gotcha.

They move around the world and eventually they settle in a council estate in the county town of Haverford West in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Okay. Okay. So we're in Wales. This is a Welsh story. Ooh. Cool.

Yeah. Don't say I never take you anywhere. They're the only black family on the estate and they're part of a broader wave of Caribbean immigrants around that time called the Windrush generation. Windrush. Windrush, yes. Okay. From an early age, June and Jennifer have a peculiar way of speaking to one another.

It says their father, Aubrey, quote, in the home they talk, make sounds and all that, but we knew that they weren't quite like, you know, normal children talking readily. Hmm. And this kind of intensifies in the face of ostracism and abuse from students around them when they go to school, much of it racial. And at around eight or nine, June and Jennifer make a pact. They'll never speak to anyone else, not even family, only each other. Whoa, dude.

The only time they talk is upstairs when they're alone in their bedroom together in what seems to be a sped up dialect of their own creation. Sped up. They talk quite fast. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

One thing that they don't do fast is everything else. The one thing, okay. They move in unison agonizingly slowly. If one of them is walking in one direction, the other is like kind of next to her or behind her or around her, like mirroring the exact same motions. At all times? Pretty much. And they have this like remarkable way of like, they have a shared language of like,

Jennifer will give June an eye twitch and that means like, don't talk or go this, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the people of 1970s whales by and large don't know what to do with this and it contributes to the othering and bullying of these girls. It also creates frustrations at home amongst the family.

Yeah. How big is the family again? How many siblings? Three siblings, two parents and the twins. So seven in total. Okay. Yeah. That's a big family.

And for like two of them to be like, walking very slowly on the hallway. You should be like, can you please hurry up? Yeah. We got to go to the park. Yeah. Why won't you fucking talk to us and why? Yeah, there's that. What do you, what do you, so the primary reaction that people seem to have had both in

amongst family and then in the broader population is the sense that the twins are playing some sort of game on them and feeling like really belittled and offended and even threatened by that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. In 1976, when the twins are about 13, a guy named Juh. 13.

Cool. When the twins are about 13, a guy named John Rees visits their school to give TB inoculations to the students. Ooh, fun. Okay. He gives one of the twins a shot and she seems almost catatonic like she does not flinch. Oh. And then the next student obviously is an identical girl, same reaction.

So he gets curious and he refers them to another psychologist and he can't even tell them apart and doesn't really try to. So he refers them to a speech therapist. Basically they kind of get bounced around from medical personnel to medical personnel who are only interested in observing them as curiosities, but not actually improving their lives in any meaningful way. Okay. Yeah.

So stud, there's, there's specimens to be studied and not, yeah, understood as human babies. Yeah, exactly. I can imagine there's like a big waft of medical racism to the whole thing, especially in John Rees, his initial appraisal of the twins includes, includes a term that I am not comfortable repeating. Yeah. So eventually they end up with this speech therapist named Anne Triharn.

And Anne is able, yeah, she's able to coax them to speak into a tape recorder when she's not in the room. I think they kind of like Anne. And when she listens back, she realizes that they're a shared language because she's able to like slow down the tape, really listen, whatever. Yeah. Repeat certain spots. Exactly.

Yeah. And she realizes that their language, their shared language is a mix of just standard English and then a bit of Barbadian patois and they just speak it really quickly and also have a shared speech impediment from like a congenital mouth thing. Oh, okay, okay. So that's kind of when people talk about them either not speaking at all, which isn't true, really, or only speaking in like a made up twin language and it's not that. It's just like, they've kind of made a dialect of a dialect, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like anybody who is hearing multiple languages in the house, like you have, you have, there's a certain language that you speak in a house, anybody speaks in the house. And then when there's like a foreign language involved too, then it just becomes even more complex and rich and then you add all these other elements, like speeding it up and being a twin. Yeah.

And you're moving together. Yeah. Yeah. You can do shit with your eyes so you probably don't need to complete sentences. Yeah. Exactly. So another thing to note here is that Anne voices an opinion that comes up a few times over the course of the story, which is that June is the slightly more agreeable, functional

personality of the two and Jennifer is the one who exerts control over June. Oh, okay. Slightly more possessive and codependent. Okay. Yeah. To its extreme, people talk about Jennifer possessing her sister. That seems like very coded language, but yeah, okay. One of the teachers even goes as far as to say that Jennifer is evil.

Cool. What an educator. Wow. Listen, this may shock you, but it seems like maybe the cream of the crop educators weren't teaching at counties, schoolhouses in rural Wales in the 70s. Fair. Okay. This ties into this like global cultural trope that we seem to have around good and evil

twins. Yeah. And I feel like there's some iteration of that in a lot of cultures. The idea of the evil twin or the doppelganger or someone who looks the same as someone else but like is warped in some way because of this. Yeah. And it ties into even medical professionals as you kind of alluded, describing the dynamic between these two black girls in these like exotic kind of magical kind of ways, you

know? Yeah. Yeah. But whatever the case may be, people did broadly say that Jennifer wielded some kind of latent power in the interpersonal dynamic and there does seem to be some evidence to that effect. Okay. So based on the recommendations of Treeharn and another doctor, Tim Thomas, they get

transferred to the Eastgate Center for Special Education in Pembroke and at Eastgate they decide that they're going to try splitting up the twins and sending them to different schools. Whoa. Schools, not even just classrooms. One of them gets sent to, I mean, they're programs really. Like I think that the twin that gets split up here goes to like a ward of a hospital or something.

No, exactly. Okay. And upon hearing this news, the girls freak the fuck out and start physically attacking one another. One another? Yeah. They're clawing at each other. They're ripping out hanks of hair.

Oh no. They also like start phoning up the teachers responsible to prove that they'll talk, but they can only do it over the phone. So they'll call them up and they'll be like, we'll talk all the time if you don't split us up. Just like rapid fire onto the phone, calling these people at their homes. Whoa. This is kind of like a backtrack question, but like through all of this it's been proven

that they are understanding other people, correct? Yes. So it's weird because a lot of the people who like John Reeves, the guy who gave the inoculations, experienced them as these like catatonic mute girls who maybe were like developmentally disabled in some way or couldn't speak or whatever. And it's not that at all. They're very, so not to give too much away, but I went out of my way to incorporate the twins actual voices a lot into this because they are beautifully expressive.

Yeah. They have a lot going on behind the surface. The billwaters run very deep in this case, but some people do misunderstand them by virtue of these strange games that they play, but also by virtue of not wanting to understand them by seeing them and medicalizing them and kind of already deciding what these girls were. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Interesting. In spite of the bad reaction, they decide to go ahead with the separation. Soon as the one who goes to this other adolescent ward for two days, during which time she like completely shuts down, becomes catatonic, they can't convince her to speak or eat or do anything move.

So the experiment is a failure and the girls are reunited. Oh, well, I could have told you that, but okay. So one thing that I love about these girls is that they are so fucking boy crazy. And awesome. Back at Eastgate, the girls fall in love with a sexy young American bad boy named Lance Kennedy. Lance Kennedy? What an American name!

A Kennedy? I think that might have been invented by Marjorie Wallace to preserve his anonymity. Oh, okay. That's wise. I'm so smart. Lance Kennedy. Lance Kennedy. He's tall, blonde, and full of Yankee charm, and he brags about getting kicked out of school

for doing drugs. Oh, Lance. Lance would intervene when the twins were getting beat up by other students or beating each other up, but he also cops to occasionally hitting them to see how they would react. Oh, yeah. Oh, Lance. I mean... Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds about right, but yeah. They become his secret admirers, and at one point they wait for him to leave his pack of cigarettes unattended, and they leave a love note for him on every single cigarette in the pack. Wow. That's thorough. That's a move? That's a hell of a move.

Yeah. Yeah. Has anybody ever done that for you, Taylor? No. The clubs that I've been hanging out with couldn't sniff that level of romance, sad. The twins graduate from Eastgate at 16. They go on unemployment immediately. People in general seem to have had very low opinion of the twins' prospects and potential,

so they basically told parents like, yo, these girls are going to be on unemployment forever. Their home life is shit. They have virtually no relationship with anyone in the family other than occasionally their younger sister Rosie, who can kind of half-ass speak the twins' language. They ruin weddings with their stoic silence. The TV will be on, and the family will be watching in the TV room, and the twins will be watching from up the stairs, just sitting on the stairs. Don't do that.

I used to, this is not as bad, but when I was in middle and high school, I would come down to get a glass of water or something like that, and my mom and my brother, just my mom would be watching TV, and I would just stand there and watch because I didn't want to sit down, because once I sat down, then I wasn't doing my homework, but if I stood and waited for the commercial break, then it wasn't, but then I'd watch all the commercials, and then I'd have to wait for the next commercial break, so I would lurk with the TV as well, so I understand that small bit. Good for you, so that's called empathy.

Their brother's girlfriend literally just never meets them, because they're in their room all the time when she comes over, so she just, the twins are these creatures that allegedly exist, but no one's ever met them kind of thing. But it's interesting, because they start keeping extensive diaries around this time, they're gifted diaries for Christmas, I think, and they very clearly, devotedly love their family. For example, here is what June has to say in her diary about her relationship with her mother. Oh, we should all join.

I lack something, but it's not love. I love Rosie, Greta, David, Phil, mom, and dad. I worry about my mother. I see grief for all those years in her eyes. She is not young, but she is romantic, a child at heart. I cannot bear to die before my parents. I cannot bear to walk on the graves of my parents, put down flowers, and feel lost. And supposing I am a mother, I realize I am dying with cancer, and I have three young

daughters and one young son, I shall weep for them, their cozy childhood world brought to a slicing halt, like a telegram out of nowhere. Why us? They will cry. Why me? Why not some other family? Ah, girl! Damn!

So, the unspoken thing here is, these girls can fucking write, hey? Yeah! Dude, get them in a creative writing class, boom, boom, yeah! Hold that thought. Okay, I will. So this is one of the interesting things about June and Jennifer is they have, on the surface, they give you nothing. Yeah.

They may not even deign to acknowledge you with speech, but underneath they have these very active, vivid, romantic, dramatic, internal lives. Yeah, that would probably make me pretty stoic to the outside world as well. If you're trying to understand and juggle all of that intensity. Right, exactly. You'll hear stories of the twins writing in their diaries about a good, lively, edifying chat they had with someone, and the person, if you speak to them later, will only remember them uttering a few words.

But internally, it's all happening, you know? Yeah. Whoa. And you can see it in their home lives because when they interact with others, obviously they're barely responsive, but in their bedroom, they have this lively, thriving, creative, talkative chaos going on at all times. Wow. The, at first, their main creative output is this imaginary universe they have with

all of their dolls, and it's an elaborate soap opera where all the dolls have names like Johnny Joshua and Anne-Marie Esther Kingston. Ooh. Yeah. There's also doll versions of the Gibbons family, and they die in dramatic ways that their younger sister, Rosie, would note. She was the death registrar, so here's how the members of the doll Gibbons family met their ends.

Okay. June Gibbons, age nine, died of leg injury. George Gibbons, age four, died of eczema. No, don't tell me you can die of that. I know, that's bad news for me, too. Bluey Gibbons, age two and a half, died of appendix. Just appendix. Bad one, I assume.

Yeah. Peter Gibbons, age five, adopted, presumed dead. Ooh. Julie Gibbons, age two and a half, died of a stamped stomach. And then these must be young ladies who married into the Gibbons clan. Paulie Morgan Gibbons, age four, died of a slit face, and Susie Pope Gibbons died at the same time of a craft skull. At the same time.

This is a pretty dark game. I gotta just put that out there. Dude, it is a dark game, but I feel like that's how the best of the creative types that I know played with. It's so, you know, you know who played with their dolls like this is old Laura Albert, G.T. LaRoy. She had, well with her, it's quite sad, but with her it was kind of tied into the sexual

abuse that she was suffering. But there was a lot of real dark shit going on with her Barbies, too. So. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So there's an incident where Jennifer and Rosie, they're picking on the June doll. Like they're, they're both being kind of bitchy about the June doll.

So the real June locks herself in the bathroom and cuts herself with a pen knife. And then when her parents discover her, June sees Jennifer and Rosie on the stairs laughing at her. And Jennifer has a little doll of a vicar that was June's favorite, and she's staring at June and twisting the doll menacingly. June said in her diary, quote, that was the night that I started my revenge on Jay. A silent scheming revenge that never really came. I should have attacked her then, but I kept my anger, my resentment bottled up.

That was my weakness. Fuck dude. Yeah. They sure can't write. They, every line, part of the main reason that I recommend the silent twins so thoroughly is because every line of prose these girls write goes into like a fucking icicle. Like it's nuts. Yeah.

So as they grow deeper into their teenage years, they outgrow playing dolls with their sister Rosie, and they look for more conventional adult ways to express their creativity. So they start jointly taking a male and creative writing class. Oh, fantastic. By haggling, they're allowed to take it as one student number 8201. They start the program in January 1980, and they're actually quite prolific for the next little while. So in 1980, June writes a book called The Pepsi Cola Addict.

The plot is a coming of age story about a Malibu teenager named Preston Wildey King. He gets seduced by his teacher. He ends up in a gang. He lands in jail where a gay warden tries to seduce him, and eventually he comes home to find that his mother and sister have overdosed on barbiturates. Wow. Here's a snippet. I'd read that.

Well, here's a snippet. Oh, yay. Oh, good. The tenement in which he lived was alternately too hot or too cold. The room remained suffocatingly hot with the contained heat of the day. Preston was thinking he was cold. His head felt neurotic and dizzy. It resembled ice.

He thought he wouldn't mind if he lived in Arizona or even Hawaii. They lived on cool beverages and didn't care what you did, sitting in his own pad and sipping 300 cans of Pepsi Cola every day. Pretty fly. Pretty fly. If I'm an editor going in, I get it. It's hot, but pretty fly. Yeah.

After that, Jennifer writes a story called The Pugelist, which I think is fucking sick. Here's the story of The Pugelist. A baby named Lance is so ill, Lance. I just realized that, Lance Kennedy. A baby named Lance is ill, so his heart surgeon father does a secret operation to replace the baby's failing heart with the family dogs. Oh my god, good story. And the operation is successful, and then Lance grows up to become a boxer, but after

he wins the title, his heart fails. And then when he's in the hospital, the whole thing about the dog's heart comes out, so he curses his father from his deathbed and dies. And then as the doctor father is leaving the hospital, a mysterious man comes out of a car and stabs him to death. The end. Yeah. Yeah.

Sounds like a French film, I like it. It sounds like some Godard shit or something, it's dope. The twins get a little bit of a bad rap for Florida writing and like malapropisms, they kind of mix up words sometimes, but me, I unironically really dig their stuff. I think it's creative, I think it's so striking. So then Jennifer goes on to write a book called Discomenia. So these titles are fantastic. If you've ever heard the song Evacuate the Dance Floor by Cascada, it's the same basic

idea. Okay. Infectious music that penetrates the souls of its listeners and drives them to madness. Alright, alright. A lot of dancing, a lot of murder, a lot of casual drug use. The protagonists get high on LSD and steal a car, and it all ends with the death of its protagonist while his friend whispers over his deathbed, die young, stay pretty. Dude.

Yeah. Whoa. Look around for publishers, they meet a lot of rejection, you know about that life. Not you. We do. Like I do too. Sorry. Okay.

I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that. Eventually June finds a vanity press willing to publish the Pepsi-Cola addict. Vanity press is essentially when you are publishing via a conventional publisher, they are paying you money for the distribution rights to your story, first run distribution or whatever it's called. If you send your work to a vanity press, they will publish more or less anything as long as you pay them. You could be going to them with kind of any old manuscript, it doesn't really matter,

there you pay them and then you have a published copy of your book to say I've published this thing or whatever. Here's a book with my name on it. Is it pretty similar to self publishing? Yes. Yes, but I think that there's more avenues now for people to self publish with things like Amazon and you know Kindles and shit like that. Right.

Yeah, that aren't as tied to a publisher. Exactly. Whereas back in the day, if the thing that you cared about was having a book with your name on it and it wasn't, you didn't want to kind of get past the gatekeepers at wherever then you could go to a vanity press and pay them. Okay. I don't know if June totally understood that this was a vanity press though. She doesn't have enough money to cover the publication so once again via mail she haggles

paying it in installments and she says if my book does not cover the cost of your subsidy fee then ring the police and I will gladly be arrested. Nice. So here's some other things they get up to around this time that I'll just kind of clump together in one paragraph. Okay, how old are there's like 18, 19, 20 kind of thing? They're 17 at this point. 17.

Okay. Also, can I just say they would have had very different lives if they lived with the internet. Oh yeah. I know I'm always big about the internet, but like these two in the chat rooms on the dating sites they could get up to some trouble these two. Oh, pretty gnarly. Yeah.

Okay. What are they doing? Tell me what they're doing. They're doing a lot of dreams which they note in their diaries. Recurring themes are mentally handicapped children, dolls, murder, fire, and blood. Okay. So. Just a quick free write, just write down what comes to mind.

That's basically it. Murder, dolls, fire, and that. And they're very into like dreams, they got a dream symbolism book or whatever. So when they note this in their diary they'll always be like here's what was in the dream, here's my interpretation of what it meant. They always kind of in both of them interpret their dreams. Yeah. They're getting into their late teens and they're super sexually frustrated.

They're coming to grips with their burgeoning sensuality but resent the trappings of womanhood and the changes to their bodies which obviously they compare to one another a lot. Yeah. Yeah. They get really into the occult and invest in books on witchcraft. Good, good. They would be on the witch talk, you know? But yeah, yeah.

They'd have some fly witch talk. And they have a new boy named Darren that they like, so they try to cast spells to like seduce him and make him fall in love with them. Darren doesn't know they exist, I don't think, but they follow him around town from about a mile back and watch him through binoculars. Wow, a mile, that's not far. I pulled a mile out of my ass, I couldn't do it, but like they're way, way far away, like across the river, stakeout style, with like some head wraps on and sunglasses, you

know what I mean? I get it. On December 18th, 1980, they commit their first petty crime. Oh. They shoplift two teddy bears for their baby niece, Helen Marie. Christmas that year, they wait eagerly to meet the baby and give her the gifts and then when Greta, their sister, brings the child to their room, they just freeze and are motionless. And they kind of spurn their sister, even though they both desperately want to hold

the baby. Oh, that's so sad. Oh, so it's heartbreaking. June kind of blames Jennifer for silently guiding her not to move. And in that moment, Greta vowed never to acknowledge them again, just like, that's the last time I make an effort. I just showed them my brand new baby and they paid me dust. So fuck them.

Yeah. I mean, I get that boundaries, right? Yeah. On April 1981, the twins' 18th birthday comes along, and they want to mark the occasion in style. So they try to track down their old high school crush, Lance Kennedy. Oh yeah, I remember Lance, yeah. So Lance has moved back to America to join the military, but great news.

These three brothers still live in Wales. So the Kennedy sons are comprised of Lance, who's in America now, Jerry, who we don't see much in this story, youngest brother, Carl, and Wayne, who's like the hot bad boy. And no one loves a hot American bad boy like the Gibbons twins. All right, all right, all right. So they call Wayne and they're putting on American accents and they're pretending to be an ex-girlfriend of Lance's named Lisa. Oh, okay.

They're pretending to be one person. Yes, I think so, yes. He agrees to meet them at a hotel bar, but never shows. And they run out of money to cab home and they have to walk back in the rain. But they've got in their head, they're going to meet Wayne. So I think it might be the very next day, if not it's very soon. They take the natural next step, which is to break into the Kennedy's house. And they rummage through all their things.

They bust down Lance's locked door with a chair and try on all his clothes. And then the parents arrive home, George and Diane, and they're like, all the boys are gone, you know, bye. So undeterred. Wait, the parents came home and they were still there? Yeah. Oh, God. Okay.

So obviously they come back in, break in again the very next day, and as you do, and they leave some poems in Wayne's notebook for him to, you know, enjoy, and eventually the family just kind of becomes acquainted with these girls via their repeated break-ins and they kind of become family friends. Oh, so like the mom puts out snacks, she's like, hi girls, good to see you again. Never good. I think that they like, because these girls are so strange, people were always very discomfited by them, and even the Kennedys themselves, like you remember how I told

you about that kind of weird, semi-abusive friendship that Lance Kennedy had with them where he'd protect them from other people getting hit, but then also he'd hit them? Yeah, but then like poke them, see if they did anything, yeah. That kind of becomes, it becomes a template for a lot of the girls' interactions with boys in general, and it definitely kind of recurs in the dynamic with the rest of the Kennedy family. Okay, yeah. Jerry and Wayne kind of invite them over for an awkward date.

I don't know if it was explicitly a date, but the twins seem to have thought of it that way. Yeah. They all kind of quietly watch Westerns together. June would later tell Hilton Owls, they were American boys, white boys, good-looking like, do you know that boy, Leo DiCaprio? We take a taxi all in makeup and short skirts and high shoes and wigs and lipstick like ladies, like film stars.

We were trying to entice the boys to make them like us. We wanted to be glamorized, so we got long brown wigs and sunglasses and chewing gum. We spent about three hours getting ready to go out. Whoa. So they're showing up in like celebrity drag a little bit, you know? Yeah, yeah. But like if I know them, probably not getting it quite right and just looking overdressed, you know?

Right, yeah, yeah. So eventually the Kennedys form this strange friendship with the girl that's mainly based in pity. When they hang out, they smoke weed, which I don't even want to think about the quality of marijuana that was available in remote whales in the 80s. Like that can have been great. That's the last. That's where you get worried here.

That's the last place. They're breaking in. Yeah. They're smoking shitty weed. They're smoking shitty weed. I'm from Vancouver. This kind of shit matters to me. I know, I know.

When they drink alcohol, their drink of choice is vodka mixed with brandy. Oh, yeah. Girls. Yeah, I don't know about that. Damn. Okay. I thought you were going to say something like it's lemonade with like a dash of, I don't know, vermouth.

No, vodka, the parents liquor cabinet special, vodka mixed with brandy. Go hard. Go home. Oh, I don't know if I could go that hard. Go home. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough.

They also have a lot of glue. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's not great. But they... It's probably just as good as the weed, but... It's probably better. The girls obviously like getting intoxicated because it makes them loose.

It makes them giggly. It makes them talkative. It lowers their inhibitions, right? And these chicks, these are some high strong girls, man. So I get the appeal of something like that. The boys also seem to see the clearly smitten girls as an opportunity for sexual experimentation. Yeah. That's...

Yeah. Wayne kisses Jennifer at one point, but then backpedals later, he says, quote, black and white didn't go down too big in that part of the world. And kind of based on that, he stops hanging out with the girls so much, but he gets replaced by his 14-year-old brother, Carl, who has a reputation as like a massive horn dog. Whoa. He used to tell me a lot. Yeah.

So he's just like, uh, actually I'm racist. My 14-year-old brother will be... Brother, we'll be taking my place in this... Jesus. ...this exchange. Yeah. So like... Okay.

Like I say, the best term I can use for these people is friends, because that's the way that the twins perceive the interaction, and there does seem to have been in fleeting moments some affection there. But also there's a lot of like really weird, problematic, coercive stuff going down in this dynamic, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So one evening, the girls take their usual taxi to the Kennedy house.

Uh, George, the father tells them to go away and closes the door on them, so naturally they just chill in the driveway for two hours. I mean, if you're all dressed up, you're not just gonna go right back home. I'm just gonna be standing silently somewhere else, or it might as well be here. Um... Drive by party, dude. So eventually George is like, fuck fine, and lets them in to see Carl. They drink together for a while, the taxi arrives to pick them up, and Carl tells them

to send it away saying, I'm gonna take you to paradise. So that night, as the rain pours down around them, they break into a country church, and amongst the still burning candles on the altar, they smoke marijuana, drink brandy, they take off their clothes, and with all the elegance of a drunken teenager, Carl penetrates Jennifer in front of her sister, June. Jennifer notes the occasion in her diary thusly. What the fuck? Dear diary, one of the best days of my sweet life.

I've lost my beautiful virginity to Carl Kennedy. At last. It hurt a lot, but it happened. There was lots of blood. We did it in church. Sorry, God. Your friend, Jenny. Not one of your better entries, Jenny, I have to say.

There's your editor over here. Nah, dude. Okay, we did it in church. Sorry, God is pretty lit. Okay. Fuck. Yeah. Wait, is there any diary entry from June on that?

There's not a diary entry from June, but I can tell you that June was pretty distressed by the fact that these girls who do everything together, everything in unison, and now one of them is a virgin, and not virginity is a construct, like the patriarchy, but one of them is a virgin and one of them isn't, and it's such a weird, electric, dark, strange first sexual encounter, they're with this 14-year-old boy and they're getting fucked up in a church, and it's pissing, and it's pouring rain, pouring pouring rain the entire time, and they've lit some candles on the altar, and they're listening to the radio. Wow, and there's, yeah, there's a lot going on there.

No, there's a lot to unpack, there's a lot to unpack. So later the two girls are listening to the radio together, and a Rolling Stones song comes on, and I don't know what song it is, but it reminds June of the bitter reality that Carl chose Jennifer over her. So she turns off the song, and Jennifer flips out and attempts to strangle June with the chord. The tussle kind of breaks apart, they start drinking, and they go on a walk near a nearby river.

June picks up a stick and starts to get a look like maybe she's going to jab it into Jennifer's eyeball. So at that point, Jennifer threatens that if June kills her, she will haunt June and drive away her husband and destroy all her babies. June shoves Jennifer into the river and holds her head under the surface. Taylor, you're shitting me, this isn't real. This is one of their journal entries. No, this happened, baby.

After a while, they kind of both cut, like, they're struggling in this river, June is trying to hold Jennifer's head underneath. They kind of come to their senses, and they're like hugging and saying like, God help us, I love you, I love you. One week later, they hang out with Carl again, and this time he has sex with June, during which she tells him that she loves him and wants his baby. So now they've both had sex with this guy, Carl Kennedy. One thing I forgot, this is never a great time for this aside, but I forgot to mention

it earlier, so I'll mention it now. Apparently when they were in high school, one of the ways that Jennifer would be possessive of June is she would like point at June and intensely say, you are Jennifer, you are Jennifer, you are Jennifer, and June would respond, I am June, I am June, while crying. Whoa, if my brother ever did that to me. Your poncho, your poncho, no, man, I'm not, what is happening, your poncho, that's wild, yeah. Why?

So this is the twins first experience of what they conceive as love, and they start thinking of it as a forever thing. Carl, being a 14 year old, is not down, and things start to get a bit abusive. He'll beat Jennifer and send her away, which she takes for love. She writes in her diary, my boy Carl, he doesn't know how good he's been to me. I could feel the intense hotness of his eyes slowly studying my body. At that moment, I felt like a very beautiful girl. I knew he was infatuated with me, my looks, and my mysterious style.

At one point, the three of them are hanging out on a bridge, and Carl rips the wig from Jennifer's head and lights it on fire. Whoa, dude, there's so many things in that, like one, don't touch a girl's hair, two, don't light it on fire, like there's, wow. Jennifer saw it as a moment of great, passionate romance. It really, it really, really left an impression on her. She noted it in her diary. Vessely.

I saved all my life, all my speech for Carl. I was in heaven. Carl and I were together. June was far apart, quite alone. The sky became dark. It was a strange night. In its own way, everything was innocent. It was a friendship, more like a romance.

It was my very first experience of love. Which is incredibly sad. The lighting of the wig on Carl? Yes. Here's a different diary entry. This is June on her relationship with Jennifer. Something like magic is happening. I am seeing Jennifer for the first time like she is seeing me.

I think she is slow, cold, has no respect, and talks too much. But she thinks I am the same. We're both holding each other back. She does not want jealousy, or envy, or fear for me. She wants us to be equal. There's a murderous gleam in her eye. Dear Lord, I am scared of her. She is not normal.

She is having a nervous breakdown. Someone is driving her insane. It is me. What? Right? Jeez. But no great romance lasts forever. In the summer of 1981, the Kennedys all head back to America.

Yeah, it's tough because on the one hand, what a shame to deprive these girls of their most treasured, slash only social and romantic outlet. On the other hand, it's Carl. On the other hand, it was a really toxic thing that was happening, right? Yeah, yeah. Kennedys head back to America as they depart. The twins trade them. The twins give them money and a gold Rolex that one of them got for their 18th birthday

for just these weird artifacts like jackets, photographs, locks of the boy's hair, and yeah, yeah, that kind of like they're used toothbrush kind of shit. And the family moves to Virginia, leaving them the twins friendless and yearning for excitement and sensation. Around this time, they start pinching and purging. They spend a lot of, yeah, I think they've always had kind of a, like so much of their body images is reflected back at each other, right? Yeah.

And they're in close quarters. They're young teenagers, whatever. They spend all their money on food and they'll gorge themselves and then they'll throw up. And they begin committing these kind of minor crimes like stealing bikes, vandalizing property, smashing windows, ringing random doorbells. They will call up the police at pay phones and they'll just confess everything and then run away before the cops get to the pay phone. Okay.

Fuck the police. Confuse the police. That's, yeah. Confuse the police. Confuse the fucking Welsh local bodies. Yeah. Listen, system change starts with small steps. It's true.

They start hanging out with the boys at their council estate, but it's a similar thing to their relationship with Carl Kennedy. These kind of young teenage boys trying them out for sexual experiences, treating them as weird curiosities, dynamics full of casual violence, you know. And all the while, the rivalry between the two of them grows more intense. Jennifer writes, she should have died at birth. Cain killed Abel. No twin should forget that.

Every fucking word goes into you like an icicle, hey? That's good. Day good. Their minor crimes of property damage escalate into arson. They burn down a shed. They burn down a tennis court. They break into vandalize and set fire to other buildings like a local school. I think this is kind of interesting because like I said, that experience of Carl lighting

Jennifer's way gone fire was like so heightened for her, right? And so I think it's kind of interesting that they end up kind of becoming firebugs. Yeah. On November 8th, 1981, the twins are discovered by police after breaking into Pembroke Technical Center in the process of dowsing the place with cold start fuel. They're caught red handed and they're placed under arrest. Their diaries provide ample evidence. In one of them, June or Jennifer, I forget who writes something like, I'm going to be

the best arsonist ever. So. Oh, okay. Well, I do think that everyone should journal, but everyone should hide your shit. Get a little lockbox for that. Yeah. Make a code. You already created a language.

Exactly. You could make a code. Come on. Pepsi-Cola is the password. Like, come on. Yeah, done. While they're awaiting trial, they're sent to a local jail called Puckle Church, and that's where they would remain for the next six months.

Wow. Yeah. So as you might imagine, Puckle Church, not great for their mental state. Okay. The name alone. Yeah. I'd be like, no one send me mail. I don't want you to have to write Puckle Church.

On their first night there, they're basically catatonic. An officer literally has to physically go into their cell and manually close their eyes like corpses to put them to bed. Ooh. Yeah. No, I don't want that job. No. No, thank you.

One thing that particularly intensifies is their shared eating disorder. They fall deep into anorexia and bulimia. They start a rotating schedule where one of them would eat all of the meals given to both of them while the other would fast, and then they switch. But they would get into really vicious heated fights about when they would switch. If one of them got thin from fasting, the other would become jealous, obviously. They would also do their kind of shared rituals like one of them would walk around excruciatingly slowly with their arms raised above their head, and then when that twin got tired, they

would slowly switch off and the other twin would start doing it. Wow. And as they had throughout the twins life, all of these neuroses and antics really alienated and threatened both the prison staff and the other inmates. Okay, yeah. If nothing else, the twins used their time in prison to become prolific and vivid diarists. Um, here is a little taste courtesy of June's diary. I blame the daffodils.

I blame the daffodils for the misery and depression that has suddenly been forced upon me. Who wants to hear summary sounds while they're in prison? Who wants to hear summary sounds even when they're free? Not me. I hate summer. The same old outings. Happy people, but are they really happy? Going on long planned holidays?

Turn out to be a disaster and tragic? Children sucking ice cream? Pregnant women wearing large, blousy dresses feeling sticky and hot? Men in shorts and vests? Bare-chested sunshades? Why can't it be winter or at least autumn the whole year round? Do we really need summer? It may seem strange to you.

Here I am, a West Indian girl admitting that she detests summer. Yes, I do hate the crowds rushing to the beach. The sick, almost repulsive sound of the disc jockey on the radio playing records. Damn records, which we'll have to remember sometime in our lives and look back and listen and say, what were you doing that summer? Who were you with that summer of 82? So depressing, isn't it? Whoa, dude.

So that's what Jennifer is thinking when she looks at the daffodils from her prison window? Or June, sorry. Okay, as a quick aside, I'm reading some Otasha Messveg right now. Nice. Have you read her stuff? You gave me Eileen and I read it. Oh, that's right, that's right. And she feels very similar, gotta say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like very dark and like... Neurotic. Neurotic and aware to a certain degree. Yes. But the line of awareness is always kind of confusing. Like as a reader, you're like, wait, do you know? No, you don't.

Straight up. There are some things like when Jennifer is describing, for example, her relationship with Carl Kennedy, you listen and think the words she's using are very beautiful, but she's not seeing the situation for what it really is. But then there are other times where one of the other of them will write something where you're just like, holy shit, that's profound, that's so incisive. Yeah. The fraught relationship between the sisters intensifies.

One night, June, I think, is itching to scrap. And it doesn't matter what it is. I think there's just a fight in the air, you know? And the radio is on. So June leaves over and changes the fucking song. You remember that? The Rolling Stones song that got changed. And it is on.

So June flicks the song. On like Donkey Kong. It is fucking on like Donkey Kong. June flicks on the song and then goes and sits in a chair and looks in the mirror in their cell. And Jennifer comes out, comes from behind her and fucking yanks the chair out from under her. June drops to the ground and picks up the chair and shoves it in Jennifer's face and yells, you're an evil witch. I've always hated you.

And Jennifer replies by chanting, the witch will kill the bitch. The witch will kill the bitch. And June starts strangling Jennifer. It's fucking, everyone pours into their cell and separates them. They have to spend the night in different cells. And in the aftermath, June is left in the cell with the radio. And she listens to Have You Ever Been in Love by Leo Sayer and reflects upon how the lyrics remind her of Jennifer. They call each other Jay, which I think is kind of sweet.

You're going to be right in the word Jennifer or June a lot in your diary, you might as well bring it down to Jay. Right, fair enough. Jay and I are like lovers, a love-hate relationship. She thinks I am weak. She knows not how I fear her. This makes me more weak. I want to be strong enough to split from her. Oh Lord, help me, I am in despair.

Can Jay and I get back together? I really aim to be alone. Yet even as I say this, I am deceiving myself. Can I stand being alone? I need someone to talk to, a friend. Jay's bed is empty. I wonder if she will ring her bell to come back to me. My heart does not beat so fast now.

It only beats fast when Jay is around, always with Jay. So this is the chick where she probably 40 minutes earlier is like, you're an evil witch, I've always hated your guts and I'm going to kill you. Right, right. And I can't, I really can't tell if it's like the bad relationships that they've had with people, with like teachers or medical providers or like the Kennedy boys. Like if that's influencing this relationship, you know, like,

her view of love is based on this really horrific view of love from Carl Kennedy, you know, or is it the other way? I mean, I guess that's always the question, right? We're all to some extent a product of our environments and like put it to you this way. I think obviously had these girls been not from a working class family, not from a black family living in Wales, had access to all of the top child psychs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, obviously their life and their relationship with one another looks a lot different than it does.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. Also, they were in the same cell. Yeah. Okay, okay. And they specifically mentioned it's a bunk bed and I think they had a bunk bed at home too, so it's, they kind of just move their room into their cell. Wow. Yeah, cool. Their diaries from here on out are filled with the most gorgeously crafted monologues

about how the other one deserves to die, about their paranoia that the other is malevolent and evil and out for murder. If one of them wakes up early and the other one doesn't, they interpret it as a twisted game. If one of them starts their period earlier than the other, deliberate psychological warfare. They get really, because all they have in this strange place is each other and they get very, even more so, and they get very, their obsession with one another becomes really, really intense. Yeah, yeah.

Here's some pros from June and I'm sorry that I keep going back to these lengthy quotes, but I'm not going to stop. No, it's nice to hear from them, you know? No, especially because part of why I wanted to incorporate their voices is obviously I really rate their voices. I think they're very compelling writers. But an equally big part of it is that part of the mythos around these girls is that they were voiceless, that they didn't speak, they're the silent twins, and they have a huge amount to say. Yeah, yeah.

This is June on Jennifer. It is a cool evening. Jay is a miserable bitch. How I could kill her. At the moment, we are arguing about nothing. My book? Is she jealous? I want to escape her. One of us is plotting to kill one of us. A thud on the head on a cool evening, dragging the lifeless body, digging a secret grave.

I'm in a dangerous situation, a scheming insidious plot. How will it end? At 19, I want to be an individual, independent from that bitch. I'm an enslavement to her. This creature who lounges in the cell, who is with me every hour of my living soul. What did? Maybe a little separation anxiety? Things are going fine.

Things are going fine. Just fine, sweetie. Peachy at Pucklechurch is the name of this podcast this week. Meanwhile, their trial date keeps getting delayed. Their attorneys are seeking an insanity defense. The twins get evaluated by a psychologist named William Spry, who's given access to their journals from the time of the crime spree. He decides, based on these writings, that these are aggressive and crude girls.

He doesn't inquire into their creative pursuits. He doesn't learn about their relationship with the Kennedys or reduce them to drugs and drink and arson. Ultimately, he decides that in his professional opinion, the twins are psychopaths. Whoa. He talks to personnel at Broadmoor, which is the oldest high-security psychiatric hospital in England. You may have heard about it somewhere else. It's pretty famous as far as psychiatric hospitals go.

Okay. The population there is all male, but Dr. Hamilton, who's one of the psychs from the hospital, is intrigued by the case, and he wants to take the girls on. Uh... No. Again, just kind of maybe another instance of just, like, medical personnel who maybe should have the girls' best interests at heart are instead kind of intaking them as curiosities or opportunities for research.

Right, something to study. It's kind of sucky the way that everyone takes from these girls. So, the defense goes all in on trying to get the girls into Broadmoor, and they pitch it to the twins as being, like, a hotel with a spa and a gym and discos. Okay, no, but okay. You don't think it's gonna be like that? No. Something tells me. No, the all-male psychiatric ward.

The oldest one in England. Yeah. So, there's a lot of anxiety about when this trial is coming. They're specifically really, really dead set on wearing this, like, little outfit that they've put together with, like, a flowery, with flowery skirts, because they dress alike, and a little, like, a little top, and they're like, we want to look fly marching to our fate. Yeah.

And then when the day comes, their parents gave the wrong outfits. They're wearing these, like, sweaters with, like, slacks, and they're both, like, really choked about it. Oh, no! I know. It's such a minor heartbreak. I would be livid if I was, like, literally rotting away in jail, and I was literally just like, if I can do one thing when I fucking stand against the wall, I'll let me leave a beautiful corpse.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. The day of the trial finally comes. Jennifer has fasted more and is thinner, which due notes with silent jealousy. At one point, one of the young defense attorneys graces Jennifer's elbow, and she's like, he's flirting with me. Like, he's undressing me with his eyes. Even on the gallows, super boy crazy.

Nothing comes of this. She's just a horny man. Yeah. She's been in a women's prison for six months, and a hot young lawyer just brushed against her arm. Let her have the moment. An elbow appeared. Yeah. They are tried on 16 joint charges for burglary, theft, and arson.

Here's a sample of one of the charges. On the ninth day, so there's 16 like this. On the ninth day of November 1981, you did enter a certain building, namely the Pembrokeshire Technical College, Jury Lane, Haverford West, steel therein, a pair of scissors, four cassette tapes, a pack of adhesive, three dictating machine cleaning heads, a quantity of envelopes and sweets, and a carrier bag. Okay, okay.

So they're all stuff like that. You broke some windows, you lit a waste paper basket on fire, you took a toy plane, you took some film, stuff like that. And the sentence that they receive for these crimes against humanity is the rest of their lives in a psychiatric hospital. What? Yeah. I mean, the pouring, what was it?

The pouring the gas? The fuel, yeah. The fuel, like that's pretty intense. It is intense, but if you saw the richest, whitest teenage boy in town, you're the cops, and you see them, that's just boys will be boys. Oh, I got into it. No, man, you don't want to pour the fuel right on the paper. You want to pour it around.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So the leap between that and yes, these girls are unusual, but pathologizing them to the point where, and not even, I've been sharing excerpts from these girls' diaries from you, and they're so rich and creative. Right, yeah.

And this guy read their diaries and decided they're aggressive, they're crude, and they are psychopaths. Right, which is not, yeah. So that's like a pathologizing of them for their mental illness, for their race, for their socioeconomic status. I'm sure all of these things are really coming into play, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that's some very serious stuff that happens when you douse

a college with lighter fuel, but also if you're not taking into account their history, if you're not taking into account all of these different elements of who they actually are, then what is the, yeah. Yeah, it's not in any way. I can see the argument of these girls would maybe benefit from some kind of structured environment to get on maybe some meds that they need, or to experiment with ways of being a part that feel normal and natural or therapy.

These girls just need some fucking therapy, but this is a very, you are criminally insane and you must be institutionalized indefinitely. Yeah, yeah. Instead of like, why don't you just live in some guided therapeutic setting? Yeah. The twins themselves were elated by the glamour of the sentence. Oh, okay. Looking on the positive side.

Good. It reminds me a bit of dancer in the dark. Oh God, sorry to do that to you again. I made Josie smoke weed and watched dancer in the dark with me and she tried to leave during a really nerly scene and I'm a piece of shit, so I paused it. I don't remember that. I remember watching dancer in the dark with you, but I don't remember.

Yeah. We should live tweet it. We should live tweet it. That's charming. Very unbranded for us, but it sort of reminds me of, you know, how in that movie Bjork had like really bleak circumstances, but she would go into her head and there would be a musical going on. Yeah, yeah.

That's kind of the vibe of like, they're, they have such like cinematic, romantic, they feel everything so passionately. They are in love, so it must be the greatest love the world has ever known. I'm annoyed by June because she's changing the knob on the radio, so she's a bitch and she wants to kill me, but not if I kill her first. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Everything is just like...

Out of 10. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. June remarked that she would have written the trial better, by the way. She was like, that was boring. If I wrote it, there would have been drugs, sex, beautiful American teenagers. That works. Yeah, yeah.

As they leave the courtroom, a stranger kind of pops up out of nowhere and they think that they're about to get assassinated, but it's just someone taking their picture. Oh. Oh. Yeah, okay. Which is sad, but also like, get down, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they're living, they're living a reality that might be a little different. A little, a little skewed, but not inaccurate. I don't know. Right, yeah. On June 21st, 1982, the twins leave Puckle Church for Broadmoor. Here's June's diary from that day. In a few hours, I shall be driving out of Puckle Church Gates for the last time. I shall be taken further to the land of hope and glory.

There, I shall stand in my flowered skirt and black jacket, aged 19 years. And one day, I will look back on that day, Monday, 21st June, and what will I think? All I will see is my sister and me, as vulnerable as flowers in hell, yet important, flying toward another phase of life. Wow. As vulnerable as flowers in hell. That's good. That's a good line.

That's fucking, like if I'm writing this book, it's not the silent twins, it's flowers in hell. Yeah, yeah, that's good. But she didn't get to wear that flowered skirt and black jacket. No, she didn't. No, she didn't. As I read that, I realized this must be from the day of the trial, not after the trial. Yeah. Never got to wear that.

Damn. That burns. Dude, it was a big deal for them. It was all they were thinking about. Oh, also around, I didn't even mention him because it would be too much to get into. But around this time, the little things that are keeping them happy is June's book, The Pepsi Cola Addict, the self-publisher, has finally published it. Oh, god.

So her book is out. And then Jennifer has a mail order boyfriend. Oh, like a Pimpow boyfriend kind of deal? His name is Peter. They started dating via mail when she was out and then she was in jail and then she was in the institution and they kind of just keep up this correspondence throughout it. And she's like, do you want to marry me? And he's like, maybe.

Like that's the whole thing. Maybe just another letter. Yeah. Wow. Those are good. Those are positive. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's nice that you always got to have an iron in the fire. Yeah. Yeah. So the twins get to Broadmoor and it is not a hotel with spas and discos. No. According to psychologist Tim Thomas, who I mentioned way earlier in the story, they were almost treating the people in their like exhibits. All the promises, like no drug therapy, those were overturned within weeks.

June attempt suicide. Jennifer attacks a nurse. They get separated and reunited, separated and reunited. They're diagnosed with schizophrenia, which doesn't feel right to me. And they're both put on strong cocktails of anti-psychotic medications, which generally bring their creative pursuits to a halt. Yeah, I just can't come out. And that's how it goes for the next 11 years of their lives. 11.

Next, almost 12 years. They share boyfriends. Almost 13. Yeah. They share boyfriends. One of them is a guy named Ron and they ask him, well, what are you here for? And he's like manslaughter. So they go off him a bit.

Jennifer starts dating another inmate named Billy. They make a plan for him to pass his semen along to her in a baggie at a social event between wards so she can get pregnant. Oh, okay. But the plan gets found out and put to a halt. It's a whole thing. Oh. They have a variety of boyfriends over the next decade, arsonists and murderers and such.

Mm-hmm. That's probably healthy. They become known as the Queens of Broadmoor. Okay. Yeah. But they never have sex. And then also, and this is going to sound minor, but the second I tell you, you're going to realize how bad this would fuck with those girls. They found out that they weren't born at 8 a.m. and 8 10, but actually at 8 10 and 8 20.

So it threw their astrological charts all out of whack. Everything they were attributing to Jennifer was actually true of June and Jennifer had to read. And they were all about how they were different. They'd be like, you know, Jennifer is such a bitch because her Saturn's in Gemini. You know what I mean? Yeah. And now they need to, all of it was true about June and Jennifer has to redo the whole thing. So they're both super upset about this.

Oh, no. One notable thing though that happens when they go to Broadmoor is a journalist named Marjorie Wallace that makes contact with them. She becomes interested in their story during their trial. She obtained their, the parents still had all of their diaries. So when she was sniffing around the parents, Aubrey and Gloria were like, yo, why don't you, you can read their diaries if you want. Yeah. And she was really taken with the beauty and creativity of their writing. Yeah.

So she befriended Jennifer and June and she kind of becomes one of their biggest advocates and eventually writes the book that I've been quoting from, The Silent Twins, which is still regarded as the definitive version of the Twins story. And it should be called Flowers and Hell. Flowers and Hell. Yeah. Colon, The Silent Twins. Yeah.

Colon, not so silent now. So late 1992, the Twins are finally facing release from Broadmoor to another program in Wales because they're deemed to have improved, whatever that means. Okay, okay. So knowing that their release is coming up, they become very concerned with how the outside world will receive them in comparison to one another. And they start arguing about which of them should die loudly. They agree that one of them has to go and that whichever of them dies, the other names the kid after her. Whoa.

And around this time Jennifer starts getting sick. Oh no. She's eager to get out, but she's fatigued and just not feeling well, but it doesn't seem to be urgent. She's just sick. Yeah, just tired. General exhaustion sickness, whatever. And on March 9th, 1993, at the age of 29, they are ultimately released from Broadmoor. Okay.

They say goodbye to the staff and on the way out and the van as they leave, Jennifer says, at long last, we're out, and slumsa against June nods off and can't be woken up. They rush her to the hospital where she's pronounced dead of acute myocarditis and inflammation of the heart. She died of a broken heart. She died of a broken heart. According to the attending doctor, it is rare for this to cause the death, but Jennifer had, quote, the most floored case I could imagine, which is very unbranded for Jennifer. Yeah.

No one knows, even her heart disease was the biggest, the best, the most dramatic, you know? Yeah. Wow. No one knows exactly what caused the inflammation. This is a woman who binged and purged and fasted, did drugs in her youth, smoked like a chimney. She was on a million prescriptions. I was going to say, yeah, and who knows, they probably had no idea how those people reacted to each other. Yeah.

The popular retellings of the story, it's painted as Jennifer honoring the twins packed and simply choosing to die so that June could have a normal life. But upon hearing the news, June screamed and was distraught. But after 10 minutes, she became calm. When she finally visited her sister's body, she asked her, why did you have to ruin our big day? The twins story has been captured in documentaries and books. The two rock operas have been created, The Silent Twins in English and Jumel in French. Okay.

I think the twins actually got to see Jumel. I think they got, like, day leave from Broadmoor to go watch it. Good for that. I bet that was fun. Yeah. See, I told you, I was meant to be on stage. Their novels have become infamous in their own right and to this day are prized as rare pieces of outsider art. Ooh.

I was wondering about that. I was like, can you get your hands on the Pepsi Cola addict? Yeah. As of the most recent updates on her life, June still lives in West Wales as a private citizen taking care of her parents. She spent a bit of time in halfway programs, but now lives independently. Wow. At one point, Marjorie Wallace visits her for an update for a new edition of the book, where she finds June wearing fuzzy bear cloth slippers and a t-shirt that says, I'm sexier than this t-shirt.

Good shirt. Great shirt. Great shirt. Yeah, for sure. Merch. Merch booth. She goes by her middle name, Allison, now, and says it brings her more luck than the name June did. She no longer writes.

As she says, she can communicate by talking now. She has not married, but says that if she does, she'd like to marry a black rasta man. Yeah. She's still a bit boy crazy. She flirts with Hilton Alles a bit when he's interviewing her for the story. Oh, good. Oh, cool. Every Tuesday, she visits her sister's grave.

She regards Jennifer's death as an act of sacrifice. I used to miss her, June says. Now I've accepted her. She's in me. She makes me stronger. I accept the fact that she's gone now. That took me five years of grieving, crying all the time. Now my tears are gone.

They all dried up inside my eyes. I don't get lonely now. I've got her, haven't I? I think highly of these women as writers, so here's a poem from Jennifer's diary to close this out. Oh, okay. That too was her laughing, that too was her smiling. Now I am dead, and that too is your crying. Jennifer Gibbons.

Damn. So, that was where my involvement in this story ended, but I've got a happy post script. I was just randomly clicking around to see. I don't know. This was after I- Taylor, you're looking off screen right now. I'm like, is Allison there with you? Come on out, Allison.

She's just here to wave. I didn't want to interview her because I really wanted this to be my version of the story, so bye, Allison. No, just as good. Not just as good. Not as good. But I was just clicking around randomly looking at articles about this, and I think one of them was a review of The Silent Twins.

I don't remember if it was on a book review site or if it was on somebody's blog, but someone, a guy named David had written in the comments, I have a very rare PDF of Allison now, of Allison's book, The Pepsi-Cola Addict. It's super hard to find, but I have a PDF. And if you want it, email me and I'll send it to you. So obviously I was like, yeah. And he got back to me very promptly, very kindly. Thank you, David.

And I now have a PDF copy of The Pepsi-Cola Addict to enjoy. Oh my God. That's not bad, huh? You want it? Yeah. Right? So yes. Yeah.

So yes. And shoot us a line at bittersweetinfamygmail.com if you maybe want to. Because there's no, I don't think there's any, the book is long, long out of print. It was printed by a Welsh Vanity publisher in the 80s, right? Yeah. So I don't think there's any way to monetize it. If she is, listen, if this lady sets up a GoFundMe, I'll kick her a couple bucks. I know.

Or gets in contact with us and lets us know so that we can kick you a couple bucks. Yeah. Finally, someone told my story the way it was meant to be told. That French rock opera or whatever. Yeah. Holy small. Damn, dude. What do you say to a story like that?

Creative writing education is important. It is. Imagine if they had a dope creative writing class where they could just like write that all out. Oh, an outlet. It's, I think it might be a medication thing and also like a trauma thing and whatever, but like Hilton Alice even says to her, I wish she would write more. And she's like, oh, I don't really write anymore.

But you've got me thinking maybe I'll dust off the diary and give it a spin. And it's so sad because like the forest of creativity was in bloom there. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It was so creative. It's sad to encounter like such a talent, such a gift and see the way that it was kind of stamped down because of like racism, the failure of like every conceivable institution,

the educational system failed them, the legal system failed them, the medical system. The medical system. You know what I mean? And I got, I was really moved by this story. Yeah. I was really moved by this story. I, because it's a fascinating story and it's not at all what you think. And it's not at all, it's not at all what I thought going in.

It's, they're so much richer. They're not just these idiosyncratic twins who move really slow and don't really talk much. They're, it's so, it's such a more interesting, sad, important story than that. And then also like by approaching this story as a bit of a curio, like in what way was I complicit in that othering of these girls? Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Well, and I think too, like there's always like a threshold maybe of understanding. And then once, once it kind of crosses that line, then it's like, they're the silent twins. Yeah. Then it's this crazy hooky story. Yeah. Well, look at these weird twins. One of them might have been evil. You know what I mean?

That's the way that it sounds better. Yeah. Yeah. But to be fair, it does sound like June and Jennifer, like they understand that threshold and they, they understand that over the topness. Yeah. And that's part of their creative practice is they're both drama queens. Yeah.

It's to engage that. Yeah. Like, like turn it on its head and go crazy with it. You know, there's a strange like blending because their storytellers, this, their story, the story told about them. Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's just, it's strange, strange.

I'm so glad that you read so much from their diaries though. That's the story. I think that is, that is it right there is that they are, they are telling a story and they are understanding the world in a certain way. Yeah. That is probably gets overlooked a lot. For sure. And it's obviously really, really important to have their perspectives and stuff to not

just have us be talking about them like they're not in the fucking room when really, you know, this is. When Allison is there. Exactly. Hey, I'm almost on the podcast. We can hang out after. But yeah, no, it's, it's, I don't know. This story really haunted me.

I think it's going to stay with me for a long, long time. Yeah. I've been just reading passages of these girls' writings to just random captives who come over to my apartment, you know. Yeah. That's dope. So I'm, I'm really grateful that so much of their creativity has been preserved. And I'm really grateful that I've had this kind of totally lucky opportunity to actually

get the Pepsi Coladdict. I can't wait to read that. I'm going to fucking. I know. I'm going to get some Pepsi to read that. I'm going to crack a Pepsi. Good. I'm going to, I'm going to drill deep down into the Earth's core.

Yeah. Slurp out some Pepsi. Yeah. And I'm going to read this book. Cool. I love it. And I, I don't know their story is really like the confusion and pain of being a teenager. I don't know.

That came through very loud to me at least. Like that's, that's like, man, do you wish you had a twin? I'm really thinking about this. Yeah. Sure. And credits. Do. Do.

Do. Do. Do. Exactly. Okay. And credits. Do. Do.

Do. Do. Do. Do. Do. Do. Do. Do.

Exactly. Okay. Thanks to Taylor for that story, and to all of you for listening in. If you want more infamy, we release episodes every other Sunday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at bittersweetinfamy.com. Stay sweet. The sources that I used this week were the book The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace, as well as the article We Too Made One by Hilt Announce in The New Yorker on November 27, 2000.

The song you're listening to is Teastream by Brian Steele. Big out, Samanda. Yeah, good luck getting those two babies out of your body.