The identical twins derailing a French murder trial

A scenario often featured in popular culture and hypothetical discussions has come true and left investigators baffled.

A double murder trial in France has reached a “bizarre legal quagmire” because two of the suspects are identical twins and so have the same DNA, said The Connexion.

Open question

The 33-year-old brothers are among five defendants on trial in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris, accused of a double murder and several attempted killings in 2020. They deny the charges. Although both twins are suspected of conspiring to plot the double murder, the DNA on an assault rifle used in one of the later gun battles could only be from one of them.

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Identical twins develop from the same sperm and a single fertilised egg that splits during pregnancy, so they have exactly the same DNA, making forensic identification difficult. A police officer told the court that forensic experts weren’t able to tell which of the brothers had been conclusively implicated. “Only their mother can tell them apart,” said an investigator.

Although advanced genetic testing techniques can sometimes help distinguish between identical twins, experts concluded that the amount of blood available in this case is insufficient, so the estimated €60,000 cost may not be justified.

Adding to the sense of confusion, police said that the twins frequently share clothes and use the same phone numbers and ID documents. So prosecutors are being forced to try other methods to establish who fired the gun, including phone tracing, interviews and wiretapping.

But for now the “crucial question” of who fired the recovered weapon “remains an open one”, said Sky News.

Onerous costs

In 2013, French police investigating a series of rapes in Marseille were similarly stymied after they traced DNA evidence to twins but couldn’t establish which one was responsible.

“It’s a rather rare case for the alleged perpetrators to be identical twins,” chief investigator Emmanuel Kiehl told France 24, and the cost of sufficient tests to distinguish the DNA, estimated to be up to €1 million, was too “onerous”.

A breakthrough came when investigators eventually determined that some victims reported that the attacker had a speech impediment, which matched a condition caused by partial deafness in one of the twins, who eventually confessed to all the counts.

No such breakthrough has occurred in the current case, though. The trial continues, with the court expected to reach a decision in late February.