On this afternoon of September 5, 1977, New York’s Indian summer lived up to its reputation. In the shadow of the skyscrapers of 5th Avenue, a cluster of yellow taxis drop off their passengers under the gilded Plaza Hotel. On the opposite sidewalk, at the corner of 59th Street, Kathy Seckler, 16, extracts herself from the dampness of a subway entrance with her friend Dana. The two teenagers are overwhelmed with excitement. “I couldn’t sleep a wink all night. Do you realize, Dana, I may have a hidden twin! exclaims Kathy, blond mane and cigarette in the corner of her lips.
The day before, the young girl from New Rochelle, north of the Big Apple, had the surprise of her life. A friend of Dana, randomly crossed, swore to him to know his perfect double. A girl of the same age, named Lori Pritzl (on the left in the photo), also residing in the suburbs of New York.
After retrieving her number and rushing to the nearest phone, Kathy almost faints: on the line, a strangely familiar voice confirms that she was born on September 13, 1960 and that she was adopted. Exactly like her. “We are probably twins”, conclude the two teenagers, struck by the news. They decide to meet the next day.
“Why weren’t we told anything? »
2:55 p.m. In a handful of minutes, Lori’s arrival will solve the mystery. Kathy lights another cigarette and looks around. Wearing a loose t-shirt, a ponytail and a sunny smile, Kathy’s double splits the crowd in her direction. A double with the same blond hair, the same blue-gray eyes, the same pearly white skin and the same slender figure. No doubt. It’s her. It’s Lori. Their relationship is obvious.
The two sisters embrace in a silence punctuated by sobs. ” How is it possible ? Why weren’t we told anything? gasps Kathy, between giggles and tears. “Looks like we’ve been the subject of a horrible science experiment,” Lori replies. For hours, the twins go back to the film of their lives between two uncontrollable embraces.
After their first meeting in 1977, Kathy (right) and her twin sister, Lori, tried to make up for lost time (here in 1986). Personal collection/DR
When their biological parents abandon them at birth, Kathy and Lori are entrusted by social services to a New York adoption agency, Louise Wise Services. Despite its good reputation, the latter was, at the time, persuaded by two researchers to conduct an experiment with more than questionable ethics: placing orphaned twins in two separate families, and observing their development at regular intervals, throughout their childhood.
At least ten pairs of infants were thus separated from the cradle between 1960 and 1969. “The objective was to analyze how different upbringings can affect children with the same genetic heritage, explains Nancy Segal, a psychologist from Los Angeles who revealed the affair in a recent bestseller, “Deliberately Divided”. Twins are therefore excellent subjects for study, since any difference between them is more likely to be explained by the environment in which each grows up. »
Research of the same kind had already been carried out in the past, but always a posteriori, that is to say on already adult subjects. The Louise Wise Agency experiment was the first to happen in real time, hiding the truth from children and adoptive parents. They were just told that the toddler they were caring for was part of a routine developmental study.
“The basic rules of this kind of experience have not been respected”
Throughout their youth, Kathy and Lori receive visits from mysterious scientists. Arriving unexpectedly, psychiatrists ask them a few questions, make them do written tests, photograph them, then leave without giving an explanation. For nearly fifteen years, researchers have accumulated mountains of data. But these will never be exploited.
“Because of the incompetence of these researchers and their unbridled ambition, the basic rules of this kind of experiments were not respected, regrets Nancy Segal. Some separated twins have not even been seen! No formal scientific study was ever published, and the data has since been placed under seal at Yale University until 2065, likely because the researchers feared legal action. »
In the early 2000s, the psychologist manages to find Dr. Peter Neubauer, one of the managers of this program. Despite his advanced age, he did not express the slightest remorse. He died shortly afterwards. As a result of the amateurishness of the child psychiatrist and his team, the sordid experiment nearly fails on several occasions. Instead of placing the twins far enough from each other to avoid chance encounters, they all end up within the New York metropolitan area.
Kathy and Lori grew up just 15 miles apart
Kathy and Lori thus grew up only 24 km apart. Barry, Kathy’s childhood friend and now husband, remembers running into Lori at a family reunion. “It was 1971, we were 10 years old, my mother and Lori’s adoptive mother were cousins! I was speechless for twenty minutes at so many similarities. They not only had the same features, but also the same facial expressions and the same character. It was dizzying. The next day, I went to see Kathy to ask her if she had a sister. She assured me no, and we moved on. »
A few years earlier, the two pairs of adoptive parents had also heard of these strange similarities and discovered the pot of roses. But the Louise Wise agency had then convinced them to keep silent vis-à-vis Kathy and Lori. Did they judge that it was already too late to turn back? The rest of the story seems to confirm this hypothesis.
“After our first meeting, Lori and I naturally tried to make up for lost time,” says Kathy today, with whom we spoke by videoconference. Aged 62, she still lives in the suburbs of New York. “The more time we spent together, the more we found we had in common. We both danced and loved to draw. We had the same musical tastes, played the guitar and shared a passion for sport. Our genes had, in a way, maintained the bond between us. It was fascinating,” she recalls, moved.
“In the end, we never managed to develop a real brotherly bond”
The twins celebrate their 17th birthday together and meet their respective adoptive families. Five years later, they track down their biological parents and visit them in California. But an implacable reality gradually catches up with them: Kathy and Lori may be twins, but they don’t get closer. Having become a fitness instructor and a legal assistant respectively, they now live a two-hour drive from each other, see each other little and maintain a checkered relationship.
“We never managed to develop a real brotherly bond because we didn’t grow up together,” sighs sadly Kathy, who fell into depression and dropped out of school a few months after learning about Lori. We had different families and friends, different upbringings… A form of natural rivalry between us gradually appeared among the twins which, having never lived together, we weren’t always able to manage well. This is the tragic side of this case. We were meant to be together, but never could. These scientists stole a part of our lives. »
Triplets separated by the agency meet in turn
Other Louise Wise guinea pigs have paid an even heavier price. Three years after Kathy and Lori, triplets separated by the agency discover, in turn, their respective lives. Two of them attended the same university, where the students kept confusing them.
The third then came forward following press articles telling their story. After having widely publicized their incredible reunion, the three men also ended up seeing their relations stretch and developed significant psychological disorders. So much so that one of them ended up committing suicide.
Fitness instructor Kathy (right) now lives two hours away from paralegal Lori (left). Personal collection/DR
“Many victims are very bitter because we played with their lives, explains Nancy Segal. This is all the more true since these children were adopted. However, adoption sometimes makes people more vulnerable and lonely. Having a biological brother or sister by their side would have allowed them to become stronger and to avoid certain accidents of life. Some have considered filing a complaint against the researchers and the Louise Wise agency. But they had to give up.
“Such an experiment was legal because no specific law prohibited it, but it is nonetheless a serious ethical fault,” concludes the psychologist. A fault of which Kathy and Lori will continue to bear the consequences until their death. But for nothing in the world would they erase that day of September 1977 in the heart of Manhattan, suspended outside of time. “This will go down as one of the most important days of my life,” Kathy said with a tender smile, next to her husband Barry. Having a brother or a sister remains a magnificent gift of life. »
2023-07-16 11:10:00
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