'Three Identical Strangers': How triplets separated at birth became the craziest doc of 2018

Patrick Ryan | USA TODAY | 8:35 am EDT June 29, 2018
Bobby, David, and Eddy’s spent the first 19 years of their lives not knowing they were triplets. Their story of separation by an adoption agency is even more sinister than it appears.

Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized the origins of the study of identical siblings. The experiment was conducted by the Child Development Center in New York, which later merged with the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services.

NEW YORK – Tim Wardle wants you to know as little as possible about his twisty new documentary.

"The hardest thing about publicity is that it's a weird paradox: I need to promote the film, but the more cold people go in, the better," Wardle says of "Three Identical Strangers," which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January. "It's really hard to sell this film without giving away too much." 

That more people don't already know the bizarre true story behind "Strangers" (in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, before expanding wider) is surprising in itself. The doc follows Robert Shafran, who in 1980 at age 19, went to his first day at community college, where he was repeatedly mistaken for another student, Eddy Galland. He contacted Galland, only to find that both were adopted, shared the same July birthday, and were actually identical twins. 

A photo of Eddy Galland, David Kellman and Robert Shafran from documentary 'Three Identical Strangers.'

From there, the saga only gets crazier: After reading a newspaper article about the brothers and seeing their striking resemblance to himself, David Kellman reached out to Galland's mother to say that he might be their triplet. Indeed, he was adopted from the same Louise Wise Adoption Agency in New York. A media circus ensued. 

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"I think it's one of the diminishing number of stories that exist in this preinternet era where the people are still alive to talk about what happened, but it’s not been widely circulated," Wardle says. "Now, it would be viral."

Wardle, who is British, hadn't heard about the brothers until their story was brought to production company Raw, where he worked as head of development. As it turns out, there had been multiple attempts by three different TV networks in the '80s and '90s to make a documentary about the subject, all of which were allegedly shut down by the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services. 

Eddy, David and Bobby gained nationwide attention after discovering they were triplets at age 19.


"They made it a condition of the adoption, like, 'This boy is already signed up to be a part of this normal childhood development study. We would really like it to continue,' " Wardle says. "They didn’t say you have to do it, but it was implied that if you don’t, you won’t get the kid."

It's estimated that anywhere from five to 21 sets of twins and triplets participated in the study without their knowledge, although exact details about its findings are scant: Before lead psychiatrist Peter Neubauer's death in 2008, he had the records sealed in archives at Yale University, unavailable to the public until 2065. ("The Twinning Reaction," a documentary about other siblings involved in the experiment, premiered last year.) 

Although roughly 10,000 pages of the study have been released since the events of the film, they're so heavily redacted that "it's hard to work out what's true and what isn't," Wardle says. "There's so much mystery that still exists." 

Through interviews with the brothers and their families, "Strangers" explores their wildly different lives and the ultimately tragic toll the discovery took on them. It also raises questions about the importance of nature versus nurture in a child's development, which Wardle witnessed firsthand when he and his wife had a baby during the doc's production. 

"When we were making the film, I would flip back and forth every interview about which was more powerful, nature or nurture," Wardle says. "Going in, I was very much on the side of nurture: Kids are born a blank slate and it's how we raise them. So I was shocked by just how powerful nature is, and how much personality they arrive with when they come into the world. By the end of it, I had come around with a much more balanced perspective."

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Originally Published 11:29 am EDT June 26, 2018
Updated 8:35 am EDT June 29, 2018
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