Evil Twins: Chilling True Stories of Twins, Killing and Insanity (St. Martin's True Crime Library) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "One brother was a saint but his identical twin was a sinner..." (more)
Key Phrases: twin doctors, dead twin, Betty Wilson, Wolverine Lake, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

They give a whole new meaning to the phrase "Dead Ringers"

Identical twins, with the exact same genetic information, are a fascinating study in human behavior. It is a known fact that when separated at birth, they will often end up with very similar lives, without ever having met one another. So it seems to follow that if one twins turns out to be a "bad seed," the other will also go to the dark side. the shocking stories in Evil Twins prove this to be the case time and time again. And even more astounding are stories of twins turning upon each other in furious rivalries that may date back to the womb. Her is just a sampling of the compelling true stories about evil twins:

Sins of the mothers: Harvard-educated chemical engineer Jane Hopkins stabbed her two young children to death before killing herself-six years after her twin sister Jean had tried to poison her own two children...

My brother's killer: Identical twins Jeff and Greg Henry were close as brothers could be, inventing their own language and often exchanging identities. But they grew up to become violent alcoholics, and on one fateful binge, Jeff turned on his own twin brother and shot him in the heart with a shotgun...

Loathsome Lotharios: Handsome, charming twin brothers George and Stefan Spitzer went to Hollywood to become famous actors. But their movie-star good looks never landed them any parts-except in the lurid home movies they shot of themselves raping the unconscious women they doped up on "Roofies"...

Evil twins: Double the deadliness...with eight pages of shocking photos!

About the Author

English-born John Glatt is the author of more than ten books and has over twenty-five years of experience as an investigative journalist in England and America. He divides his time betweeen New York and London.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312968892
• ISBN-13: 978-0312968892
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #429,712 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Subject Matter Gone Horribly Wrong, June 18, 2008

By	Coyote - See all my reviews

This was one book in a grab bag lot of used true crime that I got in an auction. I'm glad I didn't buy it new, since after reading it I'd rather not contribute to the author's pocket book with royalties.

The subject matter the author chose was interesting and I was hoping for some psychological insight to think about. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The only reason I gave this book two stars instead of the one the author deserves for his writing is that I did manage to scour some interesting tidbits from the facts here and there and others may well do the same, since several of these cases are not well publicized.

The author almost immediately establishes himself as an unreliable narrator by choosing to fictionalize many scenes, peppering them with information he cannot possibly know. As a reader, this strikes me as a ploy to keep the reader from guessing he has not done much original research on the cases by simulating knowledge. My impression was that this book was lifted piecemeal from media coverage.

To further add insult to his subject matter, he not only fictionalizes the scenes, taking unforgivable liberties, he over indulges in adverbs and adjectives, making the tragedies he's describing remind me of a Monty Python farce.

Rather than continue my little diatribe, I'll let the author kill potential sales himself with a quote taken from the book:

"Her eyes blazed as she walked into the bedroom with the knife hidden behind her.

"'Can you come downstairs for a second, honey?' she called gently..."

Skipping forward a paragraph, as she gets her young son down to the kitchen, the author continues with what appears to be glee, letting loose with some of the worst prose I've ever seen slathered on a page.

"The boy screamed as he saw the flash of the long steel knife she was holding.

"'No, Mom! No, Mom!' he shouted as his mother began stabbing him.

"Clee screamed in pain as she plunged the knife into his chest and the blood spurted. He began running away...Jane chased him out of the kitchen and into the backyard as he desperately pleaded with her to stop.

"Finally, his mother cornered him against the garden wall and began thrusting the long knife into his throat and chest. She kept plunging it in again and again until his anguished cries turned to whimpers, finally stopping altogether. The tears rolled down her face as she dragged her son's blood-soaked body back into the kitchen and left him on the floor."

Keep in mind that this scene describes the behavior of individuals who did not survive to tell the story. While it's entirely possible to track the progress of the murder from the kitchen to the garden with forensics, there is no way to know what was said, if she cried or even if she concealed the knife at all, or lured him from upstairs where he was "reading a fairy-tale book" to his sister as the author alleges, because no one present in the house that day survived to report it.

If the author enjoys evoking the mental image of a small child spraying his life's blood all over his mother and screaming in the agony of death, more power to him.

Myself, I find this sensationalizing abhorrent and I believe it totally undermines the value this book potentially had when it was originally conceived. It leaves me with the impression that the author has a lot in common with the "evil twins" he writes so gleefully about.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Creepy but still has a few flaws., July 7, 2007

By	Tina "retail queen" (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews

I bought this book for two reasons. First, I'm going to school to study criminology so I thought it would be interesting to not only read about weird murder cases but also the psychology behind it. Second, I'm a twin so I thought this book would be a double bonus.

So what's to like about this book? First, unlike some other reviewers, I like that this book is made up of 12 short stories rather than one big story. Second, most of the stories were very interesting and quite a few of them had me shocked. Third, the 8 pages of pictures were a nice bonus (although if you don't like looking at gory pictures, I'd skip over them because one in particular shows a dead man with a rather large bullet hole in his chest).

And what's not to like? I understand that it may be hard to come up with a ton of good stories on "evil twins" but there were a few in this book that weren't all that interesting. Rather, I SHOULD say that they had the potential to be interesting but some were too short or lacked a lot of substance. Second, if you care about the actual writing, there were a couple of things I noticed. First, as another reviewer pointed out, the writer mixes up names. Second, although I'm sure the author was just trying to make the stories sound more interesting, the writer suggests things that happened (and I say suggest because if all of the victims associated died, there's no way of knowing exactly what happened). With true stories, I prefer to hear about actual facts rather than suggestions.

Overall, this book contains quite a few interesting stories. If the flaws that I stated above were fixed, I would've given this book 4 stars instead.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book is definite keeper., August 2, 1999

By A Customer

I read this book in one sitting. I was mesmerized by the content and the depth of the various stories. It was amazing to me how similar a lot of the twins were in regards to the behavoir pattern. I'll definitely be reading it again. The author has a real way of sucking you into the lives of the twins. I just wanted more information. It was a very good book. I could not put it down!!!!!!