The Silent Twins

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In this episode, I walk you through a true crime episode, sharing the real-life story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, popularly known as the silent twins, based on their unique mute nature. I describe their speech impediment, challenges they faced growing up, and how the poor understanding of their neurodiversity led up to a rather tragic end.
Once a month like today, I will discuss a true crime series on people who have neurodiversity. Today's episode focuses on "The Silent Twins" , by June and Jennifer Gibbons, who were born on the 11th of April 1963 to Aubery and Gloria Gibbons. Growing up, it was observed that both of them could hear and understand people but had a speech impediment that made their words jumbled. Surprisingly, while it got more difficult for others to understand them, they could understand each other perfectly. By school age, their speech was almost completely unintelligible but they had developed a type of idioglossia such that the sound and formation of words were completely their creation.
This phenomenon is often referred to as twin speech because it is commonly associated with twins. Because of this, added to their skin color, the twins were bullied at school. This isolation got worse as by middle school age, they only communicated with each other and their younger sister. In letters to their teachers, the girls blamed each other for their language, and after much effort and therapy, the twins were sent to separate boarding schools, hopefully, to encourage communication with others. Unfortunately, this rather put them in a catatonic state. Their story titled "the Pepsi Cola Addict" was self-published while none of the other stories were published. Getting to their late high school years, they received a social welfare check, and they began to spend on drugs and alcohol which led them to petty crimes with no official prosecution. This was until the age of 18 when they started setting fires to establishments in their town, which June documented in her diary.
The lack of understanding of their neurodiversity caused them to be treated as a strange phenomenon rather than treating them with consideration and encouragement, allowing them to lead meaningful lives. They decided that whoever lived must start speaking and live normally. In the end, it was screed that Jennifer would die. On the day they were released from the Broadmoor hospital, Jennifer went into a coma and passed away at a hospital from what was identified as "Acute Myocarditis". June's response to this was that

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Music: “She Royalty” by Amaro & “Whistle” by Lukas Got Lucky

Chapters

1. The Silent Twins (00:00:00)

2. About today's true crime series episode (00:00:40)

3. The origin story of June and Jennifer Gibbons; the silent twins (00:01:00)

4. A final failed attempt to treat the girls. (00:04:17)

5. How the girls got into a life of crime. (00:08:27)

6. The unfortunate impact of misdiagnosing the neurodiversity of the twins. (00:12:06)