Criminal defense lawyers have long counseled their clients that, “unless we can show you have an evil twin,” we are likely to lose. Well, that is precisely the defense in a English case where a twin was falsely arrested for bestiality. Police later concluded that DNA evidence belonged to his twin brother.
The police were investigating the assault and killing of sheep by a man who left clothes strewn around a field. They then discovered that he has a twin brother and the DNA sample could have come from either man. Eventually, they arrested the evil twin.
Unfortunately for the defendant in another English case, Bernann McKinnley cannot claim a twin but appears to be claiming a virtual clone of herself.
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OS:
so she had the ovaries of a twin she absorbed during gestation?
A similar problem exists with DNA tests on chimeras. Those are the result of multiple zygotes that combined. A person who is their own twin, and have multiple DNA signatures. There was a famous case involving a chimera [Lydia Fairchild], and the TV crime show CSI did an episode on the problem as well. The title of that episode was “Bloodlines.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild
What’s most disturbing here? The bestiality, the notion that he’d let his brother swing for the crimes, or the fact that he didn’t want to leave a living witness for fear that one of the sheep might ‘finger him’?
I thought twins had identical DNA? That is one weird story.
The evil twin’s DNA was on the sheep but the good twin’s was on the black helicopter. I never bought that story about aliens and our herbivores.
I think John Edwards needs this defense about now. Nightline should be fun tonight.