The Cold Room

Author’s Note

When I began the voyage of writing this novel, I was captivated by the thought of two men, separated soon after birth, brought up in two vastly different households, yet both developing sociopathic tendencies, finding themselves compelled to kill. The trick, of course, was to have identical crimes on two continents, with the dates staggered so it appeared that the same person was committing the crimes. Evidence and forensics would also point to a single perpetrator.

The basic premise of the book is so fantastical, so horrific, that I was immediately forced to reconsider. Identical-twin serial killers, killing wholly independent of one another, with practically identical crime scenes? Couldn’t happen.

Yet the further I delved into the research, the more I realized that not only could it happen, in this particular scenario, it could happen just as I’ve portrayed. Extensive nature-versus-nurture studies have been done on identical twins. Those studied show over and over again that twins raised separately show an incredible propensity to have very, very parallel lives. IQ tests administered show results that would mimic the same person taking the test twice. Career paths and job choices are eerily similar, as there seems to be an epigenetic predisposition toward skills and interests.

For instance, take the bizarre case of the “Jim Twins.” Jim Lewis and Jim Springer had been separated at birth and raised in different families. They didn’t meet until 1979, thirty-nine years after they were separated. Jim Lewis had been searching for his brother for many years, and when the two first met, Lewis described it as “like looking into a mirror.” They were more than just identical in appearance; they had an astounding array of coincidental behaviors and life actions, what any novelist would be lambasted for using in a story.

They’d both had dogs growing up named Toy. They both married a woman named Linda, then divorced and married a woman named Betty. They named their firstborn sons James Allen and James Alan. They both bit their nails, suffered from insomnia and migraines. They vacationed at the same Florida beach, drove the same kind of car, drank the same beer, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, followed NASCAR but hated baseball, left love notes for their wives, made doll furniture in their basements. And in a coincidence too great to be anything but reality, they both died on the same day, of the same illness.

They had differences as well, in their speech patterns, how they wore their hair. But the major components of their lives were more than just similar; they were exactly the same.

This seems unreal, but it’s true, documented and impossible to refute. There are many more examples in the Minnesota Twin Studies of identicals raised apart who have eerily parallel lives. The earlier the children are separated, the more alike they turn out to be.

The moment I read about the Jim Twins, I knew Gavin and Tommaso had come to life.

But the story turned darker when I realized their preferred method of killing.

Necrophilia is a taboo subject, one of the darkest, basest actions a man, or woman, can engage in. It disturbed me to no end, gave me nightmares and writer’s block, and I often thought of abandoning the topic and staying with something less…disturbing.

But when I stumbled across a Web site that discussed the use of narcotics in rape and the subsequent diagnosis of necrophilia, I knew I needed to explore that territory. It was difficult, but with fascinating aspects. Anytime you have a killer who goes off the beaten path, who gets intimate with their victim either through sex or with a specific hand weapon, like a knife, the cases are going to be a bit more bizarre.

The extensive research led me to a few conclusions. Yes, it would be possible, perhaps even likely to have identical-twin serial killers, especially if those men were separated soon after birth. Yes, their pathological growth would parallel one another. In this case, I felt it too horrific to have two killers working independently of each other and chose to have the alpha twin guiding the beta. It’s one of the things that allowed me to sleep at night.

Many of the Louise Wise Services’ twin separation psychological studies won’t be released to the public until 2066. There is something in those reports. Something that the myriad psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and other doctors involved in the studies didn’t want their subjects to know. Were they hiding their own guilt at separating children who should have been together? Did the testing go awry? Did they find the key to our evolution, or that nature trumps nurture? Vice versa? The questions abound.

Whether they prove or disprove nature versus nurture, for the purposes of this work of fiction, I’ve chosen to think like a mystery writer and assume they are hiding a bombshell in the reports, a secret so inflammatory that they don’t want anyone to know.

Perhaps there is a real-life Tommaso and Gavin among their study subjects. Perhaps genetics are unreliable, and our environment plays the largest role in determining our outcomes. Or maybe, just maybe, there is a predisposition to kill. A killer gene.

With that in mind, I’ve done my best not to strain credulity too much. I hope you’ll forgive a writer her overactive imagination.