The case of the twins who stopped talking and ended up in a psychiatric hospital

They inspired a movie, a hit song, they became friends with one of London's best-known gangsters and, although the Gibbons sisters They could talk, for years they only did it among themselves.

At 19, twins June and Jennifer also became the youngest female patients at Broadmoor, the most famous high-security psychiatric hospital in the United Kingdom, which housed criminals such as Charles Bronson and serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, nicknamed the Yorkshire Strangler.

Now, for the first time, June – the twin who is still alive – told her story to the BBC, in her own words.

“We had a speech impediment. Our parents couldn't understand a word we said, no one understood, so we stopped talking” she told the BBC podcast, June: Voice of a Silent Twin.

“Then we were ridiculed and bullied. It was a feeling of despair, desolation, of being let down by everyone, hated and made to feel horrible.”

“It was almost like a story of horror, mystery and intrigue, ending in tragedy. We were trying all these things to try to get help. We didn't know how it would end.”

The silence

The story began in Yemen, in 1963, where the twins were born. Their parents were from Barbados, but settled in Wales, because the girls' father worked for the Royal Air Force.

June, now 60, says they both wanted to integrate into their new rural community, where they were the only black family.

“I thought, 'I can be normal,'” June recalls. “But it all faded away. I must have lost confidence, maybe it was a look, a gesture or someone said something, I just shut up. I was back to square one.”

Psychologist Tim Thomas helped them. He recalls that the twins suffered bullying, which led them to become “electively mute.”

The sisters were separated with the intention that they would integrate and be able to communicate with others.

One sister was transferred to a boarding school and the other remained closer to home, but June says she stopped eating and talking to people during that time, so the experiment was abandoned.

Bad companies

After finishing school at age 16, the twins felt more isolated than ever in “their little prison” of their bedroom, and that's when their story took a turn.

At age 18, aspiring writers felt that youth was “passing them by,” and so they began spending time with guys they knew from school in Wales who were not good company. That's what ultimately led them to end up at Broadmoor.

“They taught us how to sniff glue, smoke cigarettes and drink vodka out of the bottle,” June recalls.

“We were both crazy, beyond help. So from becoming writers, we started destroying the city… vandalizing places”

“We were breaking windows, setting things on fire and saying, 'Come and get me if you can.' We were trying to do things to try to get help.”.

Newspapers at the time reported “a five-week crime spree,” in which young women burned down a local tractor store, broke into a university and stole supplies.

“(The police) read our diaries, and there was our confession, that's how they caught us,” June admits.

Their parents, Aubrey and Gloria – who are described as “lovely and very hospitable” – had no idea about this behavior of their daughters and the problems they were having with the police.

Heading to Broadmoor

When the sisters (who were 19 at the time) were in prison awaiting trial, a psychiatrist assessed them and recommended they be transferred to Broadmoor Hospital, under the Mental Health Act.

“He told us that it was a hospital for people like us, that we were psychopaths,” June remembers.

'There's nothing wrong with me,' I told myself, but then the psychiatrist told me: 'There are jobs you can do there, there are parties, discos.' And I thought, 'This is going to be great.'”

“We were excited to go to Broadmoor. “We were too young to understand.”

At trial, the twins agreed to plead guilty on the advice of their lawyer, but journalist Marjorie Wallace, who reported on their case, recalls that important information was omitted from the girls' diaries.

There was evidence of arson, but those who tried them “didn't know that before setting the fire, they had checked to make sure no one was in the building,” Wallace says.

Living among murderers

June says they were expecting a sentence of about six months, but the judge committed them to the notorious Broadmoor institution for an indefinite period, based on psychiatric reports.

It was then when they began to share their days with the most dangerous criminals in the United Kingdom.

“My first boyfriend was there for armed robbery,” June notes. “Jennifer's boyfriend had killed two women.”

“I saw the Yorkshire Ripper eating a burger on the other side of the field and he looked like he was looking at me. I thought he might get closer so I didn't want to look at him.”

June also remembers her meeting with the well-known mobster Ronnie Kray. “He came over to my table, and he took my hand and kissed it saying, 'Hi June, I've been hearing things about you.' “We used to get Christmas cards and birthday cards from Ronnie.”

Pedophile former TV presenter Jimmy Savile was hired to chair a task force to shore up work at Broadmoor, and was given his own set of keys.

June does not remember her encounter with Savile, who was later revealed to have been one of the UK's most prolific sex offenders, but Marjorie Wallace does.

“He came to our table, looked at the two girls, pointed and said to June 'I'll have you first' and then to Jennifer 'You'll be second,'” she says.

“June and Jennifer looked at me in shock and said, 'and they thought we were the crazy ones.'”

While locked up, the twins continued to write both fiction and poetry.

Goodbye to a sister

After years of correspondence with the Ministry of the Interior, The twins were eventually transferred to a low
er security hospital in 1993.11 years after they joined Broadmoor.

But there was a tragic turn for the sisters during their transfer.

June thought her sister was joking when she said, “I think I'm going to die soon.” “As we got on the minibus, Jennifer said to me, 'At least we're out of Broadmoor,'” June recalls.

“We had planned to continue talking to people and this time we were not supposed to fight, argue or make trouble. We kept telling ourselves 'let's be happy.'”

But when they arrived at the Caswell clinic in Bridgend, psychiatrist Tegwyn Williams noticed Jennifer was ill and soon began to deteriorate.

“We knew from the beginning that it wasn't a psychiatric condition, but the doctors didn't know what the problem was either,” June says.

“They couldn't understand it… this young woman who several hours earlier had been seemingly so well was slowly dying in front of their eyes and they couldn't understand why.”

A later investigation found that Jennifer died of natural causes due to acute myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Songs, books and movies

In 1994, the surviving twin, June, was released after almost 13 years of being imprisoned. But she still feels the deep impact her experience left on the institutions she passed through.

“Every other day I think about Broadmoor and when I think about Broadmoor, I think about Jennifer,” he says.

“She's still with me after 30 years. Every morning I think I'm in Broadmoor, I wake up in the morning, I hear the keys jingling, she's still with me to this day.”

June has continued to write, while others wrote about her story.

“Tsunami,” the song by Welsh rock band “Manic Street Preachers” that was a hit and Top 20 song of 1999, was inspired by the sisters. And Marjorie Wallace wrote a book based on her experiences called “The Silent Twins.” In 2022 a feature film was made about her story.

June plans to publish more of her writing, including poetry inspired by her sister during some of her most difficult times.

“Every day I wake up and say to myself, one more day for me and one more day for my sister,” he says. “I live for her. What I see and do, she does too.”

*With reporting from the BBC's Beccy Leach and Jessica Gunasekara.

Click here to read more stories from BBC News World

And remember that you can receive notifications. Download the latest version of our app and activate them so you don't miss our best content.