Three Identical Strangers

The film describes how Robert Shafran discovered he had a twin brother after he arrived on the campus of Sullivan County Community College in upstate New York in 1980 and was constantly greeted by students and staff who incorrectly recognized him as Eddy Galland. The two met that evening, realized both were adopted, and quickly concluded they were twins. Months later, the publicity surrounding this human interest story reached David Kellman, whose resemblance and matching adoption circumstances indicated that the three were identical triplets.
The brothers found themselves to be alike in many ways beyond their appearance: they had the same taste in food, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, wrestled in high school, and showed signs of separation anxiety as children. They quickly became a minor media sensation, appeared on talk shows such as The Phil Donahue Show, and celebrated their newfound brotherhood, moving in together and opening a restaurant called Triplets, which they operated together.
Each boy was involved as a child in a study by psychiatrists Peter B. Neubauer and Viola W. Bernard, under the auspices of the Jewish Board of Guardians, which involved periodic home visits and evaluations, the true intent of which never was explained to the adoptive parents. Following the discovery that the boys were triplets, the parents sought more information from the Louise Wise adoption agency, which said that it separated the boys because of the difficulty of placing triplets in one household. Upon further investigation, however, it was revealed that the infants had been intentionally separated and placed with families with different parenting styles and economic levels—one blue-collar, one middle-class, and one affluent—as an experiment on human subjects. During the film, the siblings ask if perhaps they and other sets of twins involved in the study were chosen because their parents reported signs of mental illness before having children, but one researcher interviewed denies this flatly, saying the research was simply about parenting.
Over time, differences among the triplets became apparent, and their relationships became strained, especially due to the stress of running their restaurant. All three struggled with mental health problems in their youth, and Galland, who was diagnosed with manic depressive disorder, died by suicide in 1995.
The results of the experiment were never published, and the records will remain sealed until 2066. However, at the end of the film, onscreen text explains that Kellman and Shafran were granted access to the files, though they are heavily redacted and contain no formal conclusions.