According to The Washington Post, a set of identical twins in Peru not only share the same parents and looks, but also, briefly, a prison sentence.
In January, 2017, Alexander Jheferson Delgado was in a Peruvian clink serving a 16-year sentence for robbery and child sexual abuse. For some people, no matter what they do, family is family. Alexander’s twin, Giancarlo, is one of those: he came to visit his incarcerated sibling, bringing food and letters from their family with him. Giancarlo met with his twin in a common area of the prison, walking with him as he returned to his cell. Once there, Alexander offered Giancarlo a soda. So nice! Except for the fact that the can of pop was laced with enough sedatives to lay out a rhino.
Once his twin was in a deep drug-induced sleep, Alexander stripped and swapped clothes with Giancarlo. Once in his brother’s threads, all he needed to do to make his escape was walk past six checkpoints inside of the prison to freedom. If the guards at the checkpoints had been doing their jobs, they would have noticed that Alexander did not have the stamp on his arm, given to all visitors to the facility, that his brother Giancarlo did.
When Giancarlo woke up, he tried to tell his captors what had happened. Of course, they didn’t believe him – at first. After checking Giancarlo’s fingerprints against the imprints of his brother’s that they had on file, the prison’s authorities had to admit that they had the wrong man under lock and key. As a result of Alexander’s escape, the prison’s warden and a number of the guards were fired. Alexander managed to evade authorities for over a year, before finally being captured last week.
Image: Adam Jones, Ph.D. - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
