Lori and George Schappell conjoined twins dead: did they die at the same time? World’s oldest conjoined twins expected to never live past 30 die at the age of 62 amid questions surrounding their deaths, including if the death of one lead to the inevitable death of the other?
They were determined to show they were two different people, capable of respecting each other’s individuality, autonomy and privacy, even if their life and eventual death bound them together …
The world’s oldest conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell who doctors previously said would never live past 30 have died at the age of 62.
Lori and her transgender twin George passed away on Sunday, April 7 at a Pennsylvania hospital due to undisclosed causes, according to their online obituaries.
Joined literally at the head but fiercely independent and their own person
The siblings, who had partially-fused skulls and shared 30 per cent of their brains, defied doctors who said they wouldn’t live past the age of 30.
They were 62 years 202 days old – nine years older than the second-oldest female conjoined twins ever recorded.
Despite being joined at the head, the twins differed in many ways.
Lori was able-bodied but George, who had spina bifida, was confined to a wheelchair which his twin pushed around.
He had enjoyed a successful career as a country singer but Lori pursued her interests elsewhere as a trophy-winning ten-pin bowler.
She also worked at a hospital laundry for several years during the ’90s, arranging her schedule around George’s gigs, which took them around the world to countries including Germany and Japan, according to the Guinness World Records.
Would the death of one conjoined twin mean the inevitable death of the other?
The siblings became the first same-sex conjoined twins to identify as different genders after George, whose original name was Dori, came out as a transgender man in 2007.
It was at this point that he changed his name from Reba – a moniker he took up to honor his idol Reba McEntire because he disliked their rhyming names – to George, the dailymail reported.
The twins lived independently in a two-bedroom apartment in Pennsylvania where they took turns practicing their separate hobbies.
They alternated whose room they slept in and also showered separately by using the shower curtain as a barrier as one stood outside the bath.
The pair who were perennial figures of pop culture intrigue appeared on numerous shows including Jerry Springer, The Maury Povich Show and The Howard Stern Radio Show.
In the past, when asked if the death of one would necessarily mean the death of the other, Lori once responded: ‘No, it would not. That’s another misconception.’
Or was it? It remained unclear if the one of the conjoined twins had passed away leading to the timely demise of the other as a result of sharing 30% of the same brain or whether the death of one twin would physiologically necessitate the death of the other?
Of course, the death of part of the body would lead to the onset of sepsis, malignant bacteria which would pass immutably to the other conjoined twin as the two shared the same blood-stream. The unknown unsaid was always if one of the two did die, what would that mean for the other – whether a hasty operation to separate from the deceased other or the acceptance of the imminent death of the other as a result of biology?
George, then Reba, explained in the 1997 documentary: ‘If it’s caught early enough, we could both be rushed to the hospital and then in an emergency, quickly be separated to save the other one.’
Elaborating further on whether they had ever wished to be separated, he said no: ‘Would we be separated? Absolutely not. My theory is: why fix what is not broken?’
‘Just because we cannot get up and walk away from each other doesn’t mean that we cannot have solitude from other people or ourselves,’ Lori added. ‘People who are conjoined can have a very private life.’
The conjoined twin also shared her dreams of one day having a family of her own, explaining: ‘Eventually I would love to have myself a family – a husband and children of mine.’
Interviewer Antony Thomas then asked George whether he would share the intimacy with any future husband, to which he replied: ‘He would be like a brother-in-law to me, that’s it. They can do whatever they do and I’d act like I’m not even there. I would block it out.’
The twins defied all the predictions of medical professionals who said that they wouldn’t live past the age of 30.
