In May 2008, Ursula Eriksson and Sabina Eriksson, 52, twin sisters born in Sweden, traveled to the U.K. from Ireland and got on a bus from Liverpool to London.
Their odd behavior after exiting the bus at a service station on the M6 motorway caused the driver not to allow them back on board. The two were later seen on the central reservation of the heavily used M6 motorway. When Highways England traffic officers arrived to assist the women, they ran across the busy motorway, as captured by a camera crew filming a TV documentary series for the BBC. Ursula managed to dodge the fast-moving vehicles, but Sabina was knocked over. Shortly after police arrived, the women again dashed onto the motorway and were struck by oncoming cars. Ursula suffered severe injuries, including broken legs, and when Sabina regained consciousness, she refused medical aid and attacked a police officer, at which point she was arrested and sedated.
What followed was a horrendous murder of an innocent good samaritan, a court case, and the identification of Folie à deux or “madness for two”, a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations, are transmitted from one individual to another.
The Police appeared to have been negligent in preventing the death of an innocent man following the release on YouTube of edited footage not shown by the BBC.
It was madness indeed in May 2008 and a shocking and disturbing story. What made the women so terrified and paranoid of the police? Was it just a mental imbalance shared by both of them, as they suggested in their court defense or something more sinister?
Read the full article by becoming a member or logging in here: Ursula and Sabina Eriksson - the strange and disturbing case of “madness for two”
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