Shared Psychosis

Sabina and Ursula Eriksson were identical twins from Sweden, Ursula living in America and Sabina in County Cork, Ireland. In May 2008 they traveled together to England. On May 17 a coach driver put them off at the Keele services on the M6 in Staffordshire, and they were seen walking on the central reservation. When police approached, both ran into the traffic.

Ursula was hit by a forty-ton lorry and Sabina by a car; Ursula’s legs were crushed, while Sabina came away with minor injuries. A BBC crew filming with the police recorded it. A magistrates’ court gave Sabina a day in custody for trespass and assault, then released her. That evening, in Stoke-on-Trent, fifty-four-year-old Glenn Hollinshead offered her somewhere to stay. On the evening of May 20 she stabbed him repeatedly with a knife from his own kitchen, ran from the house, and jumped from a bridge onto the A50, fracturing her skull and both ankles.

She was arrested in hospital on June 6, 2008. Psychiatrists concluded she had suffered a short-lived psychotic illness, described in court as folie à deux, a delusion shared with her twin. At Nottingham Crown Court in September 2009 she pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility, and in November she was sentenced to five years, the judge calling her culpability low. She was released on parole in July 2011 and returned to Sweden.