Twins have an especially close link with each other, sometimes to the point where they appear to have the same thoughts, share the same feelings and express the same emotions. So imagine the psychological devastation caused to the surviving twin when the other is brutally killed and no-one is brought to justice. Charles Heslett spoke to Debbie Penn who, for the last seven years, has lived through that very nightmare after her twin-brother Brendan was stabbed to death

SHE HAD a premonition he would never come home alive - almost eight hours before the police arrived with the devastating news that he had been killed.

Debbie Penn had woken up in a cold sweat just before midnight possessed with an uncontrollable feeling that she had seen her twin brother Brendan for the last time.

As she was comforted in the arms of her mother June, she couldn't get rid of the sensation that something terrible had happened and he would never come through the front door again.

Sadly her worst fears were realised when the police knocked on the door of the family's home in Great Horton next morning and gave them the news which has blighted their lives since.

The police said Brendan, 22, had been stabbed after getting caught up in a neighbourhood dispute which turned into a pitched battle involving 60 people in Cecil Avenue, Great Horton.

He had been found slumped on a street corner with blood oozing out of four gaping wound.

Even when the officer described what had happened to her baby brother (Brendan was born seven minutes after Debbie), his twin sister was not so much shocked as horribly calm as the news slowly sunk in.

Debbie, who is now 29 and still lives in Great Horton, said: "The police arrived about 6.30 in the morning and told me he had died. I turned to my mum and said, 'I knew he wasn't coming home, I knew he wasn't!'

"I had the premonition on the night it happened. It was about 11 o'clock and I was in bed and I knew something had happened because I just woke up.

"I've always known if there was something wrong with Brendan since we were little. I don't know whether it was a dream or not, but I knew he wasn't gong to come home."

After she'd composed herself, Debbie, a care assistant at a nursing home, had the dreadful task of breaking the news to Brendan's girlfriend and mother of his three children, Suzanne Penn, who took his name after he died.

Debbie said: "Suzanne just went into shock. She never said anything, she was just in a trance and sat on her bed. I'd been looking after Tammy, their eldest child, after Suzanne had gone into hospital because her youngest Charlotte had just been born premature. If she hadn't been born early Brendan would never have seen her before he died."

The full horror of what happened to her twin brother only came when Debbie went with her three brothers and father Eddie to identify Brendan's body at the hospital.

She said: "When we went down to see him you could tell he had been given a real beating, he was black and blue. He'd been stabbed four times but it was the one which went through his heart that killed him."

Investigations followed but it soon became clear it would be a difficult task to bring Brendan's killer or killers to justice.

Despite numerous attempts by the police to persuade the community to come forward with information, they received little or no help, later to be described by the coroner at the inquest into Brendan's death as a "wall of silence".

Three arrests were made but the only charges were of affray.

Even though the attack happened on August 15, 1991, Brendan's family couldn't cremate him until his body was released in October, which added to their increasing misery coupled with the knowledge no-one had been arrested for the stabbing.

Debbie said: "We couldn't grieve, if you like, and we still can't. We can't get on with our lives until someone's caught. We are not going to settle until someone is arrested. It's just the way the whole family feels.

"I still feel gutted, in fact, I feel that half of me is missing. It's only Brendan's photos which keep me going. We were all really close, my four brothers and one sister. None of us will rest until someone is caught."

She added: "About three or four months ago Suzanne and I went to the police station and there was a counselling room for people who had had a member of their family murdered. It was heartbreaking listening to everybody else's story as they went round the room, and I think we came out worse than when we went in, so we didn't go back again."

She said Brendan's ashes remain in an urn on the windowsill of Suzanne's house waiting to be scattered when his killers are caught.

The original idea was to scatter them on a favourite walk of the couple's in Wyke, but now Suzanne wants to keep them until their children are old enough to decide what to do with them.

But another devastating reminder for Debbie of what happened to her twin brother comes every birthday, unavoidably a time which they always used to celebrate together. Debbie said: "March 27th is mine and Brendan's birthday and I just buy flowers for him and put them by the side of the photographs I have on my mantel. It's just so upsetting.

"I don't think any of us will be able to rest until his killers are found. All it would take is for someone who knows who's done it to phone the police. They can do it anonymously.

"To those who witnessed the killing then say nothing, I would ask how can you watch a young man cut down in his prime and carry on your life as if nothing has happened?

"And how the person or persons who've done it sleep at night knowing that they have killed a loving daddy, husband, son and brother, I don't know.

Anyone with any information about Brendan's death should call CrimeStoppers on 0800 555111.

A bond so special...

Nick Bowles, a lecturer in mental health at Bradford University, said: "It's recognised that twins often experience a greatly-enhanced sense of empathy which is almost in interconnected.

"It has been reported that one twin, for instance, has woken up when the other twin is in danger and they're able to sense what the other person is sensing, although it is a very difficult area to research.

"This loss of a twin through dying is probably more than just a loss of a loved one, it could be interpreted as a loss of part of oneself.

"You could therefore expect that the process of grieving for such a loss would be much deeper and much longer than you might expect for the remaining twin."

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