Introducing - Blood Will Tell

Sea Fishman here from Orbit Media. You know. At Orbit we like to curate great true crime series for you. Also, from time to time we publish true crime episodes from creators we admire. Today we're sharing an episode from a podcast by our friends at campsiteh Vanessa. It's called Blood Will Tell, and I gotta say the plot is amazing. The podcast starts at a birthday party in a nice suburb, a birthday party that turns deadly. Eighteen year old identical

In front of me, there's a group of acting students. The youngest ones are in their twenties, the oldest is over seventy, and they're intently focused on their teacher, woman with wiry salt and pepper hair, and she's leading them through an exercise.

She calls out two conflicting emotions. Let's start with love and fear. So let your movements express love and fear. And suddenly these actors are circling the room.

Silently pantomiming feelings of love and fear. They're warming up to rehearse the final act of Othello, a play about jealousy and deception. I'm here in California on assignment for the Washington Post. I'm reporting a piece about Shakespeare as therapy, how these stories about our deepest humanity can help people heal from their trauma because Shakespeare's plays, at a core level, they're about what human beings do to each other, what we're capable of at our best and our worst. I

Looks at me.

I can tell he's really listening. And when I ask him, Trun says, there's a lot of reasons he wanted to join this Shakespeare group.

I had a lot of he okays myself, and if I did a breakdancing too.

He loves to perform, and he likes these plays, how they're universal.

Themes of sacrifice.

Loss, and love have helped him access his emotions, to see himself more clearly. He says, these plays have allowed him to confront the pain he's caused. I ask him what he means by that, and to my surprise, he doesn't hesitate. He launches into a story that I cannot believe is real, A story that feels like Shakespeare himself could have written it, A story that starts with Trung's identical twin brother.

Shakespeare was fascinated by siblings. There's Ophelia and.

Laertes, Edmund and Edgar, Sebastian and Viola in both his comedies and his tragedies.

He makes them compete for the attention and approval of their parents.

He tests the limits of their love for one another, and he pushes them apart, sometimes violently. Shakespeare himself was the father of twins, Judith and Hamnet, and when Hamnet died at the age of eleven, Shakespeare began to process this very particular or grief in his plays. He writes Twelfth Night about twins separated in a shipwreck. The action of the play is built around mistaken identities, but it's really about the unique bond these siblings share and what

So where's your brother?

More?

Now, as Trung and I talk, his fellow Thespians are rehearsing right there beside us, and I hear Othello, mourn, you must speak of one that loved not wisely, but too well. I can see how Trung and On are guilty of having loved each other too well, if not always wisely.

Twins bonded through.

DNA and also hardship, brothers who were best friends, who trusted each other completely, who would have followed each other anywhere, even if it meant losing absolutely everything. From Wondery and camp side Media, I'm Jen Miller and this is Blood will Tell. This is episode one, Shakespeare in San Jose. It's a Saturday evening in January when eighteen year old Trung knocks on the door of his brother's bedroom. They live in the same home, but they haven't seen each

We were adulting pretty much for the first time like that, So these parties, like it felt like a drag, but at the same time, like, oh, let just go have fun. He sounds like a good way to relax.

On looks up from his bed, which is littered with textbooks.

How do you want to go my at homework?

Trunk is surprised.

He's the one typically concerned about how today's choice will impact tomorrow's outcome. That's how he's two semesters ahead in college. But more recently one has felt the pressure to keep up with trung On begs let me study, Trunks not having any of it.

You know what we deserve this. Let's just go and have fun.

Maybe this party will be a good way to blow off steam for both of them, So on relinse, all.

Right, let's do it. Is hyped up.

Figure outfits.

The party is a twenty first birthday thrown by a friend of Trunk's girlfriend.

There's a black and white theme.

The twins pull on their true religion genes and long sleeve black shirts. When they were little kids, their parents often dressed them the same, so this it's like a fun throwback, and tonight it makes it almost impossible to tell them apart. They're both five to nine, around one hundred and sixty pounds. They have a few physical differences, though Trunk's face is clean shaven and more narrow, and On has a sparse mustache and the shadow of a

The foothills of San Jose, California.

It's a short trip and a world away from the affordable housing complex where the twins grew up. They walk past a rock garden and flower beds. Following the thump of music, Trung enters the party and takes a quick scan.

He's impressed.

Looks like pretty bougie and had a DJ and everything.

He goes to himself a drink.

They opened like a cooler, and I saw shot glasses made out of ice.

Trung makes his way through the house. The guests are mostly Vietnamese like him. Some of them are college kids, but he doesn't recognize them. They're at four year schools, not community college like him and on.

Trung is relieved.

In recent months, he has been trying and largely failing to avoid situations and people he knows are trouble.

When we would go out with specific individuals, Sho would always pop off right. I would always feel the needs jump in and participate.

But the vibes here are good.

The booze is flowing, pop brownies are being passed around, and the music is pumping.

It was turned down for what little John like? That song just came out.

Trung and On make a bee line to the beer pong tape where they proceed to completely bite it.

We played horribly because didn't we sat on that table. Yeah, we had to sit on the table man, which told Rug we didn't make any shots. It was embarrassing.

Troung is so happy to have his brother here.

It's been so long since they've simply hung out like this as brothers. Around them, everyone is getting drunk or high or both. Troung is fully in the moment. He's making the rounds a beer in his hand. For a while, he loses track of his girlfriend Monica, that is until she heads toward him, clearly upset.

I wonder