Man Loses Memory & Learns Decades Later His Twin Brother Lied To Him About Their Life

Why would you ever give a loved one whose memory was lost a false narrative about their life?

Because the truth was better off erased.

That’s what Marcus Lewis thought after his twin brother Alex got into a motorcycle accident in August 1982 and was left in a coma. When the 18-year-old recent high school graduate woke up three weeks later, Alex’s entire identity and memory was erased: the only thing he knew was his identical twin brother who was sitting by his side.

Speaking to People, Marcus, now 55, recalled Alex saying:

“He actually said, ‘Hello, Marcie,’ our nickname for each other. Then the doctors started questioning him — ‘Do you know what day it is? Do you know your name?’ — and he didn’t know anything at all.”

Marcus taught Alex how to relearn to walk and brush his teeth — but when Alex wanted to know about their past, things got a bit complicated. Marcus went on to tell his brother stories of their happy childhood with loving, eccentric parents and fun-filled family vacations.

Only there was a problem: all the stories Marcus told his brother were straight up lies.

In reality, the boys had a traumatizing childhood with a brash, neglectful stepfather and a mother who had sexually abused them. Alex didn’t find this out until years later after their parents’ deaths.

Following the death of their stepfather, Jack Dudley, who died of cancer in 1990, and their mother, Jill Dudley, who died from a brain tumor in 1995, Alex was perplexed by Marcus’ cavalier attitude. He recalled:

“His reaction was so different than mine.”

Around that time, Alex had been seeing a therapist who had suggested, based on their sessions, that there may have been abuse in the family — but he didn’t believe her. He remembered:

“I was horrified. I said, ‘How dare you say that?’”

Eventually, the truth came out when the twins were going through their mother’s things and found a photograph of themselves at age 10, hidden in a drawer. In the photo, they were naked; and the top of the photo, where their faces were, was cut off.

This image caused something in Alex’s mind to click. He recalled:

“I asked Marcus if we were abused by Mummy, and he just nodded yes. And that is a moment that he and I will never forget. From then on everything changed.”

At that point, Alex felt betrayed by the one person he thought he could trust. He said:

“My brother had deceived me. All of a sudden I just couldn’t believe anything anymore.”

But eventually, he realized Marcus only lied to protect him from the unsettling truth.

Over the next 20 years, the brothers moved to London and started a property-development business together. Marcus never discussed the abuse during that time — but not because he was afraid of how Alex would take it.

He explained:

“It’s not that I wouldn’t tell him. I couldn’t. I wasn’t capable of telling him. It was too dramatic for me.”

In 2013, Alex and Marcus — now both married with children and living just 26 miles apart — were offered a book deal after Alex shared his story in an article for a London newspaper.

This book deal inspired both brothers to fully open up to each other, which eventually led to a deal with Netflix for a documentary about their lives. Fortunately, the Netflix experience helped the twins come to terms with their past — and each other.

Marcus said:

“What he really needed from me, which I never fully understood, was to tell him directly from my heart how I felt about it because it stopped him from making monsters in his head… It took us a long time to get to this place, but now we’ve been able to move on and put the past behind us.”

Alex admitted hearing Marcus during the final scene of the doc sharing the terrors they faced together as kids only deepened their connection. He said:

“I didn’t realize the enormity of what Marcus had done. [How] he had to carry all of the pain — the fake story and his own story and everything else. So I was just in awe. We’re closer than I can ever remember.”

Their Netflix doc, Tell Me Who I Am, is available to stream now. Watch the trailer (below).