Robert Shafran, Edward Galland and David Kellman had no idea they were triplets until a chance coincidence threw them together.
The brothers had been ripped apart at birth as part of a grotesque science experiment that tested the impact of separating identical triplets.
The documentary, Three Identical Strangers, tells the true story of how they found each other when they were 19.
The triplets all grew up within 100 miles of each other and even from an early age showing harrowing signs that the experiment was having a devastating impact on them.
Their adoptive parents, who were unaware their child was a triplet, reveal they would all get so upset when they were babies they would bang their heads on the side of their cribs.
All three have battled mental health problems and tragically Eddy took his own live after struggling with depression.
But the triplets may never have known the others existed had it not been for a chance encounter when they were in their late teens.
When Bobby started Sullivan Country Community College, near New York, when he was 19 he couldn't understand why other students would fall over themselves to talk to him.
He said: "Guys were slapping me on the back, and girls were hugging and kissing me. It was very welcoming, except that they insisted on calling him Eddy."
Eventually, fellow student Michael Domnitz worked out what was happened and asked Bobby if he was adopted.
Bobby’s ‘twin’ was Edward Galland, who’d dropped out of the same college the previous year.
Michael called him right away and Edward was stunned to hear a voice identical to his own on the end of the line - and discover he had a long-lost brother.
And despite spending their entire lives apart, the brothers had some very strange things in common.
The talked and laughed the same, had identical birthmarks and IQ scores of 148, were both college wrestlers and had the same fighting techniques, and had even lost their virginity at the same time.
But there was still more to this sinister tale - the two brothers had a third sibling, David.
When the story of their reunion was covered in a paper, David, who was studying at Queen's College, saw his own face staring back at him and got in touch.
It seemed like a heartwarming story - the three brothers had finally be reunited - and they became the darlings of the media.
The triplets even had a cameo in the Madonna film, Desperately Seeking Susan.
But when the boys' adoptive parents started asking why they had been separated at birth, the sinister truth began to emerge.
The triplets, they discovered, had been used as part of an elaborate psychological experiment hatched in the 1960s to study the effects of nature versus nurture.
Psychologists partnered with the Louise Wise Services adoption agency on a “Twin Study”, which involved splitting up identical twins and triplets, placing them in different homes and studying their development.
It meant that Bobby, Eddy and David, who were born to a teenage girl on July 12, 1961, were all raised within just 100 miles of each other, yet none of them knew of the other brothers.
Before the babies were placed in their adoptive homes, the agency had told the prospective parents that the children were part of a “routine childhood development study”.
The parents said it was strongly implied that participation in the study would increase their chances of being able to adopt one of the boys.
Prominent child psychologist, Dr Peter Neubauer, visited each of the boys separately for the first 10 years of their lives.
He had previously worked with Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna.
Despite visiting all three brothers, often within hours of each other, he never even hinted to them that they might have a sibling.
Chillingly, no-one, except the scientists who orchestrated the study, know how many other sets of twins or triplets were also split up for the experiment and living without any knowledge of their long-lost identical brothers or sisters.
Dr Neubauer never published his study, and when he died in 2008 all his records were placed with Yale University are restricted until 2065, presumably long enough for anyone involved in the experiment to have died.
However, with each new piece of information the triplets discovered about their lives, they began to realise that they were nothing more than guinea pigs in a sick laboratory test.
The boys were deliberately placed in different types of families.
One which was working class (David), one which was middle class (Eddy) and another which was upper-middle class (Bobby).
Each of their fathers also had a completely different approach to parenting.
David's dad owned a grocery storeand was warm and loving, Bobby's doctor father was often away, while Eddy constantly clashed with his parent.
Until the boys were two, Neubauer and his team would visit them at home four times a year.
There was at least one visit a year after that.
The triplets would be filmed doing cognitive tests, puzzles and drawings.
When they reached their teenage years, the scientists still kept a watch on them from a distance, still collected data, although the boys never knew.
Neubauer and his team wanted to establish how the development of three boys with identical DNA, who had never had any contact with one another, would be affected if they were brought up in different environments.
It seemed to have a devastating impact as all three have battled serious mental health issues.
Before they went to college both Eddy and David had spent time in mental health hospitals while Robert was on probation after having pleaded guilty to charges connected to the murder of a woman in a 1978 robbery.
David later told the New York Post: “It was absolutely separation anxiety. Those who were studying us saw there was a problem happening.
"And they could have helped. That’s the thing we’re most angry about. They could have helped . . . and didn’t.”
Bobby still believes they were treated incredibly cruelly, all in the name of science.
He added: "I can’t think of anybody else in modern times that has done anything like this.
"The other comparisons I can think of would be the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, where they let them all get syphilis and let it go untreated, and they died horrible deaths.”
Three Identcal Strangers director, Tim Wardle, believes that the researchers “lost sight of the human impact of what they were doing".
He added: "That era, the 1950s and 1960s, [was a] Wild West period of psychology when people were doing all kinds of crazy things.
"People were pushing the envelope and they were losing sight of the ethics."
After making headlines with their reunion in 1980, the triplets were regulars on chat shows, where they would often wear identical clothes and answer together.
They moved in together in New York and opened a Manhattan restaurant called Triplets.
The three young men made a million just a year after they met.
David explained: “We were sort of falling in love. It was, ‘You like this thing? I love that!’ There was definitely a desire to like the same things and to be the same.”
Bobby said: "All we wanted to do was be joyful and play and catch up.”
At this time, they still believed they had be separated because one family couldn't take all three of them.
But Lawrence Wright, a journalist with the New Yorker magazine had been researching Neubauer and told the brothers what had really happened.
They were horrified and while they continued doing every together, cracks had started to appear.
Each of the brothers felt he was being excluded by the other two and when Robert left the restaurant due to what David called “conflicting work ethics,” the brothers’ relationships began to sour.
Then in 1995 Eddy took his own life, leaving behind his wife and young daughter.
Robert and David were also both married with children and had drifted apart.
By 2010 they were no longer speaking to each other and had retreated from the spotlight.
Bobby said: "Neither David nor I had any interest in any kind of interview after Eddy died. Things were a mess. Our lives were in such disarray."
While the psychologist responsible for their pain, Peter Neubauer, never talked about the ‘Twin Study’ before he died, he was confronted about the experiment in the mid-90s by journalist Lawrence Wright.
In the interview, he admits Bobby, Eddy and David were not the only siblings he separated but didn’t show any remorse for his actions.
The remaining brothers, who continue to live in obscurity with their own families, were eventually able to read a small, heavily-redaction portion of the study that was released to them.
Even that showed their increasing emotional and behavioural struggles were carefully documented.
Filmmaker Tim Wardle, who was with the siblings when the documents were released, said anyone would know what would happen if you separated tripets, without the need for scientists to play God with innocent children's lives.
He added: “One of the most shocking these was that this psychiatrists are sitting around saying, ‘Oh, it’s really strange, the children all seem to have these problems.
“The answer is obvious - you’ve ripped them apart from their siblings."
