Killer Twin? Police Say Alexandria Duval Murdered Her Sister Anastasia By Driving Off Hawaiian Cliff
Alexandria and Anastasia Duval entered the world together some 38 years ago - but only one of them left it last spring, in a fatal car crash in Hawaii that prosecutors claim was actually murder.
On May 29, 2016, a slightly injured Alexandria was pulled from the wreckage of a mangled Ford Explorer, which had plummeted 200 feet after driving off a steep cliff. The impact killed her twin sister, Anastasia.
In November, Hawaiian authorities filed murder charges against Alexandria, alleging she purposely steered the vehicle over a Maui sea cliff, intent on killing Anastasia.
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Alexandria denies she wanted her sister dead, and her attorney tells PEOPLE the fatal plunge was an accident that has left his client devastated.
But investigators interviewed eyewitnesses at the scene who reported seeing the blonde sisters arguing in the SUV - with the passenger pulling the driver’s hair - just before the vehicle crashed into the craggy shoreline.
Prosecutors claim the SUV accelerated, hitting 50 miles per hour before taking a sharp left turn toward the cliff’s edge. The blacktop bore no evidence of braking before the plunge.
Alexandria is free on $2 million bail and has a pretrial conference scheduled for Thursday. Her trial is expected to begin sometime this fall.
The allegations against Alexandria contradict claims from friends, who say the hard-partying twin sisters - who’d been well-known yoga instructors in both Florida and Utah and who were born Alison and Ann Dadow in Utica, New York - were extremely close, even sharing the same home and vacationing together.
Maui prosecutors allege the deadly crash followed years of toxic tension between the twins, fueled by failed business ventures, personal bankruptcies and multiple brushes with the law.
Those who knew the twins in high school tell PEOPLE they can not begin to imagine Alexandria would ever have wanted Anastasia hurt, and they reject the crash was premeditated.
“I think the stress had gotten to them and I think the crash wasn’t intentional,” says childhood friend Kimberly Keiser Henry. “I think it was an act of pure rage, and that the stress [of their lives] had kind of taken a toll.”
