2008 | Staffordshire, England | Manslaughter / Folie a Deux | Solved
TLDR
In May 2008, Swedish twin sisters were caught on camera having simultaneous psychotic breakdowns on a live U.K. motorway, running into trucks, getting hit by cars, and behaving in ways police had never encountered. Hours after being released, one of them stabbed a man to death. What happened inside their heads remains one of the strangest questions in forensic psychiatry.
The Case
The CCTV footage is the kind of thing you watch twice because you are sure you misunderstood it the first time.
May 17, 2008. The M6 motorway near Stoke-on-Trent. Traffic slowed for a police check. Two women, twin sisters Ursula and Sabina Eriksson, traveling from Ireland to London, climbed out of a coach and onto the live carriageway. What followed was filmed by a BBC documentary crew riding with the police.
Both women ran into traffic. Ursula was hit by a car and survived. Sabina ran directly in front of a lorry at full speed, was knocked into the air, landed on the asphalt, got up, and tried to run into traffic again. Police physically restrained her. She broke an officer’s nose. She had the strength, according to officers on the scene, of someone who felt no pain at all, because she apparently did not.
Both women were assessed, treated for injuries, and, incredibly, released the same evening after being deemed not a danger to themselves or others. Sabina’s injuries included a fractured skull, broken ankles, and multiple lacerations. She was coherent enough to be let go.
Glenn Hollinshead found her on the roadside that night and took her in out of kindness. The next morning, she stabbed him to death with a knife from his own kitchen, then fled the house and beat herself in the head with a hammer.
She was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced to five years. She served her sentence and was released.
The forensic psychiatry debate around this case has never fully settled. Some specialists pointed to folie à deux, a rare condition where a shared psychosis spreads between individuals in close proximity, particularly twins. Others suggested a drug-induced psychosis, possibly from a substance taken during the coach journey. No definitive cause was ever established in court.
What the footage shows is real. Two people behaving in a way that suggested genuine terror, not of the traffic but of something they were both seeing that was not there. Whatever it was, it killed Glenn Hollinshead. He was 54, worked as a DJ, and let a stranger into his home because he thought she needed help.
Where to Find More
- Documentaries: Madness in the Fast Lane (2010) is a BBC documentary that first told the full story, using original footage from the motorway. It is available on YouTube. Search: Madness in the Fast Lane BBC documentary.
- Podcasts: Casefile True Crime covered the Eriksson Twins in Case 17. Crime Junkie also covered the case. Search: Folie a Deux Eriksson Twins.
- Books: A Madness Shared by Two by David Cann and Sharon Mackellar is the only full-length book dedicated to the case, examining what the BBC documentary left out.
