The Fall Line: True Crime · The Fall Line®

Introducing: Blood Will Tell

·48 min·1 clip

I picked the wrong one.

A birthday party in suburban San Jose goes badly wrong. After a drunken fight turns deadly, the story follows identical twin brothers Trung and Ahn as police narrow in on the brothers and an eyewitness mistakes one for the other in a lineup. One brother is arrested. He spends nearly two years in jail before the truth surfaces and authorities realize they locked up the wrong twin. The case hangs on a brutal question. How does one brother let his twin take the fall, and why would the other give up his freedom for a crime he didn't commit? The episode also moves through the ordinary details around the night itself. Trung gets ready for work, tries to clean the back seat of his Honda, and leaves for his T-Mobile sales shift while his brother wakes up with a crushing hangover. The shock comes in pieces. A girlfriend delivers the news about the fight, a friend sends a Mercury News link, and the reality of the death starts to sink in. Another call confirms that the injured man has died at the hospital. From there, the episode follows how panic overtakes the brothers as they face what happened. The show keeps the emotional center on family. It presents the twins as Vietnamese-American brothers bound together by loyalty, silence, and a choice that changes both of their lives. The result is a tense, human true-crime opening. It sets up a season about bond, blame, and what one mistake can do to an entire family.

As heard by us

A twin misidentification case turns a birthday fight into a long, aching story of sacrifice and error.

A birthday party in suburban San Jose turns into a wrongful-arrest case when identical twins are pulled into a fatal fight and one brother spends nearly two years in jail.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for a wrongful-arrest story about identical twins, a fatal lineup mistake, and one brother's sacrifice.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Fall Line: True Crime