Identical twin confesses to murder after brother already served time

On Thursday, Karl Smith took to the witness stand to drop a bombshell revelation: he had committed the murder that his twin brother was in jail for.

Luther Vandross was outed as gay after his death.

On Thursday, Karl Smith took to the witness stand to drop a bombshell revelation: he had committed the murder that his twin brother was in jail for.

According to Smith, he and his brother had been impersonating each other for years. Shortly after the killing, he was even stopped by police and released after he identified himself as his brother.

His brother, Kevin Dugar, has been in custody since 2003, and as Smith confessed to the crime, his mother, Judy Dugar, wept while Dugar wiped tears from his eyes as well.

“I’m here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of,” Smith said in testimony at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.

However, Cook County prosecutors are a bit skeptical of the confession, because it comes after he lost an appeal on an attempted murder sentence for which he is serving 99 years in prison. He was convicted for attempted murder after he was part of a home invasion and robbery in 2008 in which a 6-year-old boy was shot in the head.

“He’s got nothing to lose,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Carol Rogala.

“I have to get it off my chest before it kills me,” Smith wrote in a letter to his brother three years ago. “So I’ll just come clean and pray you can forgive me. … I’m the one who and shot and killed those two Black Stones on Sheridan that night.”

Dugar didn’t initially respond until Smith wrote again, once more confessing, and Dugar asked him to contact his attorneys. Dugar then signed a sworn statement of confession in 2014.

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