The tragic case of the Hermeler ‘suicide sisters’

Candice and Kristin Hermeler at the Family Shooting Centre in Denver, Colorado on November 15

The CCTV footage is blurry, but sisters Candice and Kristin Hermeler seem cheerful as they walk together towards the shooting range.

One wears a cosy-looking magenta jumper, while the other has a long grey coat. The smiles on their faces are clear. 

The 29-year-old twins, originally from Victoria in Australia, had signed up for a session at the popular Family Shooting Centre, just south of Denver in Colorado. However, within two hours of arriving, Kristin was dead and Candice was critically injured.

Both had pulled a trigger.

A frantic investigation saw police dig into the secret lives of the Australian twins. No-one was expecting their first major discovery, an unexpected link between the shooting and the Columbine massacre.

Who were the Hermeler sisters

Why the Australian sisters, both 29, had made the plan to kill themselves together remains unknown

Candice and Kristin were born in the Australian state of Victoria on January 22, 1981 to South African-born parents Ernest and Kelsay Hermeler. They attended Girton Grammar School, where they were ‘beautifully spoken and beautifully mannered,’ according to former classmates.

Matthew Maruff, principal, had later told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘They worked hard in their classes and had good prospects in their studies.’

The twins were then sent to the Methodist Ladies’ College in Kew, one of Victoria’s oldest day and boarding schools for girls, before going on to gaine university degrees from RMIT university in Melbourne.

According to local reports, Kristin was said to have worked at a school and Candice as a business administrator.

‘They grew up in a loving home. They didn’t lack for anything,’ the sisters’ cousin Jacky Sole, later told reporters from her home in Washington.

What happened before the shooting

Kristin Hermeler’s death at the Family Shooting Centre left witnesses ‘haunted’ by the horrific scenes

Candice and Kristin had stayed at the La Quinta Inn on Arapahoe Road, Denver the night before the shooting. They had been on three-month sabbaticals from their jobs in Australia, the inn’s general manager Patty Walsh told the Denver Post, and had expressed an interest in travelling to Canada.

Patty said the sisters would come down for breakfast around 10am each day and shop at WholeFoods for their remaining meals, which they’d eat in their rooms.

On November 15, 2010, Candice and Kristin took a Yellow Cab taxi to the Family Shooting Centre, six miles from the La Quinta Inn. 

CCTV captured Candice and Kristin arrive at the facility around 1.30pm and speak with other patrons. According to Brisbane-based newspaper the Courier Mail, one twin spoke with an English historian dressed in vintage military clothes, and asked him ‘what kind of gun is that?’.

The sisters were ‘perhaps a little overdressed for an afternoon shooting but not too much’, witnesses had said to reporters, but had seemed ‘happy’ upon arrival.

The weather had taken a cold turn by this point and one sister borrowed a jacket from another shooter at the range.For around 80 minutes, Candice and Kristen hired small-calibre weapons, such as pistols and a revolver, for $20 each to ‘practice’, on lane 13 of the shooting range. The twins paused to move to a different shooting stall, away from a large group of men next to them. They left behind the borrowed jacket.

Kristin Hermeler has suffered from ‘periods of despondency’ and been bullied growing up in Australia (Picture: Reuters)

At around 2.52pm, each woman fired a shot, fell to the ground and chaos ensued.

Bill Gwaltney would tell Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper that his 15-year-old son had raised the alarm by shouting ‘There’s a problem, there’s a problem!’ before 911 was hurriedly called.

‘At that point, time started to slow down,’ Bill, who had been shooting at a stall nearby, had said. ‘It could have been minutes, it could have been seconds. It’s a difficult feeling. You wish you could have prevented it, but nobody knew it was coming.’

When emergency services arrived, CPR was being carried out on Kristin by a range officer. It was in vain, and the 29-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene. Meanwhile, Candice was found ‘sitting nearby’ with a head injury and rushed to Colorado’s Swedish Medical Centre in Englewood, 10 miles from the shooting range.

DNA samples were taken as investigators originally didn’t know which twin had died and which survived, as they looked so similar.

The investigation

Captain Louie Perea, of the Arapahoe County sheriff’s office, headed up the police investigation and associated media duties. He had joined the force in 1986 and was known for his ‘smile and kindness’ among employees.

‘It is bizarre,’ Captain Perea had said in the days following the tragedy. ‘You have twin identical sisters who agreed to commit suicide. They came in from another country and decided to shoot themselves here in Colorado. Obviously there are a lot of questions we want answered.’

By Friday November 19, 2010, police had spoken with Candice after she had undergone surgery. The 29-year-old confirmed she and her sister had agreed to a ‘suicide pact’, but would not reveal why.

Detectives spent two hours trying to garner answers from Candice as she spoke from her hospital bed. 

Captain Perea gave further insight to the Sydney Morning Herald, adding: ‘We asked that [why they had a suicide pact] on more than one occasion and she declined to answer that question. She was emotional. She was … agitated, frustrated, basically ran the entire gamut of emotion.’

No suicide note had been found on Candice or Kristen’s possession. 

Police searched the Hermeler sisters’ rooms at the La Quinta Inn and found various bags, such as suitcases and backpacks, which contained clothes, blankets, jewelry, mobile phones and money.

Birth certificates, school diplomas and tax information were among the paperwork left in the rooms.

Detectives also discovered something which would provide more questions than answers – a photocopy of a Time magazine cover about the Columbine Massacre. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – who claimed the lives of 15 people in the shooting- were pictured on the cover.

The Columbine link

Footage showed the Hermeler moving to a quieter area of the shooting range (Picture: Channel 10)

It emerged Kristin had written to Brooks Brown, a survivor of the Columbine attack. He had been bullied by Harris for 11 years prior to the shooting. Kristin told Brooks she was able to relate, as she was ‘someone who has been rejected, victimized and ostracized’ growing up in Australia. 

‘It was a very sweet letter, very sad,’ Brooks had later recalled to the Denver Post. ‘It was her wanting to know why it [the Columbina massacre] happened, trying to understand.’

In a second letter, Kristin had continued to write about bullying, telling Brooks: ‘It completely baffles me as to why anyone would hate anyone when they don’t know them. It sickens me … The only reason I can think of is, as Charles Spencer said at Princess Diana’s funeral, that goodness is threatening to those on the opposite end of the moral spectrum.’

The relationship between Kristin and Brooks faded over the years, and she did not make plans to visit him when she travelled with her sister to America.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, police also found a letter in the twins’ bags from the family of Dylan Klebold of the Columbine killers. Klebold’s father Tom told News4 he was not aware of the letter, but said his wife might have written to the twins. 

Correspondence from the family of Corey DePooter, a student who lost his life in the tragedy, was also discovered among the sisters’ belongings.

Kristin and Candice seemed both fixated and concerned by the 1999 Columbine high school massacre (Picture: Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department/Getty Images)

On November 20, police made a statement to quell rumours that the sisters had been planning a ‘Columbine style’ massacre of their own. The Family Shooting Centre where the twins visited as part of the suicide pact was just 20 miles (32km) from the site of the 1999 attack.

As reported by ABC News, Captain Perea said: ‘There was nothing else in their possession, both on their person or in their property, that was left behind to show that they had planned any type of Columbine shooting. We did not locate weapons in their property. The weapons they that they used were the weapons they rented at the shooting range. The ammunition they used was the ammunition they purchased at the shooting range.’

Captain Perea had also been questioned on whether Candice would be charged. No, he explained, as the sisters had shot themselves rather than each other.

On November 24, it was reported that the investigation into the suicide pact had been closed. Candice was released from the Swedish Medical Centre the same day.

What happened next

Candice and Kristin Hermeler in a photo released by their parents Kelsay and Ernest (Picture: Reuters)

In January, 2011, results of an autopsy report were published by the Arapahoe Coroner’s Office. The research showed that Kristin had no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of her death, that she had a history of depression and experienced ‘periods of despondency’.

Kristin left all her money – $200,000 – from across five different bank accounts solely to her sister. According to the Adelaide Advertiser, the money was to go to the World Society for the Protection of Animals if Candice had not been alive. Kristin’s will had requested she be cremated.

Her heartbroken family praised her ‘generosity of spirit’ and ‘love of animals’ in their tribute. Parents Kelsay and Ernest wrote: ‘Our beautiful, kind and sweet Angel has left our world for a gentler place where we hope she will find peace.’

Former classmates and teachers of the Hermeler sisters’ were left dumbstruck and devastated by the incident.

Clayton Jones, a former Girton Grammar headmaster, told the Bendigo Advertiser: ‘I was absolutely staggered when I heard the news. They were two lovely, beautifully behaved girls.’

Kristin’s death marked the third fatality at the Family Shooting Centre since 2004.  Range owner Doug Hamilton had told Channel 10: ‘The image I have in my mind… that’s going to haunt me a little bit.’

The story of the Hermeler sisters faded after 2011, with no more reports on Candice’s health or updates to the case.

From Colorado to Victoria, people who have read about the sisters’ plight are often left searching for more answers. But only Candice will ever know the true reason behind why she and her sister crossed continents to carry out their heartbreaking suicide pact.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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