Fatal Fall: Unraveling The Duval Twins’ Crash

On the 29th of May, 2016, and a Ford Explorer SUV was driving down Hana Highway in Maui, Hawaii. The 64-mile-long Hana Highway is often nicknamed “The Road to Hana” and is a popular scenic drive with more than 50 bridges to drive over, surrounded by waterfalls and native forest.

Several witnesses watched as the SUV suddenly swerved off the road, taking a sharp turn and plummeting 200 feet to the bottom of a cliff.

Emergency services were called and quickly arrived at the scene. They found two people inside the car. Somehow, despite the 200-foot drop, the driver had only sustained a couple of injuries…however, the passenger had not been so lucky, and was pronounced dead at the scene. The two occupants of the SUV were identified as 37-year-old twin sisters.

The deceased passenger was Anastasia Duval, and her twin sister Alexandria Duval had been behind the wheel.

The Duval sisters had been born in Utica, New York, in 1978 - but as children, they had gone by different names, which they decided to change together as adults. Anastasia had been named Ann, and Alexandria had been named Alison. The twins remained close throughout their childhoods and teenage years, especially after their mother passed away when they were both only five. 

As young adults, Anastasia and Alexandria moved to Palm Beach County, Florida, and used their shared passion for health and wellness to start up a yoga studio together, which they called “Twin Power Yoga”. The business venture was a success, and soon they were running multiple studios. They quickly became well-known in the local area for driving around their matching Porsches, and they had a reputation for being eccentric and outgoing in the community.

One year, the twins were approached by a producer who wanted to make a reality television show about their lives. Both Alexandria and Anastasia were excited about the potential of the television show, and when the producers advised them that they should rent a much larger and more expensive studio space to film in, the twins agreed. However, the plans for the show ended up falling through, and the sisters quickly found that they could not afford the rent for the new studio. Before they knew it, they were in a significant amount of debt.

According to Leslie McMichael, who worked as a spiritual advisor to the twins, the reality show falling through was when the twins’ lives really started to spiral downwards. By 2014, Alexandria and Anastasia had decided to close Twin Power Yoga Studios overnight. They blindsided their employees, who were left without jobs and never received their final paychecks, and also ripped off their loyal customers who had pre-paid for expensive memberships.

The Duval twins’ reputation in Florida was now shattered, and a local gossip site even referred to them by the nickname “the terrible twins of yoga.” Instead of making amends, the pair decided that they would relocate and make a new life in Park City, Utah. They even decided to write a book, which is why they legally changed their first names to officially become Alexandria and Anastasia Duval.

While living in Park City, the twins tried to get back into the yoga and wellness industry, opening one smaller studio in the area. However, they hadn’t been able to leave their financial failures behind when they moved away from Florida - they were still significantly in debt, and each of them owed around $150,000, which neither of them could afford to pay back. In the end, they had no other choice but to file for bankruptcy.

The twins’ time in Utah is also when they really began to fight with each other. They had personality differences that caused them to clash often - according to their spiritual advisor Leslie, Anastasia was more timid and “the sweetest, kindest, most level-headed person you would ever meet,” whereas Alexandria was more controlling and had a “big, dominant personality.” The difference between the twins was magnified whenever they got drunk - and in Utah, they got drunk a lot. In January 2014, they ended up being banned from a local restaurant for getting too intoxicated and causing a scene. They also got into a car accident, where their car ended up in a ditch after they started fighting behind the wheel. When the cops arrived at the scene and tried to stop Alexandria and Anastasia from pulling each others’ hair, the twins fought with them too.

By the end of 2015, the twins had relocated again, ending up in Hawaii on what they described as “a religious quest.” However, their journey towards peaceful spirituality didn’t appear to be working out for them - only a few weeks after they got to Hawaii, both of the sisters were arrested for “terroristic threatening and disorderly conduct”. Regardless, they eventually settled into life in Hawaii, moving in with their boyfriends so that the four of them could all live in Maui together.

Romantic attachments had always been hard for Anastasia and Alexandria because of their extreme codependency. They had never really lived with anyone apart from each other, and they found it difficult to find partners who understood their close bond. Their spiritual advisor stated, “[Anastasia and Alexandria] realized that love was not in their future because they were so codependent,” adding that she would “joke that the only people who would understand them were a pair of male twins, who would understand that they needed to be together.”

On the weekend that the crash took place, Anastasia was meant to be on a romantic camping getaway with her boyfriend, Federico Bailey. However, Alexandria hadn’t wanted to be left out, so she had invited herself on the camping trip as well, causing an argument between her and Anastasia. At one point during the trip, Federico was left alone while the twins went somewhere without him. He noticed that they were in a much better mood when they returned, but then realized that they had gone out to buy themselves alcohol, and were now drunk.

Federico was upset by this - he knew Anastasia had a drinking problem, and she was a completely different person when she was under the influence. One of Anastasia’s previous partners had described the twins as being “great people when they were sober, but the minute they started drinking, they were like Jekyll and Hyde.” Federico took a moment to himself, trying to calm down, and when he came back, the twins had driven off in the SUV. Shortly afterwards, the vehicle plummeted off the cliff.

Investigators spoke to several people who had watched the incident, and from the way that witnesses described the crash, it became clear that it may not have been an accident at all. Multiple people agreed that they had heard the two twins yelling at each other as they drove past, and that it sounded like they had been arguing about something. Several witnesses had also seen Anastasia reach over from the passenger's seat to grab Alexandria’s hair, and they also believed that she had been trying to take hold of the steering wheel.

Before the SUV swerved off the cliff, Alexandria had accelerated quickly before pulling the steering wheel all the way to the left. It didn’t appear that she had tried to slow down when she realized that the car was going off the road - instead, she had sped up and driven off the cliff intentionally. Based on the evidence at the scene, investigators confirmed that Alexandria had made no attempt to brake.

On June 3rd, 2016, the police located Alexandria Duval staying at a hotel in Maui. She was placed under arrest for her sister’s second-degree murder. Although Alexandria was initially held without bail, only five days later, the murder charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence, and she was released back into the community. However, despite the judge ruling that there was insufficient evidence, prosecutors working on the case were still able to bring it to a grand jury.

In October 2016, Alexandria was indicted by the grand jury, causing her to be arrested a second time. She was in New York at the time of her arrest, then transported back to Hawaii where her bail was set at $3 million USD. In February the following year, she was released on bail. Alexandria’s attorney filed to have her case dismissed, but when it was denied, Alexandria then decided to waive her own right to be tried by a jury. 

At her trial in 2018, Alexandria’s attorney argued that the crash had been nothing more than a tragic accident, claiming that Alexandria was heartbroken by the loss of her sister. Despite the eyewitness reports and the evidence of an extremely dysfunctional relationship between the twins, the judge presiding over the case found that Alexandria was not guilty of her sister’s murder.