Twin brothers Billy and Joe Smith, who starred in TLC’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, died in a suspected suicide pact, reportedly having told family they “couldn’t live without each other” after one of them was diagnosed with cancer.
The brothers, 32, were found in a tree near a farm in Sevenoaks, Kent, on Saturday morning. While their official cause of death has not been reported, it is believed they died in a joint suicide after Joe recently learned he had cancer. In addition to both having suffered from depression, family members grew worried about their states of mind in the weeks ahead of their deaths.
“Joey had cancer, and Billy told him, ‘I’d never be able to live without you,'” Phoebe Charleen Smith, the twins’ cousin, told the Telegraph on Sunday. “Joey told the family he got the all-clear after chemo two months ago, but we don’t know if that’s true now.”
She continued, “They went missing, and Joey’s phone was turned off. Then we found a note. It said that they wanted it like this, and we would find them in the woods where they played with the family years ago. My uncle ran up there and found them.”
Billy’s partner, Kristina Delaney, paid tribute to him on social media, calling him “perfect, pure and lovely.”
“Joe, I tried telling you [during] our phone calls many times; I said to you just wait for time to heal you. I wish I could have done more for you both,” she wrote. “May you both get the best beds in heaven. Bill please, please, please, be happy now. I’m just persuading myself you’re happier. I know you wouldn’t [want] me to cry but I am and I cry because I’m in pain. You hated when I cried, but also said how loved you felt.”
The twins were launched into stardom in 2013 when they first appeared on My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which initially aired on Britain’s Channel 4 in 2010 and then on TLC in the United States in 2011. The show followed a family of British Roma gypsies preparing for a lavish family wedding. Just two weeks before their deaths, the men had been filmed singing and dancing to Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You.
The tragedies should bring attention to mental health issues among gypsies, or travelers, according to Billy Welch, a national spokesman for Britain’s Roma community. Studies have shown travelers are in “poorer mental health than the rest of the population in Britain.”
“This tragedy should be a wake-up call about high suicide rates among the traveling community,” he said. “Life can be very difficult for Romani people and travelers, and they often suffer in silence.”
Police are currently not treating the deaths “as suspicious.”
