AFTER TWIN SISTERS PLUMMETED OFF A HAWAII CLIFF, ONE DIED, THE OTHER WAS CHARGED WITH MURDER

Alison and Ann Dadow were once well-known yoga entrepreneurs who lived a lavish lifestyle in West Palm Beach, Fla. Now, Alison has been charged with second-degree murder in her sister's death

By Travis M. Andrews

The Washington Post
June 7, 2016

At the beginning of the decade, Alison and Ann Dadow were well-known yoga entrepreneurs who drove matching Porsches, as identical as they were, around West Palm Beach, Fla. In late May, the 37-year-old twins plunged over the edge of a cliff in Hawaii and fell 200 feet in a Ford Explorer, which crumpled like an old soda can when it hit the slick, jagged rocks peeking out of the Pacific Ocean below.

Ann, sitting in the front passenger seat, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her sister Alison was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and on Monday was charged with second-degree murder in Ann’s death. She’s been ordered to remain in jail without bail, according to court documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Sometime before moving to Hawaii, the two assumed new identities under the names Alexandria and Anastasia Duval. It’s unclear when the twins assumed new identities or if they legally changed their names. Court documents refer to them by both names. For the sake of clarity, The Post will refer to the twins by their given names, Alison and Ann Dadow.

On the afternoon of May 29, the two were cruising along Hana Highway, which snakes around the east coast of Maui for about 64 miles, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Despite such gorgeous scenery, an argument had allegedly grown between them, according to court documents.

Lawrence Lau, who was chaperoning a Boy Scouts troop outing, claimed to have come across the white SUV sitting motionless in the middle of the highway. According to court documents, the passenger was pulling the driver’s hair.

“You could tell that she was very violently swearing at somebody else in the car,” Lau told KHNL. “She was mad and when she took off, it was in a rage. So she floored it and was in a rage as she sped past us.”

Alison allegedly drove straight off the cliff.

Alan Akina, a contributor to “Wake Up Today,” told KHON he also witnessed the accident.

“They just sped up, drove right past our van and turned off the cliff,” Akina said.

According to the Explorer’s airbag control module, the car experienced a hard acceleration and no braking, even after it crashed into and over the rock wall on the side of the highway and plummeted to the rocks below, court documents state.

Alison was arrested at the Seaside Hotel last Friday, after she attempted to fly out of Hawaii.

“We had information after she was discharged from the hospital she attempted to fly out of the jurisdiction Wednesday night,” Maui Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Emlyn Higa told the Associated Press. The court documents state Alison had a flight booked to the West Coast.

Todd Eddins, Alison’s defense attorney, told The Washington Post she did have a flight planned but it was back to upstate New York to attend a funeral for her sister with her grandmother, “to be comforted by the only maternal presence she had left,” as the twins’ mother died when they were young.

“All we know is she was trying to leave the state,” Higa said. “We were afraid she would try to leave the country as well.”

Eddins called the second-degree murder charge “extreme and cold-hearted.”

“They were extremely close, even by identical twin standards,” he told The Post. Alison “did not try to harm herself or the person she most loved and was closest to in the world.”

The two were more than just sisters — they were business partners with a strange and winding past through the United States, stretching from Florida to the Upper Midwest and finally the Aloha State.

Long before moving to Hawaii, the Utica, N.Y.-born twins — then known to all as Alison and Ann Dadow — were yoga entrepreneurs, who opened their first location in South Florida during the “worst economy, when everybody was closing,” as Alison told the Palm Beach Post in 2011. Their approach, which focused on the spiritual as well as the physical, led them to record a yoga DVD and to open a second location of Twin Power Yoga in West Palm Beach on Nov. 11, 2011. Alison said the goal was to gift yoga to the stressed downtown professionals of South Florida.

“Our whole life is focused on sharing this yoga,” Dadow told the Palm Beach Post. “We hope we get it to the people who need it. That’s our passion.”

Their high-end studios were a hit.

“They taught each class with a passion and a knowledge of a more traditional Indian Ashtanga practice that you don’t always find in power yoga instructors,” Dalia Soles told the Palm Beach Post.

During those years, the twins also became a recurrent topic in GossipExtra, a South Florida tabloid which ridiculed them as the “terrible twins of yoga.” According to the Star Advertiser, they lived a lavish lifestyle that included matching Porsches and frequent trips to Worth Avenue, an upscale shopping resort with roads lined with palm trees and dotted with stores such as Chanel and Giorgio Armani alongside the Four Seasons and Chesterfield hotels.

“They were very well respected here for a while,” Jose Lambiet, a former New York Daily News reporter and GossipExtra founder, told the Star-Advertiser. “But when you get successful, it’s easy to start overspending. This is Palm Beach. Once you start shopping on Worth Avenue, it can get out of control pretty quickly.”

All of it — the yoga, the cars, the shopping — ended abruptly in 2014.

Following a Groupon special for their yoga studios, the twins closed both shops without warning. Clients puzzled over their worthless, prepaid memberships, while employees went unpaid. The twins were nowhere to be found.

“They just vanished overnight,” Lambiet said.

They reappeared later that year in a city with an extremely different climate: Park City, Utah. Although Twin Park Yoga had closed down unceremoniously in South Florida, the twins opened a location in their new town. Aside from Ann Dadow now appearing as Anna, according to a piece in the Park Record, everything about the studio seemed to be the same as the defunct Florida locations, including their mission to focus on the spiritual.

“We wanted the studio to reflect love and light,” Ann told the Park Record. “That is the goal of our practice. It is a physical practice with a touch of spirituality.”

On weekends, they offered “Doga,” which Ann said is “just a time to come in and connect with your pet.”

But that didn’t last long either — Ann filed for bankruptcy in December 2014.

After that, the two seemed to just disappear.

It’s unclear when they arrived in Hawaii, though Lambiet’s GossipExtra reported that Ann allegedly appeared at Family Life Center, a Maui homeless shelter, with her baggage in January.

“She had the craziest story about arriving in Hawaii a few days ago and getting robbed of her wallet and getting separated from her twin sister,” shelter worker Kahili Moniz told the site. “She gave us a false name at first. She claimed she had no ID, no money, no nothing.”

It’s also unclear when or where the two changed their names, but police found Hawaii driver’s licenses for both, which stated their new names: Alexandria and Anastasia Duval.

“They wanted a fresh start,” Eddins told The Post. “Their given names had become a liability.”

After all, aside from bankruptcy, both twins reportedly have had multiple run-ins with the law. According to the Star Advertiser, Alison was arrested in Utah on suspicion of drunk driving, fleeing the scene of an accident and disorderly conduct and in Florida for allegedly defrauding an innkeeper. Her sister, according to the paper, was arrested for public intoxication and assaulting a police officer.

Alison has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charge in her sister’s death, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.