What's in a Name? MURDER!!

In the 1980s, The Police sang about chance on their classic album Synchronicity. In the 1990s, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a great film about coincidence, Dead Again. And now we have our newest decade-defining twist of fate, one of the most bizarre stories you will ever see.

Sit down for this one.

Imagine two women arrested for soliciting an undercover officer to kill their boyfriends. Not so unusual—yet. Now … place the ladies in the same suburban county—Fairfax County, Virginia—and book them on murder-for-hire charges within 24 hours of each other.

Add the fact that their boyfriends are each 22 years old. And don’t forget that these women—who do not know each other, according to police—both have the first name April.

Oh yes, they also share the same middle name, Dawn.

It’s all true—but the common threads are all just a fluke, according to this article in the Washington Post from last week.

Detectives checked and double-checked the facts to ensure they did not err and somehow create two stories out of one. In a leading candidate for understatement of the year, a police spokesman told the press that the similarities between these confirmed separate cases involving are a “freaky coincidence.”

Normally, such low-hanging fruit would spur me to wax comic about twists of fate, chance encounters, and the knee-slapping hilarity of murder-for-hire—even though April Dawn Shiflett and April Dawn Davis are not laughing at their possible 40 years in the slammer. But today, I’m more concerned about my good friend Joe. In fact, I’m hitting his speed dial on my Razr phone now, hoping that I catch him before his girlfriend does.

Her name? April Dawn Slaughter.