Yvonne and Yvette McCarther, twins joined at the head, have died at age 43.
As children, they spent two years as a circus attraction to help pay hospital bills. In the 1970s, they sang with gospel music groups. They had been studying nursing when they were found dead Saturday in their home, apparently of natural causes.The sisters were among the world's oldest unseparated conjoined twins. They were cranio-pagus twins, one of the rarest types. They had separate personalities, brains and other organs, but shared a circulatory system.
When the two were born, doctors told their mother, Willie McCarther, that they should be institutionalized.
Willie McCarther ruled that out. Fearing that surgery would be fatal to one or both, she also refused to allow an operation to separate them. Instead, she taught them to think of themselves as individuals.