Aaron Carter's Twin Sister Opens Up About His Death And Their Disturbing Childhood—"His Innocence Was Stripped Away"

Beloved child singer and reality star, Aaron Carter, was found dead inside his home on November 5th, 2022. He was only 34. Before then, his public and private life was a series of public ups and downs. People Magazine chronicled his rise to stardom.

"He became a global superstar when he released his self-titled debut album at the age of 10. In 2000, he released his second album, Aaron's Party (Come Get It), which spawned hits including the title track, "That's How I Beat Shaq" and "I Want Candy." Before embarking on his first solo tour in 2000, he opened on tour for his older brother Nick Carter's band the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears. [He was also an] actor, appearing as himself in such shows as Lizzie McGuire and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, as well as roles in 7th Heaven and the movies Fat Albert, Popstar and Supercross."

"My mom and dad did a really good job," Carter told People in 2018. "When I grew up, I had a bodyguard outside my door. I wasn't allowed to party. I wasn't allowed to do anything. As soon as I got, like, 17 years old, 16 years old, I started being very rebellious."

This "rebellious" stage included a failed proposal to a Playboy model when Carter was just 18 years old in front of a crowd of 200 gathered for the Playboy Comedy Tour. That same year, Carter joined his older brother, Nick for an E! reality show called House of Carters, which also featured their parents and other three siblings, Bobbie Jean, Leslie, and Aaron's twin sister, Angel.

The show only lasted one season, and many viewers thought it was a funny behind-the-scenes look at a family in show business. However, a series of increasingly bizarre events followed as Aaron, Bobbie Jean, and Leslie struggled with mental illness and drug addiction.

Aaron also suffered from ongoing financial issues and ongoing conflicts with his siblings, Nick and Angel. Additionally, the death of their father in 2017 allegedly resulted in Aaron having a nervous breakdown, and Aaron was pulled over in 2017 for drug possession and driving under the influence. Stints in rehab followed.

In 2012, Leslie Carter died from a drug overdose at age 25 leaving behind a child. The tragic news devastated her family, especially Aaron, who had offered to fund her own rehab treatment.

"I wasn't really making that much money. Fortunately, I had just hit my bonus. I got $10,000 the week before Leslie died, and I actually had reached out to her two weeks before that and said, 'I'm going to get you the money to go to rehab,'" Aaron shared in a later interview.

Fast forward to November 2022, when Aaron himself was found unresponsive in his bathtub with prescription pills and drug paraphernalia reportedly found nearby although the cause of death remains "undetermined."

Since then, Aaron's twin sister, Angel Carter Conrad, has bravely spoken out about their deeply troubled childhood and the impact it had on all of them, including addiction, abuse, and mental health struggles.

"To my twin… I loved you beyond measure. You will be missed dearly," Angel wrote on Instagram, alongside childhood photos of her and Aaron. "My funny, sweet Aaron, I have so many memories of you and I, and I promise to cherish them. I know you're at peace now. I will carry you with me until the day I die and get to see you again," she added.

"Aaron really idolized Nick," she explained on "The Squeeze" Podcast with Taylor Lautner.

"He wanted to be exactly like him. At age seven, he started singing and working like an adult, innocence stripped away from him. Things were really chaotic at home. No boundaries."

She explained that her parents' divorce was "brewing" at that time and that all of the children got into drugs in their teenage years.

"There was a lot of love there. But as I got older, things really started to reveal themselves more. You know, my parents were also having a lot of fun, partying a lot and exposing us to all of that," Conrad added. "Drinking, you know, people in and out of the home. And then when my parents would drink, my dad was the nice drunk and my mom was the meaner one. And so they just fought when they would both drink, which was all the time. So that kind of really started to, you know, to reveal itself as I got older. And then Nick was discovered by my mom in the backyard. He was singing on a tree stump and she heard his voice and was like, 'Oh my gosh, like he can sing.' So she started getting him into auditions. That's how he joined the Backstreet Boys."

Additional opportunities for both Nick and Aaron followed.

"[My sister Angel] was already diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia," Conrad explained. "And she just wasn't getting the support from my parents because they were so laser-focused on the money coming in. And making Nick and Aaron stars because it changed everything for us."

"My sister, Bobby, and Aaron, they were diagnosed with mental health disorders in their adulthood," she added, as well as stating that there was a pattern of mental health issues and addiction on both sides of her family.

"You know, actually how my parents met was when my dad was 19 years old in this small town in upstate New York, and my dad was the town drug dealer. My mom was hitchhiking. And my mom knew who he was, but she was hitchhiking. And he pulled over to help her. And that's how they met." Conrad also stated that her father was a "womanizer" with a wife and daughter when he met Conrad's mother.

"He was almost like a military type of presence with us, very strong. Didn't really show us a lot of love and affection. But when he drank, he was so sweet and so loving. So as a child, it was like a psychological trick, in a way," Conrad explained. "Because we liked it when he was drunk because then he was nice and he was loving. Alcohol pulled that side out of him. And then my mom had always had issues with alcohol and she really struggled. And, you know, she definitely repeated the cycle within her family."

"And I think it's important to say that like, nobody wants to be like that," Conrad added. "Like, no one wants to like take on these addictions and for that to define you and to, you know, I'm always trying to, you know, have empathy for her situation. My mom is still alive. So, you know, to have empathy for her situation, what she went through, I don't hate my mom. I want her to be well. It's complicated."

From Conrad's perspective, the real breaking point for Aaron was his parents' eventual divorce.

"My parents divorced when I was 15, and at that time, the fighting was just all the time that for me as a 15-year-old, I was like, thank God they're finally getting divorced. Now for Aaron and Leslie, they didn't have that same reaction. It was devastating. For Aaron specifically too, because Aaron really carried the weight of that divorce and he thought it was his fault."

When Lautner asked why, Conrad responded, "Because Aaron was the breadwinner for the family. He took care of the family financially. He saw what the money did to my parents and their relationship and the greed, you know, that it caused. And he just, as a kid, just, thought it was his fault. And he carried that with him, you know, throughout his entire life. So it was almost like a guilt for his success. Because he thought that the success, you know, destroyed the family. And it wasn't his responsibility to carry all that weight."

"I always say like for Aaron, you know, he was working like an adult. He had his innocence stripped away from him. And he would often be out on these long tours, year-round, gone, just wanting to come home. And, you know, he, my parents would say, 'Oh, you know, just finish this tour and we'll buy you a boat. We'll do this, we'll do that.' And they would with his money, but he didn't want all that," Conrad explained. "He just wanted to be home. He just wanted to be a kid. He wanted to, you know, make friends. Go play outside."

"His innocence was not protected. And what do you think happens psychologically when somebody's innocence is stripped away from them? You know, now as a mother, seeing my sibling go through that and having a five-year-old and knowing how important their childhood is, you can't, it's such a small amount of time. It goes by so quick and it's so important because you think about people who have trauma and addiction issues and things that they're going through that they can't get through. So for Aaron, you know, not having that innocence, like creating a space for your child where you allow them to have the freedom to become who they want to be, right? And we just did not have that. We had no boundaries in my family."

Conrad also shared she and her siblings were sexually abused.

"And, you know, you throw on fame, money, addiction, but then you throw on sexual abuse, being abused. You know, I was sexually abused by two people when I was a child. First person at age eight, second person was about nine, like in those really young years, you know? And Aaron went through his own form of it too. So did Leslie. I mean, things that you cannot even imagine that, you know, I feel lucky that I didn't allow those experiences to define me, but my siblings didn't have the same response to that. And there wasn't anyone that we could go to and say, 'Hey, this is happening.'"

Conrad added that she currently doesn't have a relationship with her mother, but she would be open to it at some point in the future. She added that her father tried to make amends before he died in 2017.

"I remember two years before he died, he called me on two separate occasions and my dad growing up, he was like the man, like I only saw him cry twice when his dog died and when my grandma died. Those were the only two times I ever saw my dad cry. And he called me two years before he passed and just profusely apologized. And I was crying, He owned his part and was like, 'I was a bad parent and I don't wanna make the same mistake with [my other children.]"

Sadly, Conrad's sister, Bobbie Jean Carter, also died from drug-related issues at age 41. Conrad, now a mother herself, devotes her platform to advocating for mental health support.

You can watch the full interview here.

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