TWIN sisters from Abingdon were shocked to discover they had the same names as two women involved in a recent murder case.

Earlier this month at Oxford Crown Court, Karen Fathers, 35, was one of three people found guilty of murdering Sean Miles, a 37-year-old with autism.

Her sister Tracey, also 35 but not a twin, was set free after the jury found her not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Since then, identical 41-year-old twins Karen and Tracey Fathers say they have been repeatedly mistaken for the women in the murder trial and want to clear up the case of mistaken identity.

Their parents Cherry and Peter Fathers, from Gainsborough Green, have been asked constantly if their daughters were those accused of murder.

And colleagues at the taxi firm where Tracey works thought she had been imprisoned when she didn't turn up for work one day as she was on her day off.

Cherry, 64, said: "People keep phoning us to say they didn't think our girls would do anything like that.

"They have read about it in the paper and they are jumping to the wrong conclusion.

"Peter stormed out of his local, the Saxton Arms, when the regulars asked him if it was our girls and he told them 'you should know better'.

"It is a bizarre coincidence that there are sisters with exactly the same names but I want to clear this up because it is starting to upset us.

"People are putting two and two together and it has gone on for too long now."

Mum-of-two Tracey, a former Larkmead School pupil, said: "I took a day off work and all my colleagues thought I had been banged up.

"But they realised it wasn't me when I turned up for work the next day.

"It's a one-in-a-million coincidence but Abingdon is a small town and it's easy for Chinese whispers to start flying around.

"It is affecting everyone in the family. My son went round to his girlfriend's house and her mum was having a dig at him, asking him if we had done it.

"It's not nice to be mistaken for a murderer and have everyone pointing at you when you are shopping in Tesco and we want this to stop. It's not nice to be mistaken for a person who was on trial for murder."

Mum-of-three Karen, who works on a part-time basis driving disabled adults to a day centre in the town, added: "We have never been in trouble with the police in our lives, so it is a shock to find out that people think we were in the murder case.

"I only work part-time, so this has not affected me as much as Tracey, but it's upsetting for everyone."

Edward Doyle, 34, Terry McMaster, 24, and Karen Fathers, 35, have been jailed for life for the killing of Sean Miles. They all lived in Alice Smith Square in Littlemore, Oxford.

Mr MIles was knifed in the head and then drowned in the River Thames last May over unfounded allegations that he was a paedophile.