Aaron Carter's Twin Says Bringing His Ashes Home Was 'My Last Way To Protect Him'

Angel Carter, the twin sister of the late singer Aaron Carter, has laid him to rest following his tragic passing.

Earlier this year, she was driven by a strong need to protect her brother and decided to bring his ashes home, where she organized a funeral service to honor his memory. Aaron, who was 34 years old, passed away at his California residence in November 2022.

Angel opened up about her experience with laying Aaron to rest almost a year after he passed away during this week's issue of PEOPLE. During her chat with the publication, the 35-year-old addressed her need to "protect him" following his unexpected departure, stating:

"To lose a twin, it's an out-of-body experience. He's a part of me. And it was like when he died, I had this sense of, 'I've got to get him in my house. I've got to bring him home and protect him.'"

Speaking before his July 28 memorial service, she disclosed her plans to bury his ashes the week following the memorial. In her words, "I have him here. And for a few months after he died, it was my last way to protect him. I don't want anybody to do anything weird with him. Now, I'm burying him next week at Forest Lawn."

Additionally, she explained that there was nobody else that she could trust to ensure that the "Go Jimmy Jimmy" singer would not be exploited, making that her "last act of love."

During the same interview, Angel had reflected on her family's hurtful past and Aaron's passing. Starting with a flashback to how the heart attack that claimed their father, Robert's death fast-tracked her twin brother's decline into drugs and alcohol, she recalled:

"I always felt like that was the beginning of the end. Aaron was already in a bad place, but it was like a domino effect."

Even though the late singer willingly admitted himself into rehab, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, his condition remained the same. He continued dabbling with drugs for the rest of his tumultuous years, with Angel watching in distress as he streamed disturbing videos online. 

In these clips, the "Leave It Up to Me" hitmaker is surrounded by firearms as he inhaled compressed gas from air canisters and shared unexpected stories about the alleged plots of his family and others to kill him. As Angel expressed:

"I just kept waiting for him to snap out of it but he never did. He wanted so badly to be happy. He really fought to the end, but he just had too many problems to be fixed. He'd become this person who we no longer recognized. I don't even think he recognized himself."

The Tampa-born beauty's worries became more evident when their mother, Jane Schneck, posted pictures of her late Aaron's death scene, insisting that he had been getting death threats.

Additionally, the 64-year-old claimed that law enforcement dismissed her concerns of foul play a month before the official ruling, which credited his death to drowning caused by gas inhalation and drug ingestion.

That odd incident resulted in Angel ceasing contact with her mother for invading her twin brother's privacy like that. Delving deeper into why her and her siblings, including her sister, Leslie, who died of an overdose, turned out damaged, she divulged:

"Our childhood was filled with emotional abuse, dysfunction and addiction."

For her to break away from what she dubbed a "generational" cycle, Angel has partnered with the children's mental health organization, On Our Sleeves. She hopes that through her work "the stigma surrounding mental health and not being able to talk to children about how they're feeling" will be shattered.

Clarifying why it was significant to start the work from children, the mother-of-one disclosed, "It's much easier to raise a strong child than to fix a broken adult. Something positive has to come from all this. I refuse to allow Aaron to have died in vain."