The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, a new documentary about the bizarre story of a young girl from Ukraine, is bringing attention back to Michael and Kristine Barnett and their adopted daughter, who they say is not who she claims to be. The Barnetts allege that Natalia Grace is a dangerous person who was out to hurt them and their sons.
According to the Daily Mail, Natalia suffers from spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, a rare form of dwarfism, which causes her to be small in stature. The Barnetts insist Natalia would fool people into believing she was a child because of her size. What happened next caught the attention of millions who wondered what was really going on.
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The Barnetts wanted a little girl to love.
In 2010, Michael and Kristine Barnett wanted to expand their family. They adopted Natalia from Ukraine. In a 2019 interview with the Daily Mail, Kristine Barnett explained that she and her husband were experienced foster parents who wanted more children.
"I always wanted to have a larger family and I had very severe complications in my pregnancies and was unable to have more children," she told the news outlet. "I also at that time had a very privileged life. I felt that if I had the ability to help another person in the world then I wanted to do it."
When the couple learned about Natalia, they rushed to Florida to scoop up the girl from an emergency situation. Her adoptive parents gave her up for "undisclosed reasons." She had a Ukrainian birth certificate dated September 4, 2003. The parents asked few questions but took their 6-year-old daughter home.
"Out of compassion for their situation I didn't want to press them for information on what had gone wrong," Kristine Barnett told the Daily Mail.
Soon, the experienced mother felt something was off.
Although the parents believed their daughter was 6 years old and had dwarfism, soon after the adoption, the Barnetts began questioning who Natalia Grace really was. Kristine Barnett was reportedly bathing Natalia and saw that the girl had pubic hair. She says she immediately thought the girl was pretending to be someone she was not.
"Natalia was a woman. She had periods. She had adult teeth. She never grew a single inch, which would happen even with a child with dwarfism," she explained to the Daily Mail.
Natalia's behavior frightened the family.
Kristine Barnett told the Daily Mail in her 2019 interview that Natalia did strange things like trying to jump out of a moving car and smearing blood on the walls.
"She was standing over people in the middle of the night. You couldn't go to sleep. We had to hide all the sharp objects," the mother explained.
"I saw her putting chemicals, bleach, Windex something like that, in my coffee and I asked her, what are you doing? She said, 'I am trying to poison you,'" Kristine Barnett alleged.
Her father agreed the behavior was unsettling. In the trailer for the new documentary, Michael Barnett yells, "We were all abused. I hate this!"
Natalia allegedly has a mental illness.
Kristine Barnett told the Daily Mail that Natalia was diagnosed with a severe mental illness only found in adults. This confirmed the parents' worst fears, and in 2012, they petitioned the court to change the girl's birthday from 2003 to 1989. The court granted the family's request, ultimately changing her age from 9 to 22. She was then put into a hospital for psychiatric care.
After her release from the hospital, the family wanted to cut ties with Natalia and moved to Canada to raise their sons. But before leaving, they agreed to put her up in an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, for a year. At the same time, she remained under the supervision of state health care provider Aspire Indiana, Kristine Barnett told the Daily Mail. She claimed Natalia was considered an adult at that time.
In 2013, Natalia was evicted from her apartment, and the family helped her attain housing a second time, the mother said.
"I co-signed the lease and paid for the rent up front for a year. I did everything you would do when you send your child off to college, I helped her with groceries and bought furniture at Target for her," Kristine told the Daily Mail. "I was optimistic, she had a concrete plan for her life. She had food stamps. She had social security income for the rest of her things. She had demonstrated she was able to live."
Natalia stopped communicating with the Barnetts.
According to Kristine Barnett's 2019 interview, Natalia suddenly went radio silent later in 2013. The Barnetts divorced the following year. Although Kristine hoped Natalia was OK, she never expected what would happen next.
She and her husband were charged with neglect of a dependent because the state of Indiana believed they abandoned Natalia, who was just a child. "The media is painting me to be a child abuser, but there is no child here," Kristine Barnett told the Daily Mail.
Charges against Kristine Barnett were eventually dropped, and according to the New York Post Michael Barnett was found not guilty.
Natalia still contends she is much younger than the Barnetts say she is. In a 2019 interview with Dr. Phil, she broke her silence and denied being a con artist, People reported.
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The case is eerily similar to a movie.
The 2009 movie Orphan follows the story of a family who adopts a girl after the devastating loss of a child in a stillbirth. The horror movie portrays its antagonist as a violent killer hiding behind the guise of a child. It is based on a true story from Norway.
In 2022, that movie was followed by Orphan First Kill, which aligns even more closely with the Barnetts experience, depicting a girl with dwarfism first in a mental institution in Estonia, then pretending to be a missing child who is returned to her family only to violently and psychologically torment her mother, father, and two brothers.
The documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace premieres May 29 on Investigation Discovery and will air in three parts, according to a release from ID.
"Unfolding over multiple parts and three consecutive nights on ID, the docuseries presents an unparalleled deep dive into this shocking family saga tracing all the way from Natalia's birth in Ukraine up to the arrest and subsequent legal proceedings around Michael Barnett on charges of neglect," the press release details. "An unprecedented story THE CURIOUS CASE OF NATALIA GRACE is riddled with shocking allegations and explosive revelations."
