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Investigation Discovery's six-part docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace brings the disturbing details of the incidents around the Ukrainian-American teenager who was accused of conning her adoptive parents and plotting to harm them.
Natalia Grace was adopted by an Indiana couple, Kristine and Michael Barnett, in 2010 when she was almost six years old. However, the couple successfully had Natalia's legal age changed from 8 to 22 in 2012 after they formed a strong belief that she trying to cause them harm by posing as a child with her rare form of dwarfism. Her alleged story has been compared to Jaune Collet-Serra’s 2009 film Orphan featuring Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther ever since.
Investigation Discovery's new series The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks looks into the details of the case. The synopsis reads,
"The story of Natalia Grace, assumed to be a 6-year-old Ukrainian orphan with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, a rare bone disorder; her adoptive parent alleged Natalia was an adult who was masquerading as a child with intent to harm the family."
What happened to Natalia Grace? Details explored
The speculation around Natalia Grace began after she was adopted by a couple based out of Indiana - Michael and Kristine Barnett. Natalia Grace was born in Ukraine on September 4, 2003, to Anna Volodymyrivna Gava and was placed in a Ukranian orphanage soon after. She was diagnosed with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, a rare form of dwarfism after her birth.
In the months after her adoption from a Florida center, the Barnetts claimed that Grace was an adult posing as a child intending harm to the family. Grace was accused of poisoning Kristine's coffee, pushing her towards an electric fence and threatening to stab Barnett's biological sons on several instances. Michael Barnett had once claimed to have found Natalia at the foot of their bed with a knife in her hand in the middle of the night, as reported by the New York Post.
The Barnett's petitioned the Marion County court in 2012 to have her legal age changed from 8 to 22. She ended up abandoned in an apartment in Lafayette with no electricity, air conditioning, food or water along with a birth certificate stating her year of birth as 1989.
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Similarities to Jaune Collett Serra's Orphan (2009)
Jaune Collett-Serra's Orphan features Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman in a story that revolves around a woman with sinister plans and posing to be a child leading her adoptive family to a disastrous end. Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is adopted by parents Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard).
Kate and John's children Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) and Max (Aryana Engineer) are the first to fall prey to Esther's evil as Sister Abigail comes down from the St. Mariana's Home for Girls, a local orphanage, to warn the new parents of the tragic events that occur around Esther. Enraged by the incident, Esther kills Sister Abigail and hides her body in Daniel's treehouse. She later sets the treehouse on fire with Daniel inside it as he learns of Sister Abigail's death from Max.
The strange incidents recur as Esther breaks her arm and blames it on Kate causing challenges in Kate and John's marriage. She plots to murder Kate and Max by releasing her car brakes. The couple later find out that the orphanage has no records of Esther who originally came from an Estonian mental hospital named the Saarne Institute. Esther was originally a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer with hypopituitarism and a history of serial killing.
In the movie, Leena tries to disrupt her adoptive parents' marriage, tries seducing John and eventually stabs him to death. The movie ends with a violent struggle between Leena, Kate and Max. The mother-daughter duo flees as Leena sinks into the bottom of a frozen lake.
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace was released on May 29, 2023, showcasing the strange case to viewers worldwide. However, the follow-up docuseries by Investigation Discovery, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, airing January 1, 2024 onwards, offers Natalia's side of the story.
