Prepare to be shocked, creeped out, and intrigued all at the same time! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, we’re looking at the facts, accusations, and theories surrounding Natalia Grace.
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00:00 "I still don't have concrete answers."
00:02 "Somebody's not telling the truth."
00:04 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the facts,
00:07 accusations, and theories surrounding Natalia Grace.
00:10 "I want you to know how old I am.
00:14 I want you to know about my past because I want to know too."
00:18 There are two sides to every story.
00:21 In the case of Natalia Grace, though, people have gone back and forth
00:24 between who's lying, who's telling the truth,
00:26 and whether one person is being 100% honest.
00:29 "You want to have me give you one word that describes Natalia to me?
00:35 Enigma."
00:36 While investigators have been able to pin down some facts,
00:40 much of this story boils down to she said, they said.
00:43 Natalia Grace is either a monster or a victim, depending on who you ask.
00:48 The answer may never be clear-cut, but everyone can agree on one thing.
00:52 This is among the most fascinating and unsettling stories
00:56 to grace the true crime scene in some time.
00:58 "You've adopted a kid and now they're trying to kill you.
01:01 I mean, it's the stuff of a horror movie, right?"
01:05 Natalia Grace was born in Ukraine with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita,
01:11 an uncommon bone growth disorder.
01:14 Spending much of her childhood in a Ukraine orphanage,
01:17 Natalia was eventually adopted by Michael and Christine Barnett.
01:20 "We're overcome with joy and emotion.
01:22 Oh my gosh, that day in and of itself, without context,
01:26 is one of the five greatest days of my life."
01:29 This wealthy Indiana couple already had three sons.
01:32 Their eldest, Jacob, has autism, inspiring his mother
01:35 to create a non-profit special needs learning center.
01:38 "The Barnett family opened up a foundation,
01:40 a place where parents and kids with autism could go be with other parents
01:46 and kids with autism and feel normal."
01:48 Jacob was also the subject of Christine Barnett's book,
01:51 The Spark, a mother's story of nurturing, genius, and autism.
01:55 Planning to adopt another child,
01:57 the Barnetts received a call about Natalia in 2010.
02:00 Given a 24-hour window, the Barnetts flew to Florida
02:03 and formally made Natalia a part of the family.
02:06 The Barnetts celebrated with a trip to Disney World,
02:09 but things soon took a hairy turn.
02:11 "We went with Natalia to Disney World.
02:15 We were all excited to have her in the family.
02:18 Natalia seemed happy to join our family."
02:21 At the hotel, Christine prepared to give Natalia a bath.
02:24 "Christine's going to give our brand new daughter a bath.
02:28 And I hear a shout from the bathroom.
02:31 [water running]
02:34 This was a 'I'm not playing around, come here right now, Michael.'"
02:37 Although Natalia was said to be roughly around six or seven,
02:41 Christine claimed that she found hair in areas
02:44 that normally wouldn't see development for at least a few more years.
02:47 This wasn't the last time the Barnetts cast out surrounding Natalia's age.
02:51 The Barnetts allegedly discovered signs of menstruation
02:54 and found that Natalia was much taller than another girl
02:57 with the same form of dwarfism.
02:58 "There's no way anybody could look at this picture
03:00 and say those two are the same age."
03:03 Even more concerning, the couple believed
03:05 that Natalia was attempting to harm the family,
03:08 claiming that she put pledge in Christine's coffee,
03:10 hid knives in her room,
03:12 and attempted to push Christine into an electric fence at a farm.
03:15 "Christine's screaming at them, 'She needs to be arrested.
03:18 She tried to kill me. She needs to be arrested.
03:20 She tried to kill me.'"
03:22 "We wanted charges. We wanted her arrested."
03:25 These were supposedly enforced by verbal death threats.
03:29 If you're thinking,
03:30 'This sounds exactly like the 2009 horror film 'Orphan,'
03:34 you're not the only one to draw that parallel.
03:36 Making Natalia out to be a sociopath,
03:38 the Barnetts placed her in a mental health hospital.
03:41 "We had been trying to get her to inpatient treatment.
03:44 We had been begging people to help us.
03:47 We had been told by everybody, 'You need help desperately.
03:51 Your family's in danger. She needs inpatient treatment.'"
03:54 Although Natalia wasn't deemed mentally unstable,
03:57 some did question her age with accusations of her,
04:00 quote, "propositioning men."
04:02 Around the same time that Natalia was in the hospital,
04:05 her adoptive parents petitioned successfully
04:07 to have her legally re-aged from 8 to 22.
04:10 "They gave her a new birth certificate with a new birth date.
04:13 They gave her a new Indiana ID.
04:16 She had everything changes from a year of birth of 2003,
04:21 back it up 14 years to 1989."
04:23 Shortly after Natalia's release,
04:25 the Barnetts sent her to live in a Westfield apartment.
04:28 She was later moved to a Lafayette apartment
04:30 while her adoptive family uprooted to Canada.
04:33 "2013.
04:35 The Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,
04:38 wants Jacob, who's 14,
04:41 to go there to get his master's degree.
04:43 So we're moving to Canada."
04:46 Natalia would be taken in by Antoine and Cynthia Manns,
04:49 who were skeptical of the Barnetts' claims and actions.
04:52 Who's the true victim and monster?
04:55 Natalia has denied the accusations against her,
04:57 swearing that she was the one being abused.
05:00 "That whole thing was just a big chain reaction from one line.
05:03 But people don't know what happened in that house."
05:09 According to Natalia,
05:11 Christine was the primary source of torment,
05:13 inflicting physical harm and attempting to set her up with older men.
05:17 Natalia further claims that Christine pressured her
05:20 to lie about her age, among other things.
05:22 Jacob Barnett was supposedly instructed by his mother
05:25 to kick Natalia down the stairs.
05:27 "It's okay.
05:28 I feel like I deserve the right to tell my story.
05:31 I did not tell them that.
05:34 I didn't tell them about kicking the stairs."
05:36 "Well, kicking down the stairs, we said we're not going to say, right?"
05:39 Although Natalia says that Michael didn't participate in the beatings,
05:43 she blames him for not stopping Christine.
05:45 Although Michael has spoken ill of his adoptive daughter in the past,
05:49 he's since had a change of tune,
05:51 arguing that Christine abused Natalia and himself.
05:54 In any case, Natalia believes that Michael still played
05:57 a major role in her abandonment.
05:59 "Christine is the real monster.
06:00 Michael is an accomplice to the monster,
06:05 because he went along with everything that Christine said."
06:09 Michael filed for divorce in 2014,
06:12 with his marriage to Christine officially ending in 2018.
06:16 The following year,
06:17 Michael and Christine were charged with child neglect.
06:20 "Prior to this, the Barnetts were on the cover of magazines and newspapers.
06:26 And now, after being arrested and charged,
06:28 being photographed for a whole different reason."
06:30 A jury found Michael not guilty after roughly two hours of deliberation,
06:35 although some key details were excluded from the trial,
06:38 namely Natalia's age when the Barnetts abandoned her.
06:41 It had been determined that Natalia's biological mother
06:44 was Anna Volodymyrivna Gava, who was born in 1979.
06:49 "The DNA test results came back.
06:50 It is a match.
06:53 She is indeed Natalia's biological mother.
06:56 This is a huge deal,
07:01 and may put this whole age issue to rest."
07:04 When the Barnetts had Natalia re-aged,
07:07 her birth year was changed to 1989,
07:09 which would have made Gava a 10-year-old at the time.
07:12 It seemed more likely that Natalia was born on September 4, 2003,
07:16 as her original records indicated.
07:18 Nevertheless, the charges against Christine were dropped due to a lack of evidence.
07:36 In August 2023, a DNA test found that Natalia was roughly around 20.
07:42 Thus, she would have been around 9 when the Barnetts put her in an apartment.
07:45 "It's clear that the prosecution believed Natalia was a child
07:49 when she was left alone to fend for herself in this apartment in Lafayette, Indiana.
07:53 Getting her re-aged to an adult could have been a way for Michael and Christine
07:58 to protect themselves from child neglect charges."
08:01 This seems to conclude once and for all
08:03 that Natalia wasn't an adult pretending to be a child.
08:06 What remains up for debate is whether Natalia was ever violent towards the Barnetts.
08:11 Natalia and Michael have since come together,
08:13 agreeing that Christine put them both through hell.
08:16 "I'm overly sorry about what she did to you.
08:18 I am horrified by what she has done to you.
08:21 I am sorry I wasn't stronger and didn't stop her."
08:26 They also denied Christine's allegations that there was a sexual relationship between them.
08:30 Although Natalia forgave Michael,
08:32 she still believes that he holds some accountability.
08:35 "Michael, I forgive you."
08:41 "You don't have to. I don't forgive me."
08:49 "You should."
08:50 Natalia is especially suspicious of whose idea it was to re-age her,
08:56 a subject that Michael refuses to talk about.
08:58 As for why the Barnetts adopted Natalia in the first place,
09:02 it's been theorized that Christine wanted to exploit and profit off her.
09:06 "I feel like it was a mission of like boosting her ego type of thing.
09:11 I feel like she just wanted people to be like, 'Oh my goodness, like,
09:16 she's this amazing person. She just adopted a little girl from the Ukraine who has dwarfism.'"
09:21 When that didn't go according to plan, they sought to distance themselves from Natalia.
09:26 Cynthia Manns even suspects that Christine took direct inspiration from the movie Orphan
09:31 in an attempt to paint Natalia as a monster.
09:33 "It was all copied off the movie Orphan. Ukrainian girl, Russian girl, check.
09:38 Orphan, check. All this crazy stuff. Standing at the end of the bed with a knife, check."
09:46 After serving as her guardians for a decade,
09:49 Antoine and Cynthia Manns officially adopted Natalia in June 2023.
09:54 Assuming that Natalia really was an innocent victim,
09:57 this might seem like the happiest ending possible.
09:59 "With this adoption, I'll be legally a part of the family. So that way,
10:03 I'll be protected while I do civil suits against the Barnetts."
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10:24 There's just one more revelation that has given people pause.
10:27 Who is Natalia Grace? Natalia Grace has presented her side of the story on Dr. Phil and the docu-series
10:34 The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. Both make Natalia out to be a more sympathetic figure
10:39 than the Barnetts implied.
10:40 "I had to learn a lot of life lessons at an early age,
10:43 but I will forever embrace my past because I feel like it made me stronger."
10:50 However, the Investigation Discovery series ends its second season on a note
10:54 that throws everything into question. In a phone conversation, Antoine and Cynthia
10:59 Manns are heard accusing Natalia of lying, backstabbing, and only caring about herself.
11:04 "She's done other things too, but this was a new low. Natalia does not have emotions for nothing
11:12 but herself."
11:13 While the docu-series exists to inform, its goal above all else is to entertain.
11:18 For all we know, this phone call could have been taken out of context to hook us in for
11:23 a potential third season. That said, we're not sure how else to interpret this bombshell as of writing.
11:29 "We're done. We're done with her."
11:31 Following the season two finale, Natalia posted on social media that she was quote "doing well,"
11:41 but couldn't elaborate because she quote "signed an agreement with the show to keep
11:45 things confidential for now." This won't be the last we hear from Natalia Grace.
11:50 "I just want to stay focused on now because I have a lot of big plans for my life."
11:54 While a third season of the docu-series has yet to be announced, the showrunners have set viewers
12:00 up for more. Natalia's story will also be dramatized in a Hulu limited series starring
12:05 Ellen Pompeo. By that point, perhaps we'll have a clearer answer of who Natalia Grace is.
12:11 "This is a new chapter in the story with just endless possibilities."
12:19 Until then, she remains something of a mystery. Maybe this is due to limited information and
12:24 conflicting accounts. Depending on how much the media truly knows though, Natalia might be an
12:30 enigma by design. "Book two is about to be written by me and that book is going to be an amazing book.
12:38 I already know." What are your thoughts on the Natalia Grace case? Let us know in the comments.
12:43 "This was hard, but I'm willing to do it because everybody deserves a second chance."
12:54 "I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to give up."