NATALIA Grace was welcomed into her new adoptive family by parents Kristine and Michael Barnett, but it wasn’t long before the ‘six-year-old’ allegedly tried to kill them.
A new documentary, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, discovers the mysterious young woman, who they believe has a rare form of dwarfism, is actually in her 20s –ย and who the family claim ‘tried to stab’ one of their other sons.
“One night, I opened my eyes and Natalia is standing at the foot of the bed with a knife in her hand” said father Michael Barnett.
The three-part series chronicles the journey of Michael and his wife, Kristine, who initially adopted Natalia Grace in 2010 from a Ukrainian orphanage, with the belief that they were bringing a six-year-old child into their family.
They started to get suspicious when Kristine first bathed her.
“โI was giving her a bath and I noticed that she had full pubic hair. I was so shocked. I had just been told she was a six-year-old and it was very apparent she wasn’t,” Kristine told The Daily Mail
The documentary delves into the perplexing and distressing case. Dad Michael is overwhelmed with emotions and in his frenzied state, he claims that his entire family endured abuse at the hands of Grace.
After conducting medical examinations, the family discovered that the girl they had adopted was actually a 22-year-old woman.
Kristine told the Daily Mail that she witnessed Natalia ‘draw pictures saying she wanted to kill family members’. Additionally, she alleged that Natalia tampered with her coffee by adding ‘chemicals’.
She claimed: “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.
“I saw her putting chemicals, bleach, in my coffee and I asked her, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘I am trying to poison you’.”
Subsequently, the parents initiated a legal case against Natalia, accusing her of deception and portraying herself as a child while being an adult sociopath.
In response to these accusations, Natalia vehemently denied their validity, asserting that the claims made against her are entirely false.
During an appearance on Dr. Phil in 2019, Natalia added: “I just want people to hear my side.”
She also denied Michael and Kristine’s claim that they made her have scans to prove she was born in 1989, adding: “I actually thought I had found the right family after bouncing around from a lot of families. I thought I had found the right family for me.”
Dr Phil expressed concern that she might not be as old as Kristine and Michael would have us believe.
“I certainly don’t think this individual is 30 years old,” he said. “So I think the court has done a real miscarriage of justice here in reading her the way they have. I don’t think there’s really medical support for that.”
“When you’re a child, particularly coming from a group home in a foreign country… they didn’t celebrate every one of her birthdays. I don’t think she knows how old she is.”
The new documentary is airing on Discovery’s ID channel from 29 May. It examines the case that saw the couple charged with neglect after moving to Canada with their three biological sons, leaving Natalia in her own apartment back in Layfette, Indiana.
In the trailer Michael Barnett teases that the viewers ”might not like the truth’.
