Orphan Natalia Grace's Adoptive Father, Brother Speak Out on Fear She Would Kill Them, Was Actually Adult Woman

While she herself was not interviewed for the 3-night, 6-part special, both her adoptive father Michael Barnett and his son Jake appeared in Monday night's first two hours, detailing the disturbing behavior they allegedly witnessed after welcoming the presumably 6-year-old girl into their home.

A quick refresher: Michael and Kristina Barnett claimed Natalia -- who was born with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia -- came to them through an adoption agency in 2010 and were told she was six at the time. But they began to doubt her age and, in June 2012, Marion County Superior Court agreed to legally change the girl's birth record to indicate she was born in 1989 and not 2003. Shortly after, the Barnetts set her up with an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, while they moved with their three sons to Canada. According to her new birthdate, she would have been in her 20s at the time ... but not even 10 years old based on her Ukrainian birth record.

She eventually befriended nearby residents Antwon and Cynthia Mans, who took her in to their own home. The Barnetts, meanwhile, were charged and arrested for neglect in 2019, but claimed Barnett was not actually a child. Michael was cleared of all four neglect charges he was facing on October 27, 2022, while the charges against Kristine were dismissed in March 2023.

"The Curious Case of Natalia Grace" features new interviews with her adoptive family, as well as neighbors, family friends and footage of Natalia while under the Barnett's care. Most prominent in the series is Michael Barnett, who said that by the time the charges against him were made he had "no wife, I have no children, I have no home, I have no job." He added, "If Natalia never entered our lives, I never get divorced."

Throughout the first two hours, he explained that he had immediate concerns about Natalia after his wife discovered the girl had "full public hair" when they gave her one of her first baths. He and his wife pushed those initial concerns aside, however, because they felt, he said, "all that mattered was there's a little girl that needs love and needs a home."

However, he said, "eventually we had a lot of escalation going on in the first few months we had her" -- claiming her "dark side" stated to become more apparent. That "escalation," according to Michael, included Natalie allegedly admitting to having her period and "hiding it," her mysterious behavior when asked about her Ukrainian upbringing and threats against the family.

"Anytime we spoke to Natalia, 'Hey tell us about the orphanage,' nothing," said Michael, who claimed they also introduced her to someone who spoke Ukrainian, an incident which left him believing, "I swear on all things holy, Natalia's never heard a word of Ukrainian in her life."

"We don't know who she is, we don't know where she's really from, for all I know, she had been living in the Ukraine for 20 years and found her way out. For all I know, she's an American citizen that got this to happen," he said, before claiming Natalia would urinate on one of his three sons and would also "defecate in the car and put her hand into it and try to smear it on" the boy.

He also claimed she would "throw herself" out of their car -- to, he believed, reinforce the "poor helpless little girl status" -- and would also purposely drop things the boys found "important," like their toys, in front of cars to "[bait] my kids to run into traffic so they'd get run over." He said the girl was "doing as many things as possible to cause hurt or harm or mental distress to the entire family" just six months after the adoption, adding, "I can't put into words the abject horror we had to live with."

"I haven't seen Natalia in like a decade. I find the situation incredibly confusing. I want to know what happened and the actual truth and everyone's motives. But at the same time, I don't want to remember that and I don't want to have to revisit a lot of trauma from my childhood," Michael's son Jake -- who now lives in his dad's basement -- said near the top of the series. "It's difficult for me to piece together what happened with adopting Natalia."

Though he said he was "excited" to have a sister at first and recalled feeling "overjoyed the day that I met her," Jake too pointed out her lack of knowledge of where she came from.

"I don't recall her having any belongings from the orphanage, any Ukrainian toys, she didn't seem to know much about Ukraine. At one point we asked her, 'What's it like in Ukraine' and she's like, 'it's always summer there,'" he said with a laugh.

"There was a set of things that didn't add up. Natalia had no accent. She didn't know the Cyrillic alphabet. She knew no Ukrainian. The dynamic between Natalia and the rest of the family began to shift pretty early, there was a lack of trust," Jacob continued. "Natalia did have behavioral issues, which certainly the adoption process, must be traumatic. Abandonment issues are a thing and Natalia was abandoned multiple times."

Jacob also confirmed that "it was a frequent occurrence for Natalia to soil surfaces that she wasn't supposed to," and said "there was certainly a lot of fear" in the home, as they wondered, "What if Natalia actually harms one of us."

Both Michael and Jacob claimed Natalia would hide knives under her bed, with Jacob saying she had "intentions to attack us." Michael said the girl even told him she was "going to kill you in your sleep" when asked about the knives. He also claimed she put Pledge in Kristine's coffee and admitted she was "trying to kill" or poison his ex-wife.

While the adoptive father said the adoption agency was "unhelpful" when it came to their situation, they began to see therapists -- including one who told them they were "in extreme danger" and said Natalia was a sociopath.

"That's a very scary feeling. I definitely didn't feel safe around Natalia. I just was scared," recalled Jacob. "I certainly have that instinct now, I can't share a drink with someone unless I've seen the surface of it the entire time. It's probably rooted in this fear Natalia's coming to poison us. Still working through it. I think I might need a minute, I'm sorry.

A good chunk of the second hour was devoted to Michael claiming Natalia got into a "physical" altercation with Kristine during a trip to a farm for one of their son's birthdays. He claimed he took the boys for a walk before he heard "screaming" and saw what looked like Natalia "trying to pull Kristine" toward an electric fence they had all been warned about previously. He said that while Natalia is small in stature, "she's got guns like Schwarzenegger" since she uses her arms a lot to get around -- and could overpower the "frail" Kristine.

"The second I hear the sirens, I thought Kristine is dead. Natalia had been trying to pull Kristine into the electric fence, she'd been screaming out loud, 'You f---ing bitch, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you, you bitch, you're going to die,'" he said, claiming the girl also told police who responded to the incident that she was "trying to kill" Kristine.

But Michael seemed to contradict himself later in the episode, as in another interview he said he didn't see anything at all because he and his sons were "in the forrest," far from the altercation. He said he didn't speak with any officers and said Natalia was no longer at the scene by the time he and the boys got back.

A witness at the creamery was also interviewed, who said he didn't recall "any of that being said" or "any threats" being made after being shown video of Michael's interview comments. "I just felt like the situation had been overblown and was not that big of a deal," he added.

A forensic interview of Natalia from 2019 was also shown, in which she claimed Kristine simply fell while they were getting up off the ground. "I guess she thought I was trying to put her into the electric fence of whatever," said Natalia, "so she called the police on that." She also said she never wanted to hurt her adoptive family.

Following that incident, she was taken to a state hospital, who allegedly moved her into the adult ward after seeing her pubic hair. According to Michael, she allegedly reiterated her intent to kill the boys while there -- writing in a journal, "I am going to stab them with a knife while they sleep. I'm going to drag their bodies underneath the deck out back."

He claimed she "was propositioning the men" at the facility as well, while an unnamed nurse said that Natalia often "talked about sex" and was "very sexual" in general while in their care. The nurse claimed Natalia would talk to the men who worked there about "dating them" and "wanting to have a boyfriend." She added, "The language that she was using with the males, I was shocked. There was a mention of her doing sexual favors for money."

The first two episodes included Michael also claiming a police detective questioned the child's age during a welfare check and even told the family to "correct her age." That detective, however, has since died ... and, in an email from him shown on the special, wrote that by all accounts Natalia "is a child."

Footage from a Ukrainian investigator who tried to track down Natalia's alleged birth mother in 2020 also showed him talking to the woman's twin sister. The sister was seen calling Anna, the presumed birth mother, on the phone -- and while she did not want to be interviewed, Anna said "it is 17 years," which would seemingly confirm Natalia's age to be right around what the agency said it was when she was adopted.

"My god, why can't they leave me alone? I do not want to talk to anybody," she said in the translated video.

The episode included acquaintances of the Barnetts who are also part of the little person community coming to the belief that the adoptive parents were totally lying about Natalia ... while a neighbor said she felt she had been "fooled" into thinking the Barnetts were "a perfect family" before adopting Natalia.