If you’re someone that finds yourself enamored with the true-crime genre, then allow us to recommend one of the most captivating documentaries we’ve seen in 2023, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace now streaming on Max. Over the course of six episodes, we watched as the mind-boggling tale behind Natalia Grace’s adoption and Indiana life unfolded.
Briefly recapping, Kristine and Michael Barnett of Indiana adopted Natalia back in 2010. At the time, the couple assumed she was six years old. However, the Barnetts later claimed that Natalia wasn’t six at all, but a grown adult. Eventually, a court sided with the Barnetts and affirmed that Natalia wasn’t underage at the time of her adoption, despite Natalia’s birth mother, along with other proof, contradicting the court ruling.
As it would turn out, the more involved you got with this story as a viewer, the more twists there were as allegations of abuse at the hands of the Barnetts were made, Natalia was accused of being dangerous and sexually inappropriate and the dark underbelly of the Barnetts’ own marriage was revealed.
By the end of the six-episode event, we, along with those who watched the documentary, were left with more questions than answers. Then as The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks began airing on January 1, 2024, some answers were revealed but more questions arose. (You'll want to watch The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks as it's a bit like watching a circus.)
Now, we did a little digging to try and find answers to the more prominent questions in the first part of the documentary. Here's what we found out.
How old is Natallia Grace really?
A big point of confusion in The Curious Case of Natalia Grace was Natalia’s age. As reported in Huffington Post and discussed in the docuseries, Natalia’s Ukrainian birth certificate listed her birth date as September 4, 2003. By the time Kristine and Michael Barnett adopted Natalia in 2010, she was allegedly about six years old.
However, after the Barnetts insisted that they noticed some bodily developments with Natalia that more aligned with an adult rather than a child, the Barnetts were able to convince a doctor, and subsequently a court, to rule that Natalia’s age had been fabricated prior to her adoption, and that she was really born in 1989. That would mean Natalia was around 21 when she became a member of the Barnett family.
As highlighted in the documentary, Natalia’s biological mother, Anna Volodymyrivna Gava, was supposedly born on April 20, 1979. Doing some math, if Natalia’s new legal birth year rings true, that would mean Anna had her daughter at the age of 10. That’s highly improbable.
Adding another layer to this, in The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, it's revealed that Kristine took Natalia to Dr. Andrew Riggs, an endocrinologist, on June 3, 2010. After conducting a medical assessment of his own, he deduced that in 2010 Natalia was between the ages of 9 and 11 years old.
Furthermore, in 2011, Natalia visited Dr. Tim Gossweiler, a dentist who took an X-ray of Natalia's teeth at the time. The film showed she had 12 baby teeth remaining. Given the amount of baby teeth she had, he estimated that in 2011 she was between the ages of six and nine.
Lastly in The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, in the present day, Natalia went to TruDiagnostic to have a blood sample drawn to determine her age, and the tests pinpointed her age at 22. If the aging is true, that means she came to the US in 2008 when she was roughly four or five, was adopted by the Barnetts in 2010 when she was seven, the Barnetts filed a petition to change Natalia's age when she was eight and she was placed in the apartment in Westfield in July 2013 when she was nine going on ten.
So what is Natalia’s birth year and real age?
Legally her birth year is still listed as 1989, but given the medical revelations of The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, we'll have to call that into question.
Who adopted Natalia before the Barnetts?
Early on in the docuseries, viewers learned that prior to the Barnetts’ adoption of Natalia, she was actually adopted by another family that wound up taking her back to the Florida adoption center where the Barnetts would ultimately pick her up. There wasn’t much said about Natalia’s previous family or why they were unable to keep her.
Again, according to the Huffington Post, before the Barnetts, Natalia lived with Gary and Dyan Ciccone in New Hampshire. Now turning to an interview Natalia did for Dr. Phil, she alleges that she was with the Ciccone family for roughly 2 years.
When pressed about why she wound up leaving the Ciccones, she speculated it had to do with a rough-housing moment with one of the couple’s sons, where Natalia "landed on his arm wrong," and the mother accused her of trying to purposefully break it. Natalia also alleges that at some point before or after staying with the Ciccone family, she stayed with a family known as the DePauls. She surmises she didn’t stay with the DePauls due to a "money issue."
You can check out the story for yourself below.
Is Orphan based on Natalia Grace?
Simply put, the answer is no.
The 2009 Orphan film follows the story of a couple who adopts a 9-year-old girl named Esther from an orphanage after losing an unborn child. Unfortunately, Esther turns out to be anything but innocent, and tortures the married pair, making for quite the horror movie.
Now Orphan is inspired by real events. However, these events have nothing to do with Natalia Grace, but instead mirror the curious case of Barbora Skrlova. As covered by CBS News, at the age of 33, Skrlova posed as a 13-year-old boy all in an effort to avoid giving testimony in regards to a child abuse case.
The story of Skrlova in itself is a lot to unpack, so we suggest you again refer to the CBS News report. Also, you can watch Oprhan on Hulu with a subscription to the streamer, Hulu with Live TV or the Disney Bundle.
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace is now streaming on Max.
