The Curious Case of Natalia Grace (2023) s01e02 Episode Script

1
Hello, anybody
that is watching.
Hi.
[theme music playing]
[Michael Barnett]
Early on with Natalia,
she was doing
as many things as possible
to cause hurt or harm
or mental distress
to the entire family.
I've got my adopted daughter
trying to poison
and kill my wife.
We have had her standing
over my bed with a knife.
She's clearly dangerous.
At this point, what do we do?
We we take her
to the stress center.
She's seen by
a psychiatric doctor.
And so, at this point in time,
we had already begun asking
mental health
professionals for help,
trying to find guidance,
trying to figure out
the right medication.
And all we're told
at every turn is,
"Nothing you can
do about this.
She is this.
This doesn't go away.
This doesn't change.
And she can't stay
at the stress center.
She's she's yours.
Take her home."
But they did say,
"You can't let Natalia have
free roam
of the house anymore.
You need to put a latch
on the outside of her door.
And anytime she needs food,
bath, bathroom,
whatever is needed,
you need to escort her
through the house.
You cannot let her freely roam
your home anymore."
At this point,
we haven't done anything
as a family for a long time.
We can't go
eat dinner together.
We can't go to the
grocery store together.
We are always
on guard for things.
We don't do anything.
So, it's my son's birthday.
Ethan, my youngest son,
loved cows.
So for his birthday,
we find a place
in Indianapolis
that lets you milk
your own cow.
And it's called
Traders Point Creamery.
We get inside and they say,
"We have some release forms
for you to sign."
Out there where the cows are
is an electric fence.
And you have to say,
you know there's
an electric fence there,
and if you touch it
and you get harmed,
that you're not
going to hold us liable.
When they say that to us,
Natalia's eyes lit up
like a Christmas tree.
"Really?
There's a scary
fence out there
and, uh, I have to sign this?"
Happily signs away.
It's another quarter mile
from that building
to where the fence starts.
Everything's fine.
The moment we get
within ten feet of the fence,
Natalia suddenly
can't walk again.
Before we went
on a walk on the trail,
like, uh, my mom and Natalia
sort of stayed back.
[Michael]
So Kristine decides
you're not going to ruin
Ethan's birthday.
Michael, you take the boys.
You go on ahead.
I will stay back here
and I'll handle this.
Myself, my three sons,
we keep going.
We keep going. We keep going.
We get about 40, 50 yards down
and I start hearing screaming.
[woman screaming]
I turn and look.
Natalia and Kristine
are in a physical altercation.
[woman screams]
It looks like Natalia's
trying to pull Kristine.
Now you might think,
"Hey, she's a little person.
How strong can she be?"
She uses her arms a lot.
Push herself up on things.
She goes up the stairs
using her arms.
She's got guns that
Schwarzenegger would
be impressed with.
She's very strong.
My wife is frail.
She's got a degenerative
disease called lupus.
She's weak.
I start to go back.
Kristine says, "No, go."
Okay.
She wants my son to have
his birthday. We go.
And me and the boys
double time it.
We get a little bit
farther down
and we hear the sirens.
[siren wailing]
The second I heard the sirens,
I thought Kristine was dead.
I think she's dead.
And the police have arrived,
um, ambulances have arrived.
And we can see
Kristine is there.
Kristine's very angry,
very upset.
Natalia's over with the EMTs,
and Natalia had been trying
to pull Kristine
into the electric fence.
She'd been screaming out loud.
How am I with language
in this interview?
Am I allowed to use words?
"You [bleep] bitch,
I'm going to kill you.
I'm going to kill you,
you bitch.
You're going to die."
Kristine's screaming at them,
"She needs to be arrested.
She tried to kill me.
She needs to be arrested.
She tried to
kill me."
We wanted charges.
We wanted her arrested.
She, admittedly,
to their face when they came
to the 911 call said,
"I'm trying to kill her."
They made the distinction
that their visual told them,
"Hey, that's a little girl.
She's not really trying
to kill anybody. She's sick.
We're going to take her
to the hospital instead."
But they stated we're not
going to press charges.
She's going to get
a mental health evaluation.
[Jacob] I think she was
already in the ambulance
by the time I had come back.
I was like,
"Oh, well, I guess,
Natalia's mental health
is clearly off.
I guess it's good that
she goes to the hospital."
I felt a sense of relief,
like, uh, it can be
a little safer.
[Michael]
Kristine and I said,
"She has to go to a hospital
long-term and get help."
We didn't know how long.
She can't come home
until she's better.
When Natalia was in
the state mental hospital,
she was under 24/7
observation and care
of 90 doctors, nurses,
orderlies, therapists,
et cetera.
While she's there, she admits
openly and freely that,
"Yeah, I'm trying to kill her.
And by the way,
I'm going to tell you,
doctors, and I'm going
to write this in my journal.
I'm going to kill
the boys, too.
And here's specifically
what I'm going to do to them.
I am going to stab them
with a knife while they sleep.
I'm going to drag their bodies
out of the house,
and I'm going to put them
underneath the deck out back."
Natalia drew this picture
immediately after being
admitted to Larue Carter
State Hospital.
It says, "bye," as in goodbye.
[nurse speaking]
[orderly speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Michael]
After a couple weeks,
we get a phone call from them.
"You got to come get her."
Why?
Well, they tried to be
really delicate with it.
"Natalia was
propositioning the men."
What are you talking about?
[Michael]
Natalia was at Larue Carter.
We had been trying to get her
to inpatient treatment.
We had been
begging people to help us.
We had been told by everybody,
"You need help desperately.
Your family's in danger.
She needs
inpatient treatment."
"Great.
We are at
an inpatient facility.
That's fantastic.
Can you help us?"
"No."
They said, "Mr. Barnett,
the state mental hospital,
the adult wing,
most of the men there,
they're not particularly
good with children.
And they're not particularly
good with girls.
[nurse speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Michael]
So, after a month,
they need her
out of there because
bad things are about to happen
with all the men in the unit.
"Take her home."
"She's going to kill us."
"Can't help you."
The danger we've been in
isn't going anywhere
anytime soon,
and it can't be controlled.
[Beth Karas]
I'm Beth Karas.
I'm an attorney in New York.
I'm a former prosecutor.
What hooked me in this case
was just the strange story.
She's had various diagnoses,
the last one being sociopath.
But in my opinion,
there are questions, a lot
of questions with this case.
The fundamental rule
in all investigations
is that you follow the facts
wherever they may lead you.
There are some things that
just don't sit right with me.
If she's actually
threatening to kill them,
you got to go
to the police.
Kristine and Michael
don't call the police.
But the neighbor,
who is very concerned,
does call the
Department of Child Services,
who bring in the police
in March of 2012.
They get a report
of child neglect of Natalia.
[Michael]
March comes.
Kristine and Natalia
are having the
"who are you?" fight.
Kristine wants Natalia
to write down
people she's lived with,
places she's been.
Tell us about
people you've known.
And this night,
Kristine decides
that the most effective way
to make you tell me
who you really are
is you no longer have
a bedroom or a bed.
You sleep outside.
Grab your blanket.
You're sleeping
on the back deck.
Natalia's out there crying
finally, like,
three hours into this.
Well, I tell Kristine,
"I can't do this."
I get up, I let Natalia in,
I get her back to her room.
One of the neighbors
called CPS.
So CPS shows up on the door,
Child Protective Services,
with a detective from
the local police department.
They come in,
they've gotten this call,
and we're neglecting Natalia.
The detective for the
Westfield Police Department,
within 10 minutes,
takes a look
at the surroundings,
takes a look at the paperwork,
listens to us speak
for a couple minutes,
and he immediately realizes
he's not here
to protect Natalia.
He's here to protect my sons.
He knows instantly
they're in grave danger.
Detective Klaus,
he conducts an investigation,
he comes back and visits us.
He's got a picture of Natalia
from when she was naturalized
here as a US citizen in 2008,
when she first got here
from the Ukraine.
He's got her naturalization,
uh, information,
basic vital statistics,
stuff like that.
[Beth]
Natalia admitted
to Detective Klaus
that she was told
her new birthday
at the orphanage in Ukraine,
that new birthday being 2003.
Another thing,
Detective Klaus showed her
a picture of herself
from when she
entered the country,
but she did not recognize
herself in the picture.
He's not 100% convinced
the girl in the picture
is even her.
Another interesting thing
he mentions to us
is her height.
Four years ago,
when she was naturalized,
she hasn't grown a centimeter.
I don't care what kind
of dwarfism you have,
if you're a six-year-old,
you still grow.
He informs us he believes
that her Ukrainian birth
certificate is all bogus.
Here's this business card
to an attorney.
You need to go
to them immediately.
You need to correct her age.
What are you talking about?
Correct her age. That's
You can't just take an eraser
to her birth certificate.
I'd never heard
of such a thing.
I never It never even
crossed my mind.
I just thought
we have an adult
who's masquerading it
as an eight-year-old,
and that's what it is.
So, he explains to me,
foreign-born children often
have inaccurate birth records,
and sometimes
it needs to be corrected.
This is our
legal recommendation
from the police department.
We have it in writing
from them.
So, the only way to protect
the entire family,
I have to prove she's an adult
and that she definitely has
a fake Ukrainian
birth certificate.
Kristine and I,
again, we reached out
to the adoption agency.
When we asked them,
"Can you help give us
contact information
for her old family?
We have got to find out
what's going on here,"
they said, "No, we can't."
The answer is always,
"It is a closed adoption.
The other family
does not want
to surrender
any information to you."
It is not until
I got a phone call
from the secretary
of the adoption agency
a little bit later that day,
and she said, "I can't tell
you where she's from,
but check her luggage closer.
Really inspect
those backpacks."
So I go upstairs in the house,
get the backpacks out,
start rummaging through it.
There was a little ID tag
inside of her bag
when we adopted her
that had the original family's
information on it.
What are their names?
Gary and Diane Ciccone.
[Beth] We know,
according to records that
Natalia starts her early life
in an orphanage in Ukraine.
But all the conflicts
in this case,
boil down to Natalia's age.
Is she a child
or is she an adult?
In 2020,
a Ukrainian investigator
went to track down
Natalia's biological mother,
Anna Gava,
and found Anna Gava's
sister, Tatyana.
[dog barking]
[investigator
speaking Ukrainian]
[Tatyana speaking Ukrainian]
[investigator speaking]
[Tatyana speaking]
[investigator speaking]
[Tatyana speaking]
[investigator speaking]
-[Tatyana speaking]
-[Anna] Hello.
[Tatyana speaking]
-[investigator] Anna.
-[Anna speaking Ukrainian]
[investigator speaking]
[Anna speaking]
[interviewer speaking]
[Anna speaking]
[bleep]
[Tatyana speaking]
[Anna speaking]
[bleep]
[investigator] Anna.
[line disconnects]
This woman, Anna Gava,
who is supposedly
Natalia's biological mother,
just said she's been
going through this saga
for 17 years.
Well, she said that in 2020.
Do the math.
That means
Natalia may really
have been born in 2003,
which is what
she has said all along.
And in 2008,
Gary and Diane Ciccone,
from New Hampshire
adopted Natalia.
By 2009,
it's possible that
they found her behavior
to be too hard to manage.
I don't know,
but to Ciccones, it's clear
they wanted to unload her.
Closed adoption
giving virtually
no information about her.
They made a mistake though.
They left their
identifying information
on one of the luggage tags.
So, the Barnett's were able
to track them down.
[Judith Irving]
My name is Judith Irving,
and I'm from
a little town in Indiana.
And, uh
I-- I don't know
what else to say.
Okay, can we start over?
I'm so sorry.
Oh, Natalia. [chuckles]
The first time
I heard about Natalia,
um, I actually
received an email
from Little People of America.
Little People of America
is an organization
where people with dwarfism
can meet
and come together once a year.
And we're there
for each other,
we help support each other,
we're friends with each other.
It's often where we meet
our husbands,
or wives, or our best friend.
Little people of America
told me that the Ciccones
had adopted a little girl.
She has diastrophic dwarfism
and they're trying
to find a home for her.
When I saw her picture,
it was--
I instantly fell in love.
[chuckles] I was like,
"Yeah, this little girl,
Natalia,
she's meant to She's
meant to be my daughter."
I-- I heard that she loved
to dance and sing
and be creative,
and I was like [gasps]
You know, she's just
meant to be with me.
[chuckles]
Dyan and her husband
said that,
"Pay the legal fees
and you can adopt
this little girl."
If I remember right,
she told me that
adoption costs from Ukraine
were around $25,000.
And I find it kinda crazy
that you would adopt a child
and spend $25,000 and only
spend a year with that child?
So, I-- I find it odd.
I don't know if there was
a financial scam or not.
My husband decided that
I don't think we can
do this financially.
And I feel like
if you're going to adopt,
both parents have
to be totally into it.
But it broke my heart.
So Sorry.
[chuckles and sniffs]
It just, uh
When I wasn't able
to adopt her,
I just wanted her to be happy.
[crying] And then
when I found out
what happened to her,
I was like,
"She wasn't happy."
And that was what
broke my heart the most
is that she wasn't happy.
[in normal voice] In my heart,
Natalia is the daughter
I never had.
Once we-- we told them that
we couldn't adopt Natalia,
they moved on really quickly
to the next couple.
My name is Robyn Farris
and this is my husband,
Dwayne Farris.
Back in 2009,
we received an email
from the Little People
of America
asking us if we might
be interested
in a possible adoption
of a little girl
named Natalia.
And she hooked us up
with the, um, adoptive mom,
Dyan Ciccone.
She had asked us
if we would cover
her previous medical expenses.
So right then and there,
we started to get concerned.
We thought it was
some kind of weird scam
where, you know,
she kinda came across
as a used car salesman
of sorts trying
to "sell" Natalia to us.
So we said, "Heck, no,
we're not gonna do that.
We're not gonna pay
for anything that occurred
in the past."
And I think she harped on it
a little bit.
But then, eventually,
she gave that up.
Another red flag that
we were concerned about
is why Dyan adopted her
and so quickly wanted
to basically get rid of her.
We were concerned
about her mental health
coming from an orphanage
in Ukraine.
So we did ask her
if we could
please have
Natalia evaluated,
um, for a psychological
evaluation
to see where
she stood on that.
And, um, Miss Dyan said no.
Why would someone, if they
didn't have anything to hide,
why would they
refuse the psychological
evaluation?
Yeah, definitely shady, weird.
-Um, definitely red flags.
-Mmm-hmm.
But I was still interested.
-I still wanted to pursue.
-Hmm.
[Dwayne] So we're driving
to this lake house
in New Hampshire,
where we were meeting
Dyan and Natalia.
And it reminded me
of Camp Crystal Lake.
It was kinda spooky.
[Robyn] He had some concerns
because the driveway
was super steep
and it was gravel.
And us, you know, having
physical disabilities
just like Natalia,
we were wondering, "Wow.
How does she get up
and down the gravel driveway?"
'Cause when we first
saw Natalia,
she didn't have shoes at all.
She has these slippery
braces on her feet.
And if you're stepping
on pebbles,
it could definitely
hurt your feet.
So we were just
really surprised
she didn't have any shoes
because you could
fall down the driveway easily
without the proper footing.
But we thought that
she was really adorable.
She was about to turn
six years old
and she definitely
looked her stated age.
But we really
had a feeling that
there was something bad
going on.
We're both Christians
and everybody,
in our opinion,
has God given natural gifts
and one of his gifts
is the gift of discernment.
You know, to the regular,
um, average world,
it would just be
more of a sixth sense
or an intuition.
I have a really good
lie detector
[chuckles] I guess.
But Dyan and Natalia,
I knew that they were lying.
-She was withdrawn and quiet.
-Mmm-hmm.
And didn't engage.
[Robyn] Yeah, she would,
like, look up first
to make sure her
answers were appropriate
-for Dyan.
-[Dwayne] And then
you asked her
what the Ukrainian
orphanage was like.
-Oh, yeah, yeah.
-And she
gave an uncoached answer,
it was obvious.
-[Robyn] Yeah,
she said, "It sucked."
-She said, "It sucked."
And then Dyan
interrupted her
and seemed surprised
that she said that
and said, "Oh, no,
it wasn't that bad.
You were fine."
It was almost like Dyan
had to give her approval
-[Robyn] For her to Yeah.
-to come out. [scoffs]
And then as soon as she said
what she was coached to say,
she went back in.
I've never seen
another person do that.
-Even in movies.
-[Robyn] Yeah.
Even in The Exorcist.
It scared the [bleep]
out of me.
I can feel evil
when I come into her room.
I couldn't really put
my finger on whether
it was the situation
that was evil
or Natalia,
there was something
wrong with her.
And I think
that's the first time
I've ever completely
trusted that intuition.
Right then is when
I made the decision
that we-- this was
not gonna happen.
As-- as hard as it was
to make that decision
'cause I knew how it was
going to affect you
And when I told you,
I was like, there's
I can't put my finger on it
but there's something wrong.
When you called Dyan
to tell her we weren't
coming back,
then
the story just got crazier.
'Cause she went
ballistic on the phone.
She was furious.
I could hear her
through the phone yelling.
-And so I was like, "Okay."
-[Robyn] Yeah.
We need to go, like,
there was no telling what
she was gonna do.
I mean, she went nuts.
[Judith] Kristine Barnett
tried to contact me
on Facebook
not long after
they adopted Natalia.
And I wouldn't--
wouldn't talk to her.
And I knew that
things were not right.
I don't know if she's trying
to get me on her side
or-- or what she's trying
to do. I don't--
I don't know.
But it's
I'm-- I'm not going
to entertain
even saying hello to her.
The Barnetts claim that
Natalia had threatened them.
So what if-- even
if she did threaten you?
You're the parent.
I've-- I'm a teacher.
I have 600 students.
Some of those are from
really rough families.
You know, and I've been told,
"I'm gonna cut you up."
I've been told,
"I'm gonna drink your blood."
Uh, I've been told all kinds
of weird stuff. [chuckles]
But I'm not truly scared
that that's gonna happen.
That child needs help.
So you get that child help.
So yeah, I find actually
being scared of a child, um,
when you're a full-size
grown adult,
a little ridiculous.
So I started posting
on an adoption message board
asking about
if anybody had any experience
of a Natalia.
What was it, like,
a year later,
that Michael Barnett
emailed me out of the blue
and said, "I think
we adopted the little girl
you were talking about."
And he started to
Said her name, Natalia,
-some other things.
I was like, "Yep, that's her."
-Yeah.
Kristine, his wife,
wanted to talk to you.
Kristine and I kept in touch
over Facebook Messenger
for several years.
It did seem like a lot
of shady stuff going on.
Michael and Kristine Barnett,
I mean,
they lied a lot.
They will do anything
to get what they want.
They lie about Natalia
being violent.
You just don't know
the true Barnetts.
When Kristine started
telling us all these
crazy stories,
we thought, "Wait a minute."
I mean, she's tiny.
-[Robyn] Yeah.
-[Dwayne] These stories
don't make sense.
So we started
figuring it out that
everything Kristine told us
wasn't the truth.
[Robyn] Kristine was
using me and Dwayne
because if she could
get us on her side
believing, you know,
that Natalia had issues,
then she would feel justified
in maybe getting rid of her.
Michael and Kristine Barnett
not only lied to get her
into their family, but they
also lied to get rid of her.
If they wanted to claim
she's older than what she is,
I mean, I don't know
where they came up with that.
That's just crazy.
Like, who thinks of that?
[Michael] Detective Clouse
had told me,
"You need
to correct her age.
This is our legal
recommendation
from the police department."
I am attaching
a picture presumably
taken at entry
into United States.
A home study report
was prepared
about the Barnetts,
early 2010,
by a licensed social worker.
One section that
I found very troubling,
and it's the background
information.
The worker asked
Michael and Kristine
if they had ever had
any domestic violence
or disturbances at home
and they both said no.
The state took
their word for it.
Th--they relied
on the self-reporting.
They should have gone
to the local police
to see if their names
ever appeared
because they would
have found
domestic violence
in 2003,
years before this
home study evaluation.
They're fighting.
Michael's got Kristine
in a headlock.
And then he's pushed her.
These are situations
that are pretty serious.
Scary, you know, to think
of what could have been
and what all the evil,
dark secrets
are that we don't even know
that her coming to light.
[Beth] It really doesn't
shock me that Michael
and Kristine have
kept some of these
family secrets secret.
This is not the public
persona they want to have.
[Rachel] Every now and then,
Michael and Kristine would
be in the front yard arguing
or fighting,
or There was no--
I never saw anything physical.
It was just the yelling
and the screaming.
I felt sorry for Michael
because she was degrading him
and calling him a loser
and a jerk.
And I just was like,
"God, that poor guy."
I've been fooled
by thinking that
they were the perfect family,
because I don't think
they were the perfect family.
[Michael exhales]
[Beth] There were
a number of allegations
that Michael and Kristine
made about Natalia
acting out in a violent way.
Most of them happened
within the home,
but the bottom line
is every incident
was told from
the Barnetts' perspective.
But the last one
was different.
The Traders Point Creamery
incident had witnesses.
I'm Chris.
I worked at Traders
Point Creamery
as a herdsman
from 2012 to 2015.
Uh, so I had gotten a call
that there was some crisis
on the electric fence.
Officers were called
and that we needed
to take them down to where,
uh, the individual was.
So I was under
the impression that
when we got down there,
that there was going to be
uh, a little person who was,
um, distressed, um,
very emotional. When
we get down there, um,
the caretaker seemed
to be the one
who was the emotional one
of the two.
And the little person
seemed to be more calm
and rational about
the whole situation.
There was no mention
of, uh, the caretaker
being at risk
or anything like that.
Natalia had been trying
to pull Kristine
into the electric fence.
She'd been
screaming out loud,
"[bleep] bitch,
I'm gonna kill you.
I am going to kill you,
you bitch. You're gonna die."
So, uh,
I was there with,
uh, the officer.
I don't remember
any of that being said.
I don't remember
there being any threats
about being, "I'm going
to [bleep] kill you,"
or anything like that.
I just felt like the situation
had kinda been overblown
and it was not really
that big of a deal.
Like, I have
a fairly good memory
and I am positive
I would remember that.
The biggest thing
I remember is thinking that
if I had to deal
with the adult caretaker,
that, uh, I would be
really frustrated,
uh, just
because it felt like
she seemed to be making
the situation worse.
My name's Mark Hostetler
and at Traders Point,
I was the farm manager.
I got a phone call from
one of my employees
saying, "Hey,
we've got an issue.
There's somebody
on the walking trail.
They're having a crisis.
What should we do?
Can you turn the fence off?"
Or is it dangerous,
was also the question.
And both the answers
I should say were, uh,
"No, it's--
it's not dangerous."
And also, "No, I can't
turn it off 'cause it's
already off, I think."
That section of fence
isn't even on today
because the cows are
in a different part
of the-- the farm.
And so my response was
maybe a little callous.
[chuckles] But mostly
because the threat
was so hollow.
[Judith] I can't imagine
taking a child's threats,
like, so seriously.
Being truly scared.
Now, you could take
their threats serious,
but we're not even
super strong.
We're diastrophics.
We have joint problems.
We have all kinds of issues
that would make it
difficult for us to truly
overcome someone.
We don't have the capability
of truly hurting an adult.
You know, unless, you know,
there was firearms involved.
[laughs]
But someone like me,
I couldn't damage an adult.
They could just hold me off.
If Michael's version
of what happened
at Traders Point Creamery
is not true,
that Natalia really did not
try to push her
into an electric fence
and "kill her,"
then it casts doubt
on all the other allegations
of Natalia's acting out
that Michael and Kristine
have reported.
I don't know though
that anyone can get
to the truth here
because there
are so many stories
from everybody.
For example,
Michael's version
of what happened here
is not necessarily reliable.
At the Traders Point incident,
how did the police react?
I don't know.
My-- My sons and I
were out in the forest.
We When we saw
the police lights had arrived,
we still had a good mile,
mile and a half
of running through a forest
to get back on the path
to get back up there.
So by the time all four of us
get all the way back up there,
Natalia's already gone.
The officer with her
is already gone.
I don't speak to the officers,
I speak to my wife.
We keep going, we keep going.
We're about 40, 50 yards down,
I start hearing screaming.
I turn to look.
Natalia and Kristine
are in a physical altercation.
It looks like Natalia's
trying to pull Kristine.
Look, I don't know
what the truth is,
but this raises
a question in my mind
of whether or not
Michael and Kristine
kinda orchestrated
the Traders Point
Creamery incident.
They wanted
an outside incident
where there would be
you know, some
potential witnesses maybe,
uh, and she would be
taken away
for good this time.
[woman speaking]
[Natalia] Okay.
-Yes.
-[woman] Okay.
Yes.
[woman speaking]
[woman] Mmm-hmm.
[woman] Mmm-hmm.
[woman speaking]
[Beth] The closer you look
into this case and dig,
the harder it is to know
where the truth lies.
Maybe there's more than
one villain in this story.