The Curious Case of Natalia Grace (2023) s02e01 Episode Script

1
[interviewer] How old are you?
A child from the Ukraine
who was adopted by
a married couple here
in the US,
what happens after that
will make your head
burst into flame.
[reporter] Is this a child
or a grown woman?
Bruh, this documentary
is unhinged as hell.
It's called The Curious Case
of Natalia Grace.
The Curious Case
of Natalia Grace.
It is shocking.
[reporter 2] More than
10 million people watched.
I have never watched
a documentary this good.
This story captured
the imagination of the world.
Oh, my God. I'm blown away.
Whoa. I am shooketh.
She was gonna kill everybody.
She's evil.
[woman] You've adopted a kid
and now
they're trying to kill you.
I mean, it's the stuff
of a horror movie, right?
[man] Like a serial killer
or something.
[anonymous person speaking]
Kristine tried to set me up
with Natalia.
She was an adult.
[Nicole DePaul]
Natalia was a child.
Is it true? Is it not?
We don't know.
[woman 2] Definitely not
an area of town
that I would let my kids
walk around unattended.
He's not the kind of guy
that could do well
if he had to go to prison.
[voice breaking]
I couldn't!
I just couldn't.
What a creepy guy.
Who does that with
his daughter?
[news anchor]
Eight months later,
the world is unified
in one thing.
They want to hear
from Natalia.
[woman 3] They don't know that
there's 100% one villain here.
[woman 4] There were all these
pieces to a puzzle
that we couldn't quite
put together.
[Beth Karas]
Natalia was a victim.
The Barnetts
are the predators.
[man 2] Kristine trying
to beat the truth out of her.
That was what
broke my heart the most.
[interviewer speaking]
Just when you think
you have it solved,
you find out you don't.
[man 3]
The story just got crazier.
[man 4] You might
not like the truth.
[Natalia]
The Barnetts tried to paint me
as this big monster.
They claimed
I'm lying about my age.
I was six years old
when they adopted me.
but the Barnetts did
a petition to change my age
to 22 years old.
I literally lost my childhood.
[Cynthia Mans]
When the verdict
was handed down for Michael
and they said, "Not guilty,"
and he looked at us
and he smirked
it was like watching
my daughter be raped.
There was no justice served.
If I could've
caught Kristine in an alley
and put a black hoodie on,
I would have busted her
upside the head.
There are things
I'm gonna tell you
that you have not heard
from anyone else yet.
Michael and Kristine
are cowards.
They're heartless cowards.
That's not love. That's hate.
Sometimes the truth
is crazier than fiction.
She knew that she couldn't
"give the kid back."
She's a little girl.
She's not a car.
[scoffs]
Many of these questions,
there's not gonna be
a single answer to,
there's gonna be
a lot of answers to.
[Dr. Timothy Gossweiler]
What I'm about to show you
will be definitive as to
how old Natalia was.
[Dr. Halland Chen] Her DNA
has all the answers.
I was never in y'all's room
with a knife.
I know what I saw.
[Natalia] In every lie,
is a hidden truth.
But you gotta dig enough
to be able to see it.
They're not gonna
get away with this.
This is my side of the story.
Do I look like
a monster to you?
There has been so much time
that I've been just trying
to figure out who I am.
I have no idea.
Because, right now, this is
like a 1,000-piece puzzle
and I think I have like maybe
only 300 pieces together.
I want you to know
how old I am.
I want you to know
about my past,
because I wanna know too.
It's very fuzzy.
Like, there's a lot of things
that I remember,
but like I can't picture it.
So I want the puzzle
to be complete.
But the things that Kristine
and Michael have said
that I've done
is a lie.
It was all copied off
the movie Orphan.
Ukrainian girl, Russian girl.
Check.
Orphan. Check.
All this crazy stuff,
standing at the end of the bed
with a knife.
Check.
That's why I wanna do this.
That's why I wanna tell people
what really happened,
because I didn't get
that chance.
Michael and Kristine
are painting me
as this homicidal maniac.
"She was eating her period.
And she hid it for this long.
And having pubic hair at
seven years old,
like, don't trust her. Don't
believe anything she says.
She's trying
to murder my family,"
and this, that and the third.
But then you're gonna
come into that apartment
that y'all dropped my off in
and pretty much
try to murder me.
I just want people to
know the truth.
I'm Bishop Antwon Mans.
And I am Natalia's dad.
We started taking in children.
We wanted to adopt
because there was a lot of
children who need a family,
who don't have a family.
I'm Cynthia Mans.
I love being a mom.
I have literally 11 children.
And I'm Natalia Grace's mom.
[Natalia] I've been with the
Mans family for over 10 years.
You can see my life
the way it is.
-[Antwon] A lot of love.
Great.
-Thank you.
[Natalia] I finally have
parents that love me
more than Kristine and Michael
ever did.
My dad and my mom,
they let me be a kid.
My dad protects me.
He does what a dad
is supposed to do.
My mom
gives me hugs every day
and tells me
how much she loves me.
And never once
have they had to worry
about me hurting their kids.
I have siblings that love me.
You can see that they love me
and that I love them.
[laughing] Hi!
Hi. Oh, hi!
Hi.
There's no-- Oh, hi.
Oh, my gosh.
She has been a light
to our family.
She has brought so much joy.
But when Natalia came
into our family,
she was broken.
[all praying]
Love in the name of Jesus.
We plead the blood of Jesus
[Cynthia] And we're trying
to pick up her pieces
from her being shattered
by what Kristine and Michael
did to her.
[Antwon] We pray, God, that
the truth will be revealed.
[Cynthia] Hallelujah.
Thank you, Jesus.
I'm Beth Karas. I'm a former
prosecutor in New York City
and also a legal analyst.
In my experience,
this is one of
the most twisted cases
I've ever seen.
This story is very different
from anything I've covered.
Usually, I'm doing stories
that have to do with murder
and mayhem.
And this has no murder,
but it has a lot of mayhem,
and a lot of it.
I mean, it's like a ping pong.
It's just going in
one direction to another
as new information
comes to light.
Especially now that Natalia
is able to speak to us.
And, today,
it seems pretty clear
that Natalia has the family
she's always wanted,
the Manses.
But that wasn't
always the case.
'Cause back in 2013,
the Barnetts relocated Natalia
to Tippecanoe County
as a re-aged adult.
So she's living there
on her own.
At an adult learning center,
Natalia gets the attention
of the faculty and staff
because it's
an adult learning center,
but she's kind of childlike.
So they call the police.
This is what led the current
Sheriff of Tippecanoe County,
Bob Goldsmith,
but then a detective,
to get involved in
the investigation of Natalia.
I'm Bob Goldsmith. I'm the
Sheriff of Tippecanoe County.
In our Detective Division,
I was the first detective
involved.
People talk about a case
that's kind of like
a defining moment,
the one they'll never forget.
This is one of those cases.
It was in September, 2014,
when I received a phone call
from Excel Center.
They said they had
a young lady that had came in,
was enrolled in school,
and things just
weren't adding up.
She said this young lady
has an Indiana ID
that says she's like
22 years old,
twenty-five years old
or something like that,
they said.
But the conversations she has,
you'd think she's like
maybe 11.
I've been around people
with special needs
throughout my career,
but nobody like Natalia.
When she walked in,
her backpack was bigger
than she was.
And she was very, very short.
And she climbed right up in
the chair and started talking.
I asked her if she--
"Do you think you're
25 years old?"
And she said, "No."
[Travis] I remember
we got in the car,
we both have kids,
and we're just like, "There's
no way she's that old."
Some people, they have
commented that it's an act.
What's your take
on Natalia acting?
In all the interactions that
me and you had with Natalia
at the Excel Center and here,
even watching her
in the lobby,
she always acted
like a little child.
She played
like a little child.
She talked
like a little child.
If she's acting,
she never broke it
that we could see.
I know at one point,
I asked Natalia,
um, if she had been abused.
And she kind of
closed up on me.
She quit talking.
She got silent.
You could tell
she was uncomfortable.
I don't know if that's
physical abuse, sexual,
I have no idea.
But I wasn't gonna pry.
Um, I learned through
the training
and having interviewed
several kids
and working these cases
over the years,
it's not gonna
do any good to pry.
Um, when a child's ready
to tell their story,
they'll tell it.
So I just left it alone.
Knowing what I know,
I don't think
justice has been served.
But what I do believe
is that Natalia's in a place
where's she's happy now,
and she feels safe,
and she feels loved.
And that's what she said
she wanted.
I don't know.
No.
Because Natalia
had been telling everybody,
therapists, doctors, us,
um, that she was a grown-up.
[Natalia] It's true that
I told everybody
that I'm 22 years old.
But
Kristine literally
trained me to lie.
And--
that's what makes it worse,
the fact that it had to
come from me
and
they could use that
against me,
like, "Oh, but you said it."
You said that you was
22 years old.
And then they changed my age.
That whole thing was just
a big chain reaction
from one lie.
But people don't know
what happened in that house.
They tortured me.
I was abused.
Kristine is the real monster.
Michael is an accomplice
to the monster
because he went along with
everything that Kristine said.
Who does that?
[Natalia] Changing my age
is the worst thing that
the Barnetts ever did to me.
It hurts every single day.
But I was so terrified
of Kristine.
When she told me
to tell people
that I was 22 years old,
that's what I did.
One time, Kristine told me,
she was like,
"I'm gonna show you
what it's gonna feel like.
If you do something wrong,
I'ma pepper spray you."
Kristine told me
to keep my eyes open.
And then she just
pepper sprayed me.
And I couldn't
do anything about it.
She literally made me sit
there for like ten minutes.
Until I could finally go
wash it out.
And, even then,
it still hurt.
And she didn't care.
She didn't care.
[sniffles]
It just really hurt
because she was supposed
to be my mom.
But she didn't
act like a mom to me.
[Beth] Kristine was going
to push the envelope
as far as she could
to try to break Natalia.
So Kristine starts putting
words in Natalia's mouth.
"This is what you tell people.
This is what you say.
You're 22."
And the threat of
being pepper sprayed
was just another
control mechanism.
The abuse against Natalia
didn't start immediately.
But the Barnetts' attempt
to control the narrative did.
[Michael]
Looking back to 2010,
something just wasn't right.
And you've gotta understand
with it being
a closed adoption,
the adoption agency
was not willing to share
any details of her
when we asked them originally,
"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."
And then 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."
There was a little ID tag
inside of her bag
when we adopted her
that had the original
family's information on it.
I have never
met them in person.
I have no idea
why they would say
they never met the Ciccones
when they literally met them
at the adoption agency.
Like, I remember
having to wait
for who knows how long
while the Ciccones
talked to the Barnetts.
Like, that's literally
like how I remember it,
like plain as day.
So
I don't understand that.
The Ciccones were the first
family that ever adopted me
from the Ukraine.
I remember find out that
they were gonna adopt me
and I was so excited
because all I've ever known
was being in that orphanage.
And then just to find out that
someone is gonna adopt me
was just
an awesome thing for me.
Like, I was so excited.
I was happy that I was
finally gonna have a family
that actually wanted to-- me.
When we finally like pulled up
into their big driveway,
like it was a hill.
And I was just like, "Whoa."
Like, I remember
my 5-year-old self
being so excited
'cause it was a big house.
Once we got in,
I literally like
just looked everywhere.
And then they opened a door
and through that door
was my bedroom.
And I was so excited
it was pink.
[laughs] And it was just like
there was everything in there.
I was with them
for about two years.
But, yeah, there was
a lot of good memories there.
But then it was like
after a while, like
everything kind of changed.
One time, me and
the little boy, Buro,
we were just playing.
I landed on Buro's arm wrong.
And I just kept saying,
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to hurt you."
But then Gary came in
and he just started yelling.
And then,
as he was walking away,
I was crying and I was mad,
I said, "I hate you."
After that,
Gary, I guess,
like, he didn't like
me anymore,
like, that's what I felt,
like, it felt like
he hated me.
Then one day, I remember
Dyan coming in my room,
she told me,
she was like,
"I'm not gonna be
your mom anymore,
but I will always love you."
And, like, I didn't know
what was going on.
I felt like I was abandoned
most of the time
because I bounced around from
so many different families.
Dyan Ciccone had gone to
the Little People of America
and said, "This little girl
is available for adoption."
There were three little people
couples interested in Natalia,
but none of them
had worked out.
Gary and Dyan,
they passed me
around from families,
and I met a bunch,
but they didn't
wanna adopt me,
or something happened.
And then all of a sudden,
she told me that
they found a family
that wanted me.
And that's
where we were going,
we were going to Florida.
It makes me mad
because I pretty
much got sold,
like I'm some toy!
When the Ciccones took me
to the adoption agency,
I remember being told to just
sit outside the room
and just wait.
And the Ciccones
went in first
and talked
to Michael and Kristine
and the three boys.
I remember waiting
for a while, like,
I felt like a long time.
Finally, the Ciccones
came out, and it was like,
"You can come in now."
And I remember running up to
Michael and giving him a hug,
and I called him Daddy,
'cause the Ciccones
told me that
Michael and Kristine
were gonna be my parents.
I think it was Kristine
who told me, she was like,
"We're gonna be
your family now,"
and I remember still being
very sad and very confused.
I believe I cried too.
She was like, "It's okay."
They acted like they wanted
me to be their daughter.
So all I thought was just,
"I've found my family.
They're gonna love me."
But thinking back on it
I think I trusted
them too fast.
My name is Jackie Starbuck.
I was the lead
deputy prosecutor on the
State versus Barnett cases.
There are things
I'm gonna tell you
that you probably
have not heard
from anyone else yet
that are part of the truth.
As we were conducting
this investigation and talking
to witnesses,
it was clear that there
was something going on
that was unusual,
to say the least.
From the time that Natalia
came to the Barnetts
in April of 2010,
there continued to be
a pattern of saying,
"Well, we don't know
how old Natalia is.
We think she's this age.
We think she's an adult."
When in fact,
they had been told repeatedly
by multiple
medical professionals
that that wasn't the case.
They were working to hide,
really, that they ever had
any connection with Natalia,
'cause they also
claimed that
they didn't have
any records at all
about Natalia's
prior medical history,
and yet, they were providing
to the school system
medical records from
before she was with them.
[Beth] Michael lied
when he said
he never met
the Ciccones,
and he lied when he said
this was a closed adoption.
A closed adoption,
by definition, means
no information about
or contact with
the prior family.
Not only do we have
Natalia's account
of the Ciccones
and Barnetts meeting
at Adoption by Shepherd Care,
but we have email exchanges
between the Barnetts
and the Ciccones.
And these email
exchanges included
the executive director
of Adoption by Shepherd Care.
They were talking
to both families.
There were also
signed contracts.
And the Ciccones
and Barnetts were involved
in a legal proceeding
within a few months
of picking up Natalia
in Florida,
because there
were complications
with the adoption.
But for some reason,
Michael hid this fact.
And he led us
to believe that
Adoption by Shepherd Care
was the sole adoption agency
brokering the adoption
of Natalia,
but that's not true.
We get this phone call
out of the blue
from Adoption
by Shepherd Care.
We get this phone call
from Adoption
by Shepherd Care.
I have nobody to trust
except for the experts
involved, in this case,
it's gonna be
Adoption by Shepherd Care.
[Beth] But Gateway Woods
was their adoption agency.
Michael never mentions
Gateway Woods.
Why not?
And I remember,
after we left
the adoption agency,
we went to Disney World.
And I remember
seeing the Ciccones
and I remember
pointing them out.
I was like, "Hey, it's Mom."
And then Kristine was like,
"That's not your mom anymore.
I'm your mom now."
And I was like, "Oh."
Like, I didn't really know
what to say to that.
I was worried, like, "I hope
I don't do something wrong."
We get to the hotel that night
and Kristine's going to give
our brand-new daughter a bath,
and I hear a shout
from the bathroom.
She says,
"Michael, look down."
And Natalia
had full pubic hair.
The first night,
Kristine gave me a bath,
and, like, she never
mentioned anything to me
about pubic hair or anything
like that. Like, I didn't
know what that even was.
Like, nobody explained
anything like that to me.
I was six, about to be seven,
like, I didn't know.
I don't know why
they said what they've said.
I don't remember Michael
ever coming into the bathroom.
I, like, honestly, I don't.
Like, I just remember Kristine
just helping me get dressed,
and then we were just
getting ready to go to bed.
I don't remember her, like,
calling Michael or anything
like that, I don't remember
Kristine doing any of that.
I just don't understand
why the Barnetts
would say that
I have pubic hair
or anything like that,
because literally, like,
I didn't start noticing
any hair, and so I was, like,
seven, almost eight.
But that doesn't mean
that I'm this big monster.
I was still a kid, like
Look, some kids start early.
You know, that's just,
that's what happens.
Regardless of what
happened in that hotel room,
we do know that
that event did not trigger
any desire
on the part of the Barnetts
to return Natalia.
Was this horror story
by the Barnetts
in the Florida hotel room
about massive amounts
of pubic hair really
revisionist history
as justification for re-aging
her years later?
Now that Natalia
is able to speak to us,
we have more information,
and some of that information
includes the Gateway Woods'
reports on home visits
and Dr. Riggs' report.
We did not have these before.
And this is how
we learned the fact
that the Barnetts were
represented by Gateway Woods
during the adoption
of Natalia.
Natalia was seen
by a Dr. Riggs,
an endocrinologist,
on June 3rd, 2010.
[Detective Brandon on phone]
What age was he saying
that Natalia was?
[Dr. Andrew on phone]
Okay, so here we go,
this was the 3rd of 2010.
So at that time, she was at
the age of 9 to 11 years old.
[Detective Brandon on phone]
And did you tell the parents
this directly?
[Dr. Andrew on phone] Yes,
oh, yeah, mmm-hmm.
They were informed that
we felt that she was a child.
So this is, like, five weeks
after she enters
the Barnett household.
They knew right away
she was a child.
Michael had to distance
himself from Dr. Riggs
and his report
because the doctor
specifically told him
that Natalia was a child
between the ages of 9 and 11.
He also had to distance
himself from Gateway Woods
because Gateway Woods
incorporated this information
in their report.
Is that why Michael led
everyone to believe that
Adoption by Shepherd Care
was his agency?
By leading others to believe
that the adoption was closed,
Michael guaranteed
that few would question
his story about the adoption.
We know now
this is not true.
But it made
a great cover story.
Everything could have been
so different for Natalia
if she had been adopted
by one of the families
she met before the Barnetts.
-[Nicole] We are the DePauls.
-It's not a toy.
-[dog whines]
-No.
[Nicole] Woohoo!
As far as Natalia's age,
she was a child.
You like? Ooh.
You finish that.
We think the Barnetts
should be in jail,
both of them.
We attempted
to adopt Natalia
back in, uh, 2009.
-We set up
a private meeting
-We--
-really, at a museum.
-A museum, right? Yeah.
Her adoptive mother
at the time, uh, brought her.
-[Nicole] She came in.
-[Vincent] What a cute kid.
-[Nicole] Oh, my gosh.
-[Vincent] She was adorable.
-[Nicole] So cute.
-[Vincent] Absolutely.
[Nicole] We had Mackenzie
already, our daughter,
and she was four.
We actually have pictures
of Mackenzie and her
on this scooter together,
and they were just like
long-lost sisters.
[Vincent] Like two peas
in a pod, it was really nice.
And we had two
subsequent visits.
[Nicole] Halloween,
and they were both
princesses that year.
They got ready
for bed together,
they did everything.
-[Vincent] Helped each
other blow dry their hair.
-[Nicole] Yeah.
And then Mackenzie
had a little car.
[Vincent] Just adorable
four and six-year-old
playing in the yard.
We were hopeful that it was
gonna move forward, and, uh--
Um, yeah, like, it felt
like a bomb got dropped,
and then we weren't able
to see Natalia again
after the last visit
over Christmas because things
just got really messy,
uh, with the attorneys.
You know, it had nothing
to do with Natalia.
-It was heartbreaking.
-It was very heartbreaking.
Ugh.
Very, very heartbreaking.
The bond between Natalia
and the DePauls
was deep and enduring.
They loved her,
had no problems with her,
they wanted Natalia to be
a member of the family.
I'm sorry, honey.
This should have worked out
with the DePauls, right?
But things get complicated
when Child Protective Services
in New Hampshire received
a report regarding Natalia
and the Ciccones.
The Ciccones suspected
the DePauls filed that report.
The DePauls denied it,
but it culminated
in Natalia's adoption
being taken off the table.
She was no longer
available to the DePauls.
As you can imagine, this was
heartbreaking for the DePauls
and their daughter, Mackenzie,
but also, it was
heartbreaking for Natalia.
The DePauls, they were
little people like me,
and I used to always
go and visit them.
Um, I was there for Christmas,
Halloween, and Mackenzie
and I were, like,
it felt like we were
best friends.
I loved hanging out with her.
We did, like, almost
everything together.
Just like how
sisters would be.
I really did wanna stay
with the DePauls,
so I wouldn't have
had to go through the pain
that I went through.
I felt like they actually
wanted me and they loved me.
But-- And then it was just,
like, I just stopped
seeing them.
And I was sad about that.
I don't know, it was
just a really weird thing,
like, I just stopped
seeing them altogether.
Oh, yeah.
[Nicole] A few months later,
Kristine messaged me,
and she said,
"We adopted Natalia."
The first red flag that I saw
with the Barnett family was
they got Natalia
way too quickly,
never even met her.
And they just,
basically, that was it.
They just ripped her
out of the family.
[Vincent] That was
kind of shocking to us.
-Should we--
-"Should we make
sure it's a good fit?"
-Yeah.
-"Should we make
sure she likes us?"
"Should we make sure
she's comfortable with us
and our other kids?"
She's a little girl,
she's not a car. [scoffs]
Another thing that felt weird
was Kristine asked me,
you know, "Had you ever, um,
questioned Natalia's age?"
I said, "I've never once
questioned Natalia's age."
I said, "I have
her birth certificate,
I have all of her paperwork."
-Do you remember this?
-[Mackenzie] Yeah.
-This was at the museum
-The museum.
when we first met Natalia.
It was in 2009.
And look at her tooth.
-See? It's missing, right?
-[Mackenzie] Yeah.
In this picture, you can see
the difference. See the teeth?
This one's from Halloween.
Can you see the teeth?
And then this one
is before that.
You could tell the changes,
obviously, in her teeth here.
And adults don't have changes
in their teeth like that.
That happens only
once in your life,
when you're around
six years old,
exactly how old she is
-[both chuckle]
-in 2009.
Does that look like
a 20-year-old to you?
I mean, come on.
-[both chuckle]
-I'm sorry,
which is ludicrous.
I remember,
when I was with the Barnetts,
we had just got
back from dinner,
and my tooth came out.
I had a wiggly tooth,
and my tooth came out.
Of course, Kristine
didn't believe me.
She said, "Why did
you pull your tooth out?"
I said, "I didn't
pull my tooth out."
And there was,
like, a long piece,
like, I guess, like,
almost, like, the root of it,
and she's like, "See,
the root is right there,
you pulled it out.
That wouldn't be there if
your tooth actually fell out."
And I didn't know
what to say to that,
but I just kept telling her,
"No, I didn't, I didn't pull
my tooth out, it fell out."
But she just kept telling me,
"You're lying, you pulled
your tooth out."
Ny name is Dr. Tim Gossweiler,
I've been practicing general
dentistry for 34 years,
and I am the dentist that,
uh, Natalia Barnett
and her mother
came to see in 2011.
Mrs. Barnett
brought in Natalia,
and was saying,
"We have a question
as to how old Natalia is,
we think she might be older
than what she says she is.
Is there a way
you can find out?"
Uh, which is an
unusual request.
Talking to Natalia, she looked
like she was about seven,
but she acted like
she was much older.
She was answering
questions articulately.
So at seven years old,
you just don't see
that all the time,
and that's why I thought,
"Well, this girl can't
be seven years old."
And I can see how
mom would think that,
after talking to her, because
she seemed very mature.
I did ask
how do they know
that she's not six
or whatever when they got her?
And she's like, "Well,
we had dental records done
on her and the dentist said
that none of her teeth
are baby teeth,
they're all adult teeth.
So I was like, "Okay, okay."
[chuckles softly]
[Dr. Timothy] This is the room
where we did Natalia's
panoramic X-ray.
So what I'm about
to show you
will be a definitive
answer as to
how old Natalia was in 2011.
Yeah, we determined
that she had, uh,
12 baby teeth remaining, uh,
three in each quadrant,
so these three teeth right
here, in all the quadrants.
It's very simple to determine
Natalia's age, I mean,
there is really no question
when you take an X-ray
like this.
You've got baby teeth,
adult teeth,
and there is a range
that you have for someone
who's got this level
of tooth development,
and that's going to be,
going to extremes,
six to nine years old.
This is way too many
baby teeth to be an adult.
It's indisputable,
you can't fake teeth
coming in like this.
So when mom and Natalia left,
mom knew that Natalia
was around eight or nine,
which is right in the range
of what she said that she was.
Oh, her age was ch--
They legally changed her age?
Oh, they tried to--
Oh, I wasn't aware of that.
And what was it changed to?
Oh, really? Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a big jump.
Nothing in the X-ray
that we took that would show
that she could be
anywhere near
15 years older.
Wow, that seems crazy.
[Beth] So that means
that even after signing
the dental records,
Kristine still told people
that Natalia was an adult.
Why?
[Natalia] After the trial
and everything, and all
the records I have,
especially in the
medical records,
it all points
to me being a kid.
So I understand
what the truth is.
I've known the truth for
as long as I can remember,
that I was a kid.
But there's a lot of people
who are thinking, like,
"There is a way
to tell her age.
There is a way to prove it."
I just want people
to just really
see the truth about my age.
TruDiagnostic,
really, we're answering
a fundamental question,
"How old are you?"
In fact, the uses
and the insurance
will actually predict when
someone's gonna die, right?
And so, if you think
about that world,
this is super important
to be accurate.
What we're trying to determine
is someone's
chronological age,
not based off of
anyone's emotions,
or what he said or she said.
For Natalia,
we're trying to figure out,
"Well, how old is she?"
[softly] Ooh.
-[man] You ready?
-No, mm.
We're really just taking
a sample of blood,
which has our answers,
because it's in the DNA.
Once we get this sample,
we are very excited
to really tie this
entire case together.
[Natalia] I'm praying
for the best for this,
but I'm really nervous.
Like, I don't know
what they're gonna say.
Thanks for coming to the lab.
Wanna take a look
at the results?
Yes.
All right.
-[chuckles nervously]
-[Dr. Halland] All right,
so moment of truth, all right?
Yes.
Based off of all the studies
and everything being analyzed,
you're more closer to 22.
Which is pretty close
to what you think,
you're almost 20,
that's within two years.
Wow.
This one little piece of paper
throws every single lie
that the Barnetts have said
right into the trash
with a match.
[sniffles] This is so big,
because literally,
this has been 13 years.
Thirteen years of just two
people lying their butts off.
[sniffles] They ruined
a kid's life.
They painted that I'm some
big monster, when in reality,
they were the ones.
[Bishop Antwon]
You're exactly right.
[Natalia] It just proves that
I was not lying about my age.
They ignored everything
[sniffles] that was
pointing to the truth,
just so they could
create this stupid lie.
[crying]
So if all of that
is true about her age,
that means Natalia came
into the country in 2008
when she was four,
almost five.
Adopted by the Barnetts
in 2010 when she was seven.
Natalia was eight when the
age-change petition was filed,
and was placed in
the apartment in Westfield.
In July of 2013,
when she was placed
in the Lafayette apartment,
she would have been nine,
a few months shy
of turning ten.
What that means is that
Natalia was a child
living on her own.
[sniffling and crying]
I just wanna know,
why create this story?
[sniffles]
They knew, and they
still did what they did.
[sniffles]
[Bishop Antwon]
Why do this?
Why go through
all of this, for what?
The question is, why?
That's the
million-dollar question.
I always knew
I wasn't an adult,
but I never knew
why the Barnetts
adopted me.
Never once
did I see any love.
I feel like there's
something bigger with this.
I don't know what it is.
How did they shut
these doctors up?
How did they hide
all this evidence?
They are hiding
something big.
And I wanna know the answers
to these questions.
And I want people to pay
for what they have done.