Kristine and Michael Barnett lived in Indiana with their three sons. In 2010, they decided to adopt a girl from Ukraine named Natalia Grace. She had a type of dwarfism that affects bone growth and development. The Barnetts thought they were bringing home a six-year-old child who needed a family.
According to Today, things started going wrong pretty quickly after the adoption. The Barnetts said Natalia acted strange in ways that didn’t match up with being a little kid. Michael Barnett later talked about this on a documentary series called The Curious Case of Natalia Grace. He said they started thinking maybe Natalia wasn’t really a child.
The couple adopted a little girl and gave her a new life. But her behavior had them convinced she was hiding a dark secret. The Barnetts said Natalia tried to hurt them. Michael claimed he woke up one night and saw her standing next to their bed holding a knife. They also said her body looked more like an adult’s body. Natalia has always said none of this is true. She told the documentary makers, “It’s a lie. I’m an 8-year-old, 37-pound little girl. I never tried to murder anybody.”
What the Barnetts did next shocked everyone
The Barnetts went to court in 2012 and got a judge to change Natalia’s birth year. Her papers originally said she was born in 2003. The court changed it to 1989.
This made her legally 22 years old instead of eight. Then in 2013, the Barnetts did something that got them in serious trouble. They rented an apartment for Natalia in Lafayette, Indiana, and left her there by herself. After that, they packed up and moved to Canada with their three boys.
Police eventually charged both Kristine and Michael with neglect. But things didn’t go the way prosecutors hoped. Michael went to trial in October 2022 and the jury said he wasn’t guilty. The charges against Kristine got dropped in March 2023. Like other weird cases where the truth seems impossible to figure out, this one left a lot of people confused about what really happened.
Doctors who examined Natalia back in 2010 said she looked about eight years old. Two years later, more doctors checked her and said she seemed around 11. Then in 2023, she took a DNA test that suggested she was about 22 at that time. If that’s right, she would have been around 10 when the Barnetts left her alone in that apartment.
After the Barnetts left, a couple named Antwon and Cynthia Mans met Natalia and invited her to live with them. They officially adopted her in 2023 and got her birth year changed back to 2003. But that living situation fell apart too. Now Natalia lives in upstate New York with Vincent and Nicole DePaul. They both have dwarfism and had actually wanted to adopt Natalia many years ago.
The whole story got so much attention that TV shows started making programs about it. Investigation Discovery made three seasons of documentaries following what happened. Then Hulu made a drama series called Good American Family that came out on March 19, 2025. Ellen Pompeo plays Kristine Barnett and Mark Duplass plays Michael.
The show creator Katie Robbins said they looked through tons of Facebook messages, medical files, and adoption papers to get the story right. Just like someone investigating a mystery for years, people can’t seem to stop trying to understand what really happened with this family.
Published: Nov 13, 2025 02:23 pm