THE adoptive father of an alleged con artist who pretended to be a six-year-old girl has spoken out after he claimed that she threatened to kill his sons.
A family from Layfette, Indiana adopted Natalia Grace, who is from Ukraine under the assumption that she was a six-year-old girl in April 2010.
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But later, Michael Barnett and his wife, Kristine, came to believe that Natalia was reportedly an adult dwarf who allegedly tried to harm their family.
The Barnetts had to uproot their family and leave Natalia behind after updating her birth certificate.
Michael and his wife, Kristine, petitioned to change Natalia’s birth year back 14 years, which a judge agreed to in 2012.
This meant that the alleged dwarf was in her 20s, instead of a nine-year-old girl.
The couple then rented an apartment for Natalia and fled to Canada with their three biological sons.
Natalia is an “adult sociopath masquerading as a child,” Michael claimed.
In the trailer, Michael screamed out: “we were all abused.”
After adopting Natalia, she allegedly quickly turned violent and they suspected that she was actually an adult posing as a child.
Michael claimed in a teaser for the documentary that she allegedly “threatened to stab my sons, drag their bodies outside and bury them underneath the deck.”
“She tried to poison and kill my wife,” Michael alleged of Natalia.
“One night, I opened my eyes and Natalia is standing at the foot of the bed with a knife in her hand,” Michael alleged in the trailer.
Their son Jake said in the documentary: “I definitely didn’t feel safe around Natalia.”
Michael claimed that doctors told them of Natalia: “This person is a sociopath. This person is a con artist. You are all in danger,” he told Good Morning America in 2019.
PARENTS CHARGED
After leaving Natalia in Layfette and fleeing the country in July 2013, Michael and Kristine were charged with neglect of a dependent in September 2019 for abandoning her.
Kristine told the DailyMailTV in 2019 that she and her family were the real victims of Natalia’s alleged abuse.
“She would make statements and draw pictures saying she wanted to kill family members, roll them up in a blanket and put them in the backyard,” Kristine said.
The mom went on: “She was standing over people in the middle of the night. You couldn’t go to sleep. We had to hide all the sharp objects.
“I saw her putting chemicals, bleach, Windex something like that, in my coffee and I asked her, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘I am trying to poison you.’
“The media is painting me to be a child abuser but there is no child here.”
Michael was found not guilty of his charges in October 2022 and almost six months later, Kristine’s case was dismissed nearly three weeks before trial.
WOMAN OR CHILD?
“Natalia was a woman. She had periods. She had adult teeth. She never grew a single inch, which would happen even with a child with dwarfism,” Kristine said.
The mom claimed: “The doctors all confirmed she was suffering a severe psychological illness only diagnosed in adults.
“She was jumping out of moving cars. She was smearing blood on mirrors. She was doing things you could never imagine a little child doing.”
Natalia denied being an adult or causing harm to the Barnetts in a 2019 episode of Dr. Phil.
Her new parents defended her and said she was a “genuine loving girl” and not an “adult sociopath masquerading as a child.”
The new three-part documentary on Investigation Discovery will be premiering on May 29.
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