8: Natalia Grace: ’Orphan’ Horror Movie Come To Life (feat. Jeff Topolski)

Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

History, Fiction, True Crime, Drama

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Writer Jeff Topolski (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) joins us this week to answer the question: Was Natalia Grace Barnett a murderous woman parading as a child, or a victim of terrible adoptive parents? In 2010, a 6-year-old girl named Natalia Grace was adopted by Michael and Kristine Barnett. The Barnetts, as well as national headlines, would go on to portray Natalia as a disturbed con artist pretending to be a child. According to the Barnetts, she made their lives hell and repeatedly threatened to kill their children. In today's episode, we're going to break this whole story down, piece by piece, and examine all it's layers to figure out what was really going on. Buckle up because it's going to get even crazier than what the headlines were writing. Thank you so much to Jeff Topolski for joining me today. You can follow the podcast on instagram @heartstartspounding. Have a heart pounding story you'd like to share on the podcast? Email heartstartspounding@gmail.com Links cited in this episode: https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Mothers-Nurturing-Genius-Autism/dp/0812983564?asin=0812983564&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9884021/Russia-seeks-return-of-adopted-boy-in-US-after-brothers-death.html https://nypost.com/2010/04/09/us-woman-put-adopted-russian-son-on-one-way-flight-alone-back-to-homeland/ https://www.insideedition.com/couple-who-hoped-to-adopt-ukrainian-orphan-shocked-people-think-shes-an-adult-posing-as-child-56997 https://www.jconline.com/story/news/local/lafayette/2022/02/20/kristine-michael-barnett-natalia-update/6802645001/ https://www.jconline.com/story/news/2019/09/18/michael-kristine-barnett-daughter-abandon-ukraine-adoption-dwarfism-prodigy/2364895001/ https://www.jconline.com/story/news/crime/2019/09/27/kristine-and-michael-barnett-walked-a-small-crowd-of-reporters-and-news-cameras-on-their-to-their-in/3779458002/ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7479061/Mom-claims-Ukrainian-daughter-9-adopted-really-22-year-old-dwarfism.html To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's that feeling when the energy and the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of
0:10.1	a moment and everything starts to feel wrong.
0:15.5	It's the instinct between fight or flight.
0:18.9	When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's saying, it's when your heart starts
0:23.7	pounding.
0:29.0	Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of terrifying tales.
0:34.2	I'm your host, Kaelin Moore.
0:37.6	First and foremost, I just wanted to update you all that the podcast has had a really
0:41.5	good past few weeks.
0:43.4	We were charting in the top 200 podcasts in the True Crime category on Apple Podcast,
0:48.6	with a peak at 75.
0:51.5	When you rate, review, or follow the podcast, it actually gives it an extra boost on
0:55.4	the charts.
0:56.4	Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has done so.
1:00.6	Okay, no more smiling, time to get scared.
1:05.2	In 2009, a movie called Orphan came out.
1:11.3	The movie is about a couple that adopts a young girl from Russia, who is not, who she
1:16.5	says she is, and puts the family through hell.
1:21.6	The movie, though it received mixed reviews, became sort of a cultural touchstone that even
1:27.2	inspired a sequel 13 years later, clearly it had been on some people's minds for that
1:32.2	long.
1:34.1	The same year that Orphan came out, a little girl from Ukraine named Natalia Grace came
	...

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