Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - Natalia Grace: ’Orphan’ Horror Movie Come To Life (feat. Jeff Topolski)

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

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 [e-mail]    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

It's that feeling when the energy and the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment and everything starts to feel wrong. It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's saying. It's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of terrifying tales. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. First and foremost, I just wanted to update you all that the podcast has had a really good past few weeks. We were charting in the top 200 podcasts in the True Crime category on Apple Podcasts, with a peak at 75. When you rate review or follow the podcast, it actually gives it an extra boost on the charts. So thank you,

thank you, thank you to everyone who has done so. Okay, no more smiling. Time to get scared. In 2009, a movie called Orphan came out. The movie is about a couple that adopts a young girl from Russia who is not who she says she is and puts the family through hell. The movie, though it received mixed reviews, became sort of a cultural touchstone that even inspired a sequel 13 years later, clearly it had been on some people's minds for that long. The same year that orphan came out, a little girl from Ukraine named Natalia Grace came

to America looking to be adopted. And her story would go on to parallel the movie in terrifying ways, often becoming stranger than fiction. Today, we're going to deep dive into that story. The story of a little girl who's adopted family claimed she was an adult woman conning them. And we're going to pull back the curtain a little bit on that family, a family that would go on to abandon her. To help me tell the story, I've recruited Jeff Topolsky.

Jeff was a writer on Brooklyn 9.9 and he has an aversion to demonic children he told me, so I thought he'd be the perfect audience. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. when he told me. So I thought he'd be the perfect audience. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. Thank you for having me. I wanted to start because I texted you or I sent you an email and I asked what you were afraid of. And one of the things you said you're afraid of was demonic little girls. That's, yeah, that's top of the list.

What is that like rooted in? I think it comes from when I saw the movie The Grudge. Yeah. That really really young when you saw it. I wasn't that I think I wasn't I think I was actually probably in like junior high or something or high maybe grad entire school. But I just remember seeing that movie and there was so many, the girl was so scary and the way that she moved was so scary. Yeah. And the hair was so scary.

And we like went, we're like, okay, well, this is done now. We saw the movie and I was like, I'm not ready to go to sleep. And so he went to my friend's house and we watched Aladdin because I needed something to put me in a better, tough space. No, that's so real, having to watch stuff to decompress

after watching something really scary. I actually would use Brooklyn 9.9 honestly to decompress after I'd watch like really scary things. Oh gosh, that's good. Yeah, I, and sometimes it, I don't know, it, it's like you're just kind of trying to trick your brain into not thinking about it, but I don't know, my brain always goes back to that. If I'm like laying, I'm like, okay, I watch another thing, I feel like okay, and then I'll go lay in bed, and then my, like my mind will always just be like, I feel like okay, and then I'll go lay in bed and then my mind will always just be like I was scary that go from the garage was like remember how she like crawled on the stairs, you know I just can't not yeah

Yeah, yeah, it like it really sticks with you and actually that is kind of a good segue into what I'm gonna Tell you about today because it's Sort of based on a movie. It's sort of been in all of our brains for a very long time But do you remember a few years ago when it came out that a family had adopted a little girl And she was maybe an adult woman Pretending to be a small orphan child and that she was maybe trying to murder the family now This is the move this was the movie the orphan right that they made this movie Yeah, so that that movie came out in 2009,

but it was 2019 that the articles came out that this family had done it. Yeah. And see, I didn't see it. So it was after the movie. Okay, and I didn't even see the orphan because too scary. I saw that little girl on the poster and I said, I'm not a past, that's a past for me.

What I'm gonna read to you today is like the whole story of that little orphan girl. Because I think the more I read about it, the more the headlines really want you to believe that like this is the movie come to life. This is like that terrifying movie we all watched. Like it really did happen. But the more you like peel away the layers of the story,

the more like nuanced it actually becomes, and there's a lot of stuff happening in the story. And so yeah, we're gonna kind of break it down today and we're gonna talk through it. Okay. And so, okay, I'm just gonna start reading you kind of like the beginning of it. I'm ready.

And 2010, Michael and Christine Barnett welcomed home their new daughter. No, they weren't leaving the hospital with a blanket-wrapped baby, but rather walking out of an adoption agency carrying Natalia Grace, a six-year-old girl from Ukraine. That day was hectic for Michael and Christine. Just 24 hours earlier, they didn't even know Natalia existed. And yet, here they were, signing paperwork to be her legal guardians, her mom and dad.

This was what the adoption agency called an emergency adoption. Natalia was surrendered by her previous family for unknown reasons, and she needed somewhere to go. Fast. The Barnets, who were already on the list for a child at the agency, had only 24 hours to decide if they could take Natalia. And they agreed. But that day, as they went to pick up their daughter, the Barnets started to realize why exactly Natalia needed to be adopted so quickly. She had a form of dwarfism that would keep her around three feet tall her entire life, and she had scoliosis so bad that she could hardly walk.

She'd need to be carried around most places. The Barnett's claimed that the extent of Natalia's disability was not disclosed by the agency, and in a way, this was not what they thought they signed up for. Despite all of this, they left the agency with her that day, and brought Natalia back to their family, which consisted of three other sons. For Christine, this was part of her dream. She always wanted another child, but her first three pregnancies were really complicated. She couldn't risk another one, and now, here she was with the final piece of her family in place. But the nuclear, idyllic image Christine had pictured for her family would soon take a dark turn.

One day, shortly after the adoption, the Barnets took a family trip to the beach. Natalia was begging Christine to pick her up and carry her into the water. The boys had all jumped into the ocean and Natalia was eager to join them. Christine told Natalia to wait a moment when, out of nowhere, Natalia stood up and ran into the ocean. Christine had barely seen Natalia walk, and here she was, bolting towards the sea. With that happening, what would you like first instinct be if you like watched that happen?

Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Um, I don't even know. I feel like, especially, well first I'd be like, piss that I've been carrying this person everywhere and it's like, it's a great, really. Like, if this is like, okay, I feel like, I feel like bad comparing it to this, but like, so we have a dog and our dog like

When we come in, so we live on the second floor of an apartment building and she You know, we'd come inside and she run up the stairs and then go to our apartment and then like one day and she just decided I want to go up these stairs anymore. I don't like them and we were like Yeah, we were like googling it and we're like is she is she hurt is like something it's something happened But like she goes on all these other stores fine. So every now we have to carry her up the stairs every day and down the stairs Every time yeah, and we're like but she used she did it for like over a year She's been going up and down the stairs fine. So's a little like, I know you can go down the stairs. I don't know.

It's very weird, but that only ties in in the matter of every time I carry her, I'm like, I know I don't have to be carrying you. I know you're able to do this. And I thought it was probably what. But also more, I mean, obviously that's the first thing saying, and then there's a lot of questions in terms of like, what's the first thing, St. And then there's a lot of questions in terms of like, what's the deal?

I know, but as a parent too, after watching that being like, well, I watched you run. Like, do I really have to carry you everywhere? It's the same thought. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know that time when you ran into the ocean, maybe you can just do that more often around the house. Maybe you can just do that more often around the house. Christine started noticing some other strange things about Natalia after this. For one, she had a very advanced vocabulary for a six-year-old. Okay, maybe that's not something to worry about, but you would think that if her English vocabulary was large, maybe her Ukrainian vocabulary was large as well. That wasn't the case. The bar-net's brought over their Ukrainian-speaking friend one night to talk to Natalia,

but Natalia couldn't speak with her. She claimed that she didn't remember a single word of Ukrainian. Yeah, it's so funny. It's so funny to just be like, that moment of, I mean, obviously we'll see how this story goes, but that moment where you're like, caught, where you're like, yeah, I speak Ukrainian and from Ukrainian, and they're like, oh, we have so many years with Ukrainian, and you're like, oh gosh, I'm so tired now.

I'm like, you're all the sudden. Yeah, right, exactly. Like, oh, it's so late, and I'm only six. I guess I have to go to bed. But yeah, that's gotta be terrifying. Like if you're the one, if you're the fraudster, whatever, like trying to prove yourself, like that's very stressful, but also,

like it feels like the beats of a horror movie of like the parents, like one thing after the other being like the red flag. And like this is really shocking to them. And I feel like there's gotta be so many questions for the adoption agency. And obviously, we know that, as you mentioned, they like, withheld a lot of information in the beginning,

but then it's, how long was she at the adoption place before? Not very long. So she, when she came to America, she went straight to a family and then the emergency surrendered her. So within 24 hours. Oh, okay. So this wasn't like they had, okay, got you. So it's, it's, it's, it's okay to believe that they didn't know a lot of this stuff either. Natalia also had a limited interest in other children.

She just didn't care for children's toys and she tended to gravitate towards kids much older than her. Christine ran a daycare at this time, and she reported that Natalia told her, these kids are exhausting. How do you do it? That seemed very strange for a kid to say. Christine thought. That's something like, yeah, you're like middle-aged Fred

and says, you know, you're like, yeah. Exactly. Kids, right, is basically what she's saying as a six-year-old girl. One night, Christine was bathing Natalia after Natalia had a minor but necessary surgery when she called her husband in. Natalia's body had signs of puberty that a six-year-old should not have.

Christine started thinking about some of the strange stains she had seen on Natalia's clothing. Was Natalia getting her period and hiding it from her? The adoption agency had already lied to the Barnets about the extent of Natalia's disability. Did they also lie about her age? They saw a medical opinion. One way you can tell someone's age is by looking at their bones. The doctor that ordered a bone density test for Natalia said the results showed that she was at least 14, if not older.

I'm gonna pull up a picture of my phone. Okay. Um, of what she looked like at this time, because I want you to see. Okay. So yeah, describe, describe what you're seeing and feeling looking at this photo. I feel like I could see how you would like see her and think maybe she's six, but I also like it, but also I don't know, it's one of those things where it's like sometimes I'm looking, I'm like, yeah, I could see how parents would be like, yeah, she's six, she's six.

But also, I could see this bit definitely being a 14 year old or older person. There is something about her face. You can't, it's hard to see her body. I'm sending you another one where you can see her body a little bit more. But when you see her body, you're like, this is a six year old, but she's tiny anyways. Yeah, right. So it's like, there is something about her. She does have like a beautiful smile

that feels like you could take her smile off her face and put it on a woman and it would fit still. Like it doesn't look like a six-year-old smile. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. Yeah, this other picture definitely is like very specifically the body of like a six-year-old. Yeah. But still like, yeah, it's like that kind of confusing middle space with the face is like, you're like, yeah, I think like you could place that as like a six-year-old face. But also if this person, I saw this person in like middle school, I'd be like, yeah.

Yeah, she's just one of the middle school kids. Okay, so Natalia is maybe not the age that people are saying she is, but it still seems like she's a minor and a disabled one at that, so she needed the Barnets. But then, her behavior started to turn menacing. It's unclear if this came from the family right before the Barnets, the ones that had to emergency surrender Natalia, but it did come out that Natalia was returned from a family for injuring one of their sons intentionally. And Christine said the violent behavior didn't stop

when she was adopted by the Barnets. The following reports of Natalia's behavior come from an interview Christina Michael did with the Daily Mail. The parents said they would wake up in the middle of the night to Natalia standing over their bed, saying she was just waiting for the right time. That's what she would say? She would say that she was waiting for the right time. They would say, what are you doing? And she'd say, waiting for the right time?

That's the creepiest thing you could possibly say. Or maybe she means the morning. I'm waiting for the sun to come up and then we can all start our day together as a wonderful family. But around this time, the Barnett said she was also hiding knives around the house. She would jump out of cars, she smeared blood on mirrors,

she would draw violent pictures of the family, claiming she was going to kill the suns and wrap their bodies up in rugs to be put in the backyard. There was a spiteful darkness to Natalia. Hardam, he is like, so I used to work in my hometown. We have like this little nature center that did camps over the summer. And I always worked with the two,

like the two to five year olds, like the preschool kids. And some of them, like the most fucked up things I've ever heard people say came from those kids. Like there is like a weird, like they, they know the things that you're not supposed to say, like they would say swear words and stuff because they learn those from adults and they know they're not supposed to say it. But so they would like learn fucked up things like that, like, oh, I'm going to kill you. Yeah. But not really know that you can't just like say that in society. But it is, it is very advanced to go beyond. I'm

going to kill you and I'm going to kill you and then wrap your body in a rut. It's like you have a lot of knowledge of how you've thought it through enough to know like after I kill this person, like then what? You know, you've thought, you've had some thought about that. Yeah, so I'll have to dispose of their body, but bodies leak, so I'll have to wrap it in something.

Yeah, a rut, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Christine told the Daily Mail that Natalia tried to push her into an electrical fence once, and then there was the infamous poisoning attempt. One morning, Christine and mead herself a cup of coffee and left it on the kitchen table while she attended to something. When she came back, Natalia was pouring lemon pledge into the coffee. When Christine asked Natalia what she was doing, she said in a matter of fact way, void of any emotion, I'm trying to poison you. That broke something in Christine.

She knew she had to do something about Natalia, so she brought her to a mental health professional, who only seemed to confirm what Christine feared. Natalia seemed to be suffering from mental health issues that were more common in adults. So now, the Barnets are thinking that they have a severely disturbed adult woman on their hands. Christine started telling Natalia to tell people she was 22 years old, but looked young for her age. They took her to a judge and they had her birth date change from September 4, 2003 to September 4, 1989, legally making her 22 years old. More after the break. Okay, so I'm going to pause right here and I'm going to rewind the story a little bit and tell

you some more about Michael and Christine Barnett? Because I think that this might fill in some of the blanks for everyone. So Christine and Michael met in their early 20s when a friend set them up. Christine was actually about to become engaged to another man that she was dating, when her friend suggested that she meet a friend of hers named Michael. This was actually kind of upsetting to Christine. Didn't her friend respect the fact that she was an almost engaged woman? When she first met Michael, she was really cold to him. But, Michael had an idea for a screenplay he wanted to write. Apparently, Michael

talked to Christine all night about this screenplay idea he had and she was so impressed with his passion They became engaged three months later as someone who is a writer That's the opposite of that is usually the case. Yeah, if you tell someone about your I you don't really any of them Anyone asks me like wow, what's it about? I just try to give maybe a one sentence thing and because I'm like no one wants to hear about. I just try to give maybe a one sentence thing. And because I'm like, no one wants to hear me talk for a long time about an entire screenplay idea. But maybe was it a really must have been a really good screenplay idea? Well, never know because he never wrote it and it never got turned into a movie. But, oh, gosh, is it too, I mean, is it too late? Well, I don't know what's,

I don't know the fate of Michael, but I don't know if it's too late for this or not. But, um, wow, that's so, that's so interesting. I mean, hey, I mean, this is really probably very, like, promising to other screenwriters out there that there are people who want to hear your screenplay idea, so just go for it and you'll find the right person. The barnotts had their first son, Jake, just a few years later.

And right around the time Jake was two, they noticed something was not right. Jake was retreating inward, distancing himself from other children. He often seemed in his own world and it was hard to pull him away from whatever he was focused on. And shortly after this, Jake stopped talking. He was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism by age 3.

I bring this up to say that the Barnets already had a child that was facing challenges and needed their help, but the Barnets seem to take an incredibly different approach towards Jake. See, Jake would go on to become a math and physics prodigy. They soon realized that when Jake was hyperfixated on an object and not engaging with other children, it was because he was learning to do math equations in his head by observing the world around him. The Barnett's pulled him out of his special needs classes and put him in college level math courses as an eight-year-old. He was accepted into college by age 10, and 60 minutes did a profile on Jake when he was just

10 years old, claiming that he had an IQ higher than Einstein's. In that interview, one thing Christine said she loved about Jake was his advanced vocabulary, which I think is so ironic because that was the exact thing about Natalia that she was like, something's wrong. She, like her vocabularies to at least. Yeah. Yeah, I also wonder, knowing that if there will be, if there's an element of it, that's like,

like, okay, with Jake, we just needed to find the thing. We just needed to like figure out how to nurture this and like direct it. And so I wonder if when like very crazy things were happening with Natalia, if like, that's why, maybe the reaction at first was like, okay, like, we just need to figure out how to work with this. Like, this is a thing we can deal with. Like, maybe that's a little bit why to them, it wasn reaction at first was like, okay, we just need to try to work with this. This is a thing we can deal with.

Maybe that's a little bit white to them. It wasn't a much of a sound the alarm thing. Christine wrote a book about her experience with Jake called The Spark, which was meant to showcase her involvement in Jake's genius. In it, she writes about how desperate she was for children before Jake was born. Here's a passage from that book. Even as a little girl, it was clear to me and to everyone around me that children were likely to hold a special place in my future.

My family had always called me the Pied Piper because wherever I went, there was sure to be a trail of little ones on my heels, waiting for an adventure to begin. Did you not read Pied Piper? Like, that's not what the story is about. I read the first half of Pied Piper and I decided it was me and I didn't need to read anymore. Right. Yeah. Yeah, he was just so good with kids. Like, he just played his little flute and the kids followed him around. And that just felt like me, so I put the book down. What else could there be? The spark was supposed to

be an inspiration to mothers everywhere. If you're told your child will have limitations, won't ever speak again? Never stop fighting. Never give up on your child. The book came out in 2013. on your child. The book came out in 2013. That same year, Christine would rent an apartment in Indiana, leave Natalia in it, buy herself with just a few cans of food, and move the rest of her family to Canada to pursue Jake's education. The bar net said they would pay Natalia's rent for a year, but no other living expenses. Natalia was evicted in early 2014, less than a year later. Michael and Christine were arrested for neglect of a dependent, but because Natalia was legally an adult, they could not be charged with abandonment. They both pleaded not guilty, but later on, Michael would confess

to his lawyer that when they left Natalia alone in the apartment, he believed she was a child. Michael, I know. Speak up, dude. Get a spot. Look, Michael's a writer. He's not someone who is, you know, used to speaking up and voicing his, his, his so true. He's always head down just working on his, he's always the tower guy the next screenplay. But things did not end up all bad for Natalia Grace. After her eviction, she somehow found her way into another apartment. When one day, a kind woman with a southern accent approached her and When one day, a kind woman with a southern accent approached her and asked how old she was.

I'm 22. Natalia said, but the woman didn't believe her. She told Natalia that she had a few adopted children, and that Natalia was invited to come over whenever she wanted. One day, Natalia went to visit and never left. Finally, with a family who understood her, Cynthia and Antoine Mans, the couple that adopted Natalia, say they have never had an issue with her. This story had a resurgence in 2019 after the Barnets were charged with neglect. And Natalia Grace was invited on Dr. Phil with her new family. Cynthia had a hunch as to why Christine abandoned Natalia. She said,

Natalia needs surgeries and I think that because they have Jacob and they wanted to do the college, Christine's aim was to get rid of her. Because with her having surgeries, they weren't going to be able to do everything they wanted to do, because surgery was going to hold Natalia down. Christine felt like it was a burden. When the couple adopted Natalia, they actually got a call from Christine telling them to take her to a psychiatric facility and get her evaluated because she's crazy, and to not believe anything she has to say. Christine has remained firm in her conviction that Natalia Grace was a psychopath

perading as a child, trying to murder her family. What do you think? Was she a murderous adult? Or was she a victim of a crazy family? I don't know what to think. Oh my gosh. So on, did, has anyone, has it been like, when she was on Dr. Phil or whatever,

like, was anyone ever like, Natalia, did you like do this stuff? And was she like, no, or no, or is it just more? Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Phil straight up asks her everything and that's where we kind of get like the other side of the story and a lot of stuff.

You know, that's where he was like, oh, did you hurt one of the sons at a house you lived at? And it's like, we were wrestling and I fell on him wrong. But the mom thought I was trying to break his arm and it's like, okay, like, I can see how that's your side of the story, but also we were told that you were like intentionally trying to hurt a child. So who knows what really happened?

And he asked for like the other side of the story on the poisoning issue where, you know, he asked her like, did you try to poison her? And she was like, no, I was cleaning and some of the lemon pledge accidentally went into her coffee. And it wasn't intentional. So like, here's what I'll say about that. I, when I was in second grade,

I, there was like, there was, we were at recess and there was like a bottle, it was like a fresca bottle on the other side of the fence. And we were like, I don't know, we were like in second grade and we were like, let's get that bottle. And we were like putting our hands to the fence and like trying to get it.

And then I was like, pour some out and I'll drink it. And then they like poured some out and I like drank it. And then this kid went and told a teacher on me. And I got in trouble and I had to write a note to my mom to like tell her what I did. And when I wrote my note, I said, I was like, they poured some out and a few drops accidentally fell on my tongue and so like, that's how I lied.

That's how I lied. And so I'm just saying, Natalya, saying I accidentally was spraying in it and some of God in her coffee is like, what you would say. Yeah. I'm lying, but I don't know it does seem like there could be, you can find the justification of of Christine to like make things up. Yeah. But also it seems like

a really big swing to make all of that up too. Yeah, no, totally, totally. It's like, it was probably the worst of both worlds where you have a child who's adopted from Ukraine and we don't know anything about the first five years of her life so it could have been insane and traumatizing and horrible. And she could have watched really messed up stuff.

And that's the stuff she's saying to the sons of, like, I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna poison you. Like, who knows? But then you also have Christine who's probably not the best suited person for that job. Yeah. Being like, okay, well, you're getting in the way of the fun I wanna have and my famous son.

Yeah. So this is not working for me. That's so, yeah. What do you think? What do you think she's a murderist person? Do you think? No, but I feel like she probably did threaten to kill the family. But it's also, like I said, when I worked with the five-year-olds,

they would also threaten to kill each other. Like kids would say they had guns. Like, you know, I don't know. Maybe it was like a particularly bad group of kids, but like I remember one kid who I babysat until he was like 14. And I watched him grow up to be a very normal kid, but I remember when he was at that camp,

he like, he told me he was gonna kill himself. Because he had just just heard it somewhere. Yeah. And like, you know, so yeah, I don't know. Like I wouldn't doubt that she said messed up stuff to them. Yeah. But I don't know how much you actually mean it when you're a child, but then if they're thinking she's an adult,

and they're, I don't know. It's also tough because it's like, if she is actually an adult and saying that stuff, but it still is like, well, she could be this born in 1989, a great year or in B that old now, but it's a question of like, well, since there's no clarity on what happened before this, like there's no idea where she's at like developmentally developmentally. Like, there's no, like, she could be older, but never grew up in a

weird situation where she still basically has like the mind of a kid, you know, like, it's totally definitely. It's a bit unclear. Yeah, so it's so unclear. That's why I like to dig into these stories, because I think like, because I think when the article came out, I'm pretty sure her life right sold, or someone got the rights to that story, and they were gonna make a movie about it. And it's like, okay, but these were also people that went through this.

I'm sure the movie version is gonna be what the headlines were of murderous adult woman lives with her ex-cormons family for three years, but it's like if she of murderous adult woman lives with her torment's family for three years. But it's like if she was murder, she would have done it. Like what was stopping her from just murdering them if she was there for three years. Why would she just tell them she was gonna do it. Do you think Natalia saw the orphan? Okay, so that's the thing too is like part of me is like that movie came out the year

before this happened. Was it also on their minds? I was gonna show in the zeitgeist when it came out. Oh, it was, yeah. I wonder who all, I mean, we know Michael as a screenwriter, what does he this movie? That's a really good point. He's, he's, he wants to be in the industry, he's, you know, he's he's he wants to be the industry. He's you know he's seeing every movie can get his hands on. So yeah it's like did they see the orphan and then there are

like do we have an orphan situation on our hands or I don't know. You know I wouldn't be surprised. I think it's interesting to bring up too that Russia banned adoptions of Russian children to families in the US in 2013, January of 2013. They banned it for a while because there was an increase in, like, issues with Russian children and in parents in the United States. From, like, 2010 to 2013, there was an uptake in Russian children that would die under like undisclosed circumstances, some were like ruled accidents, some were like maybe intentional. There was like a Russian toddler that died in Texas and it was very unclear if the family that adopted him killed him or if he died of natural causes at two.

And then there was, I don't know if we remember this, but like 2012, a family straight up put the Russian boy, they adopted, I think he was also like six on a plane and just flew him back to Moscow by himself. Just returned him, like he was a package. Like, yeah, it was crazy. And so eventually Russia nixed it. But again, I don't know if it's the like the movies

and our brains and we're thinking about it. Or if like, I don't know him. I don't know him. That's why after the movie came out, that was happening. I'm surprised. I mean, I mean, I know I'm really focusing on Michael. It's because I'm a writer too, and I, this is a special bond Michael and I have.

I'm surprised that he hasn't tried to write a screenplay about any aspect of this that we know of. Like, hey, I had this crazy idea. It didn't happen to me. It just crazy. I think I thought of this now. I would never do this as a father. I would never do this.

This is like, I'm writing very, you know, opposite of my character. Wow. Gosh, that's so interesting. And also, it is that like you said, it is interesting like if they do make this a movie, they obviously just have to like, there are so many layers and there's so much,

but they would obviously just have to like, pick a lane and make a decision and who they think is murderous and who's not, you know, and then that's totally. It's crazy. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast this week. Of course, oh my gosh, this was such a,

this was a very, I'm gonna like go home. I know you like presented everything, but I'm gonna go and research this myself too. So, dear listeners, who really is at fault in this situation? Oh, and I wanted to fact check the story I brought up about the family who returned the Russian boy to Moscow. The real story is that in 2010, a woman from Tennessee shipped her seven-year-old adopted Russian son on a one-way flight back to Moscow, all by himself. With him, she included a note that read,

I'm sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child. As he is a Russian national, I'm returning him to your guardianship. Thank you so much to Jeff for stopping by today. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaelin Moore, Music by ArtList. Be sure to rate and review wherever you listen and follow the podcast on Instagram at Heart Starts Pounding. Have a heart pounding story you'd like to share? Email heartstartspounding at gmail.com.