[phone ringing]
[911 operator speaking]
[theme music playing]
[Michael] April 26th, 2010,
that's the day that we adopted Natalia.
By the time we get to the end of 2012,
we've been living with a sociopath,
trying to kill us everyday.
We don't know who she is, we don't know how old she is. She won't admit who she is.
She won't tell us the truth of who she is.
Doctors have told us she's nowhere near the age you were told.
And we've actually filed our motion in Marion County Court
for her case to be heard to have her age corrected to something more appropriate.
The judge had a petition prepared by an attorney
that would lay out the arguments
for why this person is not eight.
They believe she is actually an adult.
Nobody knows quite what... what age,
but she has not grown in four years.
So the judge came up with his own little formula,
"Well, you stop growing at 18.
If she hasn't grown in four years,
then she's at least 18 when she entered their lives,
and I'm gonna add four years."
He said, "Okay, I find you 22."
At the time that she was re-aged, I knew she was an adult.
Did I know it was 18, 22, 35, 150?
No.
Re-aging is not unusual,
it does happen in international adoptions.
A couple years might be shaved off the age of the child
because it's more attractive to adoptive families,
the younger the child is.
And at least, that's the belief.
So...
Oh, I can buy a couple of years, right?
Like, she's not really eight, she's 10 or 11 or something.
But to jump 14 years to 22, it doesn't make sense.
At the time of the re-aging,
there was good, solid documentation of an approximate age.
And she had a primary care physician
that looked at all of it and also provided evidence.
So that doctor was looking at lots of other doctors' information
and coming up with a determination.
And then at that point, when it's such a huge amount of years,
you... you just have to say what makes the most sense
based upon the evidence and the professionals, what they think.
And that it's in the best interest of the child to change their age.
You know, I'm not the doctor and I'm not the judge,
but I felt like it was based on something credible.
They give her a new birth certificate, well, a new birthday.
They give her a new Indiana ID.
She had... Everything changes from her year of birth of 2003.
Back it up 14 years to 1989.
When I was at the hospital,
they signed the paperwork and got me re-aged.
-So-- -[woman] Can you tell me about that?
[chuckles] I don't even know what to say about it...
-[woman] Yeah? -...because I don't know what happened.
[woman] Yeah, just kind of tell me what you know.
I just know that I had got out of the hospital.
And she got me an apartment.
Barnetts were... were very concerned
about having her back in their home.
[Michael] But Kristine wants to make sure
she's got a good place to live.
So Kristine and her go out the next day,
and they find her an apartment in Westfield.
Westfield, Indiana, is in Hamilton County, Indiana.
Hamilton County, Indiana, is in the richest part of the state.
It's a... a single-floor apartment complex.
She's got a living room, she's got a... a dining room,
she's got a little eat-in kitchen,
she's got a bathroom, and she's got a bedroom.
Kristine and Natalia signed the lease.
They paid the first three months upfront.
Moving day into Natalia's apartment,
and I know we gave Natalia some furniture out of our home.
We got groceries for her.
And it was just... It's pretty basic stuff.
There's not a lot of tale to tell there.
I think that, um, Kristine didn't know what to do with Natalia.
So why not put her in an apartment
and say she's 22?
[Sue] I'm Sue McCallum, and I was a neighbor
to Natalia when we lived in the Westfield apartments.
Okay, now what?
[chuckles]
I just met her by accident one day.
I see her mom setting out all her groceries sacks on the sidewalk
and I thought, her back was to me and I thought,
"My gosh, that poor little girl carrying those groceries."
And so, I went up there. I was going to the mailbox,
and I said, "Well, honey, do you need some help?"
And I said, "Where is your mom?"
And she turned around, she said, [scoff] "I'm 22."
I expected her to have... You know, well, young, but she's not.
She was an adult, you could tell by looking at her.
And, well, her mom had a Cadillac. [chuckles]
And she was sitting in her Cadillac
while I was helping her carry the groceries in
because she just left 'em on the sidewalk. And left 'em, uh...
Just sat there and watched us carry it in,
and she didn't even roll down the window
and say, "Thanks for helping her," or nothing, nothing.
She just sat there and looked and then... [swishing]
took off.
I thought it was rude because Natalia couldn't...
hardly open the darn front door,
you know, work the key and get it.
So I took 'em in and carried them into the, um, kitchen for her.
And so, you know, I took her to the grocery store
a couple times, and she was also on food stamps.
She had a food stamp card when I take her to the grocery store.
And I thought, "Well, if you can drive a Cadillac,
why can't you take better care of her?"
You know?
[Melanie] My name is Melanie.
My husband and I, we're both Natalia's neighbors
in Westfield, Indiana.
[Toby] The first time I met Natalia,
I think it was just my wife and I,
we were planting some flowers.
She just came running across the street
and, you know, I remember my wife and I looking at each other
and... and just, you know, like, "What's... What's going on here?"
And at first, it stressed me out, because I thought
she was just a little kid crossing the street.
And then she came over and started talking to us,
and, you know, it definitely wasn't a child.
Um, uh, it was super nice, expressed herself well
and, you know, just was being friendly with us.
She introduces herself, sits right down,
starts up conversation like we've been friends for years.
So... And that didn't bother me...
at the time.
At the time.
[Andrew] My name's Andrew Rice.
Um, I'm an auto mechanic, ASE master certified mechanic.
I used to live on Catherine Drive in Westfield, Indiana.
One day, my grandson was in the driveway playing.
It was about 60 degrees out.
And, uh, my wife went in the house for just a moment,
and I followed her in, and then when I looked out the window,
there was a little person walking up our... Into our yard,
up toward our garage.
And she started talking to my grandson,
and they started playing in the driveway.
They were riding the electric motorcycle
up and down the driveway and having races.
-[engine starts] -[Andrew] On your mark...
get set, go.
[Natalia] Go, go, go, go, go, go. Come on!
[Andrew] My first impression of Natalia was that, um, she was a... a little person.
I didn't necessarily think she was a child at first.
Um, and as we got to speak with her,
she actually admitted that she was 26 years old at that point.
Um, and she told us that she lived
in the apartments down the street,
um, which were only two to three houses down across the street.
[man on radio] Thirteen different leaders...
[kid] Ohhh! Oh, no... I'm on the grass.
-There. -[Natalia speaking]
[kid] Ah, ah, ah.
But as the sun started to set, it started to cool down a little bit,
and I know Natalia didn't have a jacket on that day,
and we were jacketed up because it started getting cool.
[kid speaking]
It also seemed like she hadn't done
some of the basic hygienic things
that most people would normally do.
Um, her was a little bit dirty,
and there was...
for lack of a better word, an unpleasant body odor,
um, that she emitted.
[Sue] She wasn't a very clean person. She had her body odor.
And she wore the same clothes for days and days
before she changed. And her shoes were all worn and scuffed up,
but part of it was the way she had to walk.
And, you know, they should've bought her more shoes or something.
I remember distinctly looking at her
and be like, you know, after seeing dirty clothes
and I wondered, "Can't she take her clothes off to wash them?
Can't she put clean clothes on herself?
How many days in row has she worn that?
Does she only get to change clothes
when somebody's there to help her?"
I remember thinking that.
[Melanie] I never saw her mom or her brothers come visit Natalia.
The only person that I saw ever come over there was her adopted dad.
I only saw him from a distance.
I noticed 'cause I think he drove a sports car,
so I wasn't... It was a car that I hadn't seen come through.
But it wasn't often, and didn't seem like he was there a long time.
[neighbor] I only saw him the one time on accident drive up and get out.
And we were right kind of where the trash can was,
and she says, "That's my dad. I gotta go."
And I just went, "That's your dad in that car?
And they are making you live here?"
[Melanie] My... My husband and I were both...
You know, we had the concern about her being...safe
being, uh, you know, smaller stature and living by herself.
Just wanting to make sure she was okay.
She needed some help, and we could pick up on that.
You know, if she was five or 50,
she needed somebody to help her to take care of herself.
[Beth] Some of Natalia's neighbors
were worried for her well-being,
so they contacted the Department of Children's Services.
So DCS starts an investigation.
Heather Wilson had investigated Natalia as a child
in the Barnett home in 2012, before she's been re-aged.
Fast-forward almost a year...
and Natalia's now living in an apartment by herself,
and Heather Wilson is brought back into the picture.
And Natalia's now, voila, 22 years old.
And Heather Wilson may... maybe she wasn't convinced
that... that Natalia was an adult,
and so, you know, she was gonna do what she could
to investigate and make sure the allegations of neglect weren't substantiated,
and make sure her basic needs are being met.
Once Michael and Kristine learned that Heather Wilson was back in the picture...
it was war against Hamilton County.
[knocking on door]
-[Michael] Hello. -[Natalia] Hi.
Where were you when I came over?
[Natalia] I was just taking a walk,
and I got all the bins emptied out.
[Michael] Yep, I'm gonna grab 'em. Where were you walking around?
I was just walking around on the sidewalk around here.
[Michael] In this... In... In the apartment complex area?
-Yep. -[Michael] I drove all through here,
-I didn't see you. -[Natalia] Oh.
How could you have been walking in the sidewalk
if I drove through here and didn't see you?
I... I was, uh, back there, walking around back there for...
And I was coming back over here.
-[Michael] Yeah, like, right over there? -[Natalia] Yeah.
[Michael] I drove over there.
-Okay. Heather was here, huh? -Hmm.
[Michael] What'd you guys talk about?
[Michael] Who? Heather got another report on you?
[Michael] And did Heather talk about what she's trying to do?
Um...
[Michael] Okay.
Well, I think she did.
Well, um, Heather told us you told her
-that we only bring you food every two months. -Mm-hmm.
[Michael] And I showed her all the receipts...
[Michael] ...for all the food I bring over.
-Mm-hmm. -[Michael] And she know you were lying about that.
Um, they were going to...
They're gonna try and do stuff,
but we showed everything to our lawyer,
and our lawyer said that they can't do anything.
Like, they're not even supposed to come over here.
So whatever Heather was trying with you, didn't work.
It appears that Michael and Kristine only started buying groceries for Natalia
after the Department of Children's Services reponed their investigation.
[Michael] Where'd you get donuts from?
I don't remember buying donuts.
You don't know?
Got an idea where, I think, the donuts came from.
-That's a lie. -[indistinct chatter on TV]
[Michael] Seriously, where did the donuts come from?
[Michael] You just found donuts in here?
[Michael] Let's see if they have a date on them.
Well, they say April 23rd, which means they're new.
So where'd they come from?
Seriously, where did the donuts come from?
[Michael] Who brought them?
[Michael] Who?
Um, she is the... Um...
[Michael] Sue, the lady over there? Is she in the office?
[Michael] Why did she bring you donuts?
[Michael] Well, you never tell me the truth.
Her parents, they didn't come around a lot. They...
Her dad would come more than the mother, and I don't know why.
And I don't even remember what her dad looks like.
I've only seen him one time.
[Michael speaking]
[Michael] Okay.
This handwritten letter, Natalia is recanting all of these things
she had said about Kristine in the past,
saying, "I made them up to make my mom and dad look really bad."
Is it possible that this is actually dictated by Kristine
so that DCS would get off her back?
[neighbor] I was standing in my yard
and a beautiful woman and Natalia came.
And Natalia's hair was all wet and cut
as if the mom had cleaned her up,
cut her hair, and she had different clothes on.
I didn't know it was the mom at the time
'cause I never saw the mom, I always saw the dad.
And the mom said, "Tell this lady you're sorry
and everything you told her was a lie."
And Natalia was standing even worse than usual.
And, "I'm sorry, everything I told you was a lie."
And I was going, "Well, what do you mean?
What's going on?"
The mom didn't say, "I'm her mother."
Natalia said, "This is my mom."
[beeping]
[Michael] Well, I deleted everything.
Deleted all the phone calls and all the text messages to her, right?
Here.
And now you can't even talk to her.
Oh.
Michael wiped the contacts out on Natalia's phone,
including Heather Wilson's contact information at DCS
because, specifically because he did not want her
to be able to call Heather Wilson.
Michael had something to hide.
He did not want her reporting to Social Services something about them.
Because, why not let her talk to them? She needs help.
Why not let her get some help?
What is he hiding?
[Sue] Having Natalia live by you,
well, at first, it was okay.
And then, she started sitting on our doorsteps,
waiting for us to come home.
And, uh, then she'd follow us in the house.
In my house, the few times she was there,
she'd walk through and look at things
and pick things up and look at it
just, like, she was casing the joint.
It was always in the back of your mind,
"Is she gonna be around? Is she watching? Is she coming over?"
Like, you know, even when we would leave,
you know, peeking out the window, the front window,
like, "Is she there? Is she watching? Can I leave?"
Because I wanna go somewhere, I don't wanna get trapped in a conversation.
I still talk to her. I just had to kind of enforce
boundaries a little bit more, because, if not,
the minute we are home, she would come over
or she would call me constantly.
She knew when people come or when they come home or when they left
and she was really a pest to everybody.
[sighs]
[dog barking]
[Melanie] She would call and text me a lot,
which was fine. I mean, I... I just think
she was very lonely over there, and didn't have a lot of people around her.
[Toby] Our neighbors have our phone number,
and so if they need anything, they know they can call us.
They know that they can pop over,
um, ask us for something, they need help.
We just try... I mean, it's the Midwestern thing, just be a good neighbor.
And, uh, you know, if you're a good neighbor,
we're gonna be a good neighbor.
We'll help each other out.
It's that kind of vibe.
Um...
That was quickly taken advantage of,
um, in the sense that Natalia would call a lot
to see when we would be home.
Um, we would be out, like, a soccer game for our son,
and she would call two-three times.
To the point where, like, "Hey, you gotta stop calling us, please."
It's like, I just had to tell her,
you know, I wasn't offended.
It was just more like, you know,
"Natalia, we're busy," like...
"I'm trying to enjoy my son's soccer game,
so, um... I need you not to call me,
and I'll call you when I get home."
You know, but as soon as we got home,
she saw that our... our car pull in the driveway,
she would shoot right across the street,
and try to, you know,
before we had time to decompress,
anything like that, um,
latched on pretty quick,
to wanting to know where we were,
when we were gonna be home,
um, at all times.
[Sue] Nobody liked her. Nobody.
They kind of felt sorry for her,
but they were leery about her,
and really didn't want her around,
and everybody was complaining all the time,
about her calling the office
and saying that she's waiting on your doorstep,
and just, really eerie.
They said, "We know, we're watching her,
but we have to take certain steps
to evict somebody, and we're taking the process.
I said, "Well, good."
[building manager on phone] I think people were creeped out by her.
This sounds so terrible, that...
anytime there was, like, a siting of her,
it's like, someone came to me and said,
"I saw her today in this... She was doing," like...
She was, like, the talk of the town.
[Sue] I come home one day and Natalia was in the house,
had my refrigerator door open.
Getting a Coke, getting chips, and just looking around.
And I said, "You don't need to be back here. You go back up front."
And, uh, after that,
I started locking my doors.
And then, my neighbor said,
she'd come in to her house one time, I think,
and she didn't like it either,
so she started locking her screen doors
so she couldn't get in.
[woman] But she was always hungry, always wanting food.
She's a sly fox,
'cause she could con you in... in just, her way.
And everybody dreaded it. She was scary.
[line ringing]
[operator speaking]
[Natalia on phone]
[operator on phone]
[Beth] While living at the Union Street apartments,
Natalia calls the police on herself
to tell them that she'd been stalking a neighbor
and she had thoughts of wanting to harm others.
[operator on phone]
[Natalia on phone]
[man] I'm aware that Natalia
contacted 911 a couple of times
while she was living in that apartment,
and told the officers that she was attempting
to burn down her apartment complex
using her microwave, trying to start a fire in her microwave,
[Natalia on phone]
[Sue] Right after that, she was always acting really strange.
One day, we got to talking, I said,
"Why aren't you living with your mom and dad?" And she goes,
"Oh, they're afraid of me." I said, "Why?"
And she says, "'Cause I took a knife to them one night,"
you know, and she just had this strange look in her eye, like...
it's a normal thing.
It wasn't...
It wasn't until she started talking to me more in depth
about the history with her family,
and she said, "Well, I tried to kill my mom."
And I just was asking her more questions like,
"Well, what happened? How did you try to do that?"
"I stood over them with a knife,
so they took all the knives away.
And then, I tried to poison them,
so I had to live in the garage for a while."
Like a serial killer or something.
It's how casually they put
"attempted murder" into a conversation.
Like, "So what?"
You know, "Oh, well."
"Oh, gee, I pulled a knife on my parents. Big deal."
You know, that's the attitude you got from her.
This is kind of like, "What?" [chuckles]
What do we do with this information?
We're not social workers, we're not therapists.
Like, why would you tell me that?
And how do you expect me to handle this information?
You know, it was hard for us to understand
how she was just left in that apartment by herself.
Well, she just freely offered up that she...
tried to kill her mom, you know?
Like, that's... weird.
But then, I also think, if I had somebody in my home,
that I thought was, um, a threat to my other kids,
you know, what would I do?
Like, again, if I thought she was a child
that couldn't take care of herself,
this would be a different conversation.
But at what point do I start worrying about,
if I cut ties with this person,
it's like a bad breakup.
Like... [chuckles]
"If I break up with you, are you going to go crazy?
If I help, and then, all of a sudden, I don't help,
are you gonna be standing over my bed at the end of the night,
you know, with a knife?"
[Beth] The Department of Children Services spent weeks
investigating Natalia at Union Street apartments.
But DCS investigation can't really go very far
because that is solid legal ground,
um, from the judge, you know, who signed the order,
that she's 22, she's an adult.
So the Department of Children Services
have no jurisdiction over this.
So, Michael and Kristine Barnett
did not have to worry about Social Services anymore.
[woman] You could just tell she was an adult person!
You could just tell!
She wasn't a little 11-year-old
that they left here or wherever.
She had to be 25!
And, um, you know,
she had some... breasts and stuff, you know.
She wore undergarments that adults would probably wear,
and she had a bra on underneath her shirt,
and... and you could see the straps of that.
She spoke very fluently.
She didn't talk like an 8-year-old.
She talked like an... an adult.
[building manager on phone] She was, um, coming into my office every day
and get candy 'cause there was, like, a candy bowl,
and, um, just sit and talk to me
and it was weird and I would...
I have asked her specifically, "How old are you?"
And she just, kind of, shrugged her shoulders
and said, "I don't know."
She may have been a child
because that is something, like, a child would do.
Go into an office that you know has candy every day.
Once you become friends with someone,
you just walk into their house.
I feel like a lot of the things that she did,
were very childlike.
She did show characteristics of a youngster.
When she was playing with my grandson,
who at the time, would've been
a couple of months shy of four years old,
she seemed like a child having a great time
playing with a playmate.
[both laughing]
And when she'd interact with us,
she seemed like an adult to us.
It's okay, it'll get straightened out.
I just thought, well, maybe, you know,
she has a easier time connecting with children
'cause they're easier to talk to,
at times, less judgmental.
And so maybe it was just easier.
You know, everybody was leery about her and uneasy.
And she even talked about her brothers,
saying that the parents didn't trust her around the... the boys.
And she goes... I said, "Why not?"
And she goes, "Well, you know why."
I said, "Was you doing things you shouldn't?"
She goes, "Well, probably."
So, you know, just like, c'est la vie.
Weird too, she would wanna know when our son would be home.
And not our daughter, but our son.
I don't really remember her having interactions with our daughter.
That's when things went from uncomfortable to... to weird,
and almost borderline inappropriate.
So he... She would come across the street
when he was waiting for the bus,
um, where he would be out there by himself,
um, waiting for the bus.
And he was eight or nine,
nine years old at the time.
So, old enough to be out there by himself but, um,
you know, it just got to be a point
where we felt uncomfortable as parents, um...
Again, not knowing how to handle this situation
was somebody like Natalia.
[Sue] If you didn't keep your screen doors locked, she walked in,
because one day, I come home,
my grandson and his friend was playing Xbox.
And I walked in and I said, "What's going on?"
And he said, "She got to hanging around
too close to their chairs."
And rubbing up, you know, leaning on them and stuff.
It made my grandson feel uncomfortable,
so he told Natalia, "Get out of here!"
And slammed the door on her face.
I thought, how dare you try to do anything to my grandson.
I thought... [grunts] I just wanted to go after her. [chuckles]
And I told my grandson, I said,
"Don't ever let her in here, especially if I'm not home."
[Toby] A lady from the apartment complex had come over
and I think she spoke to my wife about, um, an incident
and just, she knew we had smaller kids, so just to be careful.
[Melanie] She came over and... and it's very serious,
was worrying us about some things
that had happened with Natalia.
And just that we need to be careful with our kids.
And, um, I think it bordered on almost like,
"You need to not have her over to your house,"
which, I mean,
I appreciate being warned if there's a situation,
um, but at the same time,
we can take that information and make our own judgments
and make our own decisions for our family.
One day, we heard the door open,
and our dog just started going crazy.
And we kind of, like, ran out front
to the living room area, where the front door was.
And Natalia was there.
[Toby] We got upset
when she came into our house without permission
and started going towards our son's bedroom,
which was in the back of the house.
Luckily, we had a chihuahua at the time,
that was small but fierce.
And, uh, she was very scared of the chihuahua.
Um, and that's when we started to distance ourselves
by saying, you know,
"I'm sorry, Natalia, we're not gonna be home for a while."
Or "Hey, we're really busy, we got a lot of things to do."
Not be as blunt as we probably should have.
Um, but again, not knowing her mental level,
not knowing how she can handle rejection, things like that.
You know, I remember my wife and I having conversations about her.
Like, "How do we let her down?
'Cause this is getting too much, it's too much."
Is that going to be the point where she snaps?
[Sue] Well, nobody let their kids out about, uh, around her and everything
after they heard about what she tried with the neighbor's little boy.
It was just, like, you had to...
Everybody had to watch out for this person.
One person that was taking over everything.
Having Natalia live by you is like a Hitchcock movie.
And you got so you hated to go out your door
because you didn't know if she's gonna be out there waiting on ya.
Or if you'd walk out to the mailbox, here she is.
[building manager on phone] She would start walking
into people's apartments without even knocking.
Just going in their house
and getting into their cupboards
and eating their food.
And then, we have a landscaping crew.
And she would, like, hide behind the bushes.
Then kind of pop out at them and that would scare them.
She seemed to hang around all the older... real old guys a lot.
And, uh, she was trying sexual...
and talking sexual things to 'em.
Fred was in there doing his laundry.
And she walked in,
and he just thought she was coming in there
to be friendly or something, because she couldn't reach the coins,
didn't do her own laundry, of course.
And I guess she started talking, you know,
sexual and crude things to him,
and trying to ease up to him and stuff.
He said, "I was so uneasy and uptight with her.
I just wanted to get out of there.
I almost left my clothes." [chuckling]
But he said, "I finally got away from her."
And he said, "I never want to be in that laundry room again with her." [chuckling]
[woman] You could believe this man if you knew this man. She, um...
-What is the word? She offered him sex. -[interviewer] Mmm-hmm.
[woman] And he said, "Get away from me."
[Sue] Natalia went up front and there was an older guy out there,
and she'd go in there for two or three hours at a time.
And she went to his house a lot.
[woman] She said that she was living in a house of prostitution downtown,
and that she saw prostitutes and she did prostitution,
before she came here, somewhere in Indianapolis.
I didn't believe her
because that's how she talked, in circles.
[suspenseful music playing]
One day, I see a little boy
rolling around in the grass and everything, and...
I said, "Well, I'm going in." And she said, "Okay."
So she went down to the neighbor's house.
[woman] You know how you roll down a hill?
They were laying, Natalia and him
were laying, rolling back and forth.
[Sue] And then the next thing I know,
she was close to the little boy.
And Natalia reached over.
[woman] And started undoing his pants.
And I said, "Natalia, what are you doing!"
[Sue] And that's when the dad come to the door,
grabbed up his son and was yelling at her.
[woman] He said, "If you ever touch my son again,"
you know, he was just the dad enraged.
[Sue] And she took off and went up front.
[woman] Doing that with that little boy? In front of us?
God knows what she does, you know, behind closed doors.
It's so sick!
In Westville, you admitted to knocking on, um,
your neighbor's door and playing with her children?
Yes.
Do you remember harming any one of their children?
[Natalia] No.
I never did that.
[building manager on phone] There had been several complaints
about her disturbing neighbors and whatnot,
and they had said that she was playing with these kids,
and that was just kind of weird,
that, you know, an adult was playing
with little kids like the way that she was,
like, rolling around with them, and, uh...
One person said that it looked like she was being inappropriate with them,
like, touching them inappropriately,
and as the rules,
technically, like, if we get three complaints or more,
we have the ability to not renew someone.
She was there for a year.
Uh, and then her lease is up.
The apartment complex is not gonna renew the lease.
So Kristine goes apartment hunting with Natalia.
She goes to Lafayette, Indiana.
We know a little bit about the town, we went to college there.
She and I, we both went to Purdue.
So we know a bit about the town.
Kristine finds an apartment for her.
Very recently before that, within weeks,
we had found out we were going to be moving to Canada
to support my son's education.
The Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,
wants Jacob, who is 14,
to go there for a year to do his master's.
But I didn't know at the time,
that it was going to be a very,
very bad last year of marriage.
Natalia had been the subject of so many reports,
whether it was Adult Protective Services,
Child Protective Services, the Westville police,
that the Barnetts were fed up with it.
They needed her out of that county.
But what happened in Lafayette
is the beginning of the end for the Barnetts,
Did you agree to go to Lafayette?
No. I didn't know where we were going, she just took me.
So you say she just took you to Lafayette?
Yes.
And then what happened when you went to Lafayette?
Uh, we went and looked at an apartment.
And you wanted to stay in that apartment?
I didn't, but Kristine told me that that's where I was gonna be living.
So you didn't wanna live there?
-No. -Okay.
What about the apartment in Westville? Did you wanna live there?
No. She just got it for me.
Okay. Well, where did you wanna live?
I wanted to live with Kristine.
I wanted to be with my family.
Or what I thought was my family.
Why did you wanna live with Kristine?
Because I didn't know what to do.
Like, I didn't know at all what to do.
I didn't know how to take care of myself.
I didn't know how to be by myself.
They got her out. [chuckles]
So, everybody was so really... [imitates sighs]
Everybody was really happy to see her go. [chuckles]
[Melanie] So, one night, just like, overnight, Natalia was gone.
And we didn't see her.
And I tried to call her phone
and her phone was disconnected.
We had no idea what happened to Natalia,
but it was just that she was just gone.
-[woman] Natalia. I don't know where she went after this. -[interviewer] Mmm-hmm.
-[woman] I don't know anything. -[interviewer] Right.
I think she's a little possessed, she is.
That's all you can really say.
She presents herself like a nice person,
but she's really evil and devious.
People think, well, she's small and she's deformed
so she couldn't possibly do
all this stuff everybody's saying.
But they're wrong and she did do it.
[Toby] I was there, I lived it,
I lived through it.
I still don't have concrete answers.
I don't know how old she is,
I don't know if what she said was true.
Yes, that's, uh, is scary, that Natalia could still be doing this.
That she can manipulate people,
and you don't know, it's probably worse
than what she did to our apartments.
I don't think she stopped.
She's always finding some other person to manipulate.
[interviewer] Can you tell me a little bit
about the first time that you met Natalia?
Uh, the first time I met Natalia was, um,
I mean, it just really disturbed me, a lot. [chuckles nervously]
Quite honestly.