[line ringing]
[theme music playing]
My name's Bob Cooper.
I'm a former Lafayette police detective.
Oh, I handle everything from juvenile cases to homicides.
When I was on the Lafayette Police Department,
I... I think I had a... a reputation,
um, for being a very good investigator.
You know, I could say I... I care about justice.
That's a cliche.
What I enjoyed most about being a... a police detective
is the puzzles.
I think one of the reasons that I'm so intrigued
by the... the Barnett case
is this is one of the most difficult ones I've had.
It's like a Rubik's Cube.
It... It just continues to change.
Just when you think you have it solved,
you find out you don't.
I think the Barnetts, when they adopted Natalia,
they bought a pig in a poke.
They didn't know what they were getting.
It was more than they... they thought,
that... that they bargained for.
They bought a pig in a poke and they got rid of her.
They put her in a apartment, Westfield, Indiana.
Michael and... and Kristine,
they would almost be a household word
in the social services area in Westfield, Indiana
because Natalia created more problems
than they were expecting.
Obviously, they were trying to get her out of that environment
to an environment where she was not known.
And so they finally move her to Lafayette, Indiana.
"Let's get her out of our life," and they did.
They move her an hour away to another county.
There are more nice areas in Lafayette
than there are run down neighborhoods.
Where Natalia was placed in that apartment
by herself, there's crime in the area.
I think their goal was, "Out of sight, out of mind."
This thing will go away.
But that didn't happen
because Lafayette was a wrong town for them to bring her to.
I just... I don't like bull [bleep].
It's just me.
[Michael] 2013.
The Perimeter Institute
in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,
wants Jacob, who's 14,
to go there to get his master's degree.
So we're moving to Canada.
You'll get those six combinations.
Natalia, she had an apartment for a year
on her own in Westfield, Indiana.
Natalia's current lease is up.
Another apartment needs to be found.
Kristine and her go out
and they find her an apartment in Lafayette, Indiana.
This is the best place possible.
I would happily, casually, stroll around that neighborhood.
It is a nice part of town.
This apartment is within two blocks
of an adult GED center
that she signed up for to get her GED.
It's within two blocks of the bus route...
a suicide prevention center,
The Salvation Army,
a local grocery store that takes her food stamp card.
You couldn't draw a map
and centralize her better
to a place that could care for
any one of her possible needs.
[man] The Barnetts thought that this was it,
problems are solved.
They've washed their hands with this.
Well, then of course, their nightmare ends.
The nightmare being... being charged with child neglect.
It actually became the beginning of the end.
[girl shouting] Get off!
-No, you are not getting that cheese. -No, no, no, no.
You can't have that.
My name is Kyna.
I was Natalia's neighbor.
-I have nine cats... -[cats meowing]
...two dogs...
five kids...
[speaking indistinctly]
Yeah, I have all my kids tattooed on me. [chuckles]
If we adopt him he'll be the sixth.
[chuckles] I ran outta...
out of limbs, so I had to start
put on one on another limb. [chuckling]
[girl] Cheeto!
-[cat meowing] -[dog barking]
[girl] ...don't touch me, Cheeto.
[sighs] Sorry, my house is so noisy.
Uh, check my dogs either.
I need to... I need to check them...
...don't lose it.
I've lived in Lafayette my whole life,
born and raised here.
The first time I saw Natalia
was when Michael and Kristine
were moving Natalia into her apartment.
And I just assumed
that they were the ones
moving into the apartment,
but I never did see them again.
The first time I met Natalia,
she had come over to my house, knocked on the door.
I was a little startled
because I thought it was a little kid at my door.
And then she explains to me
that she is 22
or she thought she was 22.
And I thought that was a little bit strange
that she thought she was 22.
And Natalia said that she didn't have
any food over there,
in her home, in her apartment
and that she needed to call her parents
so that she could get some money.
When I handed the telephone,
she didn't know what to do with it.
It was like, uh...
You know, like one of those reactions.
Then I said, "Well, do you have the phone number?"
"Um, no, I don't know it."
So, then that...
The phone, just kinda, just got put aside
and it was,
"Um, I'm really hungry. Could I have a sandwich?"
I also thought it was strange
that the Barnetts
would put her in a second floor apartment.
To have to climb 16 steps
plus the three or four on the outside,
that's a lot of steps for someone that small.
She was struggling to climb those steps.
I was kinda stunned.
And even if she was 22,
she has these disabilities,
she has special needs.
Why would you get her a apartment
that she can't navigate?
Going down the steps is extremely dangerous,
so, she could've fell at any point...
and nobody would have known she'd fell.
Nobody would've known it.
I mean, there's so many things that could've happened.
I mean, what if she had burnt the house down?
Uh, it would...
Not only would she have died,
you got all those people below her
in those apartments that could've died.
I just... I felt like she was kinda left to the wolves.
We lived a block away from a village pantry
and there was vagrants
uh, outside of that place
and there was a homeless shelter.
There's a lot of crime happening.
And, at any point,
someone could have gotten her to go home with them.
Or, could've just straight up picked her up and snatched her.
Definitely not an area of town
that I would let my kids walk around unattended.
It's gotten to the point
where not only do I carry a weapon
in my home, on my body,
I carry a weapon outside of my home
on my body at all times.
It's a necessity to be armed.
I hope Natalia knows that if I had...
realized in... during that moment
what was really going on,
I would've took action.
I would've done something to help her.
I just hope she's having a... a good life.
[sniffles]
And I... I hope she gets the justice she deserves.
She deserves for,
um, Kristine and Michael to...
to go to court. They need to see their day.
Um...
And she just... She just deserves to have...
um, a circle around her
to make her feel safe.
I can't even imagine how scared she was.
[sniffles]
If she was 22,
she, I'm sure, she'd still be scared.
I mean, look how small she was.
How, um, helpless she was.
So, regardless of her age,
she was very scared...
and alone.
[sniffles]
And that situation should have never ever happened.
The truth is, if I saw the Barnetts
I probably wouldn't say really anything,
I'd just start swinging.
So let's recap here.
The Barnetts took
a three foot tall,
disabled little person,
put her in an apartment
on the second floor,
where she's gotta scale stairs...
that are dangerous,
given her disability.
It's in a high crime neighborhood.
She's in an apartment
with no accommodations for her disability.
Couldn't reach the stove,
couldn't reach the washing machine dial.
First they took her cellphone,
there's no landline in the apartment.
There's absolutely no way for her
to call for help if she needs it.
That gets them in trouble
and so they give her back her cellphone
but they wiped all her contact information
off her cellphone
and at times...
there was no electricity or food.
So what are the Barnetts doing here?
Are they trying to keep her silent?
Are they trying to get rid of her for good?
[Eddy] I spoke to Natalia one time, that was it.
I never seen her with parents.
You know, every time I seen her she was...
...90% of the time, she was by herself.
Been in the neighborhood since '67.
I've seen it go from bad to worse.
And I've been in trouble before.
You know, I messed up in life.
-I've been to prison. -[man] Mmm-hmm.
Just like I tell anybody, I got a sex offence.
I messed up in life.
-I went, did my time, come back out, you know? -[man] Mmm-hmm.
So I... I watch everything.
-That's what prison taught me, -[man] All right.
...to be very observant of people,
your surroundings,
-'cause you don't wanna get caught up -[man] Yeah.
-in that moment again -[man] Mmm-hmm.
...and have something else happen to you.
So, you know, she's a little kid,
you know, I've to...
kinda stay away from that.
[Kyna] About a month after she started going
to the Lafayette Adult Reading Academy,
I just didn't see her come home anymore.
She just disappeared.
If you're an underage child
living by yourself in that kinda surrounding,
you don't know what to look for or what to stay away from.
Nobody there to protect her.
Nobody there to make sure
that nobody even hurt her.
I mean, it... it just really disturbed me.
Natalia could have knocked on any door
and it could have been the last door she knocked on.
One day, when we moved to Canada,
we got a phone call from the adult GED center
that she had been signed up for
and she was going to for classes
asking us if we had heard from or seen Natalia.
We don't know what to do.
We start making phone calls.
We start trying to figure things out,
we can't figure anything out.
[Beth] When Natalia went missing in Lafayette,
suddenly, Michael and Kristine
are worried about her?
They weren't worried...
enough about her safety
to put her in
a first floor apartment
in a safe neighborhood
with a telephone?
What are they really worried about?
Maybe that she is talking to a social worker?
Or even the police?
[Michael] Couple days later, we get a phone call
from the GED center, "Don't worry about it.
We've found her."
She is with this lady Cynthia Mans.
Okay, well, that's concerning.
Because anytime Kristine would hear
about Natalia had spoken to a neighbor
or had interacted with a stranger,
Kristine would find out who that was
and she would do what it takes to stop it.
That's her. That's Kristine.
She needs to be in control.
So, we try to call Cynthia.
We have a conversation with her.
She lets us know,
"She's living with us, everything's fine. She's moved in."
She's moved in?
You met her three days ago!
Kristine and I call Lafayette Police Department.
We call Adult Protective Services.
Adult Protective Services goes out and evaluates the situation
and they report back to us.
They found out that she had a food stamp card
that had $500 on it
and they had spent all the money
on all the foods at their house.
-This. -[Natalia chuckling]
If you like this give us a thumbs up
-if you don't, give us a sad face. -[Natalia] Yeah.
So they just took all of Natalia's food money.
What's up?
[chuckles] What's up, people?
[Michael] A week later,
I get notified by mail
that Natalia's social security payments,
which was going to me,
I was paying ourselves back for the rent,
and I was paying her gas bill and her electric bill,
that they're no longer going to me.
Within two weeks of meeting her,
Cynthia took Natalia to the social security office
and Natalia signed over
her social security money to her.
They're subletting the apartment
against the lease's rules.
The Mans were making money
off of Natalia's apartment that we paid for in advance.
She was evicted.
There was nothing we could do.
[Beth] Between 2014 and 2019,
a number of law enforcement agencies
actively investigated Natalia Barnett's case.
It culminated in 2019,
when Brandon Davenport enters the picture.
Once Detective Davenport
starts looking into how Natalia came
to Tippecanoe County,
things start falling apart for Michael and Kristine Barnett.
[Cynthia] Oh, yeah.
[Michael] 2014.
After years and years and years of... pain and abuse...
and I finally got the courage to leave Kristine.
Her and the boys stayed in Canada.
I came back to Indiana.
And it was a very rough divorce.
It was not amicable.
We lost the most important thing
a marriage can have and that's trust.
[knocking on door]
[Michael] There we go.
[Det. Davenport] All right.
[Beth] Follow me here,
that means that six years earlier
when she was living in Westfield she was 16...
by Michael's calculation.
That means she's still a minor.
He admitted it.
[line ringing]
[Det. Davenport] Um...
To be charged with something like this...
[sighs]
It's embarrassing, it's appalling,
It's disgusting, it's degrading.
Once the charges got filed,
my attorney and I, we pull up to the Tippecanoe County Jail
the next day to turn myself in.
First denied, the man accused
of leaving his adopted child
alone in an apartment in Lafayette
turned himself into authorities today.
[male reporter] The case being built by prosecutors,
confident enough to file charges of neglect.
[Michael] I get put into a holding cell by myself.
I was booked.
I was fingerprinted.
And then it's time for my mug shot.
It's gonna sound strange.
-[camera shutter clicking] -I wasn't nervous.
Not that camera. I'm not thinking about that camera.
I'm thinking about the ones that are waiting for me outside.
[female reporter] Michael Barnett bonded out of Tippecanoe County Jail
about an hour after turning himself in.
[man] Kristine, is there anything you want to say?
No comment.
Kristine Barnett turns herself into the authorities
a day after Michael turned himself in.
[Bob Cooper] Especially for the first time
to hear that jail cell close behind you.
[door closes]
[Bob] That has to be one of the most
humiliating experiences
any individual could go through.
-[camera shutter clicks] -Prior to this,
the Barnetts were on the cover of magazines
and newspapers.
And now, after being arrested and charged,
being photographed for a whole different reason.
The next day,
I have employees pulling that up on their computer.
"Is this you?"
I have employees sending the link
to my HR department.
Saying, "Did you guys know this monster works for us?"
Suddenly, I am the bad guy of the universe.
But my ex-wife, Kristine, was the one in power.
I had no control over any of this.
[camera shutter clicks]
From that point on, it becomes Barnett versus Barnett.
It is war.
And Natalia is no longer Michael's target.
It's Kristine.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Beth] He's not going to take the fall for this by himself.
[Michael] I'm the dictionary definition
of a guy that had it all and lost it all.
The car itself is dead.
Hasn't run for about a year.
It's not gonna run anytime soon.
Lately, my life has been all about the trial,
which is coming up just in a couple of months.
If I felt like I was ever doing wrong...
I would've hid it.
Knowing what I know now,
knowing... and being able to see how I was manipulated,
and being able to see how my sons
have been manipulated after divorce,
the question is,
do I think Kristine could have manipulated Natalia?
That's an easy question.
The answer is yes,
Kristine could have manipulated Natalia.
There was so much mental engineering done on me
that built up and I blew up,
and things ended so negatively, so poorly.
She and I are truly unable
to even exchange an email.
Her nickname is "Evil" and she's earned every letter.
She has twisted,
convoluted, lied publicly, privately, repeatedly,
over and over and over again
so she can maintain power, money, control
over everything and everyone.
My middle son and my youngest son,
I've not seen them in over eight years,
and they want nothing to do with seeing me.
We all were abused in that household
and Kristine was the purveyor of abuse.
You're going to get the truth.
I will pre-warn you,
you might not like the truth,
but you'll get the truth.
Kristine blamed everything on Natalia.
[Jacob] The dynamic between Natalia and the rest of the family
seemed to shift relatively early on.
My mom would get into arguments
and, like, try to figure out who Natalia really was.
Their relationship was definitely hostile.
[Kristine speaking]
Things would
spiral quickly and escalate quickly.
Kristine and Natalia were an imminent danger.
My children were just one step below it.
I promise you,
within five years someone's dead.
[Kristine speaking]
[Natalia speaking]
[Kristine speaking]
My mom firmly believed
that, like, uh,
Natalia is a hostile agent.
You know, that she definitely is not who she says she is
and intends harm.
Every day, Kristine and Natalia
would have the third-degree spotlight,
tell me everything about you.
One time I come home from work,
open the door,
say hello.
Natalia is standing in the breakfast nook,
nose against the wall.
What'd she do?
This is what I was told.
Natalia this morning is not cooperating with Kristine.
Very adversarial, very butting heads
and honestly, God bless her,
Natalia is probably the first person ever
to stand up to Kristine.
[Kristine speaking]
10:00 a.m. she puts her nose on the wall.
"You will stay there
until you get to this table and write down
names of people you have been with.
That girl stands there, nose on the wall
from 10:00 a.m. to noon.
Kristine makes everybody lunch,
gets Natalia's food,
puts it right next to her.
"You can eat this, when, boys and girls?
When you sit your ass at the table
and you write down the names
of every person you've lived with
and you tell me who you really are.
When I got home,
Kristine says that,
"Yeah. She's been standing still,
nose on the wall for eight hours
and she ain't getting out of there
until she writes down names.
Michael, don't you say a word to her,
don't you help her.
I have been dealing with this all day long.
Don't you do anything except back up your wife.
Do you understand me?"
Yeah.
So,
at this point in time, it's been eight hours.
Natalia soiled herself.
Natalia, according to Kristine,
soiled herself hours ago.
And per Kristine,
"On purpose just to spite me and make me upset."
So, I sit on the couch in the living room,
Natalia's behind me in the kitchen,
Kristine's on the couch,
and we're going to enjoy our evening.
We're going to watch TV.
We're enjoying our evening!
You can join us. You can watch TV
when you tell us who you are.
Two in the morning comes.
She has now defecated on herself.
She hasn't moved.
Every day I would come home,
and best-case scenario
is Kristine is sitting on the couch angry
and Natalia's in her room.
That is the best-case scenario for the next two years.
[producer speaking]
[bleep] I told the cops this anyway.
[exhales]
I told the police this
when they came to me three years ago
to talk to me about Natalia.
So, if I'm open and honest and willing enough to...
tell police officers this,
I can do this.
There are multiple times,
three that I bore witness to
and I'm certain far more than that.
That Kristine beat the holy hell out of her.
So one day I come home from work. [exhales]
[sniffles] And this is...
maybe early 2011.
I can feel the tension in the air.
Walking into the house.
I see... I see my wife.
[stutters] I'll be...
I'll try to be as accurate as I can.
Get one of the guys point the camera at the floor.
[sighs]
I need right here-ish...
to get you to understand.
[exhales]
The beatings
were similar to this.
[groans]
-[thudding] -[grunting]
[grunting continues]
Ow.
[Davenport speaking]
[Michael speaking]
[bleep]
[Davenport speaking]
[Beth] Detective Davenport was using a common interrogation tactic
where he leads the target of the investigation
to believe that he's on his side
to gain his trust and elicit more information.
Michael really has changed his tune,
and after hearing about how Natalia was treated
and the beatings,
if she really was hiding knives under her bed,
it makes me wonder if she was doing it in self-defense.
[Michael] As the beatings happen,
I stand there not knowing what the hell to do.
The only thing I can think,
turn a camera on,
turn a recorder on and I palm my phone
and hide it and I start recording.
"How could you betray my trust?
How could you do that?
Right in front of me right now,
you erase everything on the [bleep] phone.
Reset phone, hit okay.
Don't you ever do anything like that again."
I never got rid of the phone.
I specifically kept it my entire life
just in case someone was ever able to do
a data recovery off of it
and pull the video back.
This exchange between Michael and Kristine
is really an explosive revelation.
Michael accuses Kristine of beating Natalia
and she doesn't deny it.
So that's sort of a tacit admission that she did.
[Beth] When the time came,
Michael offered up Kristine
to the police on a silver platter.
[Michael on phone]
[Davenport on phone]
[Michael on phone]
[Davenport on phone]
[Michael on phone]
[Davenport on phone]
-[Michael on phone] -[Davenport on phone]
[Davenport on phone]
[Michael on phone]
[Davenport on phone]
[Michael on phone]
[Davenport on phone]
[Michael sighs]
[Davenport on phone]
[Jacob] From my mom's perspective, when Natalia infiltrated
our family and wanted to harm us.
And so, my mom denied possibly doing anything wrong
and if anything, she was just operating
under the, uh, advice of therapists.
And I can assure you that
no therapist would advise
uh, this particular action,
which I'm not going to go into detail, but I...
like if a therapist did, they would lose their license.
[Michael] Breathe it in.
It's truly the best regular moment
we would always have together as a family.
Sitting down having popcorn.
[stutters] It brings a level of comfort,
like, there's a level of... [exhales]
maybe it's happiness, maybe it's purity,
maybe it's just remembrance of a good moment
here and there.
This was... this was part of our lives.
This is... We were movie people.
It was what we did two, three nights a week.
[chuckles]
Jake smells the popcorn, Jake arrives.
Like, I'm already, like, mmm tasty.
You and me standing here eating popcorn together.
You know, I just... [exhales]
I never thought I'd get this again.
I'd never in a million years
dreamed that this would ever happen again.
2019, I haven't seen you in five and a half years.
And I sent you a couple messages on Facebook
just to let you know, hey,
if you have any questions about
"Dad, why'd you leave?"
Just ask.
Of the three boys,
you're the one that responded.
You invited me to come see you in New Orleans.
I had no idea what to expect.
No clue.
And I walk up and
the first thing you say to everybody was,
"This is my dad."
[sobbing]
I hadn't heard you say the word "dad"
in almost six years.
It gave me hope.
[sniffles] I...
I didn't have hope
for a very, very, very long time.
I was 100% convinced I'd never see you again.
I'm still convinced I'll never see your brothers again.
Sorry. [sniffles]
[Jacob] It's clear that someone wronged someone else.
It's easy to go around and categorizing people
into, uh, clusters of good people and bad people.
But good people do bad things, bad people do good things.
I just don't want blame to be falsely assigned.
My mom and I are, kind of,
going through it at the moment.
Recently I had a bunch of questions relating to childhood
and just concerns.
Uh, so I called her.
Like, I was just expecting her to maybe acknowledge
some of the things I was saying.
Like, I wasn't necessarily
looking for an apology or anything,
but I didn't even get that.
[Jacob] I did ask her about some stuff
relating to Natalia
that I don't think I'm comfortable
sharing with here.
Partially I'm protecting my mom
by not being explicit here.
I mean my mom is definitely not 100% innocent,
so I'm kind of stuck between, like, a rock and a hard place
where like I, uh, don't want to hurt anyone.
And, uh,
I recognize that that might not be possible.
Yeah, I need to sleep on some things.
Yeah, I don't know if I wish to talk about this further.
I'm done.
[Bob] Because there are so many questions
could possibly, the Barnetts just be making this up
to cover their tails and to cover their tracks.
There's something really deeply wrong here.
It doesn't smell right. There's something wrong.
Oh, it smells like [bleep]
Somebody's hiding something someplace.
[Jacob speaking]
[Michael speaking]
[Jacob speaking]
-[Michael speaking] -[Jacob speaking]
[Michael speaking]
[Jacob speaking]
[Michael speaking]
-[bleep] -[Jacob speaking]