This True Crime Docuseries Sounds Just Like the ‘Orphan’ Horror Movies

The family claims doctors told them “This person is a sociopath. This person is a con artist. You are all in danger.”

Magic Symbol: Water Winter
Truth is stranger than fiction and Isabelle Fuhrman’s character in the Orphan films may not be entirely fictional.

In the psychological horror movie Orphan (2009), a couple struggling to have a third child (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga) decide to adopt Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a 9-year-old Russian orphan. However, the couple begins to notice that something isn’t quite right with their new daughter. The precocious girl acts out violently in front of her new siblings and classmates and pits her adoptive parents against each other.

Spoiler alert: the film’s shocking twist reveals that Esther is not a helpless orphan girl at all. She is in reality a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer with a hormonal disorder that has stunted her growth. Using her dwarfism in order to appear non-threatening, Leena has murdered at least seven people.

Isabelle Fuhrman plays Esther/Leena Klammer, a murderous woman in her 30s posing as a little orphan girl.

In 2022 a prequel, Orphan: First Kill, followed Leena Klammer two years before the events of Orphan when she was a 31-year-old woman. Leena seduces and kills guard in order to escape from a psychiatric institution. She then researches missing children, poses as Esther and is “reunited” with her wealthy Connecticut family. However, her new mother and brother are suspicious of “Esther” and the ensuing violence explains how she came to be adopted by another family just two years later.

While Orphan was criticized by adoption advocates for portraying an adoptee as a murderous psychopath, it was inspired by a true story. Barbora Skrlová was a 34-year-old woman who duped a Czech family into believing she was a 13-year-old girl. When she was discovered, Skrlová bound her chest and shaved her head in order to pretend to be a missing 13-year-old Czech boy named Adam. She pretended to be Adam for four months before getting caught.

In 2019 an American couple used the Orphan movie plot to justify abandoning their 10-year-old adopted daughter, claiming she was actually an adult. Kristine and Michael Barnett adopted a 6-year-old girl, Natalia Grace, from Ukraine in 2010. They allege Natalia was actually a 22-year-old woman and “tried to harm the family“.

Natalia Grace Barnett previously talked about being accused of being a 22-year-old woman who posed as an orphaned child on the Dr. Phil Show. She said, “It’s not true at all.”

According to her adoptive mom Kristine, Natalia would “draw pictures saying she wanted to kill family members, roll them up in a blanket and put them in the backyard…She was smearing blood on mirrors. She was doing things you could never imagine a little child doing.” Kristine also claimed Natalia was trying to poison her by putting Windex and bleach in her coffee. The family says doctors told them “This person is a sociopath. This person is a con artist. You are all in danger.”

However, DNA tests proved that Natalia was indeed just 10-years-old by the time her parents decided she was an adult and abandoned her in an apartment by herself. They were officially charged with child neglect but Michael was acquitted and Kristine’s case was dismissed. This wild story was told through sixteen episodes in the docuseries The Curious Case of Natalia Grace.

All three seasons of The Curious Case Of Natalia Grace are streaming on HBO Max.

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Meet The Author

Chrissy is the co-founder of Creepy Catalog. She has over 10 years of experience writing about horror, a degree in philosophy and Reiki level II certification.

Chrissy Stockton