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Nicole and Mackenzie DePaul struggle over how things have been “chaotic” in their household ever since bringing Natalia Grace Barnett to live with them in late 2023, in an exclusive In Touch preview clip from Investigation Discovery’s The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter, airing on Monday, January 6.
Mother Nicole, 49, and daughter, Mackenzie,19, — who are both little people like Natalia — have a heart to heart about how Natalia’s presence is tearing apart their relationship.
“Before Natalia moved in, Mackenzie and I were close and always talking. Now that Natalia is at the house, I definitely see Mackenzie a lot less,” Nicole reveals in a confessional.
She is next seen asking her daughter what was keeping her “away from home,” other than school.
Mackenzie replies, “You’ve always been a great advocate for me and protected me and have a heart of gold and wanted to do the same thing for Natalia. But she makes the environment kind of stressful. And now it just feels like there’s always some kind of drama.”
Nicole tells her daughter that sometimes she “feels guilty” because she was the one who “brought this on us. I was the one who jumped on it,” when it came to adding Natalia to their family.
Nicole continues to describe how she “feels bad” and hopes bringing Natalia into her home didn’t cause problems in her relationship with Mackenzie.
However, it is too late for that in her daughter’s opinion.
“Bringing Natalia to our house was a crazy decision and it’s had consequences. It just sucks that everything is so complicated,” Mackenzie explains to her mother.
Nicole agrees with her daughter that before Natalia got there, “it was peaceful, completely peaceful,” at their home and the two didn’t really have any drama. “We don’t even yell really in our house,” Nicole states.
“Once Natalia got into the scene, it was just chaotic and tumultuous. And if you just really want me to be honest, it’s like somebody put a bomb into our house,” Nicole adds, making an explosion noise.
Natalia’s saga before she went to live with the DePauls was long and chaotic.
She was originally adopted by Indiana couple Michael and Kristine Barnett in 2010, who believed she was a Ukranian orphan as her birthdate on her birth certificate was listed as the year 2003.
However, they began to suspect she was an adult and eventually had her birth certificate legally changed to the year 1989 and rented her an apartment after claiming Natalia created too much chaos in their own household.
Natalia was then taken in by Cynthia and Bishop Antwon Mans, whom she lived with for nearly a decade and was adopted by them in 2023. However, she met a boyfriend named Neil via Facebook who lived in the United Kingdom and wanted to change up her life six months later.
In the season finale of Investigation Discovery’s Natalia Speaks and in the first episode of The Final Chapter, Antwon called producers in a panic.
“We got a situation,” Antwon said. “Something ain’t right with Natalia … she got this dude online. He turned her against us.”
“She was going to pack up and leave and go to the U.K., the United Kingdom,” added Cynthia.
Natalia knew Nicole after she and her husband Vince tried and failed to adopt her in 2009. With Neil’s help, Natalia got back in touch with Nicole, who was happy to take her in.
“I loved her like she was my daughter — I still do,” Nicole previously said in the docuseries. Even though she hadn’t seen Natalia in more than 10 years, Nicole kept up with Natalia’s story through the various Investigation Discovery docuseries about her plight.
Nicole told People in a January 3 interview that Natalia has been diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, better known as RAD, and there had been ups and downs in the two years Natalia has lived with her.
“Did she probably do weird things in the past? Yeah,” Nicole told the outlet. “[But] when you take in a child, you take that child as your own. You don’t just get rid of them when they don’t fit into your puzzle.”
The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter, continues tomorrow night with the finale starting at 9 p.m ET/8 p.m CT on Investigation Discovery.
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