In “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter,” Natalia Grace Mans leaves her adoptive parents to live with a new family — the DePauls.
In the second episode of the documentary series, which premiered on Investigation Discovery and Max on Monday, Nicole DePaul, 49, and her daughter Mackenzie, 19, travel to Nashville to pick Natalia up from church without her parents’ knowledge. They then bring her to live with them in upstate New York where Nicole lives with her husband Vince DePaul, 51.
The DePauls are a family of little people, and Nicole and Natalia both have the same form of dwarfism, producer Shannon Evangelista told The Hollywood Reporter. They also have a connection dating back to Natalia’s childhood, when the family considered adopting her.
Here’s everything you need to know about the DePauls, and where Natalia lives now.
Investigation Discovery
The DePaul family tried to adopt Natalia as a child
The DePauls were one of three families interested in adopting Natalia Grace in 2009. As part of that process, they met with Natalia at a museum and had her over to their home several times.
Natalia and Mackenzie got along well as children and bonded when Natalia visited for holidays. After Christmas, however, the adoption fell through and they weren’t able to see each other again.
“Things just got really messy with the attorneys. It had nothing to do with Natalia. It was heartbreaking,” Nicole said in “Natalia Speaks,” the second installment of the series that aired in 2024.
Nicole says in a confessional in episode one of “The Final Chapter” that she still thought about the adoption not going through. She even kept a picture of Natalia and her daughter as kids, as well as Natalia’s Christmas stocking.
“There’s a lot of guilt because, well, maybe there was something we could have fought harder when we tried to adopt Natalia,” she says in episode one of “The Final Chapter.”
As the two previous seasons of “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace” recounted, after the DePauls’ adoption attempt fell through, Natalia ultimately wound up being adopted by Kristine and Michael Barnett, the Indiana couple who later claimed she was really an adult posing as a child, legally re-aged her, and then left her on her own in an apartment when they moved away to Canada. Natalia went to live with Cynthia and Antwon Mans, another Indiana couple who had fostered and adopted multiple children, while the Barnetts were charged with neglect in relation to her abandonment (Michael was eventually acquitted, and the case against Kristine was dropped).
Investigation Discovery
Nicole DePaul helped Natalia leave the Mans family
In “The Final Chapter,” Natalia Grace’s boyfriend Neil contacts Nicole on Natalia’s behalf, asking her to help Natalia leave the Mans family, who had formally adopted her in 2023 after she’d lived with them for a decade. Though Nicole’s husband, Vince, was hesitant about bringing Natalia into their home, Nicole agreed to help Natalia.
In episode two of “The Final Chapter,” Nicole and Mackenzie pick Natalia up from her church without the Mans family’s knowledge and bring her to live with them in upstate New York. Despite leaving her parents, Natalia’s attachment to them led to some friction between herself and Nicole.
In the show, Nicole and Mackenzie also speak about the effect that Natalia being in their home had on the family. Nicole said in a confessional that she saw her daughter “a lot less” than she previously had, and Mackenzie said that Natalia’s presence made the “environment kind of stressful.”
Now, Shannon Evangelista, one of the docuseries’ producers, says that the DePauls are Natalia’s “No. 1 advocates.” Nicole told People that she has no plans to adopt Natalia, who is now legally an adult, and though their relationship hasn’t always been smooth, she trusts her.
“Did she probably do weird things in the past? Yeah,” Nicole told People. “[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.”
Natalia says in “The Final Chapter” that while she regretted the manner in which she left her parents, she appreciated that living with the DePauls allowed her to “explore.”
“Learning everything that I have about how to live with my dwarfism — it’s been a great experience,” she told People. “I love it. I mean, of course, I still miss my siblings and everything. But I love it. I feel free.”
Nicole and Vince DePaul did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter” will finish airing on Investigation Discovery and Max on January 7.
