Today, we have a very gloomy story.
Many of you may know the movie Orphan, released in 2009, where a couple adopts Esther, an
8-year-old girl, apparently angelic, but, who hides a terrible secret.
After several macabre scenes, we discover Esther is actually 33 years old.
She is a woman with a strange disease and many mental disorders.
It sounds like science fiction, right?
How would you react if I told you the movie is based on a true story?
The story of Bárbora Skrlová might seem old to you, something that happened a long
time algo…. but not really.
Her horrifying story dates back to 2007.
Barbora was born in the Czech Republic, and same as Esther, the protagonist of the movie,
she suffered from hypopituitarism, a weird disease that affects the hypophysis, the gland
that segregates hormones to the rest of the body.
This strange disease can have different effects, depending on the hormone affected.
In Barbora’s case, it made her look like a little girl.
We don’t know a lot about her childhood or about her parents, except that she was
a very problematic girl, up to the point that, when she was a teenager, she was hospitalized
in a mental hospital due to her strong psychopathic attitude.
Despite this behavior, those who knew her say she had a prodigious ingenúity.
Barbora realized she could use her disease in her favor.
She decided she could pretend to be an innocent little girl and so manipulate people as she
pleased and commit little crimes, knowing that, since she was just a girl, the authorities
wouldnt chase her.
Desde que salió del hospital psiquiátrico se le perdió la pista, hasta que encontró
una víctima, con la que fue demasiado lejos.
Klara Mauerová también nació en la República Checa y conoció a Barbora cuando estudiaba
pedagogía en la universidad.
Since she left the mental hospital, everybody lost sight of her, until she found a victim,
with whom, she went too far.
Klara Mauerová (maróva) was also born in the Czech Republic, and had known Barbora
when she was studying pedagógy in university.
The fake infant introduced herself as an abused child, who had escaped from a center for minors
and didnt have anywhere to go.
Klara talked to her for days until she decided to adopt her, without following any legal
procedure.
So, she took her to her house in the village of Kurim, in the outskirts of Brno, the second
biggest city in the country.
She had recently divorced her husband and was living with her sister Katherina (katerína)
and her two children, 8 and 10 years old.
Both sisters had suffered schizophrenic episodes, with visions of Joan of Arc.
For a long time, they both thought they had been chosen to accomplish big and important
missions on Earth, which probably made it easier for Barbora’s intentions.
However, Klara had always taken good care of her children, and she put lots of effort
in having a normal life, or at least, that’s what they say.
But with Skrlová’s arrival to their home, everything changed.
She started to feel jealous of the children and would blame on them any disaster that
happened in the house, most of them caused by her.
But things didnt end there - the little psychopath encouraged the sisters to join a religious
sect she belonged to, The Grail Movement.
This sect was led by a being known as “The Doctor”, who communicated with his believers
through text messages.
This strange religious group promoted cannibalism, prómiscúity and incest.
From this point on, the story becomes a complete nightmare for Klara’s little kids.
The fake girl suggested to lock them inside cages and the sister decided to do so.
The kids were caged, totally naked, in the basement.
They were tortured by the 3 women 24h a day, they lived on their own waste and at the edge
of starvation.
But things kept getting worse: Barbora was obsessed with Hansel and Gretel’s tale,
so she convinced the two sisters to fatten the kids so they could later on take pieces
of their flesh that would be eaten up by them and the rest of the members in the sect.
Skrlovça was obsessed with watching the kids when the sisters weren’t around, so she
decided to buy a baby monitor and set it up in the basement.
What she could not predict was that some neighbors that had recently had a baby, would buy the
same monitor to watch their little one.When they connected it, it wasnt their baby in
their nice crib that they saw, but the orrible image of the Mauerová sisters’ basement.
And there were the two kids, locked, laying down over their own excrements.
When they saw this, they immediately called the police, but when they came to the house
they not only found the two kids.
The picture of the tortured siblings was completed with a third child, crying for help in a corner.
Yep, you’ve got it right!
That girl was Barbora Skrlová, but the police didnt know that.
The fake girl managed to escape from the authorities before they suspected her.
She crossed the border, it is said, with the help of the sect.
Barbora travelled to Norway, she gained weight, got a hair cut and pretended to be a 14 year-old-boy.
She found a family who took her in again, but this time, it was her weird attitude that
gave her away.
Adam seemed to be a very bright kid, however, he would always refuse to participate in any
kind of team sport.
Also, he claimed he had run away from home because he didnt want to be a witness in a
trial.
These weird circumstances made teachers doubt, and they started looking into more information
about her case.
Again, Barbora ran away, but luckily, the Czech police had already sent an arrest warrant
against her, and her picture was everywhere.
Eventually, she was arrested in the north of Norway and repatriated to her country,
where she was finally tried and condemned to only 5 years of prison.
Why?
Because she was only the intellectual author of the crime.
In 2011, Barbora Skrlová left prison before she served all her sentence, due to good behavior.
Right now, nobody knows where this woman is.