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Stefania Sarrubba
Horror movie fans who were left reeling from psychological chiller Orphan might be surprised to learn the true story that inspired it is somehow even crazier.
Released in 2009, the first Orphan movie stars Isabelle Fuhrman as nine-year-old Russian girl Esther, adopted by Connecticut couple Kate and John Coleman after the stillbirth of their third child.
Unfortunately for the couple, Esther isn't quite who she says she is.
You can watch the horrifying trailer here:
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At home with her new family, Esther displays odd behaviour.
In the big twist of the horror film, Esther is revealed to be a 33-year-old Estonian woman named Leena Klammer who’s diagnosed with hypopituitarism, a condition that stunts her physical growth and causes proportional dwarfism.
To add to it all, Leena is a serial killer who’s taken advantage of her physical appearance to commit several murders.
Despite the bonkers premise — seeing a grown woman impersonating a child — the film by House of Wax filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra is at least partly grounded in reality.
The film is inspired by the real-life story of Czech woman Barbora Skrlová, who effectively impersonated a little girl in 2007, and subsequently posed as a 13-year-old boy.
In the city of Brno in Czech Republic, Skrlová posed as a young girl and moved in with two sisters, Klara and Katerina Mauerova, and Klara’s two children, Ondrej and Yakub.
Klara struggled with her mental health, which allowed Skrlová to manipulate her more easily, leading her to believe that Ondrej and Yakub were misbehaving, including breaking things in the house.
Skrlová convinced Klara and Katerina to administer increasingly violent punishments for the boys’ imagined shenanigans. She even convinced the sisters to lock the boys in the basement and leave them there without any food.
When a neighbour of the Maureova sisters alerted the authorities suspecting child abuse, Skrlová fled to Norway, where she impersonated a missing schoolboy named Adam after binding her breasts and shaving her head.
According to Oslo police, the parents of the real Adam helped Skrlová pass off as their missing son and deceiving the local police and childcare authorities.
In September 2007 — months before Skrlová’s real identity was unveiled — a woman supplied a Czech passport to enrol her son Adam at the Marienlyst school near Oslo.
As for the teachers and school personnel, they claimed it was hard for them to spot Adam was, in fact, an adult woman.
“We did react to Adam's behaviour. But it's not easy to know. Children at that age can be so different," school principal Ingjerd Eriksen told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet at the time.
Orphan spawned a 2022 prequel, Orphan: First Kill, with Fuhrman, then 24, reprising the role of Esther/Leena.