If you’re a true fan of horror movies you probably have seen the movie ‘Orphan’ and are shockingly aware of the girl named Esther whose hidden story scarred us for life.
What if I tell you that the character ‘Esther’ from Orphan was based on a true story of a real-life girl with the same medical condition and dark side of humanity? So buckle up to know the chilling true story behind Orphan.
Adam
In January of 2008, the nation of Norway got into a frenzy when Oslo police released a missing persons bulletin looking for a 13-year-old boy named “Adam.”
Adam had joined the Marienlyst School in September, only a few months before his disappearance, after emigrating from the Czech Republic with his father Martin Fahrner.
He attended the school through permission from his parents and described by his peers as being rather odd. After his disappearance in mid-December of 2007, Norwegian authorities released images and information about Adam in an attempt to find him.
Tips from Norwegian residents led authorities to the Arctic city of Tromso, which has a population of about 71,000. Once in the city of Tromso, Norwegian police were able to find and locate the missing boy Adam.
However, after locating him they discovered that Adam wasn’t actually a teenage boy at all. In fact, he was a 33-year-old woman by the name of Barbora Skrlová, who had been on the run for almost a year.
After being extradited to the Czech Republic, authorities continued to question Barbora Skrlová as to why she was masquerading as a teenage boy in another country and how she was able to pull it off.
With the initial investigation, investigators reveal that Barbora is trying to escape from having to testify in a 2007 child abuse case with which she is directly in a fix.
The imposter
Barbora was able to pass herself off as Adam due to a glandular disease that made her appear much younger than she actually was. To look as much like a teenage boy as she could, Barbora shaved her head and bound her chest which appeared to be flat.
To be able to get into Norway without being detected by using the passport of the real Adam, which had been supplied to her by the boy’s parents.
The boy’s parents didn’t just provide the passport – they also went to great lengths to deceive authorities into believing that Barbora was the real Adam.
Adam’s father, Martin Fahrner, moved with Barbora to Norway to make it seem more believable. Once they were successful Barbora escaped to Oslo with Martin so that she could live in hiding as his young boy.
Although students and faculty described who they thought to be Adam as an “odd” child who “kept to himself,” no one considered that Adam wasn’t who he said he was.
What investigators soon realized was that this incident wasn’t the first time that Barbora had pretended to be a young child.
In fact, the child abuse case that she was running from involved Barbora pretending to be the adopted daughter of Klara Mauerova.
The two evil sisters
In May of 2007, a couple in Brno, Czech Republic, prepared their home for their new baby. The crib was assembled and the changing table ready to go. The last thing that they put together was a baby monitor, planning to have it supervise their newborn in its crib.
Once the baby monitor had been put together, they turned it on and tried to connect it to their camera. Instead of simply connecting to their camera, the monitor connected to a camera nearby.
To their horror, the new parents realized that the image on the screen was of their neighbor’s house. After looking harder at the image on the screen, they noticed two young boys tied up in a dark room.
When police stormed the residence of sisters Katerina and Klara Mauerova, they were horrified to find Klara’s young boys restrained in their basement. Ondřej, who was 8 years old at the time, was beaten and had been forced to do harsh things.
Jakub, two years older than his brother, experienced the same treatment including being submerged in water and having cigarettes put out on his body.
The sisters were immediately arrested, and the two boys were taken to the hospital to receive special care and psychiatric treatment. When searching the house, authorities found another young girl named Anička, who was also brought into the hospital and given special care.
Initially, police thought that Anička was a victim of the two sisters, having been adopted by Klara not too long before. Anička was taken to a children’s home, but after a few months, she disappeared without a trace.
Revelation
It wasn’t until the disappearance of Adam that investigators put the pieces together and realized that Barbora had pretended to be Anička as well. But why was Barbora pretending to be a child not once, but twice?
And, if she was the victim, why would she try to flee from authorities on two separate occasions? Investigators continued to look into the strange situation of Barbora Skrlová and the abuse case of Ondřej and Jakub, only to find a much more sinister truth.
Klara Mauerova was the mother of both boys, Ondřej and Jakub. After a bitter divorce, mostly due to the bizarre behavior of Ondřej and Jakub’s father, Klara moved in with her sister Katerina and brought her two sons with her.
Neighbors of the two sisters described Klara as a loving mother, as she had been seen playing with her two boys in the yard. No one thought that she would participate in the child abuse that was described.
However, Klara had often told people that she was destined to fulfill a mission for God and her sister Katerina told people that she also had a mission too. This “mission for God” led both sisters to join a sect of a cult called The Grail Movement.
The Grail Movement brought in a mixture of Christian ideologies as well as New Age views. It was founded in the 1940’s by a self-proclaimed messiah named Oskar Ernst Bernhardt. The cult’s sacred text was written by Oskar and titled, The Light of Truth: The Grail Message.
The Cult
Oskar was able to gain supporters from across Germany and Austria and built a compound where he and his supporters could live. In 1938, Oskar’s The Light of Truth was seized by the Nazi Party after Austria came under German occupation.
He was imprisoned for six months in Innsbruck before being exiled to the Saxony Mountains. After the fall of the Nazi Party, Oskar continued to work on The Light of Truth and continue his cult, which soon grew to several thousand members.
By 2007, the cult had branched off and Josef Škrlovám had become the leader of the new sect that Klara and Katerina joined. It was initially Katerina who had told Klara about Anička and introduced her to Anička’s doctor and leader of the cult, Josef.
Klara and Katerina were looking for religious purposes and agreed to adopt Anička, who they knew was actually Barbora the whole time.
Barbora was actually the daughter of the cult leader Josef and currently in the process of being groomed to take over in a leadership role within the cult.
As part of their initiation into the cult, Joseph convinced Klara to let Barbora live in their house and pretend that Barbora was her adopted daughter. While living at the house, Barbora would help to brainwash Klara’s two sons into the cult thru torture and neglect.
Barbora was not in fact a victim in this case and participated in the abuse of Ondřej and Jakub as much as Klara and her sister did. When the three women were finally interrogated, they all turned on each other and played victim.
The dark truth
Barbora claimed that she had been brainwashed by her father into the cult and that she believed that was what she was meant to do, initially not admitting to the abuse she put the boys through.
Klara also claimed to have been brainwashed by Barbora’s father and said that he would send her text messages with instruction on how she should torture her sons.
Klara testified and said that she never wanted to kill her sons but wanted them to blindly follow their cult. She went on record saying,
“Yes, I know now I hurt my children. But I never intended to. Horrible things were happening then, and I do not understand now how I could’ve let that all happen.”
Not much was released about what Katerina said, but it is assumed she also tried to incriminate her sister and Barbora.
When the claims about Barbora’s father’s text messages were investigated, the number traced back to Katerina’s, revealing that she had been the one sending the abusive text messages.
The three women were in fact not even a part of the initial Grail Movement cult and had broken off to form their own cult between the three of them.
After trial, all were found guilty. Klara was sentenced to nine years in prison. Katerina was sentenced to ten years in prison most likely for her role in convincing Klara to do what she did to her sons.
The true story behind Orphan
And Barbora got five years in prison. All three have since been paroled and today are free. This bizarre case of false identity has inspired popular media to recreate the case in movies or TV.
The most popular and true recreation is the movie “Orphan” a story of a normal family that decides to adopt a 9-year-old girl from Russia.
Although they were more than ready to welcome her into their home, Esther wreaks chaos on the family all while hiding a dark secret. If you’re into horror movies and would like to check it out, we highly recommend it.
A prequel movie, “Orphan: First Kill” has also been released. So when you watch Orphan, just remember the true story behind it.
