The terrible story of the psychopath who inspired the movie ‘The Orphan’

For many cult and horror movie lovers, the film The orphan is a classic that makes more than one bristle with the chilling attitudes of a little adopted girl who turns out to be really an adult woman with serious mental problems.

What many do not know is that this story was inspired by a real life drama starring Barbora Skrlová, a Czechoslovakian woman who was capable of committing terrible crimes without being discovered.

Skrlová was born in the 1970s in what was then Czechoslovakia, but the story of her childhood and her real parents remains a mystery, as little or nothing is known about them.

The woman suffered from a disease called hypopituitarism, a disorder that affects the pituitary gland and prevents a person from growing, so Skrlová always had the image of an innocent 13-year-old girl, despite being much older.

This was used by her to commit multiple crimes and go unnoticed, because she was a girl and they did not associate her with them.

To date, the number of the crimes he would have committed is not known, but it is known that he murdered and abused several children in his country; she never confessed to her crimes.

One day, Skrlová, who also had multiple identity disorder with psychopathic, schizophrenic and violent traits, decided to trick two sisters, who also had mental problems, into adopting her.

On the surface, Klara and Katherina Mauerová, together with the two children of one of them and Skrlová, were a happy family. Neighbors and acquaintances described them as two good women with a quiet and loving home.

Manipulative and controlling, Skrlová managed to dissuade the sisters from entering a sect called The Grail Movement, in the name of which they committed countless violent acts such as promiscuity, cannibalism, and incest.

Motivated by a supposed man called ‘The Doctor’, the women performed strange sexual acts, carried out orgies, acts of cannibalism and all kinds of dark acts, which Skrlová enjoyed.

Although it seemed that there could be nothing worse, Skrlová began to feel jealous of the love that the two sisters professed for the children Jakub and Ondrej, aged 10 and eight, their adoptive brothers.

So, as he always did, he decided to convince the sisters to lock the little ones in a cage and torture them.

The acts of violence against these two little ones were inhumane, full of hatred and violence; They were tied up, burned with cigarettes, spent several days naked without eating and living among their own excrement.

One day, the women’s neighbors inadvertently connected their security system with that of the sisters and were able to see how these little ones lived and the humiliation to which they were subjected.

The police officers arrived at the house and saw that one of the minors was passed out, the other in a state of shock and there was a third girl, crying inconsolably in a corner of the cage.

It was the same Skrlová who, taking advantage of her girlish appearance, posed as another victim of the sisters.

One of the little ones finally died in the hospital, while the other was too weak to be able to give his statements.

Meanwhile, Skrlová took advantage of an oversight by the authorities and fled to Norway.

Change of identity

In Norway, the 33-year-old woman has already changed her physical appearance and, in fact, she was renamed Adam and changed from female to male.

There she tricked a family into adopting her and putting her to study at a prestigious school.

However, things did not go well for her, as the teachers became suspicious of her because she was extremely intelligent, introverted, and refused to play group sports.

When they checked her background, they realized that it was indeed not Adam but Barbora Skrlová and that she was wanted by the authorities in Czechoslovakia.

They captured her and accused her, together with the two Mauerová sisters, of crimes against the minors of the family.

Klara, the children’s mother, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, Katherina to 10, but, incredibly, Skrlová only received five years in prison.

In 2011 he appealed his sentence and was released; So far no one knows his whereabouts, but his story served as the inspiration for one of the most popular Hollywood films.