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In 1994, Nicholas Barclay vanished from his neighborhood in San Antonio. Three years later, he was found in Spain, having allegedly escaped from a military child sex ring. When he returned home to Texas, he appeared physically different and spoke with a French accent. The family excused all of this and accepted him into their family. But of course, this very different person wasn't Nicholas Barclay at all. After several months of passing himself off as Nicholas, 29-year-old French con artist Frédéric Bourdin admitted he had stolen the identity of Nicholas, the family's long-lost son. But how could the family be so blind?
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In 1994, a teen named Nicholas Barclay
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vanished from his neighborhood in San Antonio. Three years later, he was found in Spain
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Or was he? What seemed like a happy ending to a sad story
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was just the beginning of this unbelievable tale. Today, we're uncovering the bizarre story
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of the con man who pretended to be a missing boy. OK, time to get Interpol on the phone
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the police organization, not the band. A 13-year-old boy named Nicholas Barclay was playing basketball
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with his buddies on June 13, 1994. After the game ended, he rang his older brother
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to come pick him up. But because their home wasn't too far away, he was told to walk
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With mom sleeping off a night shift and nobody else to pick him up, the teen
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hung up on the last person to ever speak with him and began the short hike back to his house
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Nicholas disappeared that afternoon without a trace. Unfortunately, even before his disappearance, things hadn't exactly been easy at the Barclay
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House. His home life was less than stellar, with an alcoholic mother who worked overnight shifts
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and an alcoholic older brother. And Nicholas himself was not above being violent and verbally
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abusive to his family. He also had three tattoos by the time he was 13, which in one way is pretty
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boss, and in another way, not boss at all. And as you may expect from a tattooed middle schooler
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he'd had some run-ins with the law already, even at that young age. Nicholas had previously been busted by the cops for petty theft
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and would sometimes spend several days away from home. Due to his flighty home nature, it was several days before anyone even noticed he was missing
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By the time police were called, Nicholas already had an upcoming court date
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and was facing time at a home for troubled boys. With Nicholas's storied history of delinquency and disappearing from home for days on end
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he already had a pretty sizable juvenile criminal record for someone newly in his teens
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So in June of 1994, when Nicholas was reported missing, the police just kind of assumed he had
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run off. In the early 90s, with no internet, running away was basically all kids did back then
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That and pogs. But the family became less convinced that Nicholas had simply jetted off
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for a few days when he never showed back up at home or tried to reach out to the family
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Three months after his disappearance, his older brother Jason called the police to report that
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Nicholas had tried to break into the family garage This was the first piece of evidence that Nicholas was still alive Unfortunately he ran away shortly thereafter and it unclear if he was actually there
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Either way, this supposed interaction was the last news of Nicholas the family
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would hear for three years. Then, in October of 1997, the Barclays
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received a call from the San Antonio police, who in turn had gotten a call all the way from Linares
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Spain, claiming Nicholas had been found. Barclay's sister, Carrie, flew out to Spain and positively identified the boy as her brother
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and Nicholas was released to her custody. After three long years, Nicholas was finally heading back home to San Antonio, Texas
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He claimed that he had been abducted into an international trafficking ring
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However, his time away had changed him. And we're not just talking about the emotional changes a 13-year-old would have gone through in such a situation
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We mean, to everyone who knew Nicholas beforehand, this new Nick looked flat out strange
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When Nicholas went missing, he had blonde hair and blue eyes. The person now under the Barclays' roof had brown hair and brown eyes
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Strangest of all, he spoke with a French accent. However, despite the amount of evidence suggesting Nicholas might not be who he claimed to be
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the Barclay family accepted him as their long-lost son and brother. The family saw no reason to doubt that his captors forced him to speak French
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and doused him with chemical eyedrops to change the color of his baby blues
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They were just happy to have their boy back. The abduction and faraway discovery of a San Antonio teen was definitely a weird scenario
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And when a bizarre occurrence went down in 1990 suburbia, you could count on hard copy being there
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The tabloid television show interviewed Nicholas and his family while an interested detective named Charlie Parker stood nearby to observe
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During the interview, Parker couldn't get over the dissimilarities between Nicholas and
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whoever the heck the person sitting in the Barclays' living room was, because Parker did not believe it was Nicholas Barclay
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Remembering a method used by Scotland Yard to trace Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin
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James Earl Ray, Parker requested the cameraman get some shots of the suspected imposter's ears
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Parker recognized the ears were mismatched and came to the obvious determination that
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whoever this dude was he was not Nicholas Bizarrely the family refused to believe the detectives claims which forced Parker to turn his attention directly to Nicholas One day during breakfast with Parker
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the person who had been living Nicholas's life dropped the least surprising news of the day
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He admitted he was not the Barclays' missing son. As it turns out, he was a young man named
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Frédéric Bourdain, and he was wanted by Interpol. We can't imagine why. For five baffling months
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this stranger who looked nothing like the missing Nicholas Barclay lived as one of the family
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He attended Nicholas's high school and was a fully-fledged member of the family's life
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He even beat all the top scores on the family's Nintendo Entertainment System
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Come on, man. Have some class. After admitting his fraud to Detective Parker
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the FBI became very interested in the saga because they tend to take notice of international con men
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After delivering a confession to the FBI, a fingerprint ysis and ear review confirmed
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Bourdain's true identity. Instead of attending four years of high school, Bourdain was given six years in prison
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for falsely obtaining a passport and perjury. After prison, Bourdain settled back down in France
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got married, had some kids, got divorced, and, as far as anyone knows, never returned to San Antonio
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Although, we wouldn't really know if he did, would we? Nicholas Barclay's story received the big screen treatment
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in the 2012 documentary-style film noir, The Impostor. While director Bart Layton refused to gloss over Bourdain's details in the film, he does pay a
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special focus to the Barclays themselves. It brought up how perplexing it was that the family
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seemed to ignore mounting evidence that clearly indicated their long-lost son was an imposter
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They were never concerned that their 16-year-old son looked like an adult man. Bourdain was 24 at
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the time and had different colored eyes. They never asked questions about his hair being brown
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instead of blonde or why he spoke with a French accent. Layton goes on to film fictitious sequences
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of Nicholas's sister, providing Bourdain with all the needed information to fully embody the
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character of Nicholas flawlessly. The film attempts to shine a spotlight on possible
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hidden motives of the Barclay family and why they would accept this bizarre imposter into their home
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The question of why would a family allow an obvious stranger pretending to be their son
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into their home has a few theories surrounding it, but Parker has formulated some of his own
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after repeated suspicions around the Barclay family Parker speculation began after interviewing the Barclay family particularly the older brother Jason According to Parker Jason just about refused
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to look the detective in the eye. Parker notes that Jason never particularly seemed to buy that
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Bourdain was his brother, and the only words the detective heard him say to the imposter were
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good luck. This shifted the Barclays from grieving family to possible suspects in the
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eyes of authorities. While Bourdain has his own theory about what actually happened to Nicholas
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you can't necessarily believe anything a convicted con man has to say. Lying is kind of their
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business. However, Bourdain claims that Nicholas's family actually had something to do with his
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disappearance, and insists that's why they were so ready to accept such an obvious forgery into
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their home. Bourdain has stated in interviews that Jason, Nicholas's older brother, was responsible
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for whatever mysterious fate befell the missing teen. But days after Detective Parker accused Jason
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of involvement in the disappearance, an accusation that was not denied, Jason succumbed to an overdose
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Though it can no longer conclusively be proven, Parker believes that Jason was covering up Nicholas's death
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and that the family accepted Bourdain as their son to have the authorities close the book on his disappearance
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After leaving the Barclays, Bourdain tried several more attempts at impersonating young people
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wherever he could, to limited success. He even pretended to be a 15-year-old orphan in Spain
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and attended junior high school for an entire month in his 30s
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Dude must have a thorough daily moisturizing routine. As far as anyone knows, he's still out there
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And also out there are several burning questions which may never be answered
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Questions like, why would an adult from France think he could get away
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with stealing a missing American teen's identity. How long did he expect to keep that up
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But it becomes a bit clearer when you look into Bourdain's backstory. As you may have guessed, the Barclays weren't the first family he tricked
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He already had such a documented history of impersonating various young boys
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that reporters had dubbed him Peter Pan, the boy who doesn't want to grow up
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While hiding from the cops after a previous con, Bourdain called authorities and claimed he was a lost American boy
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He was then able to get Nicholas Barclay's information to steal his identity
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and move forward with the con. Bourdain even has a tattoo of his nickname, the chameleon
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which is kind of shooting yourself in the foot. That's going to be a dead giveaway the next time he tries to pull this