How a French man in his twenties convinced an American family that he was their 16-year-old missing son
When a missing 13-year-old boy suddenly returned home his family were thrilled—but they later discovered the person they’d let back into their lives wasn’t the one who’d left.
In June 1994, Nicholas Barclay, 13, was playing basketball with pals in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas.
However, when he failed to return home, police launched a probe into his disappearance.
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According to his file, the teen had been seen wearing ‘a white T-shirt, purple pants, black tennis shoes and carrying a pink backpack’ before he vanished.
Three years on from Barclay’s vanishing, a French man named named Frédéric Bourdin was sent a copy of his file an missing persons flyer via fax machine.
After receiving the information, the New Yorker reports that he rang the San Antonio Police Department.
He told the officer that the child had been ‘found’ before assuming the person’s identity himself.
Barclay’s sister Carey was quickly flown out to Spain—where 23-year-old Bourdin was residing—to identify the person as her missing 16-year-old brother.
Despite Bourdin having brown eyes over Barclay’s blue eyes and speaking with a French accent, Carey claimed that the man was her long-lost bother.
After the imposter was identified and vouched for, he was granted a United States passport.
He found himself on a flight to San Antonio the very next day and on October 18 1997, Bourdin officially assumed life as Barclay.
He lived with the missing teenager’s sister in a trailer park when asked about his three-year absence he claimed he’d survived a child sex trafficking ring.
And while the family believed Barclay has waltzed back into their lives, private investigator Charlie Parker wasn’t so sure.
He worked to analyze images of Barclays’s ears and with those of Bourdin and later accused the man of being an imposter.
Of course, it turned out Parker was right and the child’s family was informed that the man who’d assumed his identity for the last six months was a serial con-artist.
Bourdin was sentenced to jail for six years after the unveil and he later revealed why he’d became Barclay in the first place.
"If there is a change, there is doubt... If there is doubt, then I've got a chance,” he explained. “Something in my head decided that I could do it - that I had to try.”
After being released from prison Bourdin, commonly known as The Chameleon continued to impersonate missing children.
The Frenchman, now 50, claims to have taken on more than 500 identities over the course of his life.
Unfortunately, Nicholas Barclay remains missing to this day.