Frederick Bourdin and the Disappearance of Nicholas Barclay | Morbid | Podcast | Forensic Files

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is [Music] Morbbit. This is morbid. It's morbid in
the late morning. I'm tired. I know. You know when you sleep too like not to brag, but you know
when you sleep too good. It's like when your hair is too soft. Yeah, you know. Yeah, it happens. Actually, guys, my
hair was too soft this morning. I had to put some dry shampoo in. Her hair's too
soft and she slept too good. I know. And my skin's too clear. My skin is actually
not very clear right now. You're just really You're struggling. I know. I'm really out here. I have thoughts and
prayers, everybody. I have a I have a prayer up. Prayers up for me. I have a couple spots on my face that I had to
conceal. Don't feel today. So, you know, just like I say, prayers up. Just like you. I'm imperfect. Ash, she's just like
us. This is an off-putting intro. It is very offputting. Imagine if this is the first uh the first episode someone
chooses to listen to. Christ almighty. They're out. Sorry, they're gone. We lost them. It was nice knowing you. I'm
a good person. I swear. I'm a good person. I swear. No, we're a little silly today. We are a
little bit silly. I'm hungry, so that's going to play a role in this episode. I think I just ate my weight in chia seed
pudding. Good for you, man. It was [ __ ] good. I have pineapple next to me if you want some. She does. Like you
over like Elena, if you want some. Elena, I have some. If I could, I would give you the pineapple through the
speaker, weirdo. But I haven't quite figured that out yet. Uh, thank you. I appreciate that. You betcha. I'll wait
until after the episode. Yeah, it's weird to eat on mic. Yeah, I don't want to give you guys like a misophonia
moment. That's pretty [ __ ] gross. Um, yeah, if you Oh, one fun thing is if you
haven't listened to the rewatcher yet, uh, what the [ __ ] are you doing, dumbass? Uh, we're we're in the last
season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer over there and then we're moving on to another show. The way that I was just
about to say, yeah, just boop. No, we're not. We have not announced that yet. I'm
not telling you, but I think it'll be one that you'll be excited about cuz it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And if you
don't know what we're talking about, we have another show called The Rewatcher. We cover Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've
never seen it or like I've seen a couple episodes, but for the most part, I've never seen it. And Elena has and Mikey
has. Yeah. And now we're going into another show that I have literally never seen even a single episode. And Elena
has and Mikey has. Yeah. This is This one is going to be even more wild just because Ash, at least with Buffy, had
seen like bits and pieces. Yeah. Just like growing up with you. But this one she's blind. Completely completely in
the dark about. So, this is going to be a real real experience. In fact, I was getting You guys were talking about it
in code earlier. Yeah, we were me and Mikey were texting hilarious moments. It was making me teed and we said, "Don't
worry, we'll show you this conversation when they come up." You did. That was nice. That was nice of you cuz I was
like, but there's something really fun with it, too, that we'll get to announce soon. A little added fun thing with that
um season of the rewatcher. Is there? Yes. We were just talking about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
was like, what? Anyway, h so yeah, go check it out if you haven't watched listen to the rewatcher yet. It's a lot
of fun over there. It is fun and I think you guys will dig it. Yeah. And we do Scream, too. So, listen to Scream with
Caleb with Caleb. We listen to We listen to and watch horror movies. We do both.
We cover them and we all pick a different one every week and it gets pretty [ __ ] crazy. It does. It gets
funny over there. Yeah, it gets silly. So, if you need if you needed to round out your morbid listening experience, I
highly recommend that. Just a whole bunch of Elena and Ash. Yeah. Yeah. In France. In France. In France. All right.
Well, I have a weird [ __ ] case for you today. Yeah, you do. I know this case uh like I knew of it but I didn't
know all the details. Uh this is the case of Frederick Bordon and the disappearance of Nicholas Barlay
Interante. It is an interesting case. It's pretty sad um but fascinating and you're just like how the [ __ ] did this
happen? But I'll tell you how I am wondering that. So let's start at the beginning which is June of
1994. Nicholas uh Barlay was 13 years old and he got into an argument with his mom over something pretty trivial.
Nobody really knows like exactly what they were arguing about, but it was a pretty common occurrence between the two
of them to be fighting. So, Nicholas was definitely a troubled kid. He had a lot
going on. We'll get into some of it later, but that spe that specific day, his mother, Beverly Dollar, was really
just in no mood to entertain this argument. So, rather than continue at all, she gave Nicholas $5 and she was
like, "Go play basketball with your friends. Like, get out of the house." Yeah. A few hours later, after his
friends had gone, like all gone home, Nicholas called the house to ask his mother to pick him up, but his halfb
brotherther Jason picked up the phone and told him that their mom was sleeping and he didn't want to have to wake her
up. So, he was like, "You got to walk home." And hours and hours passed and Nicholas never did return home. Oh, no.
Yeah. What an That's such a sad way to, you know, just to think that they were arguing. They were arguing and then also
being like, "No, I'm not coming to get you." Oh, that's sad. So sad. So, at first,
the family ran away and they assumed, you know, he'd just be back soon. His sister, Carrie Gibson, said he'd run
away before for a night or two. He was mad at mom and said, "I'm leaving. I'll find a new mom and a new home." He was
not this nice, sweet, innocent kid. He was a very street smart city boy. But Nicholas didn't return after 3 days. So,
Beverly filed a missing person's report at that point. But he's 13. Yeah. And he's been gone for 3 days. Yeah, that's
not the likelihood of them finding him at this point is pretty low. Yeah. So, when the news that Nicholas had gone
missing was made public, shockingly, it didn't come as a surprise to anybody familiar with the family, according to
neighbors, the police would visit the house a few times per month because the arguments between Beverly and the kids
or between Beverly and her boyfriend got so heated. Yeah. It seemed to be a pretty known fact that n that Nicholas
was a difficult child. He was constantly getting into loud arguments with his mom. He was fighting with his brother
Jason and he had been known to run away from home on occasion. Beverly said he thought he was an adult. We called him
13 going on 30. It was very difficult to discipline him. If he made his mind up he was going to do something. There
wasn't much I could do. So when he was reported missing, no one outside the family seemed particularly alarmed. His
disappearance never made the news. It wasn't news to them. It was just news to us.
Just sad. Yeah. So weeks and weeks passed, but there was no sign of Nicholas anywhere. No one heard from him
at all. The belief that he had had just like run away pretty soon gave way to the belief that actually there might
have been some kind of foul play involved. Beverly said, "I thought somebody offered him a ride and he got
into the car." I think he would have gotten into a car with someone who kidnapped him. That's so scary. I know.
Those weeks turned into months, the months turned into years, and it seemed like Nicholas was never coming back.
Then out of nowhere in the fall of 1997, 3 years after he had disappeared, the family got a call from the US Embassy in
Spain saying they had found Nicholas in a children's home and that he was desperate to return home. Can you even
begin to imagine this? Like this like that would be unthinkable. Like you're just getting a call from a
from a foreign embassy and they're just like, "Hey, your kid's here." Yeah. Just
showed up. And how how long was this again? 3 years. 3 years later. Think of how long 3 years is. Yeah. Like 3 years
is an eternity. An eternity. So, and every single day waking up just like filling in the blanks of what happened
to your kid and then you get a call like, "Oh, he's he's just here and now he gets to come home." Yeah. Like you'd
be you'd be I feel like the mix of complex emotions that you would be feeling would be so overstimulating
because you'd be like it's like excitement, grief for what they could have potentially been through. How did
they get there? Who was with them? What have they been dealing with? How'd they get all the way to [ __ ] Spain? Were
they living in Texas? Yeah. Like holy [ __ ] Yeah. Well, according to the Spanish authorities, Nicholas had told
them very little and was by all accounts very deeply traumatized by what had happened to him. From what they could
piece together, this is like a little bit triggering. Uh Nicholas had been kidnapped from Texas by human
traffickers who sold him into essentially sexual slavery until he was able to escape after 3 years of enduring
that abuse. He ended up being discovered by uh two French tourists who were in Spain at the time and they found him by
the side of the road near a diner and just called the police. After conducting a basic interview with him, the the
authorities were convinced that he was an American and they were eager to return him to his family. His family
obviously was elated by the news that after 3 years with no answers, their son and their brother, their loved one was
coming home. Yeah. His sister Carrie coordinated everything with the embassy and she made plans herself to
immediately travel to Spain to be the one to bring her brother home. But because of the circumstances of his
disappearance, the case ended up being transferred to the FBI who would now be opening an investigation and vowed to
capture the men who had kidnapped him in the first place. But this complicates things obviously. Oh, massively. Yeah.
Yeah. So when Carrie arrived in SP in Spain to meet her brother, she really didn't know what to expect. I would have
no idea what to expect. From what she had been told, he had experienced horrific abuse at the hands of his
kidnappers. And obviously, she knew that going through an experience like that will leave some kind of long-term
emotional effect on a person. Absolutely. Like psychological scars. And she also knew that 3 years had
passed and in that time Nicholas would have changed physically, especially when you think about the jump from 13 to 16.
That's a big jump. Yeah. So, it seemed likely that maybe she wouldn't recognize him immediately. And despite having
prepared herself for the worst when they finally met in Spain, Carrie didn't have
much trouble recognizing her brother. She said he had changed somewhat, but as far as she could tell, he was Nicholas.
That said, there were things about him that did give her pause. She said he talked with a funny accent, but it was
always a whisper, very quiet, like he was hiding. She also noticed that his eyes, which
were always a very vibrant blue, if you look up pictures of him, he has like striking eyes. Now they were light
brown. So that's weird. Yeah, that doesn't happen. Yeah. The handlers from the embassy explained that while he was
being held captive, the the abusers would beat him if he spoke English, so he learned to speak in a way that would
please them. And they explained that according to Nicholas, the capttors had also injected his eyes with some sort of
solution to change their color. Holy [ __ ] Yeah. And as for his quiet, skittish behavior, obviously Carrie
rationalized it by reminding herself that he had been severely tormented and traumatized. Yeah. So that was going to
change his behavior around others for sure. You know, so that night she spent hours going through an old photo album
with her brother, just giving him updates on everybody, reminiscing, pointing out people, being like, "You
remember auntie? You remember uncle. This like mom, you must miss mom." Yeah. and he said very little, but he seemed
interested. And she said she could tell that he loved seeing the pictures. But before they could leave Spain and return
to Texas, the US embassy obviously needed to certify Nicholas's identity. As far as Carrie could tell, it was her
brother, but they needed actual like information to confirm that this was really him before they would issue him a
passport. Of course. So the following day, Nicholas met with a judge from the embassy who had devised a strategy to
determine if this was in fact Nicholas Barlay. In their meeting, the judge showed Nicholas five photographs of his
family, his quote unquote family, and asked him to identify various people in those pictures. He correctly identified
the first four, but he was unable to identify the fifth person, like the person in the fifth image. Huh. Yeah.
Now, even though he hadn't been able to identify all five correctly, the judge reasons that four out of five was
sufficient and the embassy issued him a new passport and he was off to return home to
Texas. I mean, I trauma. That's the thing. I can I there's like that element of unthinkable trauma here. Yeah. That
is playing a role in all of these decisions. I feel like it would play a role in most of my decisions. three
years of being human traffked. I mean that's a that's something most of us luckily fortunately can never even begin
to conceive of human trauma that would come to that taught to speak a different language injected in the eyes to speak a
different language right like like injected in the eyes like big I can see how they would be like okay yeah four
out of five maybe he's not going to his memory is not going to be as clear right
you know you can see it you can kind of see it yeah of course so with all the details and the paperwork squared away
Carrie and Nicholas went to the report the next day and they were, you know, prepared to leave Spain. To Carrie, he
seemed incredibly nervous about the flight or returning home, maybe a combination of both. She said, "I didn't
understand why he was so nervous. He was constantly watching people, watching me.
He was always watching me." Which obviously she had some kind of strange feeling about it. Yeah. Once they got
back home though, Nicholas was welcomed with open arms by almost everybody in his family. At first, the attention and
warmth did seem to be overwhelming for him. To the family, he seemed pretty shy, pretty withdrawn, obviously very
guarded. But like Carrie, they reminded themselves that he had undergone a profoundly traumatic experience. So it
made sense that he wasn't like super duper happy, you know, like he was before. Yeah, of course. So within a
couple months, Nicholas did seem to relax and he was settling in. He started hanging out with his old friends. They
were super happy to have him back, obviously. And he even seemed to be kind of developing a crush on one of the
girls in the neighborhood. The change was positive and it seemed to indicate that he was returning to his old self.
But there was still one big hurdle before he and the family would be able to put this whole thing behind them.
Because of the alleged kidnapping and the human trafficking, the FBI was obviously eager to pursue the case, and
they wanted to speak with him immediately. So, after letting him get settled back in with his family, they
scheduled a meeting with special agent Nancy Fischer, and Beverly and Nicholas sat down with her at the Texas Center
for Missing and Exploited Children. Given what had happened, Nicholas was obviously eager to get through the
interview as fast as he could and never talk about what had happened to him again. Can't blame him. Yeah. While that
would be easy to understand, though, there was still something about Nicholas and his behavior that struck Nancy
Fisher as unusual. Later, she said, "Not that people can't change in 3 years, but
this person did not appear to be 16. He had a shadow of a beard, a dark beard that I doubt Nicholas would have had at
the age of 16 since he had blonde hair." Yeah. And if you do look at pictures of
like when he was found three years later, he looks like he's in his 20s. Oh, 100%. Like he looks like a man.
Yeah, it's shocking. It is. Not to say that like differently, like you know, right?
Like some 16-year-olds, you're like, "Holy [ __ ] you look so much older." But this was this was a little different.
But he also obviously appeared to be nervous and uncomfortable, but almost unusually nervous and uncomfortable. But
like the others, Nancy was like, "He's been traumatized. He's been brutalized. It's going to change a person,
especially in this setting where they're disclosing the most horrific details about their abuse to a stranger. So, she
gave him a little bit of a leeway, a little leeway. Yeah. According to Nicholas, he said he had been abducted
by the quote military overseas on the night that he went missing. He said his captor approached him on the basketball
court, chloroformed him, threw him in a van, drove to the airport, and they left
the country. He claimed that from then on they would move him around often. He was always kept in rooms with other
children that were also being trafficked and they were regularly assaulted and sexually abused by highranking members
of the military. He said in a report prepared after the interview, Nancy Fischer described
various aspects of his abuse. Um this is pretty graphic, but she said every night
all the kids were raped and molested by men. These men were American, Mexican, European. They kept burning him and
giving him insects to eat. His left foot was broken by a crowbar. The boy's identity was changed by changing the
hair the hair color, eye color, or other ways. His eye color was changed from blue to brown by use of a solution.
This is horrific. There's unimaginable things. I can't even like go there. I can't either. Nicholas claimed that he
only managed to escape that night because his captors forgot to close the door securely and that's how he got out.
Damn. Yeah. He said he got out of the building and just ran for hours until he couldn't run anymore. And that's when he
was discovered by those two French tourists who obviously called the police. Which you wonder at that point
you're like, "So, did anyone else try to escape?" That was my immediate thought.
I was literally just going to be hearing that like other kids showed up. Yeah, they left the door open and one kid's
running. I'm assuming everyone is going to run. Obviously, there's fear, but but
there's going to be at least another one. More than one. Yeah. So Fischer said later, "This was a horrendous
interview and I was shaken by it when I left because I felt all the horrific emotional side effects that go with
listening to such a story." So she thanked Nicholas for being super candid with her and she assured him they were
going to find the people who had done this to him and bring them to justice. Before leaving, she reminded the family
that because this was an open and ongoing case, they really should avoid speaking with the press because it could
compromise the investigation. Yeah. Despite the warning, the news about Nicholas's ordeal and his return home
had already gotten out and the family was constantly getting calls from reporters. About 2 months after Nicholas
had got home, private investigator Charlie Parker got a call from a producer at Hard Copy, the national news
uh magazine program, and they wanted to do a story on Nicholas, but they were having trouble getting in touch with the
family. So, it was their intention to hire Parker, who worked out of San Antonio, track the family down, and get
their consent to cover this story. Parker actually had no difficulty getting hold of Beverly and Nicholas.
And to his surprise, they seemed pretty eager to share their story. Huh. Which was not great because the FBI literally
said literally just said don't do that. And like anything the FBI tells me to do, I'm I'm prob's going to listen.
Yeah. If they say don't do that because it's going to compromise a giant child trafficking ring that they're trying to,
you know, eradicate. Take down. Yeah. Listen to that. I'm going to listen. Yeah. No. Just a few days after reaching
out to the family though, Parker found himself invited into the family home. He was watching as the local news taped an
interview with Nicholas just sitting in the living room. In that specific interview, Nicholas is wearing a large
jacket pulled up around his neck, a widebrim hat, and dark sunglasses. Okay. Interesting. His responses to the
interviewer's questions are very short, very quiet, and delivered with a distinct heavy French accent,
which is [ __ ] weird. Yeah. Like that would make you people questioning this. I get it. Yeah. Like this is it's
[ __ ] strange. It's strange. I can't imagine my like like my child goes missing three years later comes back
with different eyes, a dark beard, and a [ __ ] French accent. That's it's the eyes that I'm having trouble. Yeah, that
I would have. But again, like I understand desperation Yes. could could also be playing a role into this that
you are just desperate to have your child back and you will just kind of ignore the red flags because you're like
I just want this to be him. It's like the case that you covered the Bobby Bobby Dumbar Bobby Dumbar case. Yeah.
It's like you just desperately want your child back so you'll just kind of put yourself in a headsp space of like this
has to be him. Yes. Because otherwise something terrible happened otherwise he's gone. Yeah. I can't take that.
Right. And I'm sure like in some ways it would feel like don't rip this child away from me like if you know like
they're thinking like this is my child or even like they've convinced themselves you know like they've
convinced themselves and it's like don't take him away again kind of. Exactly. So
Charlie Parker was watching the interview in a separate room where he could see Nicholas clearly. And as it
happened he also found himself standing next to a photograph an old photograph of Nicholas on the wall. as he watched
Nicholas being interviewed, his eyes just kept darting back and forth between the photograph and the young man in the
other room. And the more he examined the photo in front of him, the more he started, you know, kind of noting the
differences between the two. He said there was a moment where the hair stood up on the back of your neck and there
was just something wrong about it. The fact that he just like knew he just like innately Exactly. Yeah. Not wanting to
tip anybody off to his suspicion though, the next day Parker asked Beverly if she
had a picture of Nicholas that he could borrow to kind of study some more. Yeah.
And he remembered that, and this is interesting, he remembered that when Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James
Earl Ray was arrested in London, the authorities used a comparison of his ear in those photographs or in a photograph
of Ry in order to confirm his identity. So Parker enlarged the photo of Nicholas
and compared it to the photo of 16-year-old Nicholas in his passport. And to his surprise, the boy's ears were
not even remotely similar in the two photos. And our ears don't change. No, it's entirely possible for somebody to
dye their hair, change the way they speak, maybe even change the color of their eyes to seem like they're somebody
else. But again, our ears are like our fingerprints. They're formed when we're very young. And you know, barring some
kind of mutilation, they just don't change as we grow older. So, that being the case, Charlie Parker now had
compelling evidence that the boy living in in Beverly's house was not Nicholas Barker, which also is [ __ ]
horrifying. Terrifying. Horrifying. Like, I have goosebumps now. Like, I've read through this multiple times. I have
goosebumps. I can't. So, fearing that the young man could be a spy or have some kind of nefarious intent, Parker
called Nancy Fischer, special agent Nancy Fischer, to report his discovery, and he was stunned to find that Fischer
didn't seem too interested in what he had to say. Huh. In fact, the most she was willing
to tell him was just be careful that he didn't intrude on a federal investigation unless he wanted to get
charged for the crime. Oh, yeah. Later she said, "I thought I didn't have a right to question their statement that
this was their family member because how could they be wrong? I mean, no one would be wrong about something like
that. Why would you ever take in a stranger, not just a stranger from this country, but a stranger from another
country who speaks with a French accent? This has to be Nicholas Barlay." Which I
again, I understand that totally that thought process. Like I totally get where they're coming from. Like and I I
get that, but also you're an FBI agent. Well, for sure. That's the thing. Like I
that's I to this is so [ __ ] up like this whole thing cuz it's like it's different cuz she's an FBI agent. That's
where that's where like to like that's your job. It's different cuz you're an FBI agent but then at the like I was
just saying that but then at the same time when the [ __ ] do you run into that during your career? Well that's and it's
like at this point it's so hairy because you are questioning a grieving a family
who's been grieving for three years. Yes. the loss of their child and it's like and now they have this hope and
they are telling you this is their family member. They're like steadfast about it. It must be a very strange
position to be in to know that it is not and to be like how are you not seeing it
right? You know like we think of the Bobby Dunar case and we were saying like how can you not know that's not your
son? I think I think self desperation plays a a part of just controlling the part of your brain that logically tells
you that is not your child. It just shuts it off. I think that's the thing. And I think when unless you've been in
that position, it's probably hard to understand to understand. But looking from this point of view, you say, "Dear
FBI agent, question." You got to question it. If you ruffle some feathers, you ruffle some feathers. You
got to let it slick off your back and be like, "Sorry, I'm just doing my job." Right. Well, you know, we're here
talking about it, so you know, something happened. Exactly. So, Nancy Fischer might not have wanted to believe that
they were dealing with a straightup impostor, but there were others who were far less willing to entertain this whole
charade. As part of the FBI's investigation into the case, Nicholas was sent to see forensic psychologist
Bruce Perry in order to collect more information about his claims about being trafficked. He later said, Bruce said,
"I introduced myself and when he spoke back, immediately I thought, something's wrong here. As a contractor with the
FBI, Perry had interviewed countless survivors of traumatic situations, actually unfortunately similar to those
that Nicholas said he had gone through. And nothing about the boy's behavior seemed to support his story. Most
significantly, Nicholas spoke pretty casually about the details of this abuse that he supposedly went through without
showing any of the physical and largely unconscious signs of somebody who's been
abused. There was also the fact that he seemed entirely incapable of speaking fluent English or speaking without an
accent. Like it seemed like he could not do. Yeah. Perry said that told me about
the development of his brain and the development of language. You just cannot be raised for the first six or seven
years of your life in an English-speaking home and not be able to speak English without an accent. I can
guarantee you that this kid was not raised in an English-speaking family, which it really is fascinating how
people can like pick those little parts of your pathology. Yeah. And point to like nope. Proves it. You know what I
mean? And it's so fascinating just how the brain works and how even no you might so badly want to change that but
you just can't. Like your brain is just wired that way. Yeah. So Bruce Perry reported his suspicion to Nancy Fischer
and along with what she'd heard from Charlie Parker at that point she could not ignore the obvious fact that whoever
it was who had returned home from Spain with Carrie Gibson was not Nicholas Barkley.
So fearing now that the family might be in danger, she immediately called Carrie
Gibson, his sister, or quote unquote, and told her what they learned. And to NY's great surprise, Carrie seemed
uninterested in hearing that the young man living in their house was not her brother, and may in fact be a dangerous
person. Oh. Later, Carrie said she didn't remember uh Nancy Fischer putting it in like those exact words that this
person might be dangerous. But the fact remained that no matter how she phrased it, the family was determined to hold on
to the belief that their lost loved one had come back to them and it seemed like
nothing was going to change their minds, which you like we're saying over and over again, you can understand a sad
situation. It really is. Very quickly, the Dollarhead family had gone from willing participants in an FBI
investigation to now a serious obstacle in finding the truth. A few days after Nancy Fischer informed the family about
the potential danger, she actually went to Beverly's home to obtain permission to get a DNA sample from Nicholas, but
the agents were met at the door with a very uncooperative Beverly. Oh no. Not only did she refuse to allow them near
Nicholas, quote unquote, but when they pushed the issue, she threw herself onto the floor and started screaming, "No,
and you can't pick me up and you can't make me." Yeah. Which is sad. It's The whole thing. It's heartbreaking. The
whole thing is heartbreaking. I mean, this is awful. Yeah. From Nancy Fischer's perspective, though, the
change was remarkable. She said, "She wasn't just apathetic. She was hostile. I no longer saw them as a grieving,
victimized family. I saw them as a questionable family. There'd be no reason for them to accept a stranger
into their lives unless there was something to hide cuz she's looking at it like this is a bit nefarious now."
Yeah. Cuz it cuz I understand that you need to question that. You need to say because you you have to look at it from
a totally, you know, unbiased point of view, not living in the emotion of it all. You need to be like, why are you
trying to keep this? If I'm telling you this is could be a dangerous stranger, this is likely not your son, right?
Like, why can't we investigate this, you know? But then you look at the family and you say, "Well, I don't want you to
put my my loved one, who I think this is my loved one, through more trauma, right? And I just want to go on with my
life." Right. But you can see how it would look nefarious from the other side. Yeah. And the thing like it
wouldn't be super traumatic to get a DNA test to confirm your identity, I don't think. Exactly. You know, like But but
again, but I've never gone through this experience, so who knows? But while Nancy Fischer and the other FBI, the
other agents from the FBI continued trying to work with the family, private investigator Charlie Parker was kind of,
you know, in the background there, he was tailing quote unquote Nicholas everywhere he went at this point. At
times, he would reach out in the hope of forming a connection that would allow him to get more information. And after
about a week or two, his efforts seemed to pay off. One afternoon, Charlie Parker invited quote unquote Nicholas
out for breakfast at a local restaurant. And they sat down together. They apparently ordered some hot cakes and
the conversation eventually turned to the night that Nicholas disappeared several years earlier. Parker said, "You
really made your mother mad." Referring to the fight that he had gotten in with his mother before he left to play
basketball. Mhm. And at hearing that, the man sitting across from Charlie Parker put his fork down, looked up at
Parker, and said, "She's not my mother, and you know it." I would. Holy [ __ ] [ __ ] my pants.
Charlie Parker was probably like, "Wow, I thought that was gonna be a lot more difficult." And also, obviously, Charlie
Parker knew. He fully knew like he had gone studied the ears and everything. Inately, he knew. You don't go that hard
unless you're pretty sure that you're right, right? But then to have somebody confirm it must be just a whole
different thing. You must be orbiting at that point. Like, I would be shot into the Kyper belt. And then you're also
like, "Okay, cool. Who the [ __ ] are you sitting across from me? Who the [ __ ] are
you? And two, what the [ __ ] do we do next? Yeah. Like, what what do I do with this information? Because now I know
it's like, is the family gonna take this? Yeah. And how are they going to take it? Exactly. So, once the
confession was out of his mouth, it didn't take long for the imposttor Nicholas's story to fall apart. A short
time after that breakfast meeting with Charlie Parker, he was fingerprinted by the FBI who ran the prints through the
international database and almost immediately got a hit, which like fantastic. Why the [ __ ] didn't you just
do that as a precaution originally? Okay, thank you. Cuz my first question was going to be, wait a second, they
didn't fingerprint him? Why didn't I think of that? We could have started like that judge's idea was super cute
and like super fun. Like family pictures, fingerprints, right? dental records, the whole nine. And what's wild
is I didn't question earlier why they didn't do fingerprints or D. I think I probably just assumed they did. I think
I assumed they did and now I'm like, wait a second. Yeah. No. Why wouldn't you do that to begin with? Clear as day.
Yeah. Wow. Certainly is. The fact that they didn't fingerprint him to begin with is mindboggling. Baffled. Truly
baffling. My baffleds are baffled. Truly. So, the young man who had been passing himself off as Nicholas Barlay
for several months now, living in this family's home was in fact 25year-old, a 25-year-old French man
named Frederick Bourdain. Yeah. So, see, there was a reason he looked that old. Not only was he 25, he was a fugitive
wanted by the Interpol on several counts of impersonating other people all around
Europe. Oh no. They had been living with a [ __ ] fugitive. Oh, no. Can you like can you imagine you think your
13-year-old son disappeared like you're not only you think he did he did disappear. Three years later he comes
back. The FBI is like, "Yay! Woo! Woo! He's back. We showed him some photos. He knows you guys. It's great." And then
you find out you've been living with a 25-year-old French fugitive. I'd be like, "What the Who did
I piss off in a past life?" Seriously, I'd be like, "What the when does it end?" Truly, when does it end? Holy
[ __ ] A 25-year-old French fugitive. You've just been laying your head down at night with that man in your house.
Yeah. Pretending to be your child. And also, this guy, what the [ __ ] It's weird. This family lost their
13-year-old child and you pray upon that. You got to be Yeah. You got to be the lowest form of scum. He is a
mentally ill human being. He, I will say, has a very tragic backstory. It by no means excuses what he did, but
there's some psychological thing that played out here. So, in retrospect, it obviously seems unbelievable that
anybody would have looked at a 25-year-old man, specifically this 25-year-old man, and believed him to be
16-year-old Nicholas. Like, I you I was telling you I was doing this case and you looked at the pictures and you were
like, "How the [ __ ] did I think?" Um, yeah. But he had gone out of his way to make himself appear younger. And when it
came to manipulating people, he was a master manipulator. Still, the difference between the two people is
immediately apparent. Bourdain himself said in a 2011 interview. I mean, who wouldn't see it? Yeah, he himself was
like, "Yeah, that's [ __ ] crazy." Yeah, I see that. When I saw the pictures, I was like, "I don't I don't
know about that." Yeah. Oh, I don't know about that. One of these things is not like the other. Yeah. So, the revelation
that Nicholas was actually Frederick Bourdain was a shock to many of the people who had, you know, closely
followed the story or who who were involved in this story. But it also raised several new questions. Chief
among them, who the [ __ ] was this guy and why did he want to impersonate an American teenager? Given that his
history is almost entirely self-reported and the fact that he is a consumate liar
and con artist, it's pretty difficult to know how much of his personal history is
true. But throughout the last decade or so, it does seem like he has this kind of remarkable willingness to be honest
about his life and his crimes. So, it's possible that he told the truth with regard to his history and his motives
for this whole thing. Yeah. So, uh Frederick Pierre Bordin or Bordon was born June 13th, 1974 to a single mother,
Gileain Bourin, in Nantara, France. Uh France. Why did Why can't I say France? France. France. Why did I say it like a
prompt in prompt? Anyway, at the time of his birth, his mother was very young and
his father was an older man from Algeria and he was already married at the time.
So, Gileain never told him about her pregnancy. Uh, not very prepared or very interested in being a mother. Frederick
ended up being raised by his grandfather who he claimed was an abusive racist who
treated him very badly because he was mixed race. Frederick said, "Before I was born, I already had the wrong
identity. I was already prepared not to know who I really was, which is really sad. That is sad. In a 2008 interview,
Gileain recalled that her son was like any other child, totally normal in his early years. But she said she didn't
have much experience with him when he was young. Okay. Yeah. Just before he turned three, he was removed from the
home and placed with her parents because of her lifestyle. At the time, she was a
heavy drinker. She usually didn't have a job. She was in no way fit to be a mother. Yeah. And besides all that,
according to one relative, she really didn't want anything to do with that child. That's sad. It is really sad.
It's really sad. It's doesn't give you a right to traumatize people later in life. But no, it's very sad. You feel
sad for the child. Yeah. When he did see her, Frederick remembered his mother being very dramatic, constantly needing
attention. So relatable. While most people would have been happy to see their children and, you know, make their
children the center of attention. Guilain seemed kind of frustrated when the focus wasn't on her. and when like
Frederick was getting attention. So she would feain illness when he was around and especially when they were alone
together and make him run and get help. He said to me to to see me frightened gave her pleasure. That's [ __ ] up. So
she's like [ __ ] up. Yeah, that's really [ __ ] up. If this is true cuz again this is I was going to say cuz
remember he's a con man, right? Caught between his grandfather's abusive, you know, abuse and his mother's disinterest
and you know whatever was going on there. Frederick started creating fantasies in his head about who his real
father might be. And when he entered school, he started telling stories about his father. He told his classmates that
his dad was a British secret agent, among other lies. But no matter how outrageous the stories about his home
life were, his peers more often than not seemed to believe him. A former teacher
of his said he had this way of making you connect with him. And they described Frederick as a quote precocious and
captivating child who had an extraordinary imagination and visual sense drawing wild beautiful comic
strips. So he like there was a lot going on in his mind for sure. At the same time that his creative side was emerging
at school like cool cool teachers started noticing other more troubling aspects of his personality. Not cool not
cool not cool. He was rebellious. He acted out a lot and he showed what teachers described as signs of mental
distress. M. So something was going on. At one point he told his grandparents that he had, this is awful, had been
molested by a neighbor. Oh god. But it doesn't seem like they did anything to report that or have that investigated.
So after that, he became even more rebellious and even more defiant. When he was 12, his grandparents weren't able
to control him anymore, and he was usually in trouble for acting out at school or stealing from neighbors. So
his behavior got him sent to a facility for troubled children. And that's a fact. Yeah. During his time in the
children's home, he seemed to get even more creative with the stories that he was telling. He got more dramatic, more
detailed. In 1990, when he turned 16, he was required to move to a different children's home for older kids. But
after just a few days there, he ran away and hitchhiked Paris, where he invented
his first fake identity. He said he was a lost British teenager named Jimmy Sale. Later, he said, "I dreamed they
would send me to England, where I always imagined life was more beautiful." But the problem was he spoke almost no
English. So the authorities in Paris didn't believe his story and eventually he confessed, gave them his real name
and they promptly returned him back to the home. Oh jeez. Yeah. So lots of failures here. Yeah. So his performance
of Jimmy Sale lost British teen might not have been very convincing uh to win him a free trip to England, but it did
seem to work for like a little bit. Like he was almost convincing them. In fact,
if he had spoken English and been able to give some other details and, you know, explain away flaws in his story,
he might have been able to pull it off. He wasn't super far from pulling it off.
So, it was then that he established a strategy of impersonation that he would now employ countless times over the next
two decades. By 1992, he had impersonated more than a dozen fictional children and just bounced around from
one children's home to the other, just lying about his identity. But now that he was 18, things were different. They
didn't send 18-year-olds to children's homes. They sent them to prison or just like kicked them out to live on the
streets. And at the same time, he hadn't received any education or life lessons,
anything that you need to live successfully as an adult. Yeah. So, he decided he just wouldn't live as an
adult. Instead, he continued impersonating children all over France, fleeing when he was found out, only to
start his ruse, restart his ruse somewhere else with a new fake identity. By that time, he had accumulated a
pretty significant record with the Interpol for lying to authorities, falsifying his identity, falsifying
documents. It was true that he had broken the law by creating so many fictional identities, but it also seemed
to be one of the few things that he was actually really good at. Like, he got caught obviously because you can only
put up things like that for so long, but he was the way he got away with it for a
while. He got away with it for a while. the way he would manipulate people like they did believe him. Yeah. He had this
this ability to make people believe him. Yeah. Which is really [ __ ] scary. Which also makes you question a lot of
his background. Yeah. That you can't that you can't verify at least that you can't Well, he kind of said having spent
so many years in institutional care, he had a keen understanding of how to elicit sympathy from adults and how to
exploit their guilt. Absolutely. He knew which buttons to push in order to get what he wanted while also making them
overlook obvious inconsistencies in his story. In the time that had passed since
his teen years, his fantasies and his stories had gone from, you know, creative play to now criminality. Yeah.
But the motive always seemed to be the same. Despite having become an, you know, a straightup con artist and an
impersonator, his identities weren't about money or anything like that or like stealing from people. He just said,
"For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be somebody else. Someone who was acceptable, which is really [ __ ]
sad." I know. That's the thing. If it's like that's really the case, then that's
devastating. And it he never got charged with like any theft or anything like that. Like he was always just charged
for being a con artist and like falsifying documents to be a child. Well, and it's like you wanted to like
he he's wanting all these things that he didn't get and these people treated him
so badly, but then he's going and like destroying people's lives. It's [ __ ] up. And it's like that's not going to
help. It's not going to help. I think he didn't learn like compassion and compassion, empathy, like relating two
things to one another, humanity. And it's like I think if he had seen a psychologist while he lived in those
children's home, he might have turned out to be a very different person. Yeah, potentially. But like you were just
saying, because he had the childhood he did, being passed around people who just
truly couldn't give a [ __ ] he never felt wanted or loved anywhere. But when he created stories about being a lost
child or sometimes a mute, traumatized teenager, he found the kind of sympathy and care that he always wanted. Even
being placed in a children's home, he said he felt more comfortable than he ever had been with his mother or his
grandparents. Wow, that's really sad. He said nobody ever gave a damn about me. So to be put in a place where somebody
really cared about me, I was reborn. Wow. which is sad. That's real. That's horrifying. Yeah. But unfortunately, no
matter how good he was, like we know, the characters and identities he made for himself over the years only lasted
so long before he was found out and had to move on. Mhm. In October of 1997, his
latest scheme had earned him a stay at a child welfare home in Spain, where a judge gave him 24 hours to prove that he
was a teenager or face criminal penalties. He was going to go to prison. So panicked that now he had overplayed
his hand and could wind up in jail. He told the manager of the home that he was an American teenager who'd been
kidnapped and brought to Spain and all he wanted was to go back home. He played the trauma card and convinced the
manager to let him be the one to contact his family in private. And he even got them to agree to letting him do it in
the manager's office like alone. I which is wild. How does certain people just have this ability? Because
here's the thing, like it is insane, but I know people who I think could pull this off 100%. That's the thing. There
are certain people who just have this ability. Yeah. Con artists are scary [ __ ] people because you hear like
there have been people in my life and I'm like, how the [ __ ] did you get away with doing that? And like how do you not
care about hurting somebody like that? How did people just let you do it? And how do people let you do it? But they
do. It's crazy. So this happened the night before he was to be fingerprinted by the Spanish
authorities. Fingerprinted. The night before. He spent the entire night placing calls to various police stations
and cities across the US. Every time he would claim that he was a Spanish police
officer who had found a missing American boy, but he said the boy refused to speak to them. So he was reaching out on
the boy's behalf to find out whether or not this boy matched any of their missing children. Wow. Which like
imagine getting that call. You'd like you'd be sus about that call. Absolutely. So he Yeah, he did. Like he
struck out repeatedly that night, but then he got a hit at the Texas Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
After providing terrible what was basically a description of himself. The operator told him the description
sounded a lot like that of Nicholas Barlay, a teenager from San Antonio, Texas, who had gone missing 3 years
earlier in 93. So, Bourdain asked the operator to fax a photo of Nicholas, and he did, or they did. And when the image
of the missing boy came through, Frederick was like, "This is a long shot. Like, I don't really even look
like this kid, but I'm going to try cuz it's my only hope." Wow. He said he thought to himself in that moment, he's
been missing three or four years. I can guarantee one thing. There would be a change. If there's a change, there will
be doubt. If there's doubt, then I have a chance. That is chilling. It is. That is so chilling because he did not give a
[ __ ] about what that could do to this family. He didn't even think about it. He just said, "I can't go to prison, so
this is what I have. I can't go to prison, so I'm just going to ruin this family's life." Yeah. Wow. So, it was
then that 25-year-old con artist Frederick Bourdain transformed himself into 16-year-old missing teenager
Nicholas Barlay. While the authorities started contacting the embassy and the family, Frederick worked fast to make
his appearance match that of Nicholas to the best of his ability. He dyed his hair blonde. He even had one of the
other residents tattoo him with the initials that Nicholas had tattooed on his hand and his ankle. Yet even those
alterations, like with those alterations, tattoos, he got Yeah, he dyed his hair. He got tattoos for this.
But even with those alterations, he was sure that he would be found out immediately and sent to prison. He just
was like, "It's worth a try." Wow. Later, he said, "You can't prepare to play a role or be a person you don't
know." But when the first interview happened and the embassy official seemed satisfied with the story, it did seem
possible, still highly unlikely, but possible that he could pull it off. Then, in the days that followed, he
thought surely he'd be discovered as a fraud at any minute. But every passing step, everyone seemed to believe his
story with no hesitation. The reality is that obviously like a lot of people don't want to question a story
like this. No, of course not. Especially one that he had told where, you know, he'd been traumatized and everything.
So, it worked. So, it just it all the cards fell into place. Yeah. And it was pretty much what he assumed. People were
easy to manipulate when you knew what buttons to push. And he did know what buttons to push, the trauma buttons.
Yeah. But his biggest challenge, he figured, came when Casey Gibson, Nicholas's real sister, arrived in Spain
to pick him up. Frederick was convinced that after days of pretending he was going to be found out when Casey got
there. But he said Casey didn't appear the slightest bit suspicious. So, it seemed like he might actually get to
leave Spain. In fact, when it came to establishing his identity for the passport, something he definitely
thought was going to trip him up. Yeah. It was Casey who prepared him for the test unknowingly.
Oh man. The night before Frederick was to meet with the judge at the embassy. Again, remember they spent hours going
through family photos and telling stories. Oh, you're right. So, when the judge asked him to identify those people
in the family photos, he had been given all the information he needed not even 24 hours earlier. Wow. Yeah. Just by it
all just kind of fell into place for him. He didn't even have to do the work. Yep. Wow. For years, years at this
point, he had passed himself off as dozens dozens of fake teenagers with varying degrees of success. But this was
the first time he had taken the identity of an actual person. And he was still convinced though that sooner or later
someone was going to realize he wasn't Nicholas. It's obviously one thing to create a fake persona and like come up
with your own backstory, but it's quite another to adopt the identity of a person who had 13 years of experiences
with a family. Yeah. and like an American family, you know, that's it's pretty different. Yeah. So, when they
arrived in San Antonio, he said the Dollarhide family welcomed him with open arms. Like Carrie, it seemed they didn't
notice the glaring differences between Frederick and Missing Nicholas. They didn't want to. No, of course they
didn't. Each new person he met seemed to adopt the position that since he had gone through this traumatic ordeal, he
would almost certainly have changed in some way. And he said if anybody was suspicious, they didn't let on. Wow.
aside from one person who did not seem even remotely interested in entertaining the ro the ruse. When they knew Nicholas
was going to be coming home, the family organized a party and all the relatives and neighborhood friends came over to
the house to welcome him when he got there. The only person who wasn't there was Nicholas's half brother Jason, the
one who had called, remember? And Jason said like, "No, I'm not waking up, Mom. You got to walk home." That's tough.
Since Nicholas's disappearance, Jason blamed himself for everything. and um he was a heavy drug user for years.
Unfortunately, it made him slip a lot further into into his addiction. A couple weeks after the party though,
Jason did finally come by the house to visit with the family. And when he walked in, he gave quote unquote
Nicholas a hug. But Frederick said he remained very standoffish for the entire visit. And he seemed to be viewing his
quote unquote brother with a very wary look. In fact, despite spending hours with the family that day, they only
spoke one time. As Jason was preparing to leave the house, he looked at Frederick suspiciously, said, "Good
luck," and left. Good luck. Good luck. Holy [ __ ] Chills you to your [ __ ] core. Can you Fred was probably
like, "Oh, yep. Oh, yep." The fact that this is not like it is a movie now, but the fact that this whole story is not
just a movie originally is [ __ ] fact that this is real. That it's real is insane. Wow. Good luck. Holy [ __ ] So,
he'd been doing this for a lot of years obviously, so he knew when his lies were
starting like he could tell when people were realizing coming onto him when things were going to fall apart. Yeah.
His resemblance was slight at best. And again, he spoke with a very strong French accent, so the lie should have
been obvious from the start pretty much. And he said that being the case, within
a few months of being in San Antonio, he started questioning if the lie was so obvious, why would the family be so
willing to accept him as their missing child? Yeah. So now he's starting to kind of be suspicious of this family. Oh
lord. When Nicholas disappeared in 1994, the authorities assumed, like we said in
the beginning, that maybe he had just run away from home. Yeah. And Nicholas actually had been picked up by the
police shortly before he disappeared for stealing a pair of uh tennis shoes. And
it was possible that the theft and like some other things that were going on at the time was going to result in him
being placed in a juvenile facility. Like he was supposed to go to juvie that summer. Holy [ __ ] Add that to the fact
that unfortunately Beverly Dollar also struggled with addiction and his brother Jason like we know was an addict at the
time and also was frequently abusive to Nicholas. Oh, like they did not get along well with each other. I feel
really bad for Nicholas. I do too. He had a very sad life. But all that gathered together, it made sense to the
San Antonio police that he would have run away at the time. Yeah. But years later, as more and more people started
digging around in the family's history, some people started to wonder if the family knew more than they were saying.
Wow. And that's maybe why they were so willing to accept go along with the roose. Yes. Exactly. It was clear
obviously that Jason immediately saw through Frederick, but he seemed perfectly willing to let everybody else
go on pretending, which Frederick said struck him as very strange. Well, that was when you said he said good luck and
left. I'm like, all right, if you can tell that this is not your brother, you're not worried for your family. Why
are you just letting this go? Right. And guys, that's exactly how Frederick felt.
Yeah. Which I'm It's wild to be on Frederick's level right now. I know. I hate it. thought process-wise, but but
it just makes sense. Like, yeah, it is a it's a question that you have to ask, right? You can't just pretend that
that's not weird. No, it is [ __ ] weird. Later, Frederick said it was clear that Jason knew what had happened
to Nicholas, which is chilling. And that's, you know, according to Frederick. I'm not saying that he did.
Yeah. At the same time, PI Charlie Parker, though, also began to suspect that the family might have been involved
in Nicholas's Charlie Paka. Oh [ __ ] In his research, he learned that a few months after Nicholas's disappearance,
and this is fact, it's not like alleged or anything, Jason called the police to report that he had seen his brother
trying to break into the house one night. But when he called out, Nicholas ran away again and was never seen ever
again. Huh. Parker knew that while sure this could have been true, it also very well could have been Jason attempting to
make the authorities think that Nicholas was still alive, which was a kind of strange thing to do unless maybe he knew
what had happened to Nicholas. Eek and maybe knew who was involved or trying to keep the keep it going. Yeah. Getting
back to Frederick though, once the positive ID had been made, he was arrested for lying to the FBI. It's kind
of a big deal as he should be. Yeah. They will definitely always arrest you for that. Yeah. Um and he was also
arrested for entering the US on a false passport among various other things. Upon being arrested though, he told the
local FBI and lo the the local police and the FBI that he was confident that Nicholas's family had killed him and had
welcomed him into the family as a way of further covering up their crime. Oh, that's awful. Which is so [ __ ] The
accusation along with other facts of the arrest were enough to make the family give up their insistence that this was
Nicholas. And this whole thing finally came to an end. Ah, years later, Beverly herself admitted that after a few weeks
of having Frederick in their home, she did start to doubt whether or not he was Nicholas. But she kept that suspicion to
herself. She said one of the things that tipped her off was quote, "Nicholas was
always was a warm child, always hugging her and kissing her. But she said this person in her house was cold and
extremely guarded. She had noticed it the first time that they hugged at the airport and she never really like he
never really seemed to get comfortable around her and vice versa. But she said at the same time she just wanted to
believe so badly that it was her son that she went along with it. Well, and also it's like if he's just been in part
of a human trafficking ring, he might not want he might not want to touch you. Yeah. Like he might not want to be
touched at all. Right. So it's like that would not shock me. No. Like I would expect that to be honest. I'd be like
you probably don't want anyone touching you regardless of who they are, what their intention is, right? So that
wouldn't like shock me. Wouldn't shock me either. And that wouldn't be like a weird thing to point out that like Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like I I feel like that would just be like part for the course with that kind of thing. You
would think so. I think we also right now have a lot more information about like what happens to people and like
what that all entails. in that immediate moment, you know, but still it's weird. I agree with you. So,
while Frederick sat in a cell, Nancy Fischer started now looking into the claim that the family was responsible
for Nicholas's disappearance. Unfortunately, and you know, not surprisingly, the family was not
cooperative with the investigation. I'd be pretty pissed if this happened to me.
But Beverly refused to help. She said, "If Jason did something to Nicholas, I didn't know about it." And I can't
imagine Jason ever doing that. It's just not in his makeup, which like he was abusive to
Nicholas, so he's, you know, well, like I'm not I'm not again I'm not like I don't know what happened here, so I'm
not going to say anything happened. I to me that's just a strange way of wording
that. Yeah. If I have children, I'm not saying like if if one of them killed the
other one, then I don't know about it. Yeah. Like that's that's not going to be in my vocabulary. Like that's not going
to be even in the orbit of possibilities. It's going to be of course that didn't happen. There's no
[ __ ] way that would happen. Exactly. And again, I'm not saying that means that something happened. I'm just a
weird way to strange way to word that. Completely agree. Like I just I wouldn't have worded it like that. I will say,
you know, hot dog and a trench coat. Take it for what it is. She took two polygraph exams and passed them. Okay.
But then they had her do a third and she failed every single question on the third one. So that shows are just [ __ ]
They're [ __ ] How do you pass two with flying colors and then the third one one
with flying colors every question. Yeah. And also like if you already passed two,
why are they making you take a third? Exact. Because they know it's [ __ ] Yeah. I'm like this is a waste of time.
But Nancy Fischer said of the third exam, she practically blew the blew the instruments off the table. Damn. I was
like yikes. Jason himself was even more uncooperative. When Nancy Fischer sat down to interview him a few weeks later,
she said he was hostile. He refused to help in any way. Shortly after that interview, he checked himself into um
rehab for drugs, but he left halfway through before finishing the program and he died from an overdose a short time
later, which is very sad. Yeah. Uh the investigation into the family pretty much stalled because they couldn't find
any the investigators couldn't find anything concrete leak linking the family to his disappearance. But, you
know, there were suspicions still. Nancy Fischer said, "I do feel like the family
knows the whereabouts of Nicholas Barlay. I think Beverly and Jason knew at one time what happened to Nicholas
Barlay." And that's just the FBI speaking. I'm not saying I know what happened. That's just the FBI saying it.
Other investigators shared the belief. They cited the history of violence in the home, the evidence of the abuse
documented before Nicholas went missing. But unfortunately, to this day, he remains a missing person. That's really
sad. That's really sad. After a few weeks of arguing back and forth with the prosecutor, Frederick Bordon accepted a
plea bargain. And in September of 1998, he pleaded guilty to perjury and obtaining and possessing false
documents. When asked why he had perpetrated this crime against a grieving family, he told the judge he
was merely seeking love, which outraged the family and would outrage me. That's great. Go find love somewhere else. Go
figure out my grieving family. Like, that's [ __ ] up. Go [ __ ] yourself. The judge actually sentenced him in this
case to 6 years in jail, which is more than three times the recommended sentence for that charge, which is
pretty crazy. Yeah, it is. When you think about like all that goes into the scheme that he played out, like it's
pretty diabolical what he did. It's like, but I remember he took a plea, so there were some charges that were
dropped. So, the judge did everything he could. After Frederick completed his sentence, he was obviously deported back
to France where he got right back to his old ways, impersonating fake teenagers,
which did nothing. No, literally did nothing. He was continuing to impersonate people and he actually spent
time in prison like multiple times. Eventually, he got out and met and married a woman named Isabelle, who he
met when he uh when she reached out after seeing him on TV discussing his history and what she described as his
quest for love. Ladies, we have to do better. It's true. Okay. We have to do better. Yeah. We
really, really have to do better. Yeah, we do. Okay. They are still married to this day and they did have five children
together. Wow. According to Frederick's mother, when the family got the invite to the wedding, they didn't go because
she said no one believed him. I wonder why. Like, that's bad. If you're sending out a wedding invite and everybody,
nobody believes that you're even getting married. like you've been lying for a long time. You're a pathological liar.
It's sad. It's sad. As for his new role of a husband and father, those who know him best do not believe that Frederick
has changed at all. According to his mother, he is a quote liar and will never change. His uncle uh Jeanluke
Drowart said he agreed saying, "You can't just reinvent yourself as a father. You're not a dad for 6 days or 6
months. It's not a character. It's a reality." Yeah. And that's that. And that's it. That's
the that on that. Holy [ __ ] What a wild thing that played out here. The real like loser in all of this. Like the
person who lost is Nicholas. Yeah. He's lost still. And and he's almost lost in the story. He is. You know what I mean?
Like it's like absolutely. No matter what, the story became something so different. And it's like when you really
boil it down, you're like, "What happened to that 13-year-old boy that day?" And it doesn't really It didn't
seem like there was like a lot of investigation that happened. That's the thing. I'm like, "Why are we not
figuring out what happened to him?" And I think there wasn't a lot of investigation because they were like,
"Oh, he ran away. He had ran away before." So, and it's like obviously that doesn't mean that they And it's
like, "Yeah, he ran away and he obviously came back." Yeah. You're telling me that kid just ran away and
never came back. Never popped up anywhere? Yeah. Ever? Yeah. Like Nicholas Barlay just does not exist
anymore. I don't know what happened to him obviously. I don't think he ran away. I think somebody did something bad
to him. Whether it was somebody who did it like while he was walking home. Yeah.
It could easily be a stranger. You know, the FBI could be right to suspect the family. Who know? Like I don't know.
Again, that's the FBI suspecting Yeah. that something was closer to home here. That's on the FBI. That's on That's on
the FBI. I'm not uh I'm definitely not the Federal Bureau of Investigations. You know, I I too am not the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. Would you tell me if you were I would I the day I become the Federal Bureau of
Investigations, I will absolutely update you. I'll text really quick. Thank you so much. Right when it happens. That's
super great. I'll throw it on my Instagram. Perfect. Uh I won't see it. Yeah, you won't see it, but everybody
listening will. Uh yeah that I this is a strange story. Yeah. An upsetting story and no one wins. No in this story
which is like very sad. Something I forget what you said earlier but like like you or you were saying he just gets
lost in this story. The other the other thing is he maybe wouldn't have gotten so lost in this story if Frederick
hadn't done what he did. He absolutely wouldn't have. Cold cases get investigated all the time. 3 years into
that, they might have found something if they continued looking, but they thought
he had came that they they thought he had come home. And then when they realized it wasn't him, they had a whole
other situation to deal with, but they were having to deal with, okay, is this him or not, right? And it's like, and
that's precious time they could have spent looking into this case and he's just gone. Nicholas is just gone now.
And then by that point, the family's angry and upset. And then some of them have I think some of them are pushing
back on on like investigations and it's like you've really lost the sauce here and it's like again there's a
13-year-old boy who went missing that just is gone gone in this whole thing and it's just the Frederick show.
Hopefully someday they can you know like reopen up an investigation and figure out what happened. Like we always say
what happened to him. Cold case is never cold and like No, they're not. A 13-year-old should never go missing and
not be found. That's the thing. That's [ __ ] up. Come on. It's like something. It's just sad that I think in his 13
years of life, he like he didn't get to be happy often. It sounds like he didn't
get a lot of uh lot to be to be a kid. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Sad case. It is a sad case. And you know, Frederick's
childhood is [ __ ] sad, too. Maybe. Maybe. Well, he was in he was in those homes, so that's sad, you know? Like
that's facts. Yeah. So that's sad that he had to be put into homes. For sure. It's just a sad case all around, but
that's a bummer. Don't impersonate people. Okay. Don't do that. Like unless it's for like like you're impersonating
like Kermit the Frog's voice. Yeah. Do voice impersonations. Those are fun. Yeah, those are fun. Yeah. Not like not
like other not missing children. Don't do that. I don't have to tell you that. Yeah. I have to tell you turn this off
and seek help. Yeah, that should really go without saying. All right. Well, we hope you keep listening and we hope you
keep it weird weird, but not so weird that you don't take our advice and um not impersonate missing children. Stupid
dicks. Yeah. Just like be cool. Don't be all uncool. Don't be all just in [Music]
[Music] [Music]

On the afternoon of June 19, 1994, thirteen-year-old Nicholas Barclay left his home in San Antonio, Texas to play basketball with some friends. Hours later, he called home to ask his mother for a ride, but was told he would have to walk home, but Nicholas never came back. His mother reported him missing and an investigation was started, but it quickly stalled when there was no evidence of what happened to Nicholas.

Three years passed and one day, out of the blue, the family received a call from the US Embassy. Nicholas had been discovered in Spain, they said. He had endured terrible trauma at the hands of a human trafficking ring and he was desperate to come home. The family was elated and eagerly welcomed Nicholas back into their home. But to some of the people involved in the boy’s return to Texas, there were just too many things about his story that didn’t quite add up.

Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!

References Associated Press. 1998. "Fugitive poses as teenager." Orange Leader (Orange, TX), September 12: 5.

Davies, Nick. 1998. "The Lost boy." The Guardian, October 17.

Flynn, Sheila. 2023. A French serial imposter convinced everyone he was a missing Texas teen. This PI convinced him to confess. January 27. Accessed May 24, 2025. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/imposter-netflix-frederic-bourdin-nicholas-barclay-b2269897.html.

Grann, David. 2008. "The Chaemeleon." New Yorker, August 8.

2012. The Imposter. Directed by Bart Layton. Performed by Bart Layton.

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Brief Summary

Nicholas Barlay went missing in 1994; three years later, a con artist posed as him, leading to shocking revelations.

Key points

The Disappearance of Nicholas Barlay. Nicholas, a troubled 13-year-old, goes missing after a fight with his mother, leading to a three-year search.
Nicholas Found in Spain. Three years later, Nicholas is discovered in a children's home in Spain, desperate to return home.
The Horrific Truth Revealed. Nicholas shares the traumatic details of his kidnapping and abuse, shocking everyone involved.
The FBI's Warning Ignored. Despite FBI warnings, the family eagerly shares their story with the press.
The Shocking Revelation. The impostor is revealed to be a 25-year-old fugitive named Frederick Bourdain.
Frederick's Troubled Childhood. Frederick's early years were marked by trauma and neglect, leading to a troubled adolescence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Can you even begin to imagine this? Like that would be unthinkable.

Ash reacts to the news of Nicholas being found after three years.

7:43WatchJun 12, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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