39: A Dangerous Con Man, A Missing Teen & Secret Murder?! The TWISTED Story of Nicholas Barclay & Frédéric Bourdin
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Today's episode of Serialistly is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Now, most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yes, I know you are. While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you are not in some kind of moving vehicle, there is something else you can be doing right now, getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what.

Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. Hey, True Crime Besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly.

Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly. With me, your true crime bestie, Annie. I'm here to break down another case for you today, another week of true crime. And I have something in the works that I will probably announce on next week's episode, but something exciting that we're going to start integrating as an addition to the podcast each week, and I think you guys are really going to like it. So stay tuned for that.

As a reminder, if you guys would be so kind as to leave a rating and review at the end of this podcast, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And I'll give you guys a reminder again at the end because it just really does help the algorithm and it helps get this podcast some exposure, puts it on the charts for new eyes to see, and ultimately gets a lot of these victims excited.

cases heard, justice, accountability, all of the things that we always talk about. So there we go. Let's jump right into what we are going to be talking about today because it is a case that has been bothering me and that I had first heard about through a documentary and you know then I had to do a deep dive on it. That was just the way it went down. As I tell my four-year-old that is the way the cookie crumbles.

He now repeats that to me anytime he wants something. He's like, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Anyways, I digress. Let's get into it. Think about the last time that you got an emergency alert for an Amber Alert on your phone. The amount of children that go missing every day in the United States is staggering and often leads to terrible outcomes.

But what about the children that are found? What are their lives like when they return home? Does it matter if they've been gone a day, a week, a month, a year, several years?

Most of the time, we only hear about the return of missing children in high-profile missing persons cases, such as Elizabeth Smart. But what happens when a family that never got media attention and eventually never expected their loved one to return finally turns up? What if they weren't the most picture-perfect family to begin with? What is it like then? There's no story like it. There's nothing like it.

It's nice to meet y'all. For any parent, there is no fear worse than your child disappearing. See, ain't I beautiful? Yeah, beautiful blonde hair. Kind of look like a little pixie.

Then, after three heartbreaking years, a reunion so dramatic. He wasn't the same Nicholas that disappeared four years before. He had been held and tortured and God knows what else. One thing we've learned in our business is teenagers are changelings. It's true. Every day they look different. One day they're a rock star. The next day they look like they're a computer nerd working for Apple. So we know that. There's no story like it. There's nothing like it.

Nicholas Patrick Barkley was only 13 years old when he went missing in San Antonio, Texas, and the events that unfolded and the aftermath of his disappearance are unlike any other case that you have heard before. Nicholas was born on December 31, 1980, in Utah. He grew up in a suburb near San Antonio, Texas, and lived in a mobile home park.

Nicholas had blonde hair and blue eyes, he loved soccer, riding his bike, and he quickly made friends with all of the other kids. He was raised by his mom, Beverly. Now, Beverly was a single mom, struggling with more than the already massive weight of being a single mom. Beverly had two children much older than Nicholas from a previous marriage. She had a half-sister, Carrie, and a half-brother named Jason. She also battled a horrific heroin addiction.

on and off for most of Nicholas's childhood. However, despite the addiction, Beverly did the best that she could, and luckily for Nicholas, she was somewhat of a high-functioning addict.

As bad as that sounds, she could still provide a relatively normal life for him, despite the addiction. And despite the using. Nicholas was such a sweet and loving little boy. But like most children growing into their teen years, things got harder at home. He was no stranger to trouble, and by the time that he was 13, he had a track record that included several encounters with the law.

Nicholas's home was no stranger to the local police either. Their frequent visits were prompted by arguments between him and his mom, and things at home were messy. Nicholas wasn't the innocent kid that most people saw. At home, he had a very short fuse and would frequently erupt into anger at his mother over anything.

Nicholas thought that the rules didn't apply to him either, and on top of that, by the time that he was 13 years old, he somehow managed to already get three tattoos. Nicholas's rebellious behavior became so concerning that his mom asked his older brother Jason to move in and help manage the situation. On June 10, 1994, Nicholas went to the basketball court nearby with just $5. He went to hang out and be with his friends. His

His mom told him to be home by dinner. Nicholas called his house to see if his mom could pick him up and drive him home, but his half-brother Jason answered the phone. He said that he didn't want to wake Beverly and that Nicholas could just walk home on his own. But as the sun began to set and the streetlights were turned on, Nicholas never came home. And just like that, nobody ever saw him again. When Nicholas disappeared, his family didn't raise the alarm immediately.

He had a history of running away, and even then, this was in the early 90s, and parenting styles were a little bit more relaxed. But when days turned into weeks without a sign of him anywhere, his family knew that something was wrong, and they reported him as missing.

Today's episode of Serialistly is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Now, most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yes, I know you are. While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you are not in some kind of moving vehicle, there is something else you can be doing right now, getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what.

Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. An official message from Medicare.

A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov slash extra help. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Several more weeks passed, and there was no sign of Nicholas anywhere. And there really wasn't much police could do, and they had zero leads as to where he could even be. It's not like he owned a car that they could trace or had a cell phone that they could track. It was 1994.

Beverly and Jason were at a loss. They had no idea where he could possibly be. But what's interesting is that even though Nicholas was gone, the police were still called to their residence regularly, all because of Jason and Beverly getting into it.

Now, in these instances, Beverly was usually the one to call the police. Then, three months after Nicholas went missing, Jason called the police. And this time, he claimed that he saw Nicholas trying to break into their garage, and then he ran away when Jason was about to catch him.

So this renewed hope that everything was okay, that Nicholas wasn't actually missing. He was around somewhere, and maybe Nicholas was just being stubborn but would eventually come home. Unfortunately, Jason's call to the police was the only report of Nicholas ever being seen that the police had ever even received since he went missing.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, there wasn't much media attention for Nicholas. His family and the police legitimately thought he would have turned up sometime after he went missing, except he never did. And after two years of being gone, his family began to lose hope that he would ever return. This was her worst nightmare. After a few years, missing children are usually found, either deceased or they're not found at all.

But that wasn't the case for Nicolas, and three years later, on October 7, 1997, his sister got a phone call that would change everything. Over 5,000 miles away in Spain, the Spanish police received a phone call from what they thought were tourists, a man and his wife, calling to report a 14- or 15-year-old boy that was lost and needed help.

The boy had no ID or documents, but they could tell that he was young and terrified to talk to them. So the police sent a patrol car and picked up the boy. The boy was taken into custody and questioned by the police. They asked his name, where he was from, where his parents were, everything, but the boy would not respond. He seemed traumatized. The

The police station finally said, look, we can't put you into a children's home unless we know who you are and can confirm your identity. If you don't speak to us, we will have to formally fingerprint you to figure out who you are. And the boy appeared to be freaking out and very scared by this. But finally, this boy told the police that he was an American boy, but that he couldn't remember his name or where he was from. And most disturbingly, that he had just escaped from a sex trafficking ring.

Immediately, the police let up on him, and they told the boy that he could sleep at their offices that night, but that in the morning, they really needed his help in figuring out his identity to get him placed somewhere and get him some help.

A few hours later, a woman from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a phone call from a Spanish police station saying they had found a boy around 15 to 16 years old that said he had been missing for a few years and doesn't remember who he is. They gave a pretty broad physical description of what he looked like, but said that he had a small gap between his teeth, hoping that this detail would be distinct enough to at least narrow out any potential matches that didn't have a gap.

The woman on the other line searched through records to see if she could find a match. And eventually, she said, hmm, maybe he is Nicholas Barkley, a teen who went missing three years ago that was 13 at the time and from San Antonio, Texas. The person on the other end of the phone responded and asked her to fax Nicholas's picture over so that they could see if it was him because the boy wasn't talking much. So she did. And once the fax came through, the picture looked like it was Nicholas.

It was a little hard to tell because the image was black and white, but the person on the phone was confident enough and told the woman that this boy was Nicholas Barkley.

I mean, can you imagine how crazy that is? How did a 13-year-old from San Antonio, Texas end up in Spain without any identification or documents? The woman from the NCMEC Center immediately called Nicholas' family and told them the good news.

It was indeed a miracle, and Nicholas would be coming home. The only thing was that someone would need to fly to Spain to confirm that it was actually Nicholas before he could come home. So Nicholas's sister Carrie said that she would go. She had never been out of the country, much less out of the state of Texas, so she was scared, but knew that this was something that she had to do for her family and for her brother.

The flight to Spain was long, and Carrie was nervous the entire time, but she held on to the thought of finally being back with her brother again. Several hours later, that thought became more of a reality as the plane wheels finally touched down in Madrid, Spain.

Carrie was escorted to where Nicholas was with the Spanish authorities at the U.S. Embassy in Spain. And as soon as Carrie saw him, she rushed to him and gave him a huge hug. She touched his nose, saying, "'I remember this nose.'" She couldn't get over how much older he looked, but she also noticed something different about Nicholas. He seemed distant, almost broken. Like whatever had happened to him this whole time that he had been missing changed who he was entirely."

Nicholas and Carrie sat down while the embassy officials were communicating and began to catch up with each other. Nicholas was still really quiet and didn't say much, but Carrie brought a picture album with her to help Nicholas remember, help him remember more of his life back home.

They went through family photos, and Carrie pointed out, look, there's mom, there's Uncle Pat, there's your brother Jason, all trying to help him remember. Nicholas seemed to catch on and truly remembered his family again. After a few minutes of going down memory lane, Nicholas and Carrie were approached by government officials from both the U.S. and Spain.

Since Nicholas didn't have any documents on him, the Spanish government wouldn't let a minor leave the country unless they had absolute proof that he was Nicholas Barclay. A panel of Spanish judges had to approve it first, and then afterward, someone from the U.S. Embassy in Spain would have to give him new documentation so that he could travel home. Spanish government officials seemed uneasy about this, which was weird since his sister was there and obviously knew that it was him.

But it didn't matter. They insisted that Nicholas and Carrie took separate interviews to prove that Nicholas was actually Nicholas. They brought Nicholas into a room and showed him five different pictures of his family members, and they asked him who they were. Nicholas answered all but one correctly. But even then, given everything that this poor boy had been through, they knew that he was trying his best, and they believed that it was really Nicholas.

So they confirmed that he was a U.S. citizen, and U.S. officials gave him a new passport with a current photo. And that was that. So soon, Carrie and Nicholas boarded a flight home to Texas.

Since Nicholas said he was trafficked, many law enforcement agencies were looking forward to speaking with him once he got home so that they could try to figure out who these abductors were, how they were getting kids out of the United States without any passports, and to potentially take down a child trafficking ring in South Texas.

When Nicholas and Carrie flew home together, she noticed that Nicholas was acting strange, but she figured, again, that he was just nervous, given everything he had been through. She didn't know if he was worried about going back home, since when he left it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows to begin with, and she even thought he might be worried that their mom wouldn't love him anymore. At the time, Carrie chalked it up to Nicholas just being different now.

She had absolutely no idea what he had been through the past few years and hoped that things would get better once they got home and got settled. Nicholas's entire family was waiting for him at the airport, except for his brother Jason.

His mom was nervous with anticipation, happy and just so excited to get her boy back. She never dreamed that this day would come. Nicholas's mom, Beverly, could barely believe her eyes and almost didn't recognize Nicholas. He was so tall now and he had changed so much from the time when he was just 13 years old. Now she was looking at a 16-year-old young man.

Not only that, but she noticed something different about his demeanor and thought back to thinking, you know, he's been through all of this horrendous stuff, so he's absolutely going to be different now, trying to justify what she was seeing before her eyes. One thing Beverly noticed was how covered up Nicholas was. He was wearing a hat, a scarf, a jacket, and sunglasses. He was quiet and standoffish. She worried that maybe he was trying to hide what had happened to him.

But overall, at the airport, it was a let's just talk about it when you get home type of situation. I'm just so glad you're back, that kind of vibe. The drive home was quiet and long, but still the family was just overwhelmed with joy to have Nicholas back. Nicholas went to live with his sister Carrie, her husband and her children. There he tried to settle in, but something was bothering him, and he had a secret, and one that he could never let anybody find out. And

And we're going to get to that secret in just a second, but we are first going to hear from today's sponsor. Today's episode of Serialistly is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Now, most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yes, I know you are. While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you are not in some kind of moving vehicle, there is something else you can be doing right now, getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what.

Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov slash extra help.

paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The secret that Nicholas had was that he wasn't Nicholas after all. He wasn't even American.

He was French, and he wasn't 16 years old. He was 23 years old, and his name was Frederic Bourdain. Frederic had pretended to be Nicolas this entire time. The night he was left alone in the offices at the police station in Spain, he spent all night using the phone to call different news stations across the country and asking whoever answered the phone if they knew of a missing persons case in that area of a 14 or 15-year-old boy.

He kept calling one after another and getting the same answer, no. Finally, one person told him he would have better luck calling the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So he did. And this time he impersonated the Spanish police officers to that woman on the phone there. Frederick described what he looked like and gave an age range. But the only detail he gave was that was specific to himself was that he had that gap in his teeth.

And other than that, he was more general, hoping that this way he would have a better chance of finding a good match to him. So when the woman on the phone suggested that maybe Nicholas was a match to the kid that they had found and sent over that fax, Frederick thought this was perfect, that he could definitely pass as the real Nicholas. But the next day, something came in the mail, and it was a full color picture of Nicholas's missing persons flyer.

See, the fax was black and white, but once Frederick saw the picture, he knew that he was screwed. Nicholas had blonde hair and blue eyes, and Frederick had brown hair and brown eyes. Frederick was worried that he would get arrested when authorities came to pick him up in an official capacity to get him ready to meet Carrie. So he bleached his hair blonde and got a scarf, sunglasses, and a hat to cover as much of his body as possible.

He read on Nicholas's missing persons poster that he had three tattoos. And somehow, he got another teen that was at the children's home to do a little jailhouse tattoo session and replicate those exact tattoos.

Then when Carrie came to confirm that he was in fact her brother, Frederick was just as shocked as you probably are now that not only did Carrie recognize him and thought it was him, she literally touched his face, touched his nose, and said she could never forget his nose and that he looked so much like his Uncle Pat. And now this new Nicholas had a French accent when he spoke English. So what the hell was going on here?

People can undergo significant changes throughout puberty, but this was on a whole other level. Not only that, but Frederick didn't even look 16 at all. And not one family member noticed this? Not even his mom? Do you think that if one of your loved ones went missing and returned years later, you would notice if it was actually them or not? Especially if their eye color changed?

Well, I guess Frederick really lucked out because everyone in Nicholas's family was embracing him, was treating him like Nicholas. And at this point, as far as Frederick was concerned, he believed he was Nicholas and was actually hoping that the real Nicholas wouldn't come walking through the door anytime soon and blow up this entire charade.

Until then, Frederick kept his act up. He went to school, made friends, even liked a girl at one point. And remember, he is 26 years old. About a month after Nicholas, fake Nicholas I should say, came home, Jason, the half-brother, finally paid a visit. Frederick said that whenever other people in the family looked at him, he could tell that they believed that he was the real Nicholas. But with Jason, it was different.

almost like Jason knew that it wasn't him. He said that Jason acted really odd and didn't know why, but was worried that Jason would be the one to tell the family the truth, which, hello, this isn't Nicholas. He thought that maybe Jason was just going along with it because he knew how happy it made the rest of his family, feeling like Nicholas was finally home. Unfortunately for Frederick, he was not out of the woods yet with his little secret, though.

The FBI was still extremely curious to interview him, to figure out who abducted him, and to talk with him about what happened and try to figure out who was responsible for taking a 13-year-old boy, smuggling him out of the country, and forcing this poor child into sex trafficking. And I don't blame them. If this really was an operation happening in the San Antonio area, there was a concern for public safety.

and the FBI needed to get to the bottom of it quickly. An FBI agent who was in charge of this process knew that situations like this didn't happen often because, as I mentioned earlier, most of the time they don't get the chance to interview children who have been sex trafficked out of the country and get to know how any of this went down from their perspective.

But there was another thing. The FBI agent was comparing this situation to other missing children's cases that she had handled. And one thing that stood out to her was that it's not uncommon for it to be hard to reacclimate back home for children that have been through such traumatizing situations. Furthermore, it can often be difficult for the parents of these kids to know how to act if their child does come home and just not acting themselves. But Nicholas's family?

that was a whole different story. They didn't ask anything. They never once reached out to the FBI wondering who did this, where they were in the investigation, said anything about how Nicholas was acting at home, nothing. They knew Nicholas was acting a little strange, but figured that he would just talk to them and tell them what happened when he was ready. Maybe they were just happy that he was home and that nothing else mattered to them than that. But this FBI agent wasn't so sure about that. Something was off.

On November 4th, 1997, finally, FBI agent Nancy Fisher gets a chance to talk with this Nicholas kid, and she hears his side of the story. Now, Nancy was highly suspicious of this situation. She said that he definitely did not look like he was 16 years old at all. He had a full 5 o'clock shadow like a full-grown man would have, and it was really dark hair. It wasn't something a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 16-year-old would have on their face.

She noticed that he also appeared really nervous, fidgeting, and looked uncomfortable, like he was hiding something. Frederick, as this Nicholas person, tells Nancy that he was taken by a military team overseas. He said he was abducted, put in a van, and flown over to some place, but that he never knew where he was. He said he was kept in a different room with different kids, and that they would all get chloroformed whenever they would wake up.

He said they were subjected by high-ranking military officials to sexual abuse. In his exact statement, he said, and I quote, Every night, all of the kids were raped and molested by men. These men were American, Mexican, and European. They broke my hands, especially my right hand, with a baseball bat.

He also said that the men kept the kids in line by using military scare tactics.

They were also experimented on. They would put needles in his eyes. They would put headphones on their heads, screaming and yelling in different languages. He said that Spanish kept playing over and over and a voice kept saying, you are not you. If he spoke in English, he apparently was beaten. And the men moved the kids around on military planes and they never had any idea where they were going.

Additionally, all of the boys that he was with, including his identity, were changed by either changing their hair color, their eye color, or in other ways. The men were also always in uniforms. He had a solution to put into his eyes. His eye color was changed from blue to brown from using this solution, and he says that they would sell him for money and sex.

He said that he escaped one day when a door wasn't shut all the way and that he ran as fast as he could. And that's when he discovered that he was in Spain.

Today's episode of Serialistly is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Now, most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yes, I know you are. While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you are not in some kind of moving vehicle, there is something else you can be doing right now, getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what.

Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov slash extra help.

paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Now, I mean, that is quite a tale.

But obviously, that wasn't true. And even the way that he was quote-unquote found in Spain by tourists that called the police, that wasn't true either. Frederick called the police and pretended that he was a tourist, and he was that tourist who he was with and his wife, and said that he found a kid who looked like they were 15 or 16 years old. And then he sat there and waited for the police to show up and acted like that terrified boy that I described at the beginning of the story.

The FBI agent that Frederick told this to was horrified.

She said, and I quote, this was a horrendous interview. And when I left, I was shaken by it because it had all of the horrific emotional side effects that go with listening to such a story. He knew about this type of activity. A normal person doesn't sit down with a story and make up horrendous things. That's not what you lie about. You don't go into details about torture and the murdering of children or whatever. None of that seemed normal.

This person had either been a victim himself or he was a fantastic actor and I didn't know which of those titles applied to him.

But still, Nicholas's family believed Frederick. They believed he was tortured. His uncle Pat said that it was written all over his face. He had a broken hand that was never medically attended to, and he walked with a limp. He had cigarette burns on the back of his head down to his ankles. And after that interview, Frederick felt like he had convinced everyone that all of this was true. And now he was home free.

He had a passport, he had everybody in the family saying he was Nicholas Barclay, and nobody was investigating him. He thought nobody was even suspicious at all. But Frederick could not have been more wrong. What Frederick probably could have never predicted was that his insane story and his miraculous escape from a nightmare was pretty sensational, and it caught the attention of many news outlets and TV production companies.

And one day, a man named Charlie Parker, a private investigator, was contacted by a TV producer for hard copy. The producer said that a boy who had been missing earlier for almost up to four years had finally turned up, and he wanted him to track the boy down so that they could get an interview with him. And Charlie Parker did exactly that. He found Beverly and Nicholas and set up an interview with him.

This was, of course, in direct contradiction to their instructions from the FBI, who asked them to absolutely not have any contact with any type of media because if anything Frederick said was at all true, whether he knew about it, was a part of it at one point or anything, this was extremely serious.

Well, Bob, the FBI is not taking this case lightly. The reason?

Somehow, a 13-year-old boy from San Antonio ended up in Spain without a passport. June 19, 1994, Nicholas got into a fight with his family, so he came here to Fort Sam Houston to play basketball. Two young boys approached him. He started talking. The next thing he knew, there was a cloth over his mouth, and Nicholas passed out.

He claims his captors changed his appearance to make him unrecognizable. He was no longer allowed to speak English. Did they rape you all every night? Me? No. Because they didn't rape me every night.

Some of them, they like more. Some of the kids, they like more. They wrap them usually two or three times a week. When Charlie arrived at a local diner where he would later meet Nicholas, this fictitious Nicholas, for his interview, Charlie noticed a picture behind the booth. And the picture was the actual, real Nicholas.

So when he saw Frederick in person, he was really confused. He noticed that not only was his eye color not the light blue/almost gray color that they had been before, but he was really disturbed. He took the picture from the restaurant with him. He compared a still shot from footage of Frederick and this picture of Nicholas and then zoomed in on the ears, since ears can be like a fingerprint and your ears don't change. And well, sure enough, the ears were wildly different.

He immediately called Nancy Fisher at the FBI and said, this guy is a fake. It is not him. Initially, Nancy didn't really know what to do with this information. She said that usually after they have interviewed somebody and everything is fine with the family, it's not normal for them to continue investigating. If

If the family says it's Nicholas, how could they be wrong? And that's a great question. How? I'm trying to understand. Why would they take in another missing child if they don't think that it's Nicholas? Did they just want it to be Nicholas really badly? But why would they take in a stranger and not just a stranger from the U.S., but a stranger that they had picked up in Spain with a French accent?

Nancy was at a loss and just thought that this had to be Nicholas Barkley, that he developed the French accent because he was beaten if he spoke English, that he was around several languages for the years that he was gone, and everything else Frederick attempted to explain away. Remember, the torture, the eye color, all of it.

The FBI's investigation into who this was was pretty much over as soon as it started because everything Frederick said was so general. There were no names, no places, no dates, no nothing, so Nancy needed to bring in Frederick to do another interview. So she told the family that she was taking him to Houston because he had been through trauma and needed to see a forensic expert to deal with that trauma.

He was taken to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston and seen by Dr. Bruce Perry, who thought that he would just speak to Frederick to find out who really abducted him. As Frederick began speaking back, Dr. Perry immediately had red flags go up. They talked for a long time, and Frederick repeated the story over and over again.

The doctor said he didn't see physiological changes that you would normally see in a person that is speaking about such traumatic experiences. He also noticed that he literally could not speak English without an accent. And to him, he knew that this was impossible.

He said for a child that is raised for the first six or seven years of their lives in an English-speaking home and later on, eight, nine, ten years later, not to be able to speak English without an accent is impossible, saying that he knew immediately that this person was not raised in an English-speaking family.

He said he didn't know who he was, but that the person that he was interviewing could not have been Nicholas Barclay. So he relied that information back to Nancy, and she called Carrie, Nicholas's sister. And she said, Dr. Perry has just stated that this person cannot be your brother for the fact that he cannot be an American. This could be a very dangerous person. Don't be at the airport. I will handle it. You don't have to take him home.

Now, according to Nancy, Carrie screamed on the phone and was like, "Oh my gosh!" But then as soon as Nancy and Frederick arrived back at the San Antonio airport, she says that Carrie was standing there, waiting for this person, for Nicholas, and that she immediately hugged him, seemed excited, and acted as if she didn't remember the conversation that she just had with Nancy, and then took her brother home. Nancy had no idea what to do at this point.

She didn't know why Carrie would just take home the person that she just found out quite literally could not be her brother, period. I mean, this is crazy. I get wanting to believe that it really is your brother and being in denial, but it's too far at this point. Now, when Charlie heard this news, he started investigating. He wanted to find out about the real Nicholas and about who this family really is.

So he went to the neighborhood that Nicholas lived in with his family when he disappeared. And he spoke with neighbors, who said, yeah, the police came here a lot, maybe two to three times a month. And Nicholas always fought with his half-brother, Jason. So back at the FBI, Agent Nancy was heated. She was pissed. She wanted to get to the bottom of this. And she tried to get DNA samples from Nicholas and his mom, Beverly, to prove that he was not Nicholas once and for all.

And guys, I am not even kidding you, Beverly refused to participate in the DNA test. She said she absolutely would not do it, that this was her son and that that was the end of the story. Now, according to Nancy, Beverly literally laid down on the floor and said, no, you can't pick me up and you can't make me.

The family had a few excuses, like Beverly didn't remember refusing the DNA test, and said she didn't want to go anywhere with the FBI. And Carrie said something to the effect of, we knew who he was. We don't need proof. Now for Nancy, like I said earlier, she was pissed. She no longer saw them as a grieving, victimized family. They weren't cooperating. Why?

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And I don't blame her, I cannot think of any circumstance where this reaction makes any sense, unless there is something to hide. For Frederick, whenever he learned that Beverly refused the DNA sample, even he became suspicious. Obviously, he knows he's not Nicholas, so he's confused why the family also knew that at this point, yet they acted, and continued to act, like he was the real Nicholas.

This story is not funny at all, but it did make me laugh a little bit because can you imagine being a con man, tricking a family into thinking that you are their missing loved one, assuming you have everybody fooled, and little do you know, the family that just took you in absolutely knows that you are not who you say you are, and they're going along with it. As a con man, I would be freaked out. I'd be like, wait, I thought I pulled the con. They're pulling the

Should I be scared of them since they're not scared of me? It is bizarre. And you could say that Frederick started freaking out. Now he felt like they hadn't believed anything he said and they were just good at hiding it. And yeah, thinking about it, who wouldn't see that this is clearly not the same person? It's almost a joke.

And then Frederick thought back to Spain and remembered when Carrie got to Spain, touched his nose and said he looked like their uncle Pat, and also immediately brought out the family photos and told him who everyone was.

Remember, she pointed at the pictures going through the album saying, look, here's mom, here's Jason. Do you remember that? Do you remember that? Here's the house that we lived in. All of the things. And Frederick was wondering why Carrie would put that in his head. And now Frederick began to wonder if this family was part of a bigger lie than all the lies that Frederick had told to get to this family in the first place. Did this family pretend even more than he did?

One of Nicholas's friends later said that Beverly and Nicholas were really close, but that when Jason moved in with them right before he went missing, that's when things really started to change at home. The friend said that Jason was a bum and a drug addict, and that when he moved in, things just got worse. Now, Jason did have an addiction throughout his life, so that was true.

The friend speculated that it may have pushed Beverly to do drugs more when Jason moved in. But who knows? We know from the neighbor that the police came to that house two to three times a month. And we also know that Nicholas was a troublemaker.

So investigator Charlie Parker looked into the records of the police incidents reported after Nicholas's disappearance. He looked into them further and said that on the day that Jason claimed he saw Nicholas trying to break in through the garage, the police report said that there was no evidence to lead them to believe that anybody tried to break in at all. Now this had Charlie thinking, why would Jason call the police and say that if Nicholas really didn't try to break in?

He believed that someone would only do that to make it seem like the missing person is still alive. From there, Charlie began to believe that something in the old house must have happened to Nicholas. Frederick began to start wondering if this was the case as well. How all of the family showed up when everyone thought Nicholas had returned, but not Jason.

And then when he finally saw Jason, he could tell that Jason didn't really believe that it was Nicholas. But at the time, he thought that maybe he was just trying to support his family and go along with it. Now, Frederick thought he didn't have to worry about Nicholas ever coming through the front door. And he thought this because he thought that his family killed him. He thought that some of them did it, some of them knew it, and some of them chose to ignore it.

Well, the FBI wasn't giving up. They ordered search warrants to obtain blood samples of the DNA from Frederick and Beverly. They got Frederick's fingerprints and palm prints, and they sent them out to all law enforcement agencies, the FBI and Interpol. And the FBI felt confident that soon they would have answers. Frederick began stressing out. He knew the walls were closing in on him quickly, and he took a razor and slashed his face.

On March 3, 1998, the FBI received a call from Madrid, Spain, with the results of the fingerprints and immediately faxed them over. And what they received, they never expected.

The truth came out: Nicolas was not Nicolas. Instead, this person was a 23-year-old French man named Frederick Bourdon, and he was wanted by Interpol. Frederick was infamously referred to as "the chameleon" and the man with 500 identities.

From childhood, he began a spree of identity theft, allegedly racking up over 500 fake identities throughout his lifetime. And the most disturbing part was that this wasn't the first time he assumed the identity of a missing teen, but his third time doing so.

He was immediately arrested. But now that it was confirmed in black and white that this is not Nicholas Barclay, the FBI focused their attention on Nicholas's family. And more importantly, where was he? And did they know? Unfortunately, Nicholas Barclay still hasn't been found to this day, and he's been missing for 30 years now. If he is still alive, he would be 43 years old.

Nobody has ever been charged in connection with his disappearance or his possible death. And I know what you're thinking. What about Jason, the half-brother? Well, he died of a drug overdose two months after Frederick was arrested.

And other than that, there really wasn't any evidence for the FBI or anyone to go off of. There wasn't a body or anything forensic, and now the one person many people suspected was responsible for this suddenly passed away. However, I want to reiterate that there is nothing linking any of his other family members to knowing details or being involved in his disappearance in any way.

They have maintained that they are completely innocent and say that they truly want answers. Frederick got away with this scheme for five months before he was arrested. In September 1998, he pleaded guilty to passport fraud and perjury. He was sentenced to six years in prison. When he was released, he was deported to France. And get this, a few months after being in France, he assumed the identity of a 14-year-old French boy who had been missing since 1996.

I'm sorry, but you just got out of prison. You just spent six years in prison, and now you get out and you do the exact same thing? Then, a year later, in August of 2004, he was in Spain claiming to be a Spanish teen whose mother had been killed in the Madrid bomb attacks. When the police found out the truth, they deported his ass once again to France.

In June of 2005, he pretended to be and passed himself off as a 15-year-old Spanish orphan, and he spent a month in a French junior high. He claimed that his parents had been killed in a car accident. He dressed as a teenager and covered his now-receding hairline with a baseball cap, and he was later discovered after a school administrator recognized who he was.

According to multiple sources, in 2007, he ended up marrying a French woman named Isabelle, and they went on to have five children together in France. I don't know what happened, but at some point in 2017, their marriage ended, and Frederick says that she left him with their children, but that's just his version of events.

According to the Daily Mirror, Frederick said he would never impersonate anyone again. But a year later, in a different interview, after the birth of his first child, he was asked if he had become a new person after becoming a husband and a father. And he said, no, this is who I am. So I don't know what to make of all of that. The jury is still out. It is crazy to me. Not only do I think Frederick is an absolute lunatic and like a serial liar, but I also

And like this perpetual needs to be a young child, like the movie Orphan in a sick, twisted kind of backwards way. I don't even know. It's bizarre. But I also don't know what to make of Nicholas's family.

Part of me wonders, and this is just speculative, so please roll with me on this, but do your own research. Part of me wonders if when Nicholas called Jason to pick him up, instead of telling him to walk home, if Jason really did pick him up and something happened, an altercation, maybe a murder, something. And then Jason went home and Beverly was still asleep, the mother, and he said that he had told Nicholas to just walk home and that he never showed up, something perhaps like that.

But part of me also can't help but wonder, why was the family so hell-bent on acting like Frederick was Nicholas if they knew he wasn't? Was it because they were just in severe denial, heartbreak, and they didn't want to acknowledge the truth because then it would break their hearts all over again? Or is it because at that point they knew something nefarious had happened with Jason and Nicholas and they still had that son and they wanted to protect him from going to prison and

any wrongdoing and being implicated? And were they just trying to cover the lie rather than actually have participated in the disappearance?

What are your thoughts on this case? I'll throw a poll up on the podcast. So if you're on Spotify, you can answer the poll as to what you think the truth really is and whose involvement is really there. And if you're watching the video version of this on YouTube, let me know what you think in the comments because it is definitely a puzzling one, especially since there are no answers decades later, no charges, no arrests, no body. It's a bizarre one. So let me know what you think.

Today's episode of Serialistly is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Now, most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yes, I know you are. While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you are not in some kind of moving vehicle, there is something else you can be doing right now, getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what.

Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov slash extra help.

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All right, guys. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Serialistly. And I will be back with you guys again very soon to break down another case. Take care, stay safe, and have a great rest of your week. All right. Bye, guys. An official message from Medicare.

A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov slash extra help. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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