The Bizarre Story of Con Man Nicholas Barclay.

This case is not a normal missing persons case and has a twist that seems too surprising to possibly be true, and yet it is.

Nicholas Barclay was born December 31st, 1980, as the youngest to two older siblings. He had a rather normal childhood in San Antonio, Texas, but as a preteen, he started to develop a reputation as a troubled kid.

Nicholas was known to have a history of fighting physically and verbally with his mother, skipping school, threatening his teachers, stealing shoes, and even breaking into a convenience store. By only 13, Nicholas had a juvenile criminal record for his antics, and allegedly three tattoos that his friends had given him with an unsterilized needle.

At some point, Nicholas was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. His mother was reportedly so exasperated with his demanding supervision, that she asked her older son Jason to come and live with her to aid in the young boy's caretaking.

On June 13th, 1994, Nicholas called home looking for someone to pick him up after playing basketball in his neighborhood. His older brother  Jason answered the phone, but refused to wake up their mother who had been working late nights, and instead told Nicholas to walk home. But he never arrived. 

Unfortunately, with Nicholas's reputation, few believed something was wrong when the 13-year-old couldn't be found. Most were inclined to believe he had run away and he would return at some point soon. This theory was given credence by the fact that the day after he vanished he had a court hearing to decide if he would be sent to a rehabilitation center. But still, after not returning for longer than normal, and with his mother's pleading, an investigation to find Nicholas was finally started. 

For months there was no sign of him. The only clue was three months after Nicholas's disappearance when Jason called the police to say that he could hear his younger brother breaking into their garage, yet when police arrived, there was no evidence of forced entry, nor any sign of Nicholas, but they couldn't understand why Jason would lie about such a thing. 

After years passed, the Barclay family started to come to terms with the fact that they may never see Nicholas again. That is until this case took a surprising and unusual turn. Few missing children's cases end in the child being found, and yet in 1997, three years after he went missing, the Barclay family was told that Nicholas had been found alive and safe.

Despite this joyous news, there was something rather strange about the phone call. Nicholas was said to have been found in Linares, Spain after having been taken by a child trafficking ring that had moved him all the way to Europe. After years of being held captive, Nicholas had managed to escape. The police told the Barclays that Nicholas had been forced to speak only French for the three years he was gone, and had been hurt during his time away from them.

Carey, Nicholas's, his older sister, flew to Spain to identify and retrieve her missing brother. Things did not go as planned though, as Nicholas appeared afraid of his sister, especially the fact that she might not recognize him and force him to remain in Spain. When he finally allowed Carey to come and see him, he kept a baseball hat and sunglasses on. Yet Carey said that she knew he was her brother. The two spent some time together to get reacquainted as Nicholas claimed that he had very little recollection of his life before being taken as his mind had blocked it out as an emotional response.

When Carey showed him family photos, Nicholas appeared to remember certain things and people, such as asking her if, "Grandpa was still an." Before he was allowed to return home with Carey though, Nicholas had to pass a test where the police showed him family photos that Carey hadn't gone over with him and he had to correctly identify the people in them. Nicholas only made one small mistake, and so he was allowed to return home to Texas with Carey.

Even though the Barclays were delighted to finally have Nicholas back, there were a few things that they couldn't ignore. One being the most obvious, which was the fact that their brother had been blonde with blue eyes when he was taken, but the boy who came back from Spain had dark hair and brown eyes.

Nicholas had an extraordinary explanation for his change in appearance. He said that to keep his identity a secret, the people who had taken him had performed experiments to change his hair and eye color so that no one would recognize him as Nicholas. He also spoke with a heavy French accent, but this was explained away with his story of being forced to only speak French for the three years.

The family was so relieved to finally have Nicholas home that they actively ignored some of the things authorities raised concerns about, and even told investigators to close the case.

A film crew heard about the amazing story and asked to follow the Barclays around to document how Nicholas was adjusting to returning to his family. They agreed and that was when everything started to fall apart.

A local private detective was working with the crew and became increasingly suspicious of the French-speaking, dark-haired Nicholas. He began his own investigation and took a picture of Nicholas's ears to compare to earlier photos. He found that they didn't match, and as ears don't age or change, he took his concerns to the authorities.

By February of 1998, after Nicholas was back living with the Barclays for five months, the FBI became involved when they obtained a court order to investigate. When Nicholas's fingerprints and DNA were taken, it was determined that the man the Barclays believed to be their Nicholas, was actually a 23-year-old Frenchmen named Frederic Pierre Bourdin.

Frederic was a notorious con artist with over 500 different identities and the nickname The Chameleon. Despite this shocking revelation, the Barclays refused to believe that Frederic wasn't Nicholas, even when in court Frederic admitted to being an impostor and pleaded guilty to passport fraud and perjury. He was imprisoned for six years.

Questions swirled around this revelation. Where was the real Nicholas? How had the Barclays been fooled? And why did Frederic do it? Though this case is utterly shocking, the imposter is not the only twist.

Investigators were concerned by the Barclay's behavior during the entire incident and their willful acceptance of Frederic. Frederic himself later weighed into the controversy, saying that even he couldn't believe that the Barclays accepted him so easily, rousing even more suspicion of the family. Frederic even claimed that the Barclays knew he wasn't Nicholas, but that they had all pretended and played along with his scheme. And he couldn't understand why.

He reported that when he met Carey, she had fed him knowledge about the family, telling him who everyone was and what to remember. She had allegedly helped him pass the police's test before being allowed to go to the US. Frederic also said that Jason had never accepted him nor pretended to.

In fact, all he had said to Frederic upon meeting him was good luck. The phone call Jason had made three months after Nicholas disappeared, suddenly became a clue, as police said that those types of calls aren't unusual when someone has been murdered, as the murderer often attempts to make it seem like the victim may still be alive after killing them. And this is exactly what the private investigator and Frederic believe happened. 

He believes that the family accepted him so willingly because they had killed Nicholas, or Jason had, and were more than happy to cover it up by claiming he was the real Nicholas. Before Jason could be investigated, he died from a drug overdose.

It is reported that he had long been battling a cocaine addiction. No other evidence appeared and the case went cold. Frederic finished his jail sentence and went on continuing to steal identities across Europe. Nicholas has still never been found, but his story has inspired the popular Netflix documentary "The Imposter."