r/todayilearned • u/WestTransportation12 • 1d ago
TIL French impostor Frédéric Bourdin convinced a Texas family he was their missing 13 year old son. Bourdin bleached his hair, got a matching tattoo and concocted a story he was human trafficked. Despite having different eye color, a French accent and being 23. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/french-serial-imposter-convinced-everyone-213904714.html?guccounter=1•
u/DaveOJ12 1d ago
Bourdin seems to have done that a lot.
In June 2005, Bourdin passed himself off as Francisco Hernandez-Fernandez, a 15-year-old Spanish orphan, and spent a month in the Collège Jean Monnet (a junior high school) in Pau, France. He claimed that his parents had been killed in a car accident. He dressed as a teenager, adopted a proper walking style, covered his receding hairline with a baseball cap and used depilatory face creams. On 12 June, an administrator from his school unmasked him after seeing a television program about his exploits. On 16 September, he was sentenced to four months in prison for possessing and using the previous false identity of Léo Balley.
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u/Morningst4r 1d ago
Unmasking makes it sound like the end of a Scooby Doo episode
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u/Historical-Usual-885 15h ago
"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling admins!"
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u/WestTransportation12 1d ago
Yeah, he is estimated to have impersonated at least 500 people and as far as we know of 3 children
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u/kateastrophic 22h ago
But WHY? Is the life of a teenaged orphan so enviable that it’s worth the trouble? Going back to junior high as an adult is LITERALLY the stuff of nightmares. I don’t understand what his motivation was to do this.
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u/Mental_Freedom_1648 22h ago
Probably because people would take care of him, take pity on him - he could play on their sympathies, live rent-free and get a bunch of gifts and leave if he got sick of it.
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u/Sixcoup 20h ago edited 20h ago
His mother had him at 17yo, with a guy that already had a wife and 6 other children in Algeria, so he never met him. Her mother admitted to punching him when he was very young, and kept telling him she wished he had not been born. She was such a bad mother, than her own parents asked the government to remove their grandson from their daughter hands and give him to them.
But Frédéric grand father was hardly better. He originally asked his daughter to have an abortion, which for a 17 years old seems like an ok decision. But when you realise he said in his own memoire years later : "elle ne veut pas avorter du raton". "She doesn't want to abort from the 'raton'" (Raton is a racist word to describe arabs). You start wondering what was the biggest reason he wanted her to not have the kid. Her being too young ? Or because he would be half-arab.. And according to Fréderic his grand father was indeed a racist pos. At 12 years old, Fréderic constantly got in problems, and he was put into a pension, which is rarely a good thing.
He said his youth was constant physical and psychological abuses from his familly, and he got sexually abused by a neighbour as well.
So yeah, he has severe trauma from his childhood..
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u/kateastrophic 19h ago
Oh, this makes it make more sense. He was trying to erase his own childhood and replace it. What a sad story.
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u/classyrock 16h ago
And then he ends up with this dysfunctional family (probably) covering up the murder of a teen…
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u/KypDurron 11h ago
He dressed as a teenager, adopted a proper walking style
What the hell is a "proper walking style"? Is there some sort of specific walking style that teenagers use, as opposed to adults? Or Spanish people vs French people? Or orphans vs people with living parents?
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u/ohliamylia 8h ago
It was 2005 so they probably mean that shuffle from pants hanging so low that your underwear is hanging out
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u/WestTransportation12 1d ago edited 1d ago
insert Steve Buschemi pretending to be a young kid meme.
But on a serious note, even all these years later Nicholas Barclay has not been found. There was a suspicion of foul play by a family member but that family member later died from cocaine overdose shortly after being interviewed.
Also before anyone asks Nicholas was verified to have a hand tattoo, likely a stick n poke which was in the shape of the letter T
I do hope someone is able to find out the truth because whether Nicholas is alive and well, or dead he deserves to be more than a footnote in a serial impostors wiki page.
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u/everybodypretend 21h ago edited 21h ago
I see you watched the documentary and missed the point like most people 😁
We spend the first half of the movie wondering how the family could have possibly believed him…
Then the conman spends the second half of the movie spinning us a tale of murder, and we the audience eat it right up.
All the suspicion of murder comes FROM the conman. There is never any evidence or even the slightest outside suggestion of murder.
But you believed him… because he is an excellent conman
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u/Jasperbeardly11 21h ago
No you believe him because who the fuck would be dumb enough to be tricked by him?
They pretended an impersonator was their son.
The question is why? It can be assumed that they know what happened to their son it is better for them to cover it up.
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u/everybodypretend 19h ago
> Who would be dumb enough to be tricked by him?
You. He narrates the second half of the movie, all the murder stuff comes directly from him 😂😂 dummy
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u/Jasperbeardly11 14h ago
I think you're the stupid one here because clearly it's not normal to be tricked by someone who definitely isn't your son who is pretending to be your son. I'm not saying his assertion that they kill them is definitely correct but that's actually the only plausible answer as to why they were willing to be tricked by someone who resembles their son 0%.
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u/everybodypretend 8h ago
You are right, the truth must be exactly what the conman told you 😂
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u/Jasperbeardly11 8h ago
Hey man to be queer I think you're totally right to be skeptical. I just think it is an interesting theory. I know for a fact that no one would ever be able to impersonate me to my family. It's a very real question. I also agree the con man is not trustworthy.
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u/CFBCoachGuy 1d ago
There’s a documentary about him called The Imposter. Genuinely disturbing
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u/laurenbettybacall 15h ago
And it’s amazing when the imposter, who had seen and done plenty of dastardly shit, was weirded out by the family.
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u/StopRightMeoww 4h ago
What's the tldw of why he was weirded out by the family?
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u/ozarkabottle 2h ago
The imposter said the family knew he was an imposter but accepted him as their "lost" son. Which meant the family probably was responsible for the disappearance of the son, but by accepting the imposter, the case closes and everyone can move along.
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u/AlanFSeem 22h ago
The case is also featured in David Grann's book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, alongside a bunch of other interesting true stories. Highly recommend!
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u/ScaboochWolf 21h ago
The dollop has an episode about this case too, I think. May just be a similar case tho.
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u/straceyg 19h ago
I lived in the house the family lived in when their son disappeared. This was the mid 2010s. It was a rental house and we needed a place in school district so our youngest could graduate from Madison high school. We did not find out about the story until right before we moved. We were told by the neighbors not to watch the documentary until we were moved out completely. I should have listened. It was super creepy. The holes in the back yard were still there from the digging spots in the documentary. The neighbors said the family was deeply troubled. The house had very unsettled energy when we lived there but we needed to find a place right away so we didnt have a lot of options.
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u/Royd 1d ago
It got to the point where even Bourdin was like "... Yeah somethings up with this family, they must have covered up the killing of their son"
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u/WestTransportation12 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah the whole thing is very strange, they claim he convinced them and I guess the court felt that way too. But he claims they knew and used him as an opportunity to avoid having to shine a spotlight on the son’s odd disappearance.
Frédéric ended up admitting to a PI that he wasn’t Nicholas but mixed reports say that even at trial some family claimed they thought Frédéric was Nicholas
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u/Finito-1994 1d ago
I mean. Don’t forget that this dude is a conman. The documentary has you listen to him. He’s conning you into thinking the victims are worse than him.
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u/Royd 23h ago
that wasn't part of the con. iF anything he was probably like "Oh shit this family is on another level of the super long con"
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u/Mental_Freedom_1648 22h ago
It could have been part of the con because he didn't come out with the story until after he was arrested, possibly in hopes of getting a reduced sentence. He thought he was living with someone who covered up a murder, and he didn't get help or try to leave. He just went along with it until he was forcibly removed from the house
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u/Royd 21h ago
What do you expect him to do, call the police and say "uhh so I'm a con artist and this family I'm conning totally is covering the death of.... Err.. Me"
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u/Mental_Freedom_1648 21h ago
He's 23 at this point and resourceful. I'd expect him to - at the very least - pack a bag and leave. How long would you live with people who know you're lying because they killed the child you're pretending to be?
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u/OttoVonWong 1d ago
Howdy y’all do, fellow Texans?
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u/Dawakat 1d ago
Only one way to prove if he’s a Texan
THE STARS AT NIGHT ARE BIG AND BRIGHT
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u/CeramicLicker 1d ago edited 1d ago
Unfortunately, the grief of losing a child can leave people kind of unhinged.
They can be very vulnerable to scam artists and manipulators, although that’s usually psychics and mediums, not imposters. What an odd story
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u/Cabtalk 1d ago edited 1d ago
The documentary seemed to hint family members knew he wasn't their son (insinuating that he was killed by a family member).One male relative apparently told Frederic something like I don't know what you're trying to do, but good luck. It's been a long time since I've watched it, and definitely butchered that quote, but even Frederic was side eyeing these people lol
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u/Torrossaur 1d ago
I watched the Law and Order episode loosely based on it yesterday, and the brother had accidentally killed the kid, and the father disposed of the body. So they both knew it was an imposter but couldn't say anything without implicating themselves.
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u/chubbybunny87 1d ago
So there's two Law and Order episodes about this? There's an SVU where a girl goes to the family with a clover tattoo and it turns out the sister killed the real girl
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u/Torrossaur 1d ago
I havent seen the other but it was 'Complicated', s19, ep5 where it was there brother.
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u/sew_no_mercy 1d ago
There’s an earlier one with a nearly identical plot. Season 10 ep. 11 “Stranger”
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u/classyrock 16h ago
Between all the spinoffs, there’s gotta be 50 seasons of L&O by now. And I believe most are real seasons (~20 episodes rather than the 10-13 of new shows).
At this point they’re the crime drama equivalent of ‘The Simpsons Already Did It’.
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u/AlexRenquist 1d ago
How could they not say anything?
Even if they'd killed the kid, why couldn't they say "sorry this is definitely not my son"?
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u/yourwhippingboy 1d ago
I’m not saying they killed Nicholas, but if you had killed your son and lived in constant fear that someone would find out, it would remove that fear were someone to come along and pretend to be said son.
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u/GottaUseEmAll 23h ago
I dunno, it seems counterintuitive because accepting someone as your son who doesn't hold up to examination would make you MORE suspicious, not less.
If you called him out and said "hey, this guy isn't my son, so please keep looking for him" it seems a lot less sus.
Maybe they just weren't smart enough to consider that possibility.
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u/The_Great_Goblin 21h ago
If someone kept looking they might find the body.
Someone involved definitely doesn’t want that to happen.
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u/GottaUseEmAll 21h ago
Yes, I understand that part.
So you're saying you would have done as they did (if you were covering up a murder)? That that was the smarter move?
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u/Kahleesi00 19h ago
The family were very poorly educated and impoverished. They’re likely not thinking three steps ahead as in this comment. Not that strange to me.
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u/Jasperbeardly11 21h ago
It actually wouldn't though because you would know that would eventually come out it wasn't your song
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u/KDPer3 20h ago
It's not the first time someone has decided to just accept the imposter and hope no one noticed. Look into Martin Guerre in France in the 1500s. They still don't know if the wife knew or if she just decided to roll with it because he was nice and being unmarried at that time was difficult.
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u/SnuggleBunni69 18h ago
The conman was really trying to sell it that they killed the kid, but at the end of the day, he was just a conman trying to save his own ass.
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u/Finito-1994 1d ago
I mean. Don’t forget that this dude is a conman. The documentary has you listen to him. He’s conning you into thinking the victims are worse than him.
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u/murdolatorTM 1d ago
It has you listen to the family too, and while there are many fair explanations for it, the family came off incredibly shady in that doc
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u/Finito-1994 1d ago edited 1d ago
That was the point. It’s a meta critique. People were wondering how a family could fall for it. Then the documentary forces you to sit down and listen to the conman. It does a twist in the second half and suddenly you fell for it too.
That’s literally the point. The director has literally talked about this. He wanted the audience to experience what it felt like to be lied and manipulated and I thought it was pretty on the nose but apparently it worked a little too well
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u/Kahleesi00 19h ago
That’s weird because the documentary explicitly features people who are more credible than the conman being highly suspicious of the families attitudes and actions (an FBI agent for one). The movie also never disabused you of the notion that someone in the family had to have been involved with the kids death and never provides any sort of counter narrative. If this was the documentaries intent, it did it in a very odd way. Perhaps it’s a bad choice for an experiment like that because the facts of the case do tend to support the idea the family was somehow involved.
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u/Finito-1994 14h ago
And the director of the documentary has literally explicitly said the intent of the documentary is to show how easy it is to believe and fall for deception.
First half: this dude is a conman.
Second half: ok, but what if.
It is actively showing you how easy it is to fall for smoke and mirrors. It was pretty blatant about it.
Director: “This is a con man; your key witness is a liar and almost the first thing he tells you is, "I'm a liar and this is how I do it." What I wanted to do was allow the audience to experience being on the receiving end of the manipulator. In one sense you need to understand how this was possible. You go into it with questions: How could a family fail to recognize their flesh and blood? How could these people be taken in by this man who so clearly couldn't have been their kid? But when you experience him in the film, you understand how he does what he does.”
D: So, the approximation justifies itself. Part of my motivation asking is, this imposter feeds on your sympathy. Allowing that to happen to the audience smacks of complicity.
BL: Absolutely, and that's really important. I'm not quite sure what the alternative is. Is it that you, as the editor, should pass judgment on this human, and all of those judgments you include are like a thesis to prove this person is unworthy of sympathy? Also, what's fairer to the other contributors--to the FBI agent or the family? It's almost fairer for you, the audience, to be put on the receiving end so you realize you're also falling victim to his spell. What the film becomes is not a story about the missing child; it's about our ability to deceive ourselves•
u/murdolatorTM 1d ago
No I got that, I just didn't buy it. I knew that guy was just pointing fingers because he got caught, I just remember feeling like something was off. I will admit it's been a very long time since watching it though so maybe I'd think differently today idk
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u/Cabtalk 1d ago
Right but that line didn't come from him, as far as I recall. I do agree with you though.
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u/billyman_90 1d ago edited 23h ago
He is the one that relays that story in the doc though. Which means it can't be trusted
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u/Cabtalk 1d ago
Yeah I agree with you, but that quote was from another person interviewed in the story from what I remember, if we're talking about the same shot. Obviously no one can be trusted, I agree with you.
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u/Mental_Freedom_1648 22h ago
I could have sworn that the con artist said Nick's brother said that. The brother was conveniently dead by the time the documentary was released and not able to give his side of the story.
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u/wittor 1d ago
I am trying to find the title of the documentary. I recommend it.
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u/HereOnCompanyTime 1d ago
The Imposter, it's done really well but then it's one of those docs where you realize that you're giving him the attention that he craves.
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u/DeanKoontssy 23h ago
Or, they didn't believe it, but were afraid that in showing skepticism they would reveal their knowledge that he was in fact dead because they were involved.
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u/GottaUseEmAll 23h ago
After being imprisoned in the US for this crime, he went on to pretend to be a bunch of other people in France and other parts of Europe, including other missing kids. He's known in France as "Le caméléon".
Such an odd pathology.
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u/cloudpetal45 1d ago
the family either really wanted their son back or really didn't want anyone looking too closely at why he disappeared
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u/GottaUseEmAll 23h ago
I mean, most families (if innocent of any wrongdoing themselves) would "really want their son back" if he'd disappeared.
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u/redhead-set-go 23h ago
Probably was a mix of both. I think even when approached by a detective telling the family “that’s not your son”, I think the mom was like “yes it is”.
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u/landmanpgh 1d ago
Yeah so I saw the documentary about this and did a deep dive on the imposter. Fascinating case.
The family almost certainly knew immediately that he wasn't the long lost kid. There's speculation that the mother and brother played along because the brother killed him and mother helped cover it up.
If I remember correctly, the sister basically wanted to believe her brother was alive so badly that she just accepted it for a while. Overall just really sad.
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u/KDPer3 20h ago
From the start when the sister went to Europe to get him instead of the mother it all seemed odd.
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u/landmanpgh 19h ago
Yeah I remember that. Very strange. I'm sure the mom was just like...welp can't say anything definitive without looking guilty.
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u/Kahleesi00 19h ago
Sister was involved too. She was the first family member to see and validate “Nicholas” and allegedly showed him pictures of family members pointing out who is who. Of course that’s based on his word, but he did seem to use the information to further fool the police. Sister just had the voice in the documentary so seemed most sympathetic. Likely a very good liar in actuality.
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u/landmanpgh 18h ago
Maybe. She seemed genuinely happy "he" was back. But it could've been guilt for knowing he was dead. Who knows.
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u/StyleatFive 1d ago
I watched a documentary about this case and this guy has done this multiple times and seems to get off on impersonating missing children and trying to take their place with their families
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u/Smartnership 5h ago
Despite having different eye color, a French accent and being 23. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison
I just can’t believe his French accent didn’t affect his sentencing..
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u/balkanxoslut 1d ago
A lot of people think the family was involved in their son's disappearance. The story doesn't even add up
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u/aTwerkingPikachu 1d ago
I'm sorry, but you have to be a psycho to do something like this.
I mean why? Just why?
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u/marabou22 1d ago
The documentary is wild. “Imposter”. It heavily hints at the idea that a family member played a part in the kid’s disappearance and the family is covering it up. That’s why they so willingly accepted this guy was the missing kid. The documentary seems to posit that they knew he wasn’t the real kid but went with it to cover their involvement. I mean. The guy has a thick accent and didn’t resemble the kid very much. It’s weird.
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u/abielle1177 1d ago
Famously a number of imposters have tried to claim they were missing family members, notably Anastasia the assassinated Russian princess. Another is the son in The Changling where LAPD Captain J.J. Jones tried to convince Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) that the boy was her son.
Just in case anyone thought gaslighting was more modern.
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u/Select_Presence_6437 1d ago
That family definitely knows what happened to the boy. They were very eager to accept someone claiming to be their son, every single person outside the family could tell it wasn't him
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u/BenderRodriguez14 21h ago
There is a documentary about this called The Imposter, it's a really, really good watch.
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u/u_r_succulent 1d ago
Based on how they received him, there was suspicion that the brother had killed the missing boy to protect the mom’s boyfriend who was abusing him. The mother helped to cover it up.
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u/Compleat_Fool 11h ago
The strongest most likely theory is that Nicholas’ family, more specifically his brother, killed him and knew of Bourdins ruse from the start. Nicholas was a very difficult child. He would constantly be in trouble with the police, had a tattoo at aged 13, would regularly disappear for days at a time and if I remember correctly was due for a hearing that would probably send him to some juvenile detention centre. Nicholas’ drug addicted mother couldn’t control him at all and his also substance addicted brother came home to try and help their mother control Nicholas but that had little to no affect and just caused more trouble in the house. An unruly, borderline uncontrollable child in the care of 2 drug addicts at the end of their tether is a volatile situation at the best of times. Bourdin has even said he knew the family didn’t believe him and that behind closed doors Nicholas’ brother even said a few things along the lines of ‘good luck with whatever this is’. Bourdin being a serial imposter and liar obviously has to have his words taken with a grain of salt but I don’t see any reason for him to lie about this and apart from trying to hide their own guilt there isn’t any reason for the family to go along with this very obvious imposter situation.
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u/finderskeepers420 22h ago
This was a well done doc on the whole thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imposter_(2012_film)
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u/Available_Copy9433 19h ago
Learned about this guy from Dave Anthony and Garreth Reynolds. They make history entertaining.
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u/comicgeek1128 13h ago
The family knows that he's dead and had to play along or admit that they already know that he's dead.
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u/MrdnBrd19 23h ago
There is a documentary about this called "The Imposter" and after watching that I don't believe that the family actually thought Bourdin was Nicholas. I think the mom really wanted it to be him so she lied to herself about it as a way to cope, and the rest of the family went along with it as a means to draw suspicion away from the older step brother who police suspected was involved in Nicholas's disappearance.
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u/MosesSupposes11 15h ago
Another fact about the disappearance of Nicholas Barkley is that his family waited for three days before reporting him missing. He had a history of running away from home and had troubles with the law, and actually had a court hearing right before his disappearance to decide if he would be sent to a juvenile facility.
Also I believe this inspired the Esther be backstory in Orphan First Kill.
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u/Beerasaurwithwine 20h ago
He also believes the family murdered or had something to do with the disappearance with the boy he was impersonating.
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u/SimplePigeon 17h ago
The documentary about this, The Impostor, is fantastic. Bourdin is incredibly charismatic on camera and the movie very cleverly frames his testimony to show the audience just how persuasive he really was.
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u/Unusual_Map4581 19m ago
Didn't the cops find out Nicolas was dead the whole time, killed by his older brother? And the mom knew about it but stayed quite to protect him?
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u/bmbreath 18h ago
Op. Are you a real person, or a repost botM
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u/WestTransportation12 17h ago
Real person. you can just look at my profile I do comment a myriad of things, have a array of interests etc.
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u/Future-Account8112 1d ago
between this and all those french guys drugging people i’m like wtf do french guys not do hobbies anymore
like this used to be a demographic known for having lots of CONSENSUAL girlfriends and now it’s whatever tf this is
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u/Gord_Board 1d ago
Their 13 year old son had a tattoo?