The Imposter (A missing person found with a new face in another country)
One midnight during a night shift from home, I was feeling so sleepy. Out of the blue I decided I wanted to watch a documentary in the background to keep myself awake until I get through my working hours.
I googled what are the best documentaries out there then The Imposter's plot summary piqued my interest. I watched it and it was the beginning of my addiction to documentaries.
SPOILER ALERT! I'm going to go through the entire plot of this documentary. And this one has one of the best plot twists I've ever witnessed!
And before I tell the story, here's the trailer so you can decide if you want to watch it yourself instead of reading about it below:
This is Nicholas Barclay from Texas.
On June 13th, 1994, he asked his mother to pick him up after a basketball game, but his mom worked late at night and slept during the day. Jason, his older brother, who picked up his call refused to wake their mom and told him he would need to walk home.
It was the last time they heard from him.
He was listed as a missing person soon after.
3 years later, he was found!?!
His family got a call from a youth shelter telling them that Nicholas was found… IN SPAIN!!!
He said he escaped a child sex ring operation run by high-ranking European political and military officials, and it was believed that he had been abused for the last three years. And these officials performed experiments that altered his looks and affected his memories.
Suspicious? Yeah, that’s not Nicholas. That is the con man, Frederic Bourdin.
Carey, his sister, flew to Spain to get him back home. She believed his story about how his captors altered everything about him. She brought family pictures to help him remember each people as he will undergo a test that requires him to name his family members using her pictures.
He passed it and off they go back to Texas.
The story gets weirder…
Nicholas’s family were overjoyed that he is back. They welcomed him warmly despite having a different face and accent.
Because of his wild claims about his kidnap story, he was interviewed by a Tv talkshow. Then, a private detective Charlie Parker was called to fact-check.
“I had not heard about this story,” Parker recalled. “It had not been in the paper. This producer just told me they wanted me to check it out. Well, I went right on over to the house.”
The first thing that struck him when he met Frederic was his French accent.
“It just so happened there was an old picture of Nicholas Barclay on the wall. I looked at the picture and saw blue eyes, but this boy’s eyes were brown. Then I went over and asked the cameraman to zoom in on his ears. You see, I remembered Scotland Yard had used that method to trace the man who killed Martin Luther King,” said Parker.
Apparently, ears are like fingerprints. It is unique for each individual. Parker was convinced that he is not who he says he is.
The court ordered DNA sample of fake Nicholas to be submitted and truly enough, Frederic’s lies were exposed.
But the family kept insisting that he is the real Nicholas despite scientific evidence telling otherwise.
Frederic was jailed
After posing as Nicholas for five months attending school and being with the family, he finally confessed to the private detective that he is an imposter.
He received six years in prison for falsely obtaining a passport and committing perjury. After prison, Bourdin returned to his home in France, and for a time, continued to impersonate missing teens.
Could the family be hiding something?
Frederic himself was clueless how the Barclay's accepted him as their son. He then concluded the family of knowing and being involved in his disappearance.
"I no longer saw them as a grieving, victimized family. I saw them as a very questionable family. There'd be no reason for them to accept a stranger into their lives, unless there was something to hide. That would be the only reason. Something was being hidden and I didn't know what that was," Frederic explained.
"I discovered from the police files a couple of months after the disappearance that Jason had called the police and said that his brother had tried to break into the house. Well we see that kind of thing all the time. People are constantly doing stuff like that to make people think that person's alive, " Frederic narrated.
Nicholas Barclay is still listed as a missing person
His disappearance is still an unresolved mystery.
Where is the real Nicholas Barclay?
Did he runaway? Was he kidnapped? Was he murdered? By who?
And do you trust the words of an imposter?
Images courtesy of:
I watched this documentary and it is very interesting. There is something fishy with the family itself.
That's true! They're so sketchy.
Excellent narration, @isrl. This documentary sounds interesting indeed and quite troubling on so many levels. The family is nuts.
Thank you! It is one of my favorite documentary films. If you find the time, you must watch it too. The mother was emotionless while being interviewed lol.