Whatever Happened to Nicholas Barclay?

June 13, 1994, in San Antonio, Texas, thirteen year old Nicholas Barclay disappeared. He was out, playing basketball with his friends. He called home, wanting his mother to come pick him up, but his older brother answered the phone. He said their mother was asleep and refused to wake her. Nicholas would have to walk home, but he never made it.

Nicholas was no stranger to trouble. Police reports stated that he occasionally hit and cursed at his mother. They were called to the Barclay residence on more than one occasion in response to these arguments. His uncle had even moved into their home, in an attempt to keep Nicholas under control.

Nicholas was often truant and frequently got into trouble at school. He had a juvenile record for breaking into a convenience store, stealing a pair of shoes, and threatening a teacher. His sentencing hearing was actually set for June 14, 1994, and one suspected judgement was that he would be placed into a group home, which Nicholas was very opposed to. Is it a coincidence that Nicholas disappeared the day before that hearing was to take place?

It didn’t help that Nicholas had run away before. He had run away multiple times, but always came back within a day or so. Because of this, the police were slow to respond. When they did finally begin to search, they found no sign of him. His mother was convinced that her son had gotten into a car with a stranger. Nicholas was not found, and no body was ever recovered.

On September 25, 1994, just 3 months after his disappearance, Nicholas’ older brother called the police to report someone trying to break into the family garage. The person fled when he was spotted, and his older brother could have sworn it was Nicholas. Police searched the neighborhood to no avail. Both Nicholas’ mother and police fail to believe his brother had actually seen him.

The family had given up on ever seeing Nicholas again.

Three years later in October 1997, across the ocean in Linares, Spain, a young man was found huddling in a phone box. He was taken to a youth shelter where he refused to give authorities his identity. Soon afterward, US law officials received a strange phone call. They believed the man in their custody was Nicholas Barclay. They told officials he had escaped from a child sex ring operation, and they believed he had been abused for years. He was healthy, but had forgotten almost everything about his past life.

That same month, Nicholas’ half-sister, Carrie Gibson boarded a plane, nervous and excited to see her long-lost brother again. When she arrived at the youth shelter, the boy remianed in his room, afraid to see her, afraid that she wouldn’t recognize him. When she finally did get to see him, the boy before her did not quite resemble the brother she remembered. But it had been three years, and Nicholas was sixteen now. She identified him as her brother and sat with him, looking through family photos she had brought with her.

“Remember?” she would ask, “This was the house we lived in before we went missing. Remember? This is when you were playing with Scotty.”

Gradually, his memories seemed to be returning. And he soon wanted to know ‘if grandpa was still an asshole.’

Despite everything, he remained very quiet, which did not surprise anyone, considering the abuse and torture he had suffered the past few years. Nicholas was relieved when Carrie took him back to Texas to their family.

Nicholas’ mother was beyond thrilled to have her son home, but not everyone was so accepting. His uncle and many others were suspicious. Nicholas, who was once blonde with blue eyes, now had dark brown hair and brown eyes. He spoke with a French accent, and European phrasing. He explained it away, claiming his abductors had chemically altered his eye and hair color, and forced him to speak differently. It became second nature to him, after living in Europe for so long.

He was enrolled him in school, and while things felt strange to him, for a while, he felt at home. While his identity was still being questioned, Nicholas refused to give blood samples or even have his fingerprints taken.

Despite his wishes to stay out of the spotlight, news agencies would not leave his story alone, and eventually in February 1998, the TV show, Hard Copy won the story. In an interview with Nicholas, Charlie Parker, a private investigator working with the show, noticed something odd. Nicholas’ ears were different. Ears are like fingerprints, and so Charlie spent some time with Adobe Photoshop, analyzing pictures of Nicholas and the person now claiming to be Nicholas, and he truly believed they were not the same person.

After a long struggle, and countless disputes from both Nicholas and his family, a court ordered fingerprints and DNA tests to be taken. It was then, that they discovered the truth. This was not Nicholas Barclay, but instead 23-year-old, French-born Frédéric Bourdin.

Bourdin was a serial impersonator, and had gotten Nicholas’ information from a missing child center. He claimed to have been raised without love or affection, and may have taken the identities of up to 500 people, Nicholas being the first of three missing children whose identities he assumed.

Despite being told that Frédéric was clearly not their son, the Barclay family tried to keep him there. Why? Frédéric Bourdin has a theory.

The Barclay family seemed to be convinced that the boy they’d taken in was Nicholas, despite the overwhelming evidence that he was not. When Frédéric met Nicholas’ older brother, Jason, Frédéric said, “When he came to see me, he didn’t look at me like Nicholas. He didn’t pretend to look at me like Nicholas. And he said ‘Good luck’ to me, and he left.”

Investigators said the family went from being ‘grieving’ to ‘suspicious.’ There was no reason they should keep an imposter in their home, unless they were hiding something.

“They knew I was not Nicholas,” Frédéric said, “They didn’t believe a word that I said. But they were good at not showing it. I remember in Spain, Carey did everything for me. When I didn’t know something, she told me. That’s the house we used to live in. That’s my daughter, your niece. Do you remember that? Remember that, remember that, remember that, over and over again. She wanted to put it in my head so I would never forget. She couldn’t say that I wasn’t her brother. Did she believe it or not? If you ask me, no. She did not believe for a second that I was her brother. She decided that I was going to be her brother.”

Investigators continued to study the family, and, according to them, the phone call Jason placed to police in September 1994 is common in murder cases. It was just the kind of call made to police to convince them that someone is still alive. “They killed him. Some of them did it, some of them knew about it, and some of them choose to ignore it. I wasn’t worried about Nicholas coming back no more,” Frédéric said.

He knew after speaking with Charlie Parker that he was done for. His days as Nicholas were numbered, so he called the police himself to report Nicholas Barclay had been murdered. Unfortunately, before he could be questioned, Nicholas’ older brother, Jason, died from a drug overdose.

The case has largely gone cold, although private investigators still seem to be actively working on it. It is suspected that there was foul play involved, with Jason as the prime suspect. But he’s dead, so we may never know what happened to Nicholas Barclay.

Frédéric spent six years in prison for his crime. After that, he went back to Europe and continued to live other peoples’ for a time, but married and started a family in 2007, and apparently hasn’t taken over any lives since. He is still convinced that Nicholas Barclay was murdered.

Nicholas (whose nickname is “Nicky”) is a Caucasian male with light brown hair & blue eyes. He has tattoos of the letters “J” on his left shoulder, “T” on his left hand between his thumb & forefinger, and the letters “L” & “N” on his outer left ankle. He also has a gap between his front teeth. He has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Nicholas was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, purple pants & black sneakers. He was seen carrying a pink backpack.

While we do not yet know if Nicholas Barclay is still out there, we do know what happened to Bobby Bizup. Well, sort-of.