Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story
03 Apr 2025
The Frédéric Bourdin case is a bizarre and unsettling tale of identity deception, where Bourdin, a French con artist, became infamous for impersonating missing children, including a high-profile case in Texas in 1997. He posed as Nicholas Barclay, a missing American teenager, despite obvious physical differences and a French accent, and even managed to convince the boy’s family. Bourdin was eventually exposed and arrested.
Full Episode
So this adult man pretends to be a teenager and he like goes to high school and somehow no one notices. So this story all starts with this kid, Nicholas. And Nicholas is 13, living in Texas. And one day in 1994, he's out in the neighborhood playing basketball. And suddenly Nicholas just disappears. Like he's just gone. What happened to him? Well, we'll get to that.
Meanwhile, all the way over in Europe is this French guy, Fred. And Fred is 23 and he's a con man. He's kind of a turd. He's always in trouble. And he's in trouble because he often does this thing where he'll pretend to be a teenager so that he can stay for free in youth shelters. And in these youth shelters, he'll like hide out there from the police because the police are always looking for him.
But then one day in 1997, he's living in this youth shelter in Spain and the director of this youth shelter starts getting suspicious of him. And he's like, I don't think you're really a teenager. And Fred's like, uh-huh-huh, wee-wee, yeah, I am. And so eventually, Fred gets ordered by a judge to prove that he's really a teenager, or the shelter is going to kick him out.
Which means the police will probably then find him, because police are always looking for him, and he'll go to prison. And that is when Fred comes up with this crazy idea. He'll just convince the judge that he's an American. But not only that, that he's an American kid who went missing. Then they'll have to let him go. And so Fred gets to work.
He calls the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. And he convinces them that he's this missing kid. And he like describes himself to them and they're like, yeah, we know of a missing kid that fits that description. And they fax over a photo. This photo of a missing teenage boy.
A teenage boy who was out playing basketball three years before and suddenly just disappeared. And so Fred convinces them that he's Nicholas and the National Center for Missing and Exploiting Children sends a member of Nicholas's family all the way to Spain to pick Fred up. So now Fred is going to pretend to be this missing American teenager in order to get out of going to prison in Spain.
Here's the thing about this missing teenager, Nicholas, though. Nicholas was only 13 when he went missing three years ago, which would make him 16 now. So Fred, who's 23 and French and brunette, is going to pretend to be a 16-year-old American blonde. So he bleaches his hair. And by the way, this is a picture of Fred, and he does not look 16. Like, not even close.
Like, look at his geriatric-looking ass. But whatever, a few days later, Nicholas's sister, the missing kid's sister, shows up to Spain to pick up Nicholas. And Fred is there waiting, and he's like, And I guess the sister believes him, because from there, they fly from Spain all the way back to Texas so that he can be reunited with his family.
And so they get there, and he meets his whole family, and I guess they believe that this 23-year-old man is their missing teenage son, and they're all happy to see him. And they have all kinds of questions for him, like, what happened to you? Where were you those three years that you were missing?
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