My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 427 - Pineapples Stacked To The Sky

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

On today’s episode, Karen covers murderer Russell Williams and Georgia tells the story of serial imposter Frédéric Bourdin. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Exactly Right. Forgive me for interrupting. I'm Bridger Weininger, host of I Said No Gifts on Exactly Right. Each week I invite my favorite people in comedy over to chat and they always bring a gift. We're coming up on our 200th episode and every episode is a gem. I have welcomed all kinds of great guests including Cola Scola, Bowen Yang, Robbie Hoffman, it goes on and on and on. And you don't want to miss the 200th episode with the great Maria Bamford. What does she bring me? Find out April 25th. New episodes every Thursday follow. I said no gifts wherever you get your podcasts. Do a fast one, fast.

Hello. Hello. And welcome. To my favorite murder. That's Georgia Heartstar. That's Karen Kilgara. And we have to go. Thank you so much for hitting play.

We have to leave that in. You saying fast, fast. We just have to run real quick. Guys, we're out. Goodbye. Goodbye. This is the new era of podcasting. Didn't you hear? Wouldn't that be so fucking irritating if you're like just trying to listen to the thing that gets you from like your front door to the subway station or whatever. And they're like, uh, oh, sorry, we have to go. And they hang

up like a phone call, but it's a podcast. Oh, sorry. The connection's not great. I can't hear you. What's that? I'm going through a tunnel. I'll call you back later. Click, click, click, click, click. Wait a second. This is a podcast. I'm going through a tunnel. What? You're in Kansas. You're not going through a tunnel. Have you ever done that, pretended the connection was bad just to get off the phone with someone because you accidentally answered the phone? Well, no, Brad.

But actually, my thing was I would just hang up while people were still talking. That was one of my favorite things to do, was to truly honor my own feelings and be like, right as I would get bored, I would just hang up the phone. That hurts. As a people pleaser who needs everyone to be entertained and like her at all times, that would be a hard hello. Hello?

You might be interested to know it makes people like you. There are many ways to make people like you. Don't. That way is a way as well. Okay. Well, listen, I'm on medication for it. Listen, goodbye. Click what? Listen, and then I hang up on you.

I can't hear you. Oh, it'd be real easy right now because I'm doing one of those things where I'm like, why am I feeling so down and kind of depressed lately? And then I was like, oh, you're in the middle of a true crime book, an awful one. Career? A true crime career. Your career. A book. And then I just finished a post-apocalyptic book that I have to recommend as well. I'm listening to Tell Me If This Would Depress You.

The book we've talked about before called Say Nothing, A True Story of the Troubles in Ireland. Wow, that is not an uplifting book. But here's what will uplift you. The troubles are the reason I get to live here. That's why my people came over. It's by Patrick Raiden Keith. It's amazing, but it's like, and it's so fascinating. It's shit that I didn't learn about this in high school. I mean, about East, East Berlin and everything like that, but not this.

Right. Because the kind of the storyline is like, oh, everything's great there. And they like that the British are there and it's fine. Which is how all colonizing kind of propaganda works. Yeah. Yeah. I actually had say nothing on my nightstand. I think we both talked about this for so long and I would pick it up and read a couple of pages and be like, I can't, I can't do this. But it was during COVID. Oh yeah, me too. So I need something new because I can't, I can't. Yeah. It's great. I can't. The book I just finished is To Paradise. It's to paradise.

It's hard to say to paradise. Like we're on our way to paradise by Hanya Yanagihara. And it's like three different stories kind of that are all interconnected at differentagihara. And it's like three different stories kind of that are all interconnected at different points in time. And one of them takes place in like 2090, when everything's falling apart and you can kind of see the connections to now. And that's really hard. Yeah.

And when they refer back to like the pandemic of, you know, 2030 and you're like, uh-oh. Uh-oh. It starts to feel like you're just reading prophecy where you're just like, uh-oh. Yup. Yeah. It's funny. We went to dinner cause I'm up at my dad's house. So I went to dinner with my sister's friend, Adrienne, my sister, Janet, the whole crew, Janet, sister, Sally, very fun.

It was Ladies night. It was ladies night. We were sitting there talking about just sharing weird COVID quarantine experiences because Adrian was the first person any of us knew to get COVID. Oh, shit. Her son went on a camping trip and they thought because they were camping, they were away from other people that they would be fine. And he then walked in the door, shut the door.

And then he was like, hey, mom, what's up? He gets a phone call. He hangs up the phone. He's like, we have COVID. Oh, no. Like, essentially. Yeah. And this was back when they had to quarantine for 21 days. Oh, my God. I forgot. I think we've all kind of wiped our memories. Entirely. Until a time we can really think about it, like a 10-year anniversary, I feel like is a

good, whoa, that was fucked up moment, you know. Well, we were all talking about how we thought Adrian was dead for sure. And we all did, we didn't ever say that to each other, but we said it at the table that night. And she's of course, the saltiest old dog. So she was like, yeah, well, I did too, whatever. But we're just like, it was such a weird, like, we just held our breath for those 21 days. Yeah. Crazy. The fear, the fear. So much fear. They're like changing in the garage after having to go to the grocery store and putting our clothes like Vince

and I putting our clothes directly into the washing machine. And just the like, oh my god. My sister mailing me N95 masks because her friend Kelly, Kelly's father is a doctor saying get these now while you still can. And then you couldn't. Yeah. And so I had four of them because my sister is the way my sister, the vigilance paid off. How dare you hoard those.

Yeah, really. Yeah. And but the first time I wore one, we walked into smart and final to just see if I could grab things at the last second. And I had a panic attack. Yeah. It's not that I couldn't breathe. It scared me to have it on, which I think a lot of the anti-mask people were trying to politicize it when deep down they were just scared and they didn't like being scared. So they were like, I don't need this. This is the cause of my panic. Not that I'm panicking. Not reality. That's like when you get a panic attack and you're like a panic attack makes your panic attack works. You know what's happening.

It's so annoying to be like, this is a panic attack. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, it's really happening. Oh, wait, it's not stopping. Oh, that's what's happening now. It's getting worse.

Oh, so fun. But did you read recently or have we talked about the fact that the candy warheads, the super sour candy warheads have been proven to stop panic attacks? No. Oh, that's just that makes me happy. Right? Because it's like, you shock your senses, I guess. Yeah, well, you know what else they do

is if you put a frozen lemon, nope, you put a lemon in the freezer and you hold onto that as it like kind of melts and it just like shocks your body because you have this frozen thing in your hand. Yeah. Something like that. It's something to do with lemons near you. You have to get a bunch of lemons near you.

Did you hear if you tase yourself, you'll get right out of that panic attack, allegedly. I heard that if someone hangs up the phone on you, you're done, you're no longer panicking, it's fine. Oh no. What else? There was something else I wanted to... Oh, I have a recommendation. My dad and I last night watched, because you know the challenge of watching TV with Jim that doesn't involve Winston Churchill. And so last night I was looking on like TikTok to see recommendations of things on Netflix or things wherever. It

recommended the movie Sing Street. Did you ever see Sing Street? Okay, it came out pre-pandemic. And it's about this Irish boy who in Dublin in the 80s, early 80s, and he's trying to start a band. Cause everything's kind of shitty in his life. So he wants to start a band. Like you have to see it.

It's so perfectly good and charming and the songs they write are so, you know, sometimes when they try to write songs for movies where it's like, these movie songs are great and like, but also realistic to a freshman or a sophomore in high school writing songs. It's such a delightful movie. Like my dad loved it and he loves to hate movies and he loves to go, this is phony, turn it off. And he loved it. It was so good.

Sing Street. Sing Street. Have you and your dad been watching the new season of The Jinx? What? I'm sorry, what? What, I'm gonna double back on you. Alejandra, turn all of this off.

What? I'm going to what you? I'm going to double what you? I'm going to hang up the fucking podcast on you because you don't know that there's a big sale. I thought you didn't know that. When? It was then.

It wasn't a huge to-do, as they say. It's episode three. It just came out last night or this weekend. On HBO? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the j, just came out last night, or this weekend. On HBO? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shit. It's the Jinks all over again. And this time, oh my God, okay, this time, it's about like the trial that happened because

he got caught after the first season. And so the characters are introducing this time around are his old buddies. So that's a fucking cast of characters that are troubling. I'm going to say the same thing to you. I said to Vince, which is just, you're going to, there's two words you need to look out for in episode two, country porn. That's it. And then that's the character of the day. Okay. I can't believe I'm so excited for you. You're gonna go watch three fucking episodes right now. This is like you actually wrapped a surprise birthday present for me and gave it to me in through words because what a fucking what a gift. Oh yeah your birthday's in four days. Shit. Happy birthday. Oh yeah I wasn't trying to say that actually it'll be like two when

this comes out but but I only meant that metaphorically. Well, it must have been on your mind because it fits. Well, I guess you have to send me at two dozen roses now. Shit! Shit! Edible arrangement! Pineapple stack to the sky, edible arrangement! Have you been going to get the chocolate covered strawberries?

That's how much I like you! Oh my God. You're splurging on me. Thank you. It's been eight years. We haven't done a theme song in a while. We haven't done a jingle for edible arrangements. And then there's the clearly.

Is it because they all sound the same? It's got to be because we're so good at it. I think you have to, we save them for the ads. I feel like this is the saddest thing about what that skippers don't know they're missing. Oh, the beautiful music that we make in the top in the first, in the first 15 of this show. Oh my God. Should we do exactly right corner? Oh, can I just say one more thing? I want to say hi to Emma. She listens and she works at a bar

that I met Adrienne and Laura and Amy G. Yes. They were all there for like a long time before I got there and I rolled in and then she came over to ask if we wanted anything. And then she had like a little bit of a, wait, are you? And I was like, I am, yes.

Cause we were like three inches away from each other. Yeah. And then she kind of like, she went to say something and then she kind of like didn't know what to do. And I go, I go, it's okay. You can come back and talk to me. I go, come back, come back. You don't have to say it now. And she just walked away and then came back

a little bit later. It was the sweetest, cutest, and it definitely means more to me when it's my hometown people. Absolutely. I shouldn't say it means more, but it is very more to me when it's my hometown people. Absolutely. I shouldn't say it means more, but it is very touching to me. Come on. It's my own town. It can.

When I'm in LA and people do it, not Orange County, I don't give a... Nobody fucking... And I can't even, and we won't. And they won't, and we won't talk about it. And they know why, and I know why. Click, uh... However, I will say, so I'll give a shout out to Kaylee, who works for the Dodgers.

I've been to the Dodger Stadium for Dodger games, shockingly. Twice in the past, like, month, every time, the loveliest gals say hello. Like, for some reason, Dodger fans are murderinos. Hey, and did Kaylee work there? Like she used to work. She worked there and then we're, and she was like, where are you guys sitting? And Vince told her and she goes, Oh no, you should do better than that. I could do better than that for you.

She gets you up on the roof. She was like, let me give you my card. And like, was just like, let me know next time you come. Sweet. That's what it's all about right there. Yeah. Nice. It was really fun. I ate a churro, I ate a hot dog. I think the hot dog was accidentally vegetarian, but.

How was it? Not good, tasted vegetarian. Sorry, Erin Brown of our marketing department sent me, did she send you the hot dog that's now in Times Square that is 65 feet long and shoots confetti up in the air. I think like once an hour, it's, I could be wrong about once an hour, but there's, for some reason, somebody put a gigantic mechanical hot dog in Times Square. Get off our gimmick.

It's a hot dog summer. It is a hot dog confetti summer. Yeah. I love confetti. That's, that's fun. It's a fun combination. Little bit phallic, little bit dirty. It's got innuendos. I think that's just where we are right now. It's like, no one has time for wordplay. Just, just show it. Yeah. Just be direct.

Just shoot the confetti out of the hot dog. In Times Square. Over and times square. I get it over with yeah and and enjoy it and celebrate it and we all do all right business time cool yeah business time we have a podcast network it's called exactly right and we think you'll like all the shows on it but here are some highlights well over on this podcast we we'll kill you. Erin and Aaron are back with brand new episodes. This week they cover everything you'll ever want to know about supplements and that's supplements with a capital S. I want to know every, I'm, this is like my obsession currently.

Yeah. Even though I refuse to take them every day. I buy them and don't take them. Oh my God. I mean, I have great supplements that I don't take. And also every time I find out about a new and different one, I'm like, this is the one I have to write it down. I have to go get it. This is going to solve everything. Yep. Maybe if I get it in gummy form, I'll start taking it. Nope, you won't Georgia. You won't even take candy supplements.

Okay. And on that's messed up in SVU podcast, Kara and Lisa discuss honor, the second episode of SVU second season, their guest is actor and comedian Asif Manvi, who you likely know from The Daily Show. Yeah, that guy's great. And also every other funny thing you've kind of ever seen. Asif Manvi has been in it. Also actor Bridgettete joins Bridger on this week's episode of I Said No Gifts and comedian Ashley's story is over with the girls on Lady to Lady. And now a little bit of business. We now have a recommendations corner page on myfavoritemurder.com. That means every freaking stupid ass thing we've ever recommended in 2024 will be there.

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Yeah. All right, I'm gonna do for you today, a classic true crime podcast story. You probably have heard of it, maybe. It's incredibly disturbing. It's also one of kind of my areas of interest, which is people that live double lives. It all starts on the morning of January 29th, 2010, when 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd of Belleville, Ontario, Canada, does not show up for work.

And when her brother Andy hears about this, he goes to her house to check on her. He finds her purse, he finds her wallet and her cell phone, but he does not find his sister. So Jessica's reported missing, which triggers an extensive search by her family and friends and neighbors, and of course, the Ontario Provincial Police. A couple days into that search, a local man sees all these police cars parked outside of Jessica's house, and he immediately goes in with information. He tells the police he saw a mysterious SUV parked in the field next to Jessica's house the night she went missing.

And that small lead would be the beginning of one of the most astounding falls from grace that Canada has ever seen. This is the story of sex offender, serial rapist and murderer Russell Williams. Wow. Yeah. Does that sound familiar to you? Not yet. Okay. I believe, and this is one of the many facts that I like to share off the top of my head that probably could be wrong, but I'm remembering watching a made for TV movie starring Gary

Cole playing this part. And he was so creepy in it. Okay. Alejandro, do you mind checking that to make sure that's right? Yes, Karen, that's right. An officer and a murderer, it's called. Oh, good. It feels good to be right. Thank you.

So the main sources for today's story are an episode of the Canadian investigative docu-series from the CBC called The Fifth Estate, which is an incredible series. Like it's on, I believe it's on YouTube for us. You should go, if you're interested, go in there. This episode is called The Confession that's that covers this case. But the Fifth Estate is pretty great. There's also an article from a website called Vancouver is awesome, which is like, it's so cute. That article is written by a writer named Jeremy Haynesworth and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So we'll just talk about him first. David Russell Williams is born in England on March 7th, 1963. He's raised in and around Ontario, Canada. His father Cedric is an engineer for a nuclear research

lab called Chalk River Laboratories and his mother Christine is a stay-at-home mom. His parents were divorced in 1969 when Russell's six years old and his mother remarries a family friend named Dr. Jerry Sovka who I guess was in the same business as his father. In 1979 work takes his mother and his stepdad overseas to South Korea. Russell stays in Canada. He goes to boarding school. So he graduates from a high school called Upper Canada College in Toronto in 1982. And then four years later, he graduates from the University of Toronto with a degree in economics and political science. 1987, he joins the Royal Canadian Air Force and earns his pilot swings in 1990. On January 1st, 1991, a year later, he's promoted to captain and he starts flying some very high profile passengers like Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip among other dignitaries

and government officials. Yeah. So he's way up there in the military. That's huge. And I think you have to have like crazy security clearance. Like they did background checks and shit, right? He had such high security clearance that we don't know what his security clearance was.

Wow. It was a secret. Yeah. So six months after that, he marries his wife, Mary Harriman, who is the associate director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. And then in November of 1999, Williams is promoted to the Foundation of Canada. And then in November of 1999, Williams is promoted to the

rank of Major. He goes back to school to the Royal Military College of Canada, and he earns a Master of Defense Studies in 2004. He's then promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and he's given his first commanding officer position of the 437 Transport Squadron. I think that's how you say it, at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, it's called CFB Trenton. And while he's there, he rises through the ranks and within five years, he becomes the overall commanding officer of the entire Air Force base. Damn. And it is the largest and busiest air base in Canada. So he is, yeah, he's very powerful and prestigious career military man.

His career advances, he and his wife move from their home in a suburb of Orléans, which is outside of Ottawa, into a new townhouse in Ottawa in the West End neighborhood. But since Ottawa is a three hour commute from CFB Trenton, Russell stays at his family's lakefront cottage in the town of Tweed. So Tweed is a tiny, like it's basically a little lakeside community. It currently has, I think this number,

this population is from current times, 1600 people. Oh, wow. Really tiny. So of course, it's the kind of place everyone knows each other. It's thought of as a very safe place to live. And it's a country getaway away from, you know, the big city of Ottawa. But all of that changes in September of 2007, when a series of strange robberies begin to be reported. Someone's breaking into homes at night and stealing women's underwear. And almost all of these break-ins are happening on Cozy Cove Lane. And this is the kind of thing where I just stopped to point this out,

which is something all people who follow true crime know, which is we used to laugh at stuff like this, peeping Toms, people who steal underwear, stuff like that. But now we kind of know, right? Or the experts know that that usually is the beginning of a very bad and usually escalating series of crimes. Absolutely. I mean, it was like a punchline when we were young. It was porkies where they're all like in a tree trying to watch girls in the shower. And it's like, sure, let's normalize that when actually the people who do it and are serious about it

usually go on to be stalkers and, you know. Have escalating crimes. The crazy thing too to think about is like, you know, I escalating crimes. The crazy thing too, to think about is like, you know, I don't know why it's such a different thing for someone to break into someone's house during the day when everyone's gone and to do it at night when people are at home sleeping. I just feel like there has to be a different mentality there. I wonder if there's any studies about that. Yeah, because well, the risk is obviously higher.

So it's like, you like that, right? You like that the risk is higher. Yeah, right. It becomes that the risk is higher. Yeah, right. It becomes about the risk. Right. Yeah. So, so of course things escalate on September 17th, 2009. And that's when in the middle of the night, a single mother living along the lakes wakes up to an intruder in a ski mask standing over her. He hits her in the head with a flashlight. He blindfolds her with a pillowcase. He then binds her to a chair, assaults her, and then

photographs her. And before he leaves, he steals some of her underwear. A little less than two weeks later on September 30th, 2009, that happens again. Another woman is physically and sexually assaulted in her home at night and then she's photographed. The assailant leaves with several pieces of the victim's underwear. And this time that takes place in a home that's three doors down from Russell Williams cottage. Cause he also lives on Cozy Cove lane. So after these assaults, the Ontario Provincial Police, or the OPP, as they call themselves, yeah, you know me, they go door to door asking everyone in the neighborhood for any information that they might have. And of course, among those, the

police talk to Colonel Russell Williams, who claims to have no useful information to offer. The police move on. There's gossip in town. People suspect another man who lives in the neighborhood. Rumors start to swirl around him and that man is ostracized in the town. Of course, Wing Commander Russell Williams evades suspicion entirely because this is a man who is respected, obviously the military, there's tons of credit and rightfully so that you get by rising up to truly the tops of the ranks in the military. So about a month later on November 25th, 2009, the body of a 38 year old woman, Corporal Marie France Camot is found in her home in Brighton, Ontario. She's been beaten over the head,

raped, and then suffocated with duct tape. And her boyfriend is the one who found her in her bed. Terrible. So Marie France was stationed at CFB Trenton. She worked on various flight crews. She was said to have an adventurous spirit and her work in the Canadian forces enabled her to live her dream of traveling the world. So when the news of her murder circulates around CFB Trenton, Russell Williams sends Marie France's father, who himself is a military veteran, a letter expressing his condolences. Russell and Marie France had worked together once before. So it's just a couple months later, it's the evening of January 28th, 2010, and Jessica Lloyd, who's 27 years old, is out at a bar with her friends.

She is known as a kind and selfless person. She's very popular, has tons of friends, so it's not unusual for her to be out socializing on a work night, but she is responsible enough to get home at a decent hour. And when she does around 10 30pm that night, she texts a friend at 10 36 and says night night and then goes to bed. Around 3 a.m., two locals are driving along Highway 37 past Jessica's house when they see a suspicious-looking SUV parked in the field next to her house. They don't know Jessica. They don't know who lives in the house. They just look at it and they see that

that car parked there, being parked there, is odd. They don't see an immediate threat, so they keep driving, but they remember it. Good. The next day, January 29th, 2010, is when Jessica's mother gets word that she hasn't shown up for work, which is totally unlike her. So Jessica's mother calls her son Andy and asks him to go check on his sister. And that's when Andy drives over to Jessica's house, finds all of her personal and very important, like personal items, but not her. He has a bad feeling. And that's when the missing person's report is made. So in the days following her disappearance, Andy hangs missing flyers around town, the Tweed community bands together to help in the search, and even complete strangers volunteer to help in this search along

Highway 37 to try to find her. And this is when one of those two men who saw the SUV parked in the field sees the emergency vehicles parked around the same house that they drove by. When he learns what's going on, he immediately contacts police and tells them everything he saw that night. So police go back to search that field and when they do, they find tire tracks in the snow and they find boot prints leading from the field up to Jessica's house. So armed with the images of these tire tracks, the police set up roadblocks on highway 37 and they begin checking people's car tires, hoping to find a match. No way. That's so smart.

It's so smart. There's a two piece thing that happens here that procedurally is so smart. They immediately set this roadblock up. It starts at seven o'clock on Thursday, February 4th, and it goes through the night to six a.m. on February 5th. And one of the cars that stopped in that roadblock is Colonel Russell Williams. They check his tires, he cooperates fully and they let him go. But what they don't tell him is that his tires are a match. They let him think that he's flown under their radar. But from that point forward, the OPP have Russell Williams under surveillance. So two days later, in the early afternoon of Sunday, February 7th, Williams gets a call from the police department asking him to come in and answer some questions.

He agrees and he heads over telling his wife on his way out that he'll be back in time for dinner. So Colonel Williams arrives at the police station just before 3 PM and he's led into an interrogation room and he's joined by Detective Sergeant Jim Smith, who reads him his rights and tells him he's not under arrest. He's free to go if he chooses. So Detective Smith starts asking Russell Williams questions about the sexual assaults that took place in Tweed. But as he

does that, and as he begins asking his questions, he does not refer to Williams as Colonel, he does not refer to him as Sir. Smith is basically tacitly suggesting, unlike down at the Air Force base where he has control over everyone and everything all the time, in this room he has no status and he has no power. So at first, Williams denies knowing the sexual assault victims. He does admit that he had once met Marie France and he tells the detective that he recalls getting a knock at the door after one of the neighborhood assaults and says he already spoke with the police about

it. Of course, Detective Smith knows this. So then he tells Williams, well, sure, but you have to admit that the geographical positioning is that can't really be, you know, it's, we can't assume it's a coincidence It makes you a person of interest and he gets Williams to basically agree with him that that's a reasonable assumption and then he asks Russell to provide both a DNA sample and To let them take an impression of the soles of the boots that he's wearing to rule him out And surprisingly Williams agrees to do both rule him out. And surprisingly Williams agrees to do both. Investigators collect those samples, immediately begin analysis on that while Detective Smith continues his line of questioning. He's

questioned for 10 hours. Finally, the boot impression comes back and Williams boot impression matches the boot impression from the field next to Jessica's house. Wow. So, that's when Detective Smith breaks the news to Williams. It's just a matter of time until the DNA comes back as a match that they've already obtained a warrant and are searching his home right now. Is it true? Are they really? Yes. Holy shit.

And that idea puts Williams over the edge for good reason. He has a lot to be scared about with cops looking through his house. He tells investigators he is ready to come clean solely to quote, minimize the impact on my wife. Oh, now he's fucking thinking about his wife. Oh my God. I mean, yeah, that's such a good point. It's so fascinating.

And I wish there was a podcast we could listen to about how this psychology actually works. And maybe there is, and maybe people will recommend it. But that idea of like, I think because he was living this double life, he truly just thought the two lives would never meet. They're separate. Yeah. I also want to know the psychology around saying yes to the DNA, especially of course, and the boot impression when you know they're going to come back as a match. Like what, who says, who are the people who say, no, I want a lawyer. Like you, you have to have a, you know, a warrant and who are the people who say yes. And and why like who's guilty and who's innocent? I it's just such a weird phenomenon to me to be like yes

And then still not respond or say I did it until the results come back Well, it's almost like did he realize that there was no way He wasn't painting himself into a corner the entire time that it had escalated to the point where he was no longer in control Where he knew it was inevitable. I mean, it would be very interesting to know. Essentially, Russell Williams confesses to all four of the crimes that have been laid out before him, two home invasion sexual assaults in Tweed and the rapes and the murders of both Corporal Marie France Camot and of Jessica

Lloyd. He then goes on to describe each crime in disturbing detail. Detective Smith is shocked to hear Russell admit between just those two murder victims that he's talking about, he stole over 60 pieces of underwear. And that bizarre fact would actually turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg. So with Williams in custody, OPP searched both his lakefront cottage in Tweed and his Ottawa townhouse where his wife lives. And in the townhouse garage, they find a pillowcase stuffed with stolen women's underwear. Several boxes hidden in the basement hold hundreds more pieces. And according to that article by Jeremy Hainsworth, quote, all of it was cataloged in minute detail. So he kept it like kept it in boxes. He knew where all

of it was from. That's so creepy. Under his and his wife's bed, the police find a bag that contains the black ski mask that he wore for the attacks. Oh my God. Can you imagine the wife like, oh my God, you're sleeping over that thing. And it's around you. It's like all around you. At the Tweed Cottage, police find another duffel bag, and this one is filled with hundreds more pieces of women's underwear.

They also find computer hard drives that are filled with thousands of photos of the victims' bedrooms, of their underwear neatly laid out on their beds, of Russell wearing that underwear and masturbating on their beds. And most horrifyingly, they find photos and videos of the actual assaults. Holy shit. Yeah. And maybe that was part of it. It was like he, with his kind of, I don't know,

mental illness, had to keep that. He had to keep the trophies. He wanted to rewatch that. So he knew if that's what he was going to do at some point, someone was going to find out. Or maybe he thought if I cooperate, I'll be able to go home and destroy all this stuff. Yeah, maybe. Like, I don't know why he kept talking for 10 hours, but maybe go along with it, go home, destroy everything.

And also maybe that's why in that, you know, in the many articles, like somebody took the time to say that he was told that he could leave because someone is in there going, we have to protect the Ottawa police department, which is something that very often happens where it's like, Hey, you know, we're certainly not doing anything for 10 hours that it would go against his rights. And it's like, do we know that for sure? Who knows? Yeah. hours that it would go against his rights. And it's like, do we know that for sure? Who knows? So with nothing left to hide, Russell Williams points to a location on a map where

he left Jessica Lloyd's body, which was 40 feet off the road at a remote local intersection. And when police search that area, Jessica Lloyd's body is recovered on February 8th, 2010. So now Russell Williams is formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of forcible confinement, two counts of breaking and entering, and sexual assault, which are folded into the same charge. So he gets the charge twice. And then 82 counts of breaking and entering related to his underwear fetish. 82. So Williams made a full confession. He doesn't deny any of these charges against him, but the details of his crimes are actually

revealed in open court to inform the Canadian public and to determine his sentencing. So a selection of just some of the thousands of photos discovered in both his Ottawa and his Tweed homes are shown to illustrate the depravity of his crimes. They also show some of the undergarments that he stole and kept as trophies. An additionally disturbing fact, he didn't just target adult women. He broke into young girls' bedrooms as well. He stole the underwear of girls as young as nine years old. Oh my god. And he also, in a one 12-year-old girl's bedroom, he wrote on her computer, thank you.

Ew. Like before he left. The amount of stolen underwear had grown so rapidly that on two different occasions, Williams will admit to burning hundreds of pieces of underwear because he didn't have the room to keep them anymore. What the fuck? How long have they been doing it for? That's like a lifetime. Yeah. He then gives the details of Marie-France Camot's murder. She had suspected that someone had been going through her underwear drawer,

but it was not her ex-boyfriend as who she thought it was. Unbeknownst to her, after she worked on a flight crew that Russell Williams was on, he had taken an interest in her. And then on November 16th, 2009, days before her murder, while she was away, Williams breaks into her home in Brighton, goes into her bedroom, and puts on her underwear, photographs himself. But then he returns a week later on the night of November 24th, 2009, while she is there alone. He actually breaks into her basement wearing the ski mask and he plans to wait there until she goes to sleep so that he can like surprise her the way he did to that young mother. Except that all changes when Marie France comes down into the basement looking

for her cat. And when she does that, she sees a masked intruder hiding behind her furnace, which is just the scariest. So basically, then the plan changes, he rushes her, hits her over the head with his flashlight, he drags her upstairs, spends the next several hours brutally assaulting her and records it all on his video camera. Oh my God. At one point, she begs for her life saying, have a heart, please, I want to live. Instead, he covers her nose and mouth with duct tape and she suffocates to death. And afterwards, he bleaches her bedsheets, he places her body in her bed, covers it with

a duvet, and then leaves it there for her boyfriend to discover the next day. He then explains how he selected Jessica Lloyd to be his next victim. So on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010, Williams was driving home on his usual route from work along Highway 37. And as he does, he sees Jessica through the window of her home, working out like walking on a treadmill. So the next day, he sees that she's not home. So he parks in that field next to her house and he breaks into her house and he looks around. But then when he gets in his car to leave, she comes home. So he waits until he sees the lights go out in her house, assumes that she's gone to bed

and he breaks in again through the back patio door. He then attacks and rapes her. He forces her into his SUV and he drives her to his home in Tweed. And then he continues to assault her there. At one point, she actually has a seizure. So when she comes out of it, she begs him to spare her life. And so he promises that he won't kill her

if she'll just cooperate with him. And cooperating with him, and I'm not going to go too far into it because it's already so upsetting and so depraved, but he would make his victims like put on their underwear and like so he could take pictures of them and do stuff. It's so insane. So she then believes if she does it, she'll at least make it out alive. And he actually supports that belief because he walks her out of the house towards his car. So she thinks he's gonna drive her back.

But instead on that walk, he hits her in the back of the head with his flashlight again, and then he strangles her to death with a length of rope. So after he kills Jessica Lloyd, he leaves her body in his garage and tweed. And then he goes to work for the day at CFB Trenton. What the fuck? Yeah. I think that counts as being a psychopath, right? You can just be that cut off.

Absolutely. Then when he's done with work, he drives back home to Ottawa and spends the weekend with his wife. And it isn't, yeah, it isn't until the following Tuesday, February 2nd, that he finally goes retrieves her body from his garage, drives it out to that remote location, and dumps the body on the side of the road. Jesus. So ultimately, Russell Williams pleads guilty to all 88 charges on October 18th, 2010. And three days later, he is given two life sentences for the first degree murders of Jessica Lloyd,

Emery France-Cameau, two 10-year sentences for the sexual assaults, two 10-year sentences for the forcible confinement charges, and 82 one-year sentences for the forcible confinement charges, and 82 one-year sentences for the breaking and entering charges, all to be served concurrently. Although technically Russell Williams is eligible for parole in 2035, the details of this case all but guarantee that he will not get it. Russell Williams was stripped of his military rank and honors immediately

after his arrest. And in what is believed to be a first, his military uniform was burned, his medals were destroyed, and the SUV he used to transport Jessica Lloyd's body is crushed and scrapped. Wow. His wife files for divorce in December of 2010. There are surviving victims who file civil suits against Russell Williams, but his wife is also accused of having known about his criminal acts all along. No. Yeah. And the suit alleges that she kept quiet because she stood to gain financially because after he was arrested, they switched ownership of the houses that they had. So I think what it is, is the more valuable house was switched into her name. But basically they were just saying, well,

I'll read you, this is a quote, an article from McLean's that doesn't have a byline. There's no journalist that attached to it. And it says quote, although Williams is the key defendant, all three lawsuits also accused Harriman of acquiring his half of their $700,000 house in a fraudulent post arrest deal designed to shield his assets from potential litigation. Harriman has denied any wrongdoing, insisting she paid good and due consideration for his portion of the property. So basically this kind of business deal doesn't look good. It makes it look like they're somehow trying to shield him. And they also just is very natural for them to be suspicious of how she couldn't have known when it went on for so long. And

he was out breaking into houses all around the area night after night. And the excuse he gave was that he was taking late night walks to stretch out his sore back. So I think there was just a lot of like, how, you know, how could this be? It makes me think of the Golden State Killer. Yeah. And the Vesalio rapist. It's like, how could this be? It makes me think of the Golden State Killer. Yeah. And by salio rapist, it's like, how, how the fuck? But then also- It happens.

I mean, look at him. He was, he fooled everyone. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So here's a more of a quote from McLean's. They say, quote, still the province's highest court was clearly sympathetic,

describing Harriman as indeed yet another victim of Williams depravity. She was shocked and devastated by the charges laid against her husband. And through the revelations that followed the laying of the charges, Harriman learned that her husband, to whom she'd been married for many years, and who she believed to be a highly respected, successful and loving man was in reality a sexual predator and cold-blooded serial murderer." Jesus. So in October of 2016, that case is settled out of court. Details are never uncovered. And then in an interview given 10 years after her death, Jessica Lloyd's brother, Andy, tries to stay positive by saying, quote, every year seems to get a little bit easier, I guess.

Every year it seems to be maybe not easier. Maybe it's just more routine. Maybe we're getting used to it, end quote. And that's the story of the double life of the serial rapist and murderer, Russell Williams. I had never heard of that. Yeah. Man, being a woman isn't safe.

The treadmill piece is gonna stick with me. It's so awful. It's gonna stick with me. Yeah. It's like, oh, and then Georgia never opened her shades in her house ever again. But there is this thing, I mean, we've talked about this a lot. And it's like, we all know you can take any precautions you want,

but if we have these violent serial rapists, we, if we have people that the crimes aren't ever taken care of when they should be, or if they're such high level predators that they're, you know, that kind of thing is it's not on you. It's not on you. It wasn't on her. It's he was, he was going to, no, no, I'm not saying, you're saying that, but it's like, he was going to find the next person. Just the chances that that he would drive by at that moment. I was just so fucked up. Yep. That's really sad.

That's awful. Yeah. Thank you for telling that story. I mean, I can't believe I haven't heard of that. Yeah. There's probably someone interesting in your life who you love to hear stories about. A mom or a mom-like figure or an old family friend. And every time you hear those stories, you think to yourself, I hope I never forget this

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now. That's how we do it. Yeah, that's how we do it. We're still doing a fucking double life story. Oh, great. Imposter story. Okay. Chameleon. The rapper. That's right. Chameleon air. The chameleon air. Today I'm gonna tell you about a French conman who compulsively impersonated unhoused teenagers through the nineties and early two thousands. He's best known for claiming to be a missing Texas teen

in the nineties. Reunited with that missing teens family, lived with them for months before his true identity was revealed. This is the story of serial imposter Frederique Pierre Bourdain. Amazing. AKA the imposter from that incredible documentary.

I literally can remember the seat I was sitting in at Man's Chinese when I saw that documentary. Like I- You saw it there? Wow. Yeah. And I just like the whole time was like, you have got to be kid, Like it was such a good documentary. It's so good. It's so hard to watch you like rack your brain because you're like, what would I do? Like, would I believe this person? Right.

And I think the answer is yes for a lot more of us than we want to believe. Sure. So here I'm going to tell you that story. The main source they used besides the documentary, The Impostor is a 2008 New Yorker article by David Grant and the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So Frédéric Pierre Bourdain is born to Ghislaine Bourdain in 1974 in the suburbs of Paris. Like, come on, take me there. His mother, she's only 18 years old when she has her son.

She doesn't have money. His father isn't around. It ended up being someone she worked with. And when she got pregnant, she found out that he had a wife already. So she didn't even tell him that she was pregnant. I mean, she was a child. Frederique has a tough childhood.

When he's two years old, a judge takes custody away from his mother and he goes to live with his grandparents. His mother claims that she was a responsible and fit parent and her parents just took him away. But it's said that she likes to party and go out all night. So, you know, who knows later, Frederick will say that she is manipulative though. When he's five, Frederique's grandparents moved to the city of Nantes. I'm not saying that right, probably. How's it spelled? It's spelled N-A-N-T-E-S. And then the

translation that Ali put in there is N-O-N-T. Nantes. Yeah, that's good. And you gave it a little Nantes. Nantes. Yeah, that's good. So he has a hard time in school. He's known there as the fatherless kid. He is dressed in secondhand clothing from the charity shop. So he's teased. He starts inventing wild stories like saying his dad is a British secret service agent, and that's why he's not in his life. No one believes him, but he is precocious and he draws people in. You can kind of understand this kid who wants so badly to fit in and have a seemingly, you know, quote, normal life.

Yeah. And he starts making up stories to try to fit in. Also, that age, when you have it hard in school, whatever you're trying to do to cope with that situation is what you're trying to do. No one can help you. Like what can you do? You're making up ways to fix it. They usually get you into worse situations.

It's just the worst. Totally. And when sometimes they don't get you into worse situations and therefore you keep doing them, or sometimes the worst situations just gives you more attention. So you keep doing it because that's all you're really craving.

I mean, it's so sad. One of his teachers about him says, quote, he had this way of making you connect to him, end quote. But he's also in distress. And this becomes clear as he approaches his teenage years. He tells his grandmother that a neighbor has sexually abused him, but it's never investigated. I think it's a small town and

it's what the eighties, early nineties, everyone just fucking ignores it, which is so tragic. Oh, horrible. That's a real betrayal. That's horrible. Yes. And so he starts acting out as you do. He starts stealing. He's ultimately sent to a juvenile facility when he's only 12 years old. So while he's at this facility, Frederic starts to experiment with creating characters. He often goes into town and pretends to have amnesia and like interact with people to be like, help me. I don't know what's going on. I have amnesia. Like, you know.

Yes. Can I just say really quick that that sound it's like the kind of thing where I would guess he saw it in a TV show or in a movie. Right. Because that is, it is that kind of thing of like, oh, this exists in the world. What would it be like if that happened to me? And then you just kind of want to try it out. Yeah. Yeah. One of his teachers refers to these things he does as quote, his little dramas.

So it's just like he's testing the waters of getting attention, not in a nefarious way, I don't personally think, but in a, you know, and a bid for attention. And in a way that I think maybe makes people dismiss him instead of embrace him, which is the, what he wants. And instead it's like you and your little dramas. Then it's like, Oh, then does nothing I say matter? Like, nothing I tell anybody matter? Yeah.

So when he's 16, which is around 1990, he runs away to Paris, and this is when he first tries to fully adopt the character of an actual missing child. He tells people that he's a boy named Jimmy Sale and that he's from England. And I looked this kid up and I can't find any information

about him other than he was just a missing child. Of course, he doesn't really speak English and he does have a very heavy French accent. So no one believes he's this missing English kid. But his intentions, he says to David Grant from The New Yorker, he says, quote, I dreamed they would send me to England where I always imagined life was more beautiful, end quote.

So I don't think he thought the end game through of, like, if people believe you're this missing child, like, you have a lot more work to do. I think he just hoped that he would just, you know, suddenly have a new life. Yeah. So Frederic has returned to the facility where he lives, but he keeps escaping maybe about a dozen times and embodies the characters of fictional, unhoused children.

He almost always claims to have been abused. And that's part of his story is I was an abused child and I ran away. And I think that that has some truth to it. He's trying to get someone to pay attention to the fact that he was abused. It's like, if I was a different child, would you care? If I was from England, would you care? And he later says when he's interviewed that like, you know, he realizes the best thing to do is to tell as few lies as possible. So be, you know, the details should be true because then you have to remember as much stuff, people believe you. And so I think

this abused part is, is definitely part of that. He goes all over the place. He goes to way more places than I've ever been. Spain, Germany, Belgium, Bosnia, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, Denmark, like come on. It's because they're close. You've been to a bunch of states, it's the same thing. I have, you're right.

If you're talking distance. That doesn't sound as fun though. And also he's like a teenager just like going all around Europe and... On a train. That's true. You could take a train everywhere. So it's not like he's jet setting. Okay, fine. Fine. Don't be jealous. He keeps getting caught and ultimately he confesses every time. He's not, he's not like trying too hard to embody this persona. And he appears to relish the confession part,

the moment when he tells people his secret, like he's kind of excited about the fact that he's like, yeah, I did this. Isn't this amazing? Which I think says a lot too, right? Yeah. He continues this until he's 18 years old. And then he's pretty much as, you know, as you are here too, in the foster system.

When you're 18, they're just like, goodbye, you know, go fend for yourself. It's so sad. It's like when we start fixing this country, and I feel like it's going to happen really soon, I really hope at some point, just imagine the timeline where things start going well again, because we have to imagine it. It's important to think about it. Fixing, well, obviously funding education

and fixing the foster care system has to happen. Like that has to start getting prioritized. We have to. It matters so much. Hey, let's give some money away right now. Okay. Let's take a second. We can look up the one that Kara Klink works for. Yeah, let's look that up. Okay, so we're gonna donate $10,000 to National CASA GAL Association for Children. It's where court-appointed special advocates or guardians

ad litem supports and promotes court-appointed volunteer advocacy. So every child who has experienced abuse or neglect can be safe, have a permanent home and the opportunity to thrive. And we know about it because our own Kara Klink from That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, is a CASA appointee. So check out nationalcasagal.org. It's a great organization. Yeah, that's such a good cause. Thank you, Kara, for working for them.

Right? That feels good. That feels good. So he's 18 now, right? And that suddenly means you know what you're doing and you can move on with your life, right? As we all did. Right. Yeah. Your brain is not done cooking. You guys, if you're freaking out right now, you're 19 and you're like, how come I don't have my shit together? Your brain is not done. You have a soft boiled egg in your head. And I feel like at that age, that's when the bad ideas really start to gestate and really

start to come to the fore. That's when I was like, Oh, I know, I'm going to drive like two hours away and get drunk. That'll be good. Like shit like that. Yeah. The quote unquote independence and all those ideas. You're like, I'm gonna do the thing my mom told me not to do. And that's how you learn why she told you not to do them. We're gonna drink Zima in my car before we go into the club. Yeah. Because we can't buy alcohol in the club. So we're gonna sit in the car and get drunk first. Yeah. Like what the fuck. And that doorman will never in the car and get drunk first. Like, what the fuck? And that doorman will never know this 18 year old is drunk. Of course not.

No, of course not. Jesus Christ. So not knowing what else to do with himself at 18, Frederick continues these ruses early into adulthood. He does still look young. He goes to various European cities and pretends to be an unhoused youth. On some occasions, he just gets rid of the accent problem and pretends to be mute. And in order to look younger, he shaves his face. He does eyebrow work. I don't know. He wears clothes that are too big to make him look small.

And as I said, he tells as few lies as possible. All of his characters at their core are the same and basically the truth of who he is, as best as we can tell, because who the fuck knows. A young person who has suffered abuse and is looking for a home. It's only the superficial details that change each time. This is really smart.

When someone says he looks older than he's claiming to be, he acts pleased. He's like, I do, thank you. Because every teen wants to look older. He's like, I do. Thank you. Cause every teen wants to look older. It's like a, it's a great one. I just keep thinking of my nephew, Micah, at 14 wanting to be an adult so bad. And you're like, quit it. Yeah, dude. I mean, that's the great irony of life is the kids don't know how great they have it. They're not supposed to. At the same time, you couldn't fucking pay me to be a kid again. No way.

It sucks. No, it sucks so bad. What was I even saying? I don't know. Literally 10 seconds ago. The thought, I mean. It's hard. It's hard to be a kid.

Okay. Every time he shows up in a new city, he places a call to authorities. This is actually genius. He pretends to be an anonymous concerned adult. So he says, I was in the train station or whatever. I saw this kid who doesn't look well. Like he obviously needs help. You should come check out this kid. The authorities come down thinking an adult called and they're like, oh yeah, this kid needs help. Yeah, that's smart. It's pretty smart.

That's kind of like when my sister and I called the cops on our own party because all these people showed up from other schools who were like, what the fuck is this? We're going to get in so much trouble. Exactly. Yeah, that's very smart. After a few years of this, so Frederick is known to local authorities and to Interpol. Here's the weird thing about him. He, not weird, I guess, but he loves the attention so much that he'll tell his story of what he's doing publicly

for the praise. Yeah. In a way. So he goes on a TV show, a French TV show called Everything Is Possible, and basically says what he does and tells people that. You know? I would love to be able to make a French friend who can tell me what they're saying on Everything

is Possible and watch Everything is Possible. I think that is possible. Do you think it's possible? I do. I have a French friend, Melissa. Do you know why? She could totally do it for you. Because Everything is Possible. Tout le monde, c'est possible. Yeah. But here's the thing, on the show, he tells everything, but then he says he does it. He tells everyone, it's not for money. He's not making money off of this. It's not, you know, whatever it is, he says he wants a loving home and a family.

And it really just seems like every time he does this, he wants to be placed somewhere where he can feel like he's at home. I know. And like just fit in and have a normal, like a kid's normal life. The producers of the show feel so bad for him and I guess like him so much that they give him an entry level job at the TV station. But he fucking later days and he runs away from that job. Well, yeah, I guess because he's never really had structure or any kind of like example of here's how you would do this

or you should want to do this. And it's not, yeah, it's not what he wants. Yeah. Right? I mean, I'm sure there's a huge element of the excitement in it for him too, that like not knowing day to day, like what the next day will bring. That's gotta be fun.

And I bet working at a TV station doesn't give you that excitement. No, it kinda sucks. It's hard in that you, they're like, take this pallet of water and run down there. And he's like, oh, this is actually work. This is not glamorous at all. Gotta go.

So now we're in October of 1997. Frederic is 23 years old. He's at a youth home in Spain, but the local authorities in Interpol are closing in. He's been told by a local judge that he has one day to prove that he's a teenager. They're kind of like, you're not giving us enough information. We're on to you.

Like, prove you're a teenager. How do you do that? Well, I'm about to write a movie about it. That's the fucking funniest premise of all time. A poor man's copyright, do not steal this idea. You have one day to prove you're a teenager and you're actually like- Ashley and Mary-Kate Olson.

Oh, prove you're a teenager, Ashley and Mary-Kate. Somebody, I think it was on TikTok, showed this thing they were holding up in Ashtray and there's a picture of Mary-Kate and Ashley and Ashley and it says Mary Kate and ashtray. They love smoking. It writes itself. It really does. It's so. You have one day to prove you're a teenager. What do you do first? In Europe. You're in Europe. What do you do first? Smoke. What would I do? I'd go roller skating like I wasn't worried about my back. Ooh, nice, nice one.

That's what a teenager would do. That's what Georgia as a teenager did. Free skate. Free skate, what would you do? Drink wine coolers. And roller skate. Under the Lefk de Triomphe. Yeah, okay, so he's like, oh fuck,

I might go to prison for this. I need to come up with a new plan. So instead of impersonating a fictional lost child, he comes up with this idea to find a real missing kid and impersonate that kid. He clearly has not thought this through, and every step of the way, he's like, oh, shit, I haven't thought this through.

But for some reason, this fucking thing works. And I think this is the crux of the story, is like, what it brought out is, is dark. Yes. And I don't think he intended to do it, but he did. And it's also horrible and awful to impersonate actual missing children. Like I don't want him to like make him seem all fun and games. Like what he did is terrible. Yeah. But he was selfish. And at this point, how old is he? He's 23. He's not thinking two steps ahead. He's thinking one. He's not a teenager, but he's certainly not.

He hasn't had the kind of life where he can be like a responsible 23 year old. Right, right, right. So in this youth home, he calls the US, he calls the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, basically explains to them in English, he could speak pretty good English now, that he's just a concerned adult over in Spain and he's met with a teenage boy who speaks English with an American accent.

The boy seems scared. So he gives the operator a physical description of the quote boy and some little details and asks if it sounds like any missing American children. And this poor representative is probably just like so excited to try to help and gives Frederick a name. And that name is a missing boy named Nicholas Barclay. Nicholas had been reported missing three years earlier,

a little more than three years when he was just 13 years old at a San Antonio, Texas. He'd been playing baseball with friends. He had called for a ride home, but his older brother told him to walk. And he was never heard from after that. And there's so much more to the story because I think this was a troubled home that this kid came from.

This kid also, Nicholas was troubled. Like, and kind of ironically in the same way Frederick was, where his home life was unstable. He was starting to get into trouble because of that. He didn't really have stability that he needed. His mom was using heroin. His brother had moved back home to kind of try to tame this rebellious kid.

And he went missing. And it's really sad. He's this cute, like, skater looking blonde, little 13-year-old boy. He had some homemade tattoos, which I had at the same time I had when I was 13 too. It's like, when you're in it, you're in it, you know? So Frederick is able to get the representative to send him a fax and then a package from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children with pictures of Nicholas and a bunch of details

about him going missing, like what he was wearing at the time. When Frederick sees this photo, he's like, oh shit, this isn't gonna work. Frederick has brown hair and brown eyes and Nicholas, the missing boy, has blonde hair and blue eyes. So basically, Frederick dyes his hair, he concocts a story about why his eye color has changed,

and he gets someone at the youth center to give him a stick and poke tattoo that matches the one that Nicholas had when he disappeared. And finally, the Nicholas Barclays family are informed that their missing child has been found. Nicholas's half-sister, 31-year-old Carrie, flies her first time out of the US, flies to Spain to see if it's actually her brother,

her little missing brother. Yeah. So sad. So sad. So sad. So Frederick puts on a hat and wraps a scarf around his face. He's like, sure, he's gonna get caught immediately, but she sees him and she wraps her arms around him and is like so happy to see her missing brother.

It seems like she wants it to be him. She does believe it's him. I do believe that she really did think it was him. Yeah. For whatever reason, I do think she believed it. So he immediately violates his own rule to keep his lies as simple as possible. Frederick says that he was abducted by a pedophile ring

and that the reason his eye color has changed is because they injected chemicals in his eyes to turn them from brown to blue. Like that's the extent of the lie and the family still wanted to believe it. Yeah. I think, sorry about watching that documentary. I feel like the idea that he is there saying

he was abducted by a pedophile ring when that was part of it. It's like that's such a, at the time, bizarre, mysterious possibility that if they say they changed us so that you couldn't find us, it makes sense. It's like, well then sure, then that's why we couldn't find you.

Of course you have a French-ish accent. You've been held hostage for this long and it's like mind control. Like these little things can be explained away easily by the trauma that you've been held hostage for this long, and it's like mind control. Like these little things can be explained away easily by the trauma that you've been through, and people are not gonna push to get you to tell them more about the trauma to prove it. You know?

That's exactly right. So posing as Nicholas, Frederick is brought back to Texas, and he has like a panic attack on the plane where he's like, I'm about to go meet this family. They're all gonna know it's not me. Like, how is this even, how has this even worked thus far? Like he had not planned the rest of it. Yeah.

And actually in the documentary, Nicholas's mother, the real Nicholas's mother, Beverly, looks trepidatious and kind of fearful and holds back a little in the documentary. When she first sees Frederick, AKA fake Nicholas getting off the plane, but she ends up holding him and accepting him as her son, as her missing son.

So Frederick has learned small details about Nicholas's life from some family members. He then like, he'll get a little info from one family member and then parrot it back to another. And they'll, so they'll think he just remembered it. And they all seem to want to believe it's Nicholas, except for Jason, the older brother. He's a recovering addict who now works at a treatment facility. And he doesn't meet them at the airport, even though he lives in the area. He takes a while to come home to see

his brother, who's this guy came to be his brother. When he does see him, he's standoffish, but ultimately he gives Frederick a hug. But also on the way out, Frederick claims that Jason said to him, good luck, man. Like, yeah. And he never sees him again. You know what I mean? He knows. He knows something's up. We'll get there. So then this TV crew is skeptical about this story. And so they hire a private investigator. And the crew tries to get everyone to interview on camera. And the family's like, no, no. Leave us alone.

We want to just have our boy back. Except for Frederick, who's like, yes. I love the spotlight. Let's do this. This is the part I love. Yeah. I don't know why he did that during the interview, the private investigator, whose name is Charlie Parker, by the way, like the jazz legend,

he sees this photo of Nicholas before he disappeared, sitting right behind Frederick, who's, who's interviewing. And he can tell it's not like there's little things that he's like, and in the documentary, it doesn't look like him, but you could kind of, you could kind of get there. You know what I mean? Sure. It's not impossible that it could be him. Maybe. Well, the story itself is a victory because we almost never hear stories of years later, a missing child being recovered in that way where it's like You know the tragedy of any family just losing a son

And that's it and then out of the blue however many years later 10 15 years later No, it was only three and a half. It was only three and a half years later. Yeah So he's like, I'm a 16 year old now. Oh, I'm so sorry. But the trauma of losing that child, and then you have this gift of them coming back, you probably don't, if everything's on the level, you don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Like you don't want to look too hard.

And then it's also like, why the fuck would someone do that? Why would someone do that? Right. It doesn't make sense. Like the problem, the solve of the problem of like this couldn't be him. Well, that means someone's pretending to be him. Well, there's no way someone would pretend to be him.

That is a very logical kind of therefore it's him. It must be him. The hard part of it is there are people who would do this for reasons that aren't familiar to us because we wouldn't do it doesn't mean someone else wouldn't do it. Right. Right. And it's the late nineties.

So the internet isn't really a thing in most homes. Such a different time. Yeah. And like all the scams we know about don't happen yet. Oh, all the information of like, these are, here's what's actually going on. This is, it used to be an urban myth. No, actually that's real, but it's worse than you think.

And it's like those days started when I was like 21, where I was like, oh, I guess I'm a compulsive liar. And it's like, no, we all were. It's like, my aunts would tell me urban legends, like that it happened to their neighbor, or whatever that's we all did that. And then Snopes came along and ruined it for everyone. Yes, we all got to be smarter. Yeah, so they weren't as onto it as we are, I feel like now. Okay. So this guy, Charlie Parker, the thing that he focuses in on are the earlobes. Cause he knows that earlobes don't change throughout one's life.

Yeah. You are born with the earlobes attached to your head. They're going to stay that way. And he sees that Nicholas in his photo has earlobes attached to his head and the kid sitting in front of him. Yeah. Touch your fucking earlobes. Yours are, yours are attached. Are they? Yeah, what about mine? Mine are a little, little not. I can't see.

They're far away. I bet it's like a belly button too, right? That's stupid. Okay. Um. So yeah, so his earlobes aren't attached. So the private investigator, Charlie Parker, he is pretty open about the fact that he doesn't think Frederick is who he says he is. He basically like calls the family. He's like, that's not your boy. And the mom is like, what are you

talking about? Yes, it is. Charlie Parker made sure that Frederick knew that he was sure that Frederick was not Nicholas. So he was on to his shit. And an FBI agent was also skeptical, like being able to tell that he obviously had bleached his hair, you know, and had dark roots. It's like that simple. And this FBI agent asks both Frederick and Beverly, the mother, to give DNA samples and they both refuse, which is suspicious. Yeah, it is.

Yes. Basically, he's there for like two months and then starts to lose steam. He's living with the sister in a trailer home on the floor of her son's bedroom. He's like, this kind of sucks. He's going to high school. He's not having what he thought would be a great time in the U.S. And so after a few months of living as Nicholas, he confesses to both Beverly and to Charlie Parker, the private investigator, that he is not who he says he is. Jason, Nicholas's older brother, dies of an overdose not long after Frederick has revealed himself. but overdose not long after Frederick has revealed himself.

And so several investigators and Frederick will imply that the whole time Jason and Beverly, the brother and mother of Nicholas, somehow had known what really happened to Nicholas. And they knew from the very beginning that Frederick could not have been Nicholas because they knew for whatever reason that Nicholas was dead. They had to pretend to believe this imposter so they could cover for themselves.

That is a very creepy turn in that documentary. When that happened in the documentary, I didn't even put that together until they said it in the documentary. I was like, holy shit. Yeah. That makes so much more sense of why they would believe this fucking adult man with, you know, French accent is their kid.

It's that they didn't believe it. They didn't and they need it. It was like, oh, this is a perfect cover. It's a perfect cover. And if we say no, it's not. Then it's going to get reopened to. Yeah. The case. Wild. So fucking wild.

But no one's ever charged with a crime. The case doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, which is so sad. And Frederick says he thinks several family members actually knew that he was faking the whole time and knows what really happened to Nicholas Barclay. And he admits that what he did to them was cruel, obviously. Frederick is ultimately sentenced to six years in prison, which is a pretty harsh sentence for his crimes,

which are perjury and obtaining false documents. Because every time this happens, authorities don't know what to charge him with. Because he hasn't stolen from anyone. He's not, it's, he's just faking being who he is. Yeah, six years is, feels like they're trying to prove a point or that it got like the case itself got famous. So they had to do it.

Or everyone got duped. And so they're like, yeah. Well, most of Nicholas's family's angry and heartbroken Beverly. Nicholas's mother isn't. She tells David Grand quote, I feel sorry for him. You know, we got to know him and this kid has been through hell. He has a lot of nervous habits. He did a lot of things that took a lot of guts, if you think about it, end quote. True. So after his release from prison in 2003,

Frederick returns to Europe, goes right back to impersonating various missing children, but he is caught quickly each time. In 2005 in France, now 31 year old Frederick once again winds up in a shelter for children. Like again, he's doing it. And he's 31. He says he had been in a horrible car accident

that killed the rest of his family, that he had then been sent to live with an uncle who had abused him and that he escaped. And so he says that he's covered in scars and burns from the accident. So he's given a private room. He's allowed to wear a hat at the school he ends up going to, which they don't let anyone else

wear hats, they have like uniforms. And it seems like everyone loved him there. He got popular with the kids. I think the teachers and the administrators like felt sad for him and kind of, you know, took them under his wing. He was charming and charismatic and people were drawn to him. And he kind of got what he wanted, which was like a home.

Well, then good, right? Yeah, but not for long. Oh, so he settles into this home. But then one night, a school administrator is watching TV and sees a special about an infamous serial imposter named Frederick Bourdain, who looks just like the snooze student that everyone loves. So she freaks out. She tells the leadership, they call the police. She also, you're thinking, I'm thinking to myself, like, if they all loved him, what if they had been like, oh, well, and like, let him stay there. He's not hurting anyone. Right? Is he just he's using up services that a kid might actually need?

Definitely. Definitely. So they realize it's Frederick. He, you know, they take his hat off. He doesn't have scars under his hat, but he is balding. And that's why he wanted to keep the hat on. Oh. Cause he's like, I don't look like a kid. I don't look like a 16 year old anymore.

I'm fucking 31. Yeah. And the jig is up. The local prosecutor tells David Graham, the journalist, quote, in my 22 years on the job, I've never seen a case like it. Usually people con for money. His profit seems to have been purely emotional, end quote. So after this last con, Frederick

seems to settle down, at least for a while. In 2007, he gets married. He and his wife have five children. And it seems like he wants to set a good example for his kids and so he stops, you know, pulling these pranks. He also now looks like an adult so it's kind of impossible to... Wait, wait, that's so beautiful. I know, I know.

He made his own home. He made his own home and family. That's all it took. Still in 2008 when David Graham asked if he's a changed man, he says, quote, no, this is who I am, end quote. Yes. Thank you. Honesty. Yeah. And it does seem like he's like, this is the way, he just accepts it, you know? And he's like, I don't want to be a monster. I've never wanted to be a monster, but this is how I am. Yeah. There's never been any answers in the Nicholas Barclay case. And that is the story of the chameleon, Frederick Bourdain. Wow.

That was great. I mean, it's so frustrating that the Nicholas Barclay case just disappears. Like there's just no solution. And even with this, because of course, there's also like in the movie version, in the Hollywood version, this kid who has this obsession with like impersonating younger people and trying to get the love he wants would help solve the Nicholas Barclay case.

Yeah, like we need answers in this one. It's one of those cold cases that you hate. And now I'm mad about it too. Right. And it's also, it should have been investigated better. Definitely. It shouldn't have been exploitable. I feel like San Antonio's gotta be such a,

like where would his body be? Well, in the documentary, the guy becomes convinced that that kid is buried in the backyard. Fuck. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which is like, but then they dig and they don't find anything and so they have to like not talk about it anymore.

But it was like one of those things where it almost is satisfying and then it's like, no. It's so sad. Just this like rebellious kid for obvious reasons. Like when they're like 12 year olds are bad and they have to go to juvie and it's like that's not true. No, no, they're not. They're a circumstance of their home life, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, good one. Thank you. You too. Should we do some of their,

what are you even doing right now? So we can just kind of end on a high note. Yes. We ask you now a day's, what are you even doing right now? When you listen kind of end on a high note? Yes, we ask you nowadays, what are you doing right now when you listen to My Favorite Murder and now we're going to tell you what you're even doing right now? You're going to tell us and we're going to tell you what people have told us. That's right. Okay, you want to go first? You want me to go first? Go ahead.

Okay. This is emailed to us. It says, I live in Maui, Hawaii and work for an ecotourist whale watching at Snorkel Company. My job is to find and train marine biologists to narrate whale watches and teach people how to save the ocean. I like to listen to my favorite murder while watching humpback whales. That's amazing.

I know more than once. I've heard your voices at the same time with a live broadcast of whale singing over our hydrophone and an underwater microphone, that it says, you sound great together. Yeah, we do edit a fucking non-packed whale. Okay, as a child whose family had a National Geographic subscription and one of those magazines came with a little vinyl 45 of whale songs that I listen to all the time. May I tell you that is the most exciting news of all time. Oh my God.

You did a TikTok duet with a Huckback Whale. The whales. Oh my God, that's so good. Okay, should I do mine? Yeah. Okay, let's see. This is from S.Christopherakis. And they say, what am I doing?

Cutting olives, hand cutting so many olives. How many hand cut olives? 1.5 hours of hand cut Kalamata fucking olives. Why? Yeah, whales and olives, whales and olives. That's it? Well, I gotta know why. Making a big Greek salad for a fucking buffet?

Do they work at Round Table Pizza? It could be a thousand reasons. Tell us, what are you even doing right now, wherever you can think to get ahold of us. Please. Thanks so much for listening, you guys. Yes. We appreciate you. We're glad we didn't hang up on you

at the beginning of this episode. It's so nice that you stayed on the phone this entire time because this was a great call. It was a conference call with you and me and everybody listening. Yep, and everyone and we appreciate you guys. And we really want you to stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.

Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squillace. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin. Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder and Twitter at MyFaveMurder.

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