The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 18 - The Chameleon
Episode Date: August 25, 2014Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds discuss Frédéric Pierre Bourdin, The Chameleon.Tour DatesSources - Main Source - "The Chameleon" by David Grann in The New Yorker Magazine Dollop MerchPatreon...
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Welcome to the dollop. We have a music
transitions into the new song. Welcome to the dollop. It's a tiny, tiny
history story. No, no, no, no, buddy. No, we did not discuss this.
Welcome to the dollop. My name is Dave Anthony. I'm here with Gary.
Here is. Reynolds. Reynolds is a Welshman. Don't you leave that last name you fucker.
Leave me pieces of my identity. This one starts in France.
On June 13th, 1974, Frédéric Pierre Boudin was born. He was the illegitimate son of
Ghislaine Boudin who was 18. It's really it's a fucking nightmare.
This is like my personal hell. I actually just eliminated some of the
names. The shopkeeper. She was 18 and poor when
she gave birth. The father was married to someone else. So she ran off and had the
kid alone. Okay.
Mom liked to drink and dance and stay out at night. She didn't want to have anything to
do with her kid. She raised a Frederick until he was two and a half when child services intervened.
At that point, mothering's done. Yeah, the work's over. They're formed.
Indeed. No, they are two and a half. Yeah.
A lot of shit's happened. Yeah, it's called imprinting.
They smoke in France. And yeah, they start smoking it too.
Frederick says that his mother had a dire need for attention. Okay.
And on rare occasions that he did see her, she would feign being deathly ill and make
him run to get help. So when her kid was around, she would fall over and go, Oh God,
I'm dying, help. Again? And he would run to get people.
Well. So it's a classic mother-son relationship. I know that it is going to, it won't affect
him. No. How?
Stuff like that never creeps up. No, no, that's just something. It's fine.
It's totally fine. There's no way that's going to affect this person.
It's fine to do that. And that's the end of the story.
Oh man, I knew it would be fine. I knew it would be fine. I just had a feeling everything
could be fine, fine, fine. Okay. So when he was five, he moved in with his
grandparents. So wait, this is before he was five that this shit was happening?
Yeah. Oh my God. And then I'm sure after, like, because if he was with the grandparents,
I'm sure that she kept doing it. Mom's going to come by today to pretend to be
dead for a little while. Are you excited, Frederick? Get your weeping clothes. Go get
your current chief. You're going to be weeping today.
So what she's doing is she realizes that she's completely fucked this kid over. So when
she sees him, she's so emotionally distraught that she can't handle the emotion of having
fucked over another human being that came out of her. So she falls over and acts like
she's dying. That's a good plan, babe.
And then he runs off. So she's got it all worked out.
Yeah. No, that's fine. That's a good audible.
Yep. He was a part Algerian. His dad was Algerian. And without a dad in the village,
he became the village outcast. Cool. Because they have a huge Algerian problem in France.
Right. They're not treated well. And school he began to tell fabulous stories about himself.
He said that his father was never around because he was a British secret agent.
Don't tell anyone else though. He'll be so pissed if he knows that I'm using this to
show and tell. And everyone was like, yeah.
No, I can tell because you're Algerian. And your mom almost died 30 times last month.
He increasingly misbehaved, acting out in class and stealing from neighbors at 12.
He was sent to live in a private facility for juveniles. So the warmest turned.
Yeah. I don't feel good about his future.
Oh, you don't? No.
What?
I'm filled with pessimism. The glass is totally empty.
Bourdain often pretended to be an amnesiac. Intentionally getting lost on the streets.
So he would just walk out and be like, I don't know who I am. Excuse me.
Excuse me. Where?
I fell off a boat yesterday. Hello.
I just rolled up the shore. I had the bread. Do you know who I am?
Help me. I don't know.
Yeah. So what is, so, okay, that's the setup. What's the next part?
What's the benefit of the amnesia bit?
In 1990, after he turned 16, Bourdain hitchhiked to Paris where scared and hungry, he approached
a police officer and told him that he was a lost British teen named Jimmy Sale.
Hello, I am Jimmy Sale. How are you?
I'm British.
I like the crumpy.
I have two normal parents and I just forgot where I am. Please feed me and close me.
I would like to go back to London.
My mother never pretended to die. Please help me.
I'm from Liverpool.
He dreamt that they would send him to England where he thought life was more beautiful.
Oh, in France.
Buddy, you're going to miss France so fast.
I want to go see the trends in factories.
I want to find out what it's like to have stew for every meal.
Tell me what the doll is.
So, so when the police discovered that he spoke almost no English, he admitted his deceit.
You've got me.
We're an investigative detective.
I'm not British at all.
As you can tell by the fact that I only knew how to say five words.
You're a genius.
You're good. You're good. You're good.
You're very thorough.
Let's kiss on cheese.
He then began to wander across Europe, moving in and out of orphanages and foster homes using fake aliases.
So, he's just wants to join up and live in places where he's taken care of.
Yes.
He's now getting past the age where he's, he should be living there.
He's graduated.
He's getting 18 in years where you don't live in an orphanage anymore.
I mean, that would be a great show, like a 30-year-old in an orphanage.
Oh, come on. Please give me more gruel.
Next episode of Buzzing Weirdos.
So, just two dudes.
Jimmy, you want to play a game? You're 40, man.
Yeah, you want to play or what? You want to play catch?
I went wee-wee my pants again. You are 39, sir.
Sorry, I had another accident.
Oh, am I 39?
Am I 39?
Or am I four?
Or am I eight? You don't know.
You don't know? Look at me. I'm playing with blogs.
Hello.
On the June 13th, 1992, after he had posed as more than a dozen fictional children,
Bordeen turned 18 and became a legal adult.
Now.
Legal.
Yeah.
Not actual.
He kept doing what he was doing.
Yeah.
By the mid-90s, he had accumulated a criminal record for lying to police and magistrates
in interpool, and other authorities were increasingly looking for him.
So now, word is out there. There's a dude out there who's like 20 who's trying to get
into orphanages by acting like he's younger.
Totally normal.
Pretty cool.
Super cool, man.
That's a pretty cool thing to do.
Bordeen insists that all he wanted was love and a family.
Uh-huh. Okay.
I mean, I know.
In America at this time, near San Antonio, on June 13th, 1994, at the age of 13, Nicholas
Barkley disappeared. He was last seen according to his file wearing a t-shirt, purple pants,
black tennis shoes, and carrying a pink backpack. That's upsetting.
That's tough.
That's probably tough to tell the police.
What was your boy wearing?
What was your boy wearing?
It was like a reddish color.
He's a boy. I mean, he's a boy.
He's a man. My son's a man.
I actually think that his red backpack fell in some water. So it has a pink here.
But it was red. It was a red bag.
Well, he got in the wash.
He got in the wash. It was a red bag.
Might look pink now.
Yeah, it might look a little pink. It faded like a faded, a faded red.
A little faded red, maybe, but yeah. He's a boy.
The faded red, but then the little colors came out. So it's like a hot.
He loves girls.
It's like a hot pink.
My boy's always talking about ladies.
I can't get the penasses out of him.
I mean, really?
He's a jerk-off machine.
I mean, when he's here, he's not here right now.
He's not here right now. He's got a pink bag.
Nicholas came from a poor broken family.
He had almost no relationship with his father.
Interesting.
Hmm.
Who for a long time didn't know that he even had a son.
Nicholas was sweet. He was lonely, but he was combustible.
He craved attention and was often in trouble at school.
Sound familiar?
Mm-hmm.
He had been caught stealing a pair of tennis shoes,
and his mother had planned on putting him in a youth home.
I couldn't handle him anymore, she recalls.
I couldn't control him.
She was a tough, heavy-set woman with a broad face
and dyed brown hair.
She worked the graveyard shift at a Dunkin Donuts in San Antonio
seven nights a week.
She had never married Nicholas's father and had raised Nicholas
with her two older children, Carrie and Jason.
She was also a heroin addict.
Oh, okay.
She had struggled during Nicholas's youth to get off drugs.
After he disappeared, she began to use heroin again
and was now addicted to methadone.
But she was a very functioning drug addict.
She was the kind of drug addict that would go to work at Dunkin Donuts
and there would be like, oh, you're a good worker.
You're good. You know what large and small is?
That's really a testament to how much brain power
you need to work in a place where you do is pour in microwave.
That's so true.
Methadone people, like, that'll be $3.29.
There you go. Normal transaction.
Hey, Bev.
I noticed that we didn't make any money again last night.
Yeah.
That's like a year now.
Yeah.
Slow knife.
Sorry.
Slow knife.
When Nicholas was young, he was a diehard Michael Jackson fan
who collected the singer's records and even owned a red leather jacket
like the one Jackson wears in his thriller video.
Do you know who was also a huge Michael Jackson fan?
Bourdine.
Bourdine was also a huge Michael Jackson fan
who was known for moonwalking and dancing just like Michael Jackson.
At some point, he probably told the cop who was Michael Jackson.
Excuse me.
I'm just a British Michael Jackson and I have lost myself.
My mother was normal.
Is that me back to Neverland yet?
It is.
It supports me to never, never land a ranch.
In October, 1987, Bourdine was out of youth home in Spain.
A welfare, a child welfare judge who was handling his case
gave him 24 hours to prove that he was a teenager.
Otherwise, he would take his fingerprints which run fire with Liverpool.
Now, what in the fuck is happening with Spain that you're like,
alright, in 24 hours, you're going to show me that you're a teenager
or we'll do it.
Just fucking take his fingerprints.
Welcome to the court of movie plot.
You have 24 hours to prove you're a teenager.
20th Century Fox presents.
Yes, but I don't know.
Now, 20 actually, a man's journey.
I don't know how to prove it.
I want order in this court.
I had 24 hours.
John Travolta.
Oh my God.
Justin Bieber.
Out of order.
24 to boy.
24 to team.
What a fucking crazy judge.
Oh yeah, the judge.
Just like taking his fingerprints and it's all over.
There's no way that the bailiff was like.
What could go wrong?
Hey, show me that you're who you say you are in 24 hours
and let me just say this, nothing can go wrong.
Alright, the honorable judge fun.
I like to keep it a little spicy in the court.
Bordeen knew that as an adult with a criminal record,
he would likely face prison this time.
He had already tried to run away once and was caught by the staff
keeping an eye on him.
Okay, that makes sense.
Bordeen had always invented identities.
He'd always made up the identities of people,
but this time he did something different.
He asked permission to use the telephone in the shelter's office
and called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
in Alexandria, Virginia.
Speaking in English, he claimed that he was a director of the shelter.
He said that a frightened child that turned up
who did not want to disclose his identity,
but he spoke English with an American accent.
Bordeen offered a description of the boy that matched himself.
His shortness, light, a prominent chin, brown hair,
a gap between his teeth.
And his mother was always pretending to die.
You know, American teeth.
And asked if the center had anyone similar in its database.
And after searching, a woman at the center said
that the boy might be Nicholas Barkley,
who had been reported missing in San Antonio on June 13th, 1994.
Oh, no.
She asked if the center, why do you say that?
Because, dude.
I see what's happening.
She asked if the center could send more information
that it had regarding Barkley.
Or he asked, sorry.
The woman that said that she could mail overnight
Barkley's missing person flyer
and immediately faxed a copy as well.
The faxed pronoun was so faint
that most of it was illegible.
It's okay.
There you go.
There you go.
Legible.
Oh, boy.
This got worse.
Glubble.
Glubble again.
I think you mean legible, right?
Instead of legible.
Glubble.
Legible.
Glubble.
Legible.
It's still.
Just move on.
I'll just say it for you.
Do they do this on NPR?
Yes, I think so.
Still, the photographs resemblance to him was close.
He quickly called back the center
and he told the woman, I have some good news.
Nicholas Barkley is standing right beside me.
What a fucking ass hat.
There's some woman who probably has lost a child
who's now working in a center to find children
and he's just given her hope.
He's just given her the best fucking news she's ever,
ever had since she's been working at the kids
or never found center.
It's all because of the fun judge.
Right.
24 hours.
What could go wrong?
Let's ruin two lives.
I want to see how many wrong lives you could ruin.
24 hours.
Go.
Someone go with it.
Be a counter.
Someone count.
A lady, she gave the number to the officer
in the San Antonio police department
who was in charge of the investigation.
This time, pretending to be a Spanish policeman,
he phoned the officer and declared the missing child
that had been found.
So he's fucking straight up on the offensive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what he's doing is just proving that he's a teenager.
Right.
Yeah.
That's all he's trying to do.
Right.
That's what I figured.
But in the process.
I mean, things are kind of opening up here.
Hey, political lateral damage.
The officer contacted the FBI and the US Embassy in Madrid.
The next day at the shelter, Bourdine intercepted a package
from the National Center for Missing and Exploded Children.
He ripped the envelope open.
Inside was a clean copy of Nicholas Barclay's
missing person flyer.
It showed a color photograph of a small, fair-skinned boy
with blue eyes and blonde hair.
The flyer listed several identifying features, including
a cross tattooed between Barclay's right index finger
and thumb.
Not only did Bourdine not have the same tattoo,
his eyes were brown and his hair was brown.
So we've got some obstacles.
Yeah.
That's being fair.
Most of it a kind of shitty moment for him.
And I was like, fuck, this is way off.
Ah, man.
Shit, this is so much different.
This boy is different.
Where am I going to get the tattoo on my hand today?
Shit, a piece of fuck.
He has three hours.
He might have to be back in cars.
He burned the flyer.
Then also, who the fuck is watching these kids at the shelter?
Yeah.
He burned the flyer, then went into the bathroom
and bleached his hair.
OK.
But who in the fuck?
So he's just in front of the judge.
Right.
There's all this staff who knows he doesn't
have blonde hair.
Yes.
And all of a sudden, he walks out of the bathroom and they go,
who are you?
Yeah.
I'm Nicholas.
Yeah.
But I mean, really, it's not like this whole plan,
there's not a lot of forethoughts.
No, it's a terrible plan.
Because, I mean, really, the judge will be like, OK,
your hair is different.
My hair has always been like this.
My hair is not only different from what I am in America.
Yeah.
I'm American.
My name is Nicholas Gosperos.
Yeah, fuck you.
I am America.
Fuck you.
I love everything.
Pancakes and coffee beans.
What's up?
So he burned the flyer.
He went into the bathroom, bleached his hair,
and then he had a friend give him the tattoo in the same place,
using ink from a pen, like dug it in.
Like, not a real.
Sounds like a possibly infected tattoo.
Yeah.
It's something you could wash off, probably.
He tried to conceive of a story that would explain his eyes.
Yeah.
Right?
Blue eyes.
Blue eyes to brown.
Close.
What if he had been abducted by a child sex ring and flown to Europe
where he'd been tortured and abused and experimented on?
Huh?
That would explain the eyes, right?
Yeah.
If everybody's a moron.
Yeah.
That would explain the eyes.
Yeah.
Like, if everybody around him is a fucking idiot.
Yeah.
It perfectly explains the eyes.
Yeah.
It sounds like you might be in the right court for this lie.
That is fucking amazing, though.
It is like they were molesting us and raping us,
and then, you know, doing medical experiments on it.
Wait, what?
So what were they doing?
They were just jacks of all trades.
They love to rape and discover science.
And change eye color.
One of the things they worked on for years
was how to change someone's eye color.
I saw some give one boy four nostrils.
Sectured one kid's eyes pink?
It is insane what they were doing.
Made one guy have black ears.
It was a whole thing.
It was like Mr. Patato's head.
One boy became a pony.
So, Jesus Christ.
So, that's what he said.
He said, and the kidnappers injected chemicals into his eyes
that changed his eye color.
He said he'd lost his Texas accent
because he had been in captivity for three years
and they refused to let him to speak English.
Yeah.
He had escaped from a locked room in a house.
No accents.
Ran away.
Perfect.
Who wouldn't buy this?
Hey, listen.
I mean, it sounds like a really good normal story
that I would believe.
Right.
Yeah.
That's why it looks different.
Soon after.
He changed his eye color.
Soon after.
Mid-malesting.
On a molesting halftime they were like,
let's change his eyes.
I only like to do molest boys, brown eyes.
No accents.
No accents.
There'll be no English.
You need a French accent.
We had a meeting, a molester's meeting,
and we came up with these two things.
We want everyone to have three things,
brown hair, brown eyes, and no accents.
All right.
Actually, we want French accents.
Sorry.
French accents.
French accents.
Really authentic French accents.
Brown eyes, brown hair.
And then we'll molest you some more.
Okay, guys.
Sound good.
All right.
And everybody get their hands in.
All right.
And go.
Soon after the phone, after the phone in the office rang,
and it was Nicholas Barkley's 31-year-old half-sister,
Carrie.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
My God, Nikki, is that you, she asked.
Wait, wait.
I mean, yes.
Bourdine said, yes, it is me.
Listen to me.
Same as always.
Quietly, you know.
Muffled tones.
Yes, it is.
It is I.
It's me coming, Nick.
Hello, mother.
Sorry, sister.
How is it?
What is the Spare's record?
Is it good?
Who looks good in the West?
So, Nicholas's mother Beverly got on the phone.
After the childlike voice on the other end said that he wanted to come home,
she told, she said, I was dumbfounded and blown away.
Carrie had often held the family together during Beverly's struggles with drug addiction.
And since Nicholas's parents, her mother and brother had never seen the same.
Carrie volunteered to go to Spain to bring Nicholas home.
And the company she worked for offered to pay the flight for the flight.
Because it's a big, if you're a company, holy shit.
No, go.
Yeah, but I'm thinking about what the fuck is the Frederique guy?
What the fuck?
This is not lining up well.
Don't you believe in happy endings?
You're such a pessimist.
Yeah, Dave, why do you think I'm a fucking pessimist?
Have you been on this podcast?
This is going to end beautifully.
No, it's not.
No, you've already told me this once.
You don't know that.
I do, too.
Something's going to happen.
No.
I mean, it's already happening.
It's beautiful.
What's happening is beautiful.
No, the wheels are in motion for a train wreck.
The family is finding their son.
No, they're not.
He's a fucking French loser.
Oh, such a pessimist.
When she arrived at the shelter a few days later,
accompanied by an official from the U.S. Embassy.
Jesus Christ.
Bourdine, after wrapping his face in a scarf
and putting on a hat and sunglasses, came out of the room.
So what?
Like a jawa comes out.
Like he's the invisible man in public.
I can't wait to hear what the fuck is his plan.
So I medically had the scarf put on my face
and I can never remove it.
But I'm yours.
You are mine.
You are what you are.
I still don't think he has a plan.
I think it's just all unraveling.
There was no rattle.
It's not unraveling.
It was unraveled.
Carrie rushed towards him and hugged him.
Carrie had never traveled outside the United States
except for partying in Tijuana
and was unfamiliar with European accents
and with Spain.
After Nicholas disappeared,
she often watched television shows
about lurid child abduction.
So she was sort of programmed to believe
this is what happened to him.
Right.
Wow.
She had the burden of deciding
as her family's representative
whether this was her long lost brother
and it was.
Oh, fuck.
It was.
No, it wasn't.
It was so great.
It's great.
Even though he had a small French accent
and brown eyes,
Carrie says that she had little doubt
that it was Nicholas.
Yep.
Not when his nose now looks so much
like her Uncle Pat's.
Yeah.
His nose, what she is saying there
is that his nose has changed
to finally look like Uncle Pat's nose.
And new eyes.
And new eyes.
Listen, you know how these molesters are.
They want different eyes.
They want different noses
and different eyes.
It's a game to them.
You know, they're talking tattoos, Nicholas.
Your heart takes over
and you want to believe Carrie said,
she showed Bordeen photographs
of the family and he studied each one.
This is my mother.
This is my brother.
This is my grandfather.
There's Uncle Pat.
His nose I haven't talked to in those years.
And neither American
nor Spanish officials raised any
questions once Carrie-
Why would?
Had vouched for him.
Nicholas had gone.
I've been gone for only three years
and the FBI was not primed
not primed to be suspicious of someone claiming to be a missing child.
That's fair.
No, it isn't.
Because they should...
I just find out whether...
Okay.
Tell me about the kid.
Oh.
He wasn't French.
Did you take his...
Why didn't you take his fingerprints?
Oh, I mean...
Like...
Yeah.
He has brown eyes to what is happening in Europe.
This is the 90s.
This is not the 1880s.
When there's shit printouts going to be...
Yeah.
There are ways to know...
Jesus Christ.
But in a way, you can also...
I guess you can understand a little bit if you are some of the people who are, like, going
to let this happen.
If she's like, it's him, you're probably a little more like, oh, well, fuck.
I mean, it's his sister.
Right.
She's saying it.
Right.
Maybe it is.
It must be.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
But still.
Carrie swore under oath that Bourdine was her brother and an American sister.
He was given a U.S. passport the next day and was on a flight to San Antonio.
Well...
Happy ending.
All right.
Do you have any dates?
Anything you would plug?
What?
It's happened.
I like it.
I like it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Halfway to America.
Oh, there's more.
Oh, yeah.
There is.
There's a little tiny bit more.
Okay.
Halfway to America, he began to freak out as Carrie puts it, trembling and sweating.
As she tried to comfort him, he told her that he thought the plane was going to crash.
Oh, and my eyes are brown.
I swear, as my eyes are blue, this plane is going to crash.
So when the plane landed, members of Nicholas's family were waiting for him at the airport.
Bourdine recognized them from the photographs that she'd shown him.
So he's already like...
He knows.
Hello, brother.
So Beverly, Nicholas's mother, Carrie's husband, Brian, Brian and Carrie's 14-year-old son,
Cody, their 10-year-old daughter, Chantel.
Only Nicholas's brother, Jason, who was a recovering jug addict and living in San Antonio
was not there.
Only Jason didn't come.
Bourdine was bundled up in his scarf and his whole deal.
He had this little man arise in San Antonio.
His glasses hiding his eyes tattooed covered by gloves.
The family rushed to embrace him, saying how much they missed him.
We're all just emotionally crazy, Cody recalls.
Nicholas's mother, however, hung back.
So Beverly hangs back.
She's not rushing in.
She just didn't seem excited the way you expect from someone seeing their son for the first time in three years.
Eventually, she came over and greeted him.
But something was off.
It was Beverly now.
Well, on the ride home, he just sat by his mom and talked to his cousin about how much he missed school
and kept asking when he'd see Jason.
Jason, Bourdine stayed with Carrie and Brian instead of his mom.
I mean, she worked and she was a methadone addict.
That makes it hard to watch a kid.
Full-time job on its own.
Luckily, Carrie and Brian lived in a remote, desolate trailer home out in the woods.
Lovely.
35 miles north of San Antonio.
I'd rather be in a Spain prison.
There was no internet.
I'd rather be in a Spanish prison.
Honestly, in a trailer park.
So he picked the worst family to con.
Like he was probably thinking, oh my God, I'm going to go live in this big house in America.
He was picturing like Beverly Hills 90210.
And then he gets there and they're like, well, that's the pissing hole.
Okay.
So the dog used to sleep there, but that's your bed now.
You want corn pops for dinner?
What kind of cereal do you want for dinner?
Um, I don't.
We got chili, but we don't have a can opener.
My name's Frederic.
Please.
No.
I usually have cheese for dinner.
Hey, shut up.
Alf's on.
He shared a room with Cody.
Oh, the luxury.
It's prison.
He slept on a foam mattress on the floor.
Great.
All worth it.
Bourdain knew that if he were to continue to fool his family, he had to learn everything about them.
He began to mine information.
They secretly rubbing through George drawers and picture albums and watching home videos.
So he's fucking in.
He's trying to become this kid, which is crazy because at this point he, there's no need.
He's gotten what he wants out of the situation.
He just wanted to get the fuck out of jail, right?
Yeah, but he's also like trapped out in the woods now.
Yeah.
But he can't leave again because then reports would go on the news.
But he could.
He could.
He just lets his hair go normal.
He doesn't look like the fucking guy.
I mean, they're not going to, they're going to put out pictures of the real Nicholas and
Frederic will just let his fucking shit go together.
I mean, how are you going to do that on the news?
Now he actually.
But the picture we're showing you is actually experimented on since then and his nose is
different and his eyes are brown.
He was kidnapped by Mengele.
So fuck.
When he would discover a detail about Nicholas pass from one family member, he would then
go and repeat it to another.
So he would act like he remembered stuff.
It's like that time when the dog ran away.
Exactly, Nicholas.
So good to have you back.
He pointed out, for example, that Brian once got mad at Nicholas for knocking Cody out
of a tree.
Do you remember the time when I knocked young Cody out of a tree?
You were so pissed.
Oh, you're so angry.
You're so mad at me.
My name's Nicholas.
You're like mad.
You're like Nicholas.
No, that's you for sure.
Don't do that.
Beverly noticed that Bourdine Nelton in front of the television just as Nicholas had.
Various members of the family said they assumed the strange accent was because of the terrible
treatment he had suffered.
So what the fuck?
That happens though.
Does it?
A lot of kids are molested into different languages.
Yeah, actually, no, I got molested so much I was rushing for about 10 years.
Yeah, it was, they were brutal.
I knew my son was being molested when he started speaking French fluently.
Bourdine and Rowling.
That is so dumb though for them.
No, they're fucking morons.
No, they're fucking morons.
How do they think?
I mean, really?
How could nobody bring facts into the equation?
It's mind-boggling.
You'll learn why later.
Bourdine enrolled in high school and did his homework each night.
Chastise and Cody when he failed to study.
He played Nintendo with Cody.
He watched movies with the family.
When he saw Beverly, he hugged her and said, hi, mom.
Occasionally on Sundays, he attended church with other members of the family.
Once when Kerry was shooting a home movie of Bourdine, he asked him what he was thinking.
And Bourdine said, it's really good to have my family and be home again.
Wee-wee.
He's gotta be going.
I mean, he's already bat shit, but this has to be very stressful.
On November 1st, Charlie Parker, a private investigator, was sitting in his office in San Antonio.
And the telephone rang.
It was a television producer from the show Hard Copy.
Oh, wow.
Who had heard about the extraordinary return of a 16-year-old boy and wanted to hire Parker to help investigate the kidnapping.
Okay.
Parker agreed to take the job.
Parker agreed to shoot the fish in the barrel.
I mean, once, okay.
So on November 6th, Parker arrived at the trailer with a producer and a camera crew.
The family didn't want Bourdine to speak to reporters.
Yeah.
But Bourdine.
You mean Nicholas.
Yes.
Sorry, Nicholas.
I didn't want Nicholas to, but Nicholas, who had been in the country for nearly three weeks, was like, yes, yes, I want to talk.
Come on.
Let me share my story.
It's a crazy story.
Hello, hello, hello.
Let's go.
USA fireworks.
I was fingered to have brown eyes.
Also, the accent is from many men that are buggering.
You know buggering?
Buggering me so much.
I became French and have brown eyes.
You've heard it a thousand times.
I stood off to one side listening intently as the young man relayed his story, but Parker was puzzled by the curious accent.
Really?
Now why?
Finally.
Well, he's from a place called Notfuckingmorons.
Okay.
He's not.
Okay.
I get you.
Parker spied a photograph of the shelf of Nicholas Barkley as a young boy and kept looking at it and then at the person in front of him thinking something was wrong.
Everything's wrong.
Having once read that ears are distinct like fingerprints, he went up to the cameraman and whispered, zoom in on his ears, get one as close as you can.
So he did.
The camera was like, don't tell me I have a fucking job.
Don't, hey, fuck you.
That's not the angle.
Hey, we don't interview ears, dipshit.
His ear didn't come from France after it got abducted, the whole person.
Are you fucking trying to get me fired?
What are you, just some ear perverse?
Oh, so these are ears.
Zoom in on the ears, nice and tight.
I'm going to, I'm going to take my, I'm going to take my penis out of my, I'm going to take my penis out.
Get in on those ears.
Get in on those ears.
Oh my God.
Oh yeah.
Look at that canal.
Um, he stole the photograph of Nicholas Barkley.
Okay.
And then he went back to his office and he compared the ears.
He did an ear comparison.
The ears didn't match.
No.
Wrong fucking ears.
I'm shocked.
He must have really gotten molested if his ears also changed.
Oh my God.
This poor guy must have just been through hell.
Oh, the poor kid.
Parker called several ophthalmologists.
Okay.
That's a tough word.
Yeah.
And asked if he could be changed.
If eyes could be changed from blue to brown by injecting chemicals, the doctor said, no.
Nope.
No, that's not a thing.
Okay.
Bye-bye now.
No, that'd be crazy.
Okay.
Parker also phoned a dialect expert in San Antonio who told him that even if someone had been
helping captivity for three years, he would quickly regain his native accent.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, have you been molested?
He called the no shit hotline.
Hello, no shit hotline.
Hey, when it rains, is that water?
Yes, it is.
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks, you for calling.
Bye-bye.
So, Parker passed on his suspicions to authorities and the San Antonio police didn't give a shit.
They're like, oh, no, that's in the wind column.
No.
We got that over here on the green board.
You want to put it back on the red board?
Well, we're gonna have to call the bus to actually.
And guess what?
There's a private investigator over here who thinks he knows who the kid is and his mom
doesn't.
Hey, everyone.
We're talking about ears.
Hi.
Anybody want to take an ear call?
Hey, Jesus Christ.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
And the ears didn't match.
Take care, buddy.
You know what?
I'd send you over to the ear department, but we don't have one.
Gotta go.
So, Parker passed, so he passed on the suspicions, they didn't care, but Parker was worried that
a dangerous stranger was living with a family.
So, we finally have one person to root for.
We have a person to root for on this story.
Yeah, okay.
And enter the non-idiot.
Yeah.
So, he phoned Beverly and he told her what he discovered.
And she said, nope, that's my son.
But Parker couldn't let it go because there was a foreigner infiltrating a trailer home
in the backwoods of Texas.
Yes.
He should not let it go.
Who he thought was a terrorist.
Oh, wow.
Oh, Jesus.
Okay.
So, okay.
An overreach by Parker.
Okay.
Now, hear me out.
So, here's what happens.
Here's what happens.
Sure.
Terrorists want to get into America, right?
Absolutely.
And so, the best way to do it is to fake being an abducted boy.
Yes.
Nobody's looking for those terrorists.
No.
And it's easy to convince a family that you're somebody else.
Yeah.
A lot of times, terrorists keep doing this.
And the family, families you want to target are the ones who live 35 miles out in the
woods in the middle of nowhere with no internet.
Yeah.
Well, there's a hotspot.
Right.
Yeah.
So, then you can blow up some trees.
You can hurt squirrels.
Hurt American squirrels.
Right.
Take away American squirrels freedom.
Right.
So, we're going to get to the bottom.
Right.
These colors don't run.
No, sir.
No, sir.
No, sir.
No.
No.
Parker started watching Beverly's apartment.
Right.
So, he's doing stakeouts whenever the kid visits.
He's doing non-authorized stakeout.
He's staking it out.
He's stalking.
It's a stalkout.
Okay.
So, he's stalking.
He's stalking a drug addict.
Better.
Better.
Better.
Better.
Better.
Warmer.
When the, when the terrorist comes over.
Okay.
Good.
Who's 16?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The 16-year-old terrorist.
After two months in the United States, Bordeen started to come apart.
Okay.
And you fry everything.
Everything's fried.
But to kill you, there's some fucking asparagus or a piece of broccoli.
Zip bread tastes like pepper.
That's the best.
It's terrible.
This is shit.
This is hard already.
American slices.
But I love the movie stars.
American slices are my fucking cheese.
It's not cheese.
It was your smell.
It was the smell of cheese.
A breed should be a runny.
A runny breed.
Runny!
It's, it's fun to imagine, like, it would be interesting to find out how long it takes
if you really have never had a dose of America, if you're fully ingratiated into it, to find
out how long until you're like, I hate this shit.
He went to fucking America.
Oh yeah.
He went straight to America.
Yeah.
He went to America.
Yeah.
He went to the place where you took our guns is like, said daily.
It's like, good morning.
Daily.
Good morning.
Don't take our guns.
Don't take our guns.
I like to just get a refill on the coffee.
Don't take our guns.
He was moody and aloof.
He stopped attending classes and was then suspended in December.
He took off in Brian and Kerry's car and drove to Oklahoma with the windows down, listening
to Michael Jackson's song screen.
The police pulled him over for speeding and he was arrested.
Beverly Kerry and Brian picked him up at a police station and brought him home.
So the boy is troubled.
Yes.
Another boy.
Just like Nicholas was.
Yes.
Nicholas is.
Well, Nicholas is troubled.
Gone.
Nicholas is troubled.
He's gone.
Shortly before Christmas, Nicholas went to the bathroom, grabbed a razor and began to
mutilate his face.
Smart.
I am not.
You are not me.
I miss my blue eyes so much.
I am a fucking monster.
Look at your monster.
Look, I'm very fucking Christmas, everybody.
I got you.
I got you.
I got you.
I got you.
I got you.
I got you.
I got you.
Scars.
That's what we gonna do in the old fucking cunts.
It would be even weirder if someone gave them a razor because they'd be like, Chuck, why
did you give him a razor.
I thought he liked it.
He's getting out the air for raison.
I didn't know he would cut up his face.
Lord, something's going to appear.
I know we could cut up his face.
He shaved his face off.
putting a psychiatric ward of a local hospital
for several days of observation,
which he probably fucking loved.
He's like, oh, I am back home being taken care of by these.
It's an orphanage, but it was grown-ups.
But I love that there were psychiatrists who didn't,
like a psychiatrist.
Yes, professionals.
They should be trained.
There should be psychologists, psychiatrists are trained.
They can tell when there's something off about it.
That's their job.
Yes, that's it.
He's there for a value in it.
I mean, the whole thing is to be like, find problems.
Right.
Find the issues.
Find the issues.
Yes.
Issues being, you're not the person.
Issues being, everything is a lie, wouldn't you?
Doctors judged Bourdine to be stable enough
to return to Kerry's trailer.
I mean, you have to air quote doctors then, because-
Also, there's no way they have good insurance, right?
And where they are, too.
They're probably like, oh, he's sick, he's fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, he doesn't seem that weird.
He says he's who he is.
We've got another guy who's supposed to come in.
Maybe we just let him go.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah.
That sounds good.
All right.
Okay.
You want potato chips?
Yep.
Oh, I love them.
I'm gonna get some chili and dip it in there.
I'm gonna eat chili with my hands.
That boy with the brown hands is gone, right?
Yeah.
I don't know.
I think that was yesterday.
We've been talking about food for a day.
Oh, God, I said, I'm a gun.
But he remained disquieted and increasingly wondered,
what happened to the real Nicholas Barkley?
Who? Wait.
So.
Bourdine.
Bourdine is now like.
A little French boy.
Where's the real me?
Well, our little French boy is like,
it's not in French, he's 18,
but he's like, he's getting a weird sense.
Okay.
So he's living here and he's going crazy,
but he's like, something is off.
So he thinks.
It's him.
He's off.
Something's not right about this situation.
No, no, nothing's right about that.
Everything's wrong about this situation.
Parker, you're not him.
You know that, right?
Mother seems distant.
No, no, no, no, no.
Let me be him till we find out the crime.
I will solve my own kidnapping.
Wait, wait, wait.
Like OJ.
Like OJ, dude.
I want to find the real Nicholas.
Wait.
Wait.
Just keep me on the cover for another month.
He just walks up to people and goes,
have you seen this boy?
He just gestures to his own face.
Have you seen this boy?
Have you seen this boy?
We seek his eyes, maybe blue now.
So.
This guy's already lost his shit,
but now he's like, what's the fight, the guy?
What?
He like wants to trip himself up.
Come on, he's in.
He's been living.
He's been living as the boy.
He wants to know who took himself.
Look, twinsies.
I found him.
Yeah.
So how come he's back together again?
When Samuel listed me, I turned into two people.
Samuel listed me so much, I parted.
I fragmented into two beings.
So Parker, investigator Parker,
also was wondering what happened.
Yeah.
And he started to gather information
and interview Nicholas's neighbors.
Always a good call.
At the time, Nicholas disappeared in 1994.
He was living with Beverly
in a small one story house in San Antonio.
Nicholas's half brother, Jason,
who you will remember did not show up at the airport,
was 24 back then and moved in with them.
Jason was wiring strong with,
he had long, brown curly hair and a comb
tucked into the back pocket of his jeans.
So he was in the movie, The Outsiders.
Yes, so he was pony boy.
So he had burn marks on his body and face.
At 13, he had lit a cigarette
after filling a lawn mower with gasoline
and it accidentally set him on self on fire.
Now that's just Texas.
Yeah, the word accidentally is not fair.
You know the deal.
Stupidly, stupidly lit himself on fire.
Oh man, I realized I'm covered gas
but I could really use some fire, right?
Hey, you guys know what flammable means?
I just learned it when I lit my face on fire.
So Jason always thought he would be alone
because of his scars.
He used to strum Leonard's singing songs
on his guitar and sketch portraits of his friends.
Though he had only completed high school,
he was bright and articulate.
He had a very addictive personality like his mother,
often drinking heavily and using cocaine.
So that's the older bro.
Sounds fun, sketch your friends and do blow.
When Nicholas disappeared,
Beverly and Jason told police
that Nicholas had been playing basketball
three days earlier and called his house from a pay phone
wanting a ride home.
Jason answered the phone and told Nicholas to walk home
but Nicholas never made it.
What?
What?
There it is.
Ah, Jason, Jason.
What?
Yeah.
What?
Fuck yeah.
Dude, police initially thought he had run away
even though he hadn't taken any money or possessions.
Just after Nicholas disappeared,
there were several disturbances at Beverly's house.
On July 12th, she called police.
Though when an officer arrived,
she insisted that she was all right.
Jason told the officer that his mother was drinking
and screaming at him because her other son ran away.
A few weeks later, Beverly called police again
about what authorities described as family violence.
Jason was asked to leave the house for a day.
On September 25th, police received another call.
This time from Jason, he claimed that his younger brother
returned and tried to break into the garage
and flee when Jason saw him.
In his report, the officer on duty said
he had checked the area for Nicholas
but was unable to locate him.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What?
Oh yeah.
I'm right, I get it.
I know where we're going.
Jason's behavior grew more erratic.
He was arrested for using force against a police officer.
Beverly kicked him out of the house.
He went on a bad drunk bitch
and was shooting cocaine for a long time.
Jesus.
The family thought Jason felt guilty
for not picking you up, Nicholas,
from basketball practice.
Yep.
In late 1996, Jason checked himself
into a rehabilitation center and weaned himself off drugs.
Well, not himself.
After he finished the program,
he served as a counselor there
and he was still there when Nicholas turned up
at the airport claiming to be his missing brother.
Uh-huh.
But Jason did not come to see, Nicholas,
until he had been there for a month and a half.
Okay.
Even then, he was standoffish.
Right.
He never hugged Bordeen
and kept eyeing him from across the room.
Uh-huh.
Finally.
Jason then asked Nicholas to come outside.
He gave Nicholas a gold cross,
put it around his neck and left
and Bordeen never saw him again.
So that was probably to save him from vampires.
Yeah, what?
I really was hoping he'd be like,
look, I know you're not my son.
I know, right?
Instead, he was like,
look, there's something I gotta tell you.
But maybe he did.
Maybe outside he did say,
you know my fucking brother?
Here's a cross.
Here, why don't you fucking find God, you bitch?
Yeah.
And he said, oh, thank you very much.
Thank you.
What, these bitch?
Thank you.
What you talk about?
I don't know.
I got you this.
Sorry, you got kidnapped.
Here's a cross.
Later.
Bordeen immediately thought that Jason knew
what had happened to Nicholas.
Uh-huh.
But that's a nightmare.
Yeah.
You can see how there's problem.
It's because you're the one guy
who knows who killed the kid,
but you're posing as the kid.
It's the classic catch 22.
Oh, wait.
You can't go and tell anybody.
Wait, wait, wait.
That guy killed the guy.
Wait.
Because you're the guy.
Wait, wait, wait.
That's a lie.
Wait, wait, wait.
What?
So that's the fucking deal?
So if he goes and tells people, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
That means he's not.
So then he would go to jail.
So they're just, they have the most uncomfortable
relationship known to man.
It's like two criminals are like,
I know you did something bad.
I know you did something bad.
Well, neither one of us can say anything.
We have an agreement here.
I killed you.
We have an agreement.
I'm pretending.
Okay.
Picky swear?
Picky swear.
Picky swear.
Yeah, yeah.
Picky swear.
Yeah, of course, yes.
Don't you murder me now.
So now the FBI began sniffing around.
Thank God.
An agent, Nancy Fisher, had interviewed Bourdine
about his alleged kidnapping
and she thought something was off.
Yeah, because she worked for the fucking FBI.
Because she's a cop.
I mean, for fuck's sake.
Because she's trained because he has blue eyes.
Different ears.
I mean, what the fuck?
I mean, it's unbelievable.
Parker and Fisher began working together.
Good.
In November, under the pretext of getting Bourdine treatment
for his alleged abuse, Fisher took him to see
a forensic psychiatrist in Houston
who concluded that he could not be American
and was most likely French or Spanish.
The FBI took the results to Beverly and Kerry,
but they insisted that he was nickel.
It's him.
But we're telling you science is saying it's impossible.
Yeah, it's him, though.
And what's that?
I'm gonna tell you guys.
Sorry, I had to drive all the way out here.
It's him.
See you later.
Fisher tried to persuade Beverly and Bourdine
to give blood samples for a DNA test, but both refused.
Oh, I like how she's nicely dropping into this dependency.
Beverly said, how dare you say he's not my son?
Yes.
How dare you?
How dare you?
Besides different ears, eyes, height, weight, accent,
he's him.
I mean, besides everything.
Besides everything, it's him.
Will you look at him?
What you're ignoring is everything.
In the middle of February, four months after he arrived
in the United States, Fisher obtained warrants
to force them to cooperate.
I go to her house and get a blood sample
and she lies on the floor and says she's not going to get up.
Also, just to point out, you don't need to get up
to give a blood sample.
Yes.
I mean, amazing threat.
If you want this.
Good luck, good luck taking it from me.
Okay, I'm just gonna take it from you.
Most people run when they don't, okay?
Ah, there we go.
Good luck.
You got it all?
I would run if I was not on heroin.
If you want this blood, you're just gonna have
to do it yourself.
That's the plan the entire time.
Whole plan, yeah.
You can do it.
So yeah, fine, give me your arm.
I got this.
Thank you.
Along with the blood, Fisher obtained Bourdine's
fingerprints.
Oh my God, finally.
I mean, how long?
Have you seen law and order?
Just go into the house and pick up a glass
that he's using.
Well, I mean, we could investigate for five years
or we could just run a test today.
What do you guys, how do you want to do it?
So she sent that to the State Department
to see if there was a match with Interpol.
Kerry also at this point couldn't handle Bourdine's
acting out, so she sent her to live with Beverly.
Okay.
She was down with his nonsense of cutting his face
and whatnot.
Yeah, not fun.
By now Bourdine had a different take on the family,
putting everything together.
He thought Beverly had treated him less like a son
and more like a ghost.
So he's offended?
By?
She thinks.
He's a ghost.
Oh, fuck.
But remember, she does heroin.
So she thinks he's there for some reason.
Come on over me and the ghost party, make your dinner.
Must have had some weird talks at night.
Y'all met Casper?
Wow.
She's just there sitting there,
uncomfortably watching ghosts with pets.
Just like us, huh?
Oh, God.
I mean, what the fuck?
One time.
I've decided you're a ghost.
That's where I'm at.
You can't take DNA from a ghost dummy.
But you put that together with sure having fights
with the older brother.
Yeah.
And saying he's a ghost.
So she knew that the older brother killed him.
Oh, my God.
One time, when Bordeen was staying with her,
she got drunk and screamed,
I know that God punished me by sending you to me.
I don't know who the hell you are.
Why the fuck are you doing this?
You know, classic mom shit, right?
Yeah.
Classic mom shit.
Yep.
Oh, my God.
On March 5th, 1998.
What the fuck?
Wow.
Jesus Christ.
On March 5th, 1998, Beverly called Parker
and said she believed that Bordeen was an imposter.
The next morning, Parker...
A ghost imposter.
He's a ghostposter.
Wouldn't a ghost have the same fucking color eyes?
Why would a ghost be?
I'm going back, but I'm going back.
I'm going back to the very French.
And I shall have different eyes.
They put me through the ghost machine, Mother.
Mother changed everything.
So she called him, said he's an imposter.
The next morning, Parker took Bordeen to a diner.
They ordered hotcakes.
First, he stood up and lifted up his...
The investigator stood up and lifted up his jacket
to show him that he was armed.
And then he sat down at the table.
Then he was like, what are you gonna get?
Ah!
Ah!
What's grabbing you?
Hotcakes are supposed to be good.
Hotcakes are good here.
This is your first time at Waffle House?
Yeah, I'm packing.
Afternoon, the five of us
are pretending to be Nicholas Barkley.
Bordeen says he was physically fried.
According to Parker, when he told Nicholas
that he had upset his mother,
the young man blurted out,
she's not my mother and you know it.
Are you gonna tell me who you are?
I'm Frederick Bordeen and I'm wanted by Liverpool.
Oh, there I said it.
Ah.
Ah.
Ah-ha.
Give me a cigarette.
Ah-ha, I feel right as rain.
The food here is awful!
You people are walking piglets!
How the fuck are you living?
Oh my God.
Have you ever heard of cheese?
By the way, candle box?
Awful!
Awful, man!
After a few minutes, Parker went into the men's room
and called Nancy Fisher with the news.
She had just received the same information
from Interpool.
We're trying to get a warrant now, she told him.
Stoll him.
After about an hour, Parker drove Bordeen
back to Beverly's apartment.
Fisher and the authorities descended on him.
He started quietly.
I knew I was Frederick Bordeen again.
He said, Beverly reacted less calmly.
She turned and yelled at Fisher, what took you so long?
What?
So the crazy heroin lady who put up all the fucking roadblocks
and kept saying, no, that's him is now like,
what the fuck have you been doing?
You know, Nicholas is dead, dummy.
Jesus Christ.
In custody, Bordeen told the story that seemed as fanciful
as his tale of being Nicholas.
Parkley, he alleged that Beverly and Jason
may have been complicit in Nicholas's disappearance
and that they had known from the outset
that Bordeen was lying.
I'm a good imposter, but I'm not that good, Bordeen said.
But the cops couldn't really believe him
because he was a weirdo who would pass himself off
as a kid from another country.
You see where things start to get complicated.
Terry.
Yeah, you know what?
You wanna go over to talk to the ear guys?
Yeah, I don't think we do this stuff here.
I don't, let me get my supervisor
because I don't even know if we can do anything.
What are you talking about?
Like a double murder?
What are you talking about?
What's your deal?
I thought you were a ghost?
Not crazy?
Are you a ghost?
Are you the real kid or are you the French guy?
You the French guy?
Are you Nicholas or are you the ghost man of Nicholas?
Which guy are you right now?
I'll be honest, no bullshit.
Kerry had a nervous breakdown.
Oh, God.
After Bordeen was arrested.
But the cops became suspicious that Beverly had made it
so hard for them to investigate the kidnapping
and didn't let Bordeen live with her
when he first came home.
Fisher began to hedge toward homicide investigation.
Then they uncovered evidence
that Nicholas had been abused.
Okay.
Which they never uncovered before
when he, cause they just thought he ran away.
But he was at school,
they kept seeing signs of him being abused.
Sometimes he hit Beverly also.
So it was going both ways.
They had, I think they were about to,
I think they were about to arrest someone.
They were getting a warrant and he disappeared.
One day, Fisher asked Beverly to take a polygraph.
She said, yep.
Because she'd been living with a ghost.
So what could possibly go wrong?
Well, she also thinks it's, you know,
you stand in the way of blood donation by laying down.
Yeah, she's not.
Not knowing that's probably the favorite position for blood.
She's not huge on science.
Nope.
So she passed the polygraph.
Twice.
Yep.
And Fisher was like, I don't, this can't be right.
And the polygraph examiner said,
the only way you can fool a polygraph test
is if you're on drugs.
So they waited until the drugs wore off.
And then they asked her again,
and it was like the biggest failure,
like the machine like exploded.
Smoking, it's like, I need to take five.
I need to take a five on this.
This thing is really overheating right now.
When the examiner asked if Beverly knew
Nicholas's whereabouts, the machine went crazy.
Oh, fuck.
She blew the instruments practically off the table.
Oh my God.
According to Fisher, when the examiner told Beverly
that she had failed the exam
and began pressing with more questions,
Beverly yelled, I don't have to put up with this
and then ran out the door.
On the contrary.
Fisher ran out.
Oh, no, Fisher then went and interviewed Jason.
And now I believe Jason and Beverly both knew what had happened
and had a hand in what happened to Nicholas.
So Nicholas is being abused by probably Jason.
Jason is abusing Beverly.
And now Nicholas is at school,
started investigation because of his bruises and stuff.
So they're gonna come and arrest Beverly.
So Jason kills Beverly, right?
That's my assumption.
Kills Nicholas.
Yeah.
Jason refused to speak to the authorities again
without a lawyer or unless he was under arrest.
Several weeks later, Jason died of a cocaine overdose.
Parker who knew that Jason had been off drugs
for more than a year says he asked,
he asked Beverly if she thought he'd taken his life
on purpose.
He said, I don't know, but the police believe it was a suicide.
A while later, Parker interviewed Beverly.
He asked her if Jason had hurt Nicholas.
She paused for a moment and then she said she didn't think so.
She acknowledged that when Jason did cocaine,
he became totally wacko, a completely different person
and it was scary.
He even beat up his father once.
She thought Jason was lying about
when he last saw Nicholas.
He also asked her how she could believe
that for nearly five months, a 23 year old Frenchman
with dyed hair, brown eyes and a European accent
was her son.
Finally.
And she said, you know, when you put it like that.
You know.
It seems a little over the top.
You're really making it sound weird.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
She said she wanted to be him so badly
it was only after he came to live with her
that she had doubts.
Right.
No.
No.
No.
You wouldn't go near him with the airport.
You wouldn't let him live in your house.
You were screaming.
You don't want to talk to him.
Who the fuck are you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
He just didn't act like my son, Beverly said.
I couldn't bomb him.
Because my son was murdered by my other son.
Okay.
Fisher said one thing was certain.
Beverly had to know it wasn't her son.
After several months of investigation,
it was determined there was no evidence to charge anyone
with Nicholas's disappearance.
There were no witnesses, no DNA or authorities
could not even say if Nicholas was dead.
On September 9th, 1998, Bourdain stood in court
in San Antonio and pleaded guilty to perjury
to obtaining and possessing false documents.
The investigators called Bourdain
a flesh eating bacteria.
Whoa.
Yeah, that's rough, right?
Me.
That's fucking rough.
That's a tough one.
Well, at least I like a good cheese.
So fuck you.
Meet Mr. Ebola.
The judge sentenced him to six years,
more than three times what was recommended
on sentencing guidelines.
Bourdain went back to France
after he was released six years later.
Within months of being released from prison
and deported to France in October, 2003,
Bourdain resumed playing a child.
He even stole the identity of a 14 year old
missing French boy named Leo Bailey,
who had vanished almost eight years late
earlier on a camping trip.
This time, police did a DNA test
that quickly revealed that he was lying.
He was also how old?
Like 28?
Oh yeah, no, he kept doing it.
I mean, he needs to know your range.
He kept doing it up until 2005.
So he's like an old man.
He was wearing hats and saying that he had scars on his head
and living in an orphanage.
And then they finally saw a photograph,
an old story and a photograph of the one known as
the chameleon throughout France.
And they were like, oh my God, that's the chameleon.
And they brought him in and he was like,
yeah, I took off his hat.
He goes, I'm just losing my hair.
The gig is up.
Like he still kept doing it.
He says he stopped living in an imposter in 2005
because of a cat.
I think that's a very normal sentence.
He got a cat.
Oh, nice.
What's weird about that?
He got a cat and it saved his life.
Sure.
But then actually the cat was a fucking dog.
My whole time, which you can now see cat dog on Ghostbite.
Cat dog followed by a ghost Nicholas.
On ABC this season.
Is he a ghost or is he a boy?
Or is he just the lunatic?
He has stopped living in as an imposter since 2005.
He married a woman now as a child.
His real family didn't come to the wedding
because they didn't believe him
when he said he was getting married.
Yeah, shocking.
Bourdine's mother, just laying,
says that her son is a liar
and will never change.
But hasn't she heard about the magic cat?
So what, so the cat, he got a cat
and then he was just like, I love this cat.
I can't imposter anymore.
Hello, what can I do?
I can't say first.
No, I can't go to the kitty and say no.
Now my name is Gerard.
Yes.
What would the kitty do?
He would be so confused.
He speaks English.
He's speaking the language.
Fuck.
How about that?
Wow.
Part, now what I was thinking like halfway through
was that the real Nicholas was going to show up.
But this is even more fucked up.
Yeah, they killed Nicholas.
They killed him.
Yeah.
And hung out for five months.
With?
I mean, Jason must have just been like, the fuck is going on.
He got that call and he was in the San Antonio.
He's like, I'm not going up there.
And finally they were like, come and see him.
Why don't you come see Nicholas?
He came up and went outside.
I don't know, you're not fucking Nicholas, really?
Because I know you killed me.
And then like, stale me.
See you at the barbecue.
I saw you there.
And the mother just thought he was a fucking ghost.
And she was being, yeah.
I mean, the whole thing was fucked up.
It's funny that he probably, Frederic probably
thought when he was doing this, that he
was the crazy wild card.
Yeah.
And then he got there and was like, fuck, I'm normal.
I'm the most normal one here.
I'm a non-murderer.
I'm winning in the family.
I'm one of the best family members.
I've never murdered a family member, which
in this household is huge.
Fuck.
Jesus Christ.
Right?
Yeah, real weird.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
That's nuts.
Yeah.
It's almost up there with the tickling investigation.
That's also crack gum shooing.
That is some crack gum shooing.
That's really good stuff.
Hats off to Parker.
Yeah, no.
Parker, I mean, he's the only one who.
Yeah, who thought that the route I could,
should have blue eyes, and that he had different ears,
and that.
A slightly different human.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Yeah.
Well, well done.
Hats off to you, sir.
Yep.
Please review the dollop on iTunes
and tell your friends about the dollop.
Put some posts up.
Get the word out.
And scare us.
We will be at LA PodFest on September 28th at 4 p.m.
We will be, so it'll be 4 p.m. Los Angeles time.
We will be live streamed so you can see it in Australia.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
And I'll put up a link so you guys can buy this stream
through LA PodFest if you want.
I'm sorry, through the dollop.
Right.
That kicks a little money back to us.
Yeah, and then we'll spend it on drugs and poof.
Fuck yeah.
Fuck yeah.
If it sounds a trailer, do it right.
I'm going to pretend to be you.
You pretend to be me.
Oh, man.
Fuck yeah.
That's a weekend or five months.
I'm Ghost Dave Anthony.
I'm Ghost Gary Reynolds.
Gareth.
Even the ghost is Gary.
I'm Ghost Gareth.
Thank you.
Thank you for my scraps.
Not what my name was.