True Crime Campfire - Changeling: The Crimes of Frederic Bourdin

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

In Irish and other European folklore, a changeling is a fae child that is swapped with a human baby to be raised by humans. Sometimes it’s because the fae needed human milk to survive, in others, it’s because the fae needed a human to be a servant or sometimes, as revenge on the parents. The parents would raise the fae child unknowingly, but the infant would be… wrong. Maybe it would eat more than a human child could, or would be particularly mischievous, or would have extra fingers or toes, but in the stories, the parents eventually knew, somehow, that their child was no longer their own. In today’s story, we’re going to tell you about a real life changeling, but instead of being swapped by supernatural forces, the imposter took the place of the child himself. Sources: Grann, David. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes The Imposter (2012), documentary film by Bart Layton https://charleyproject.org/case/nicholas-patrick-barclay https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/98/98-51227.0.wpd.pdf Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime camp. Can't fire. In Irish and other European folklore, a changeling is a fay child that is swapped with a human baby to be raised by humans. Sometimes it's because the fay needs human milk to survive. In others, it's because the fay needed a human to be a servant. Or sometimes, it's done as revenge on the parents. The parents would raise the fay child unknowingly, but the infant would just be wrong. Maybe it would

eat more than a human child could, or would be particularly mischievous, or would have extra fingers or toes. But in the stories, the parents eventually knew somehow that their child was no longer their own. In today's story, we're going to tell you about a real-life changeling. But instead of being swapped by supernatural forces, the imposter took the place of the child himself. This is Changeling, the story of Frederick Bordaunt. It was a hot muggy summer day when 13-year-old Nicholas Barkley went missing. It was June 13, 1994 in South Texas, and he had left his house to go play basketball with some friends.

He called home to see if his mom could pick him up. Playing basketball had tired him out and he hoped his mom would be awake. His mother, Beverly, who worked nights at Dunkin' Donuts, was asleep and his older brother Jason answered the phone. Jason told him he was going to have to find a ride. He didn't want to wake their mom up. Nicholas waved goodbye to his friends and stepped onto the sidewalk, disappearing down the road. No one would ever see him again. He just banished. Nicholas was a troubled kid. Sporting three stick-and-poke tattoos already at 13, he had his share of run-ins with authorities.

In fact, he had a court appearance scheduled for June 14th, which was set to decide if Nicholas would be placed in a home for troubled teens. His crimes were standard juvenile delinquent fare. He stole a pair of tennis shoes, broke into a closed convenience store, and even threatened a teacher. Not great, but we're not dealing with Moriarty here. He was just a kid. His home life was, as you might expect. His mom struggled with addiction to heroin, and his brother was hooked on Coke. Nicholas's father didn't even know Beverly was pregnant, and after he knew, was not present in his son's life. I'll note that while Beverly was addicted to drugs, her daughter,

Carrie said that she was maybe the most functioning drug addict. We had nice things, a nice place, never went without food. I think the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. With a mom working nights struggling with addiction, I think Nicholas's behavior was probably a cry for help. Yeah. Nicholas often got into physical altercations with his mom or brother and would disappear for days at a time. Remember, this is a middle schooler. He's like 13 going on 30. Yeah. So between her busy schedule and Nicholas's history of running away, maybe it's not so surprising that Beverly didn't report her son missing for a full day. Some sources indicate it was actually three days. I don't know how seriously the police took Nicholas's disappearance, but I can imagine that it was pretty easy to write off. I mean, he had a history of running away, and his court date on the 14th was to determine whether to send him to a group home. He was terrified of being sent away. I'm sure it was easy to write. him off as a runaway, but man, I wish they hadn't. In the months following his disappearance,

the police would be called to the Barclay home several times. Once, Beverly answered the door and told the police she was just arguing with Jason and it got heated. Jason told the officer that Beverly was, quote, drinking and screaming at him because her other son ran away. In a separate incident, listed on the report as family violence, Beverly and Jason were screaming at each other, and Jason was asked to leave for a bit to cool down. Another time, Jason claimed that he'd seen Nicholas trying to break into the family's garage. When the police arrived, they couldn't find any evidence that Nicholas had been there at all, and no signs that anybody tried to get into the garage.

Jason kind of came unglued after his brother went missing. He went from snorting coke to shooting it. His friends and family thought that maybe he felt guilty for not helping Nicholas catch a ride. He would eventually go to rehab in 1996 and got to. sober for a while. Beverly, who had done drugs off and on for years, started using again, too. Nicholas's case went cold, and the world spun on. Until three years later, when the Barclay family were notified that Nicholas had been found alive, in Spain of all places. When Carrie, Nicholas's sister, called the youth home where she was told her brother was staying, she asked, my God, Nikki,

is that you? And she felt hope rise in her chest when a quiet, young voice on the other end said, Yes, it's me. Then came Beverly's turn. The boy on the other end asked her if he could come home. Of course he could. His sister was on her way to pick him up. Days prior to that phone call,

in 1997, over 5,000 miles away from Texas, in Linares, Spain, the police got a call from someone claiming that he found a distressed teenage boy. When the police arrived, they found a young man who was visibly, emotionally disturbed. He initially refused to answer questions. He couldn't tell them his name. The responding officers thought he might be 15 or 16 years old. And as they slowly got him to talk,

they noticed that he spoke with a French accent. Through questioning, they thought that he might have been sexually abused, and while they worked on finding his identity, they placed him in a youth home. Days passed and the police still couldn't find anything. A child welfare judge told the teenager that she knew it was hard, but they needed to find out who he was. If he didn't tell them his identity within 24 hours, she was going to have to force him to give fingerprints. The boy solemnly nodded and returned to the group home. And then he started thinking of a plan.

You see, the boy wasn't really a boy at all. He was a 23-year-old man named Friedrich Bordaunt, and he was in some serious trouble. He was wanted by Interpol, and he knew that if he gave up his fingerprint, they'd catch up with him. See, Frederick had a bad habit of tripping and falling into someone else's identity. He'd done it numerous times before.

Each time, he pretended to be much younger than he actually was. It was almost always a child's identity. If the judge and the authorities thought he was American, he thought he might be able to slip out of their grasp again. So he asked to use the phone in the shelter, called the number for the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, headquartered in Virginia. He hid in one of the offices at the shelter while he dialed the number,

peeking out the door occasionally to see if anyone was approaching. Oh, my God. He spoke with a woman at the center in English. He actually speaks around five languages conversationally, and he picked up English in his travels. He does speak with a French accent, but he's quite fluent. Like, there's no mistaking. Yeah.

Bordaunt told the woman that his name was Jonathan Durian, and he ran the shelter in Spain and said he was carrying. for a clearly abused boy who wouldn't give his name but had an American accent. And he wondered if she could find any missing children that matched his description. Describing himself to the woman, he said that the boy was short, slight, had a prominent chin, had brown hair, and a gap between his teeth. And he gave an approximate age of 15 or 16 years old. The woman told him that the description sounds similar to Nicholas Barkley, a teenage boy

who had gone missing in San Antonio three years prior. Bordaun asked if she could send more information about the boy. She told him that she'd fax over a flyer with a boy's photo and overnight a copy as well. When he received the fax, he saw a black and white blurry photo of a kid that he thought could potentially look like him. Y'all, we cannot overstate how not like Nicholas Bortin actually looks. Not even a little bit. Not even a little bit. Nicholas had dirty blonde hair and blue eyes and was white. Bordon has dark hair with brown eyes and olive-toned skin. Not to mention, he was almost a decade older than the kid he was supposed to be.

But the faxed photo was so muddled that it looked like it could be close enough to Borda. He called the one back and said, I have some good news. Nicholas Barclay is standing right beside me. She gave him the number of the San Antonio detective in charge of the case. When he called them, he pretended to be with the Spanish police and inserted details that he learned from the previous call to make his story seem more believable, like the pink backpack that Nicholas was last seen wearing. The SAPD told him they would contact the FBI and a nearby embassy to help reunite the boy with his family. Well, shit. When the package from the National Center for Missing Exploited Children arrived to the shelter, Bordaunt opened the envelope and saw that Nicholas Barkley really looked nothing like him at all. Double shit.

Not only did Nicholas look nothing like him, but he had three tattoos at the time of his disappearance. A cross between his pointer finger and thumb, the letter J on his left shoulder, and the letters L and N on the outside of his left ankle. Unfortunately, the ball was rolling now, and Frederick could do nothing to stop it. So he did what every good con man does when backed into a corner. He doubled down. There was a girl at the shelter that did stick.

and poke tattoos, so he asked her to recreate them. There was nothing he could do to stop it, except, you know, tell the truth. That's out of the question. So that brings us to the phone call from Nicholas's family, where he shamelessly pretended to be the missing boy. Frederick told the family and the authorities that he'd been abducted by an international sex trafficking ring, that he'd been sexually abused, experimented on, and beaten, that he'd only escaped when a careless guard forgot to lock the door and he was able to run away.

Carrie, the sister, told him she was coming to pick him up to bring him back home. Triple shit. He pretty much immediately ran to the bathroom and bleached his hair. So let's just put a pen for a second. Who the hell is this guy? Why on earth would he go to these lengths to pretend to be a child? Well, Frederic Pierre Bourdain was born in Paris on June 13, 1974. his mother, Gilene, was unmarried and listed her son's father as X on his birth certificate.

In actuality, the father was an Algerian immigrant named Casey, who she met working at a margarine factory. Soon after getting pregnant, she found out that Casey was married, so she quit her job and didn't tell him about the pregnancy. After he was born, Geline had custody for just two years, during which time a relative said, she liked to drink and dance and stay out at night. She didn't want anything to do with that child. The French authorities removed Frederick from her custody when he was two and a half, and he was placed with his grandparents. According to Gillen, her ambivalence about motherhood was a lie perpetuated by her family. In one letter to her son, she wrote, You are my son, and they stole you from me at the age of two. They did everything to separate us from each other, and we have become two strangers.

Frederick, on the other hand, said that his mother was a malingerer and liked to pretend that she was literally dying and would tell her son to go get help. Gillesne said this wasn't true, but did admit that on one occasion she attempted suicide and Friedrich had to get her help. What's the truth? I don't think we'll ever know. But in my opinion, it's probably somewhere in the middle, just because it usually is, you know? Yeah. Frederick and Gellon's relationship is strained. He's a liar and will never change.

told author David Cran, whose book of essays, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, were used as a source in this episode. Frederick's childhood with his grandparents was difficult. In the documentary The Imposter, he alleged that his grandfather was racist, and when he found out that his future grandson's father was Algerian, he told her to get an abortion. He said, for him, an Arab should be dealt with with a nuclear weapon. Wow, yikes.

Again, it's difficult to determine if Frederick is telling the truth here, but I think it's obvious that his childhood was unhappy. This likely contributed to his later MO of impersonating lost or vulnerable children. I actually would not be surprised if Frederick did experience racism as someone with Middle Eastern heritage in France. It's just not clear if he's telling the truth about his family. It's a little bit like the boy who cried wolf. He's lied so long and about so much that you have to take everything he says with a huge grain of salt. I'd say a factory's worth.

this guy's anything but a reliable narrator. As a child, he told his classmates that his father was actually a British spy, and that's why he was never around. MI5 encourages the spies to tell their young children, you know. One of his former teachers said that he was a precocious and captivating child with an astonishing imagination. He loved Michael Jackson. The teacher also acknowledged that Frederick was mentally unwell. He confided in his grandchild. parents that he'd been molested by a neighbor, but nobody reported it. He loved drawing comics about

himself, and in one, he drew himself drowning. By 12 years old, he was acting out more and more, and was eventually sent to a juvenile detention center after being caught stealing. He liked to tell fantastical tales about himself. He pretended to have amnesia and would wander the streets acting disoriented, waiting for someone to help him. At 16, he ran away from the youth home where he was being held and hitchhiked to Paris. There, after days without food or shelter, he put on his first mask. He told a Parisian police officer that his name was Jimmy Sayle and he was British and lost. Jimmy Sayle, British, comma, lost. After it became clear that he knew very little English, he was forced to admit that he was lying and was sent back to the youth home. But that was enough to start

his technique, as he calls it. The war is over and both. Both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.

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We're going to quote the essay directly here, and I think this will give you an idea of the way this man thinks. First, he said, he conceived of a child whom he wanted to play. Then he gradually mapped out the character's biography, from his heritage to his family, to his ticks. The key is actually not lying about everything, Bordaunt said. Otherwise, you'll just mix things up. He said that he adhered to maxim such as keep it simple and a good liar uses the truth.

In choosing a name, he preferred one that carried a deep association in his memory. The one thing you better not forget is your name, he said. He compared what he did to being a spy. You change superficial details while keeping your core intact. This approach not only made it easier to convince people, it allowed him to protect a part of his self to hold on to some moral center.

I know I can be cruel, but I don't want to become a monster, he said. Okay, sure. Yeah, I know, right. Side eye. Yeah. Then he would go about making himself look younger. He'd shave his face,

then had his eyebrows with tweezers, and used depilatory creams for the rest of his body hair. He'd dress and clothes too big for him to make himself appear smaller than he already was and more vulnerable. He'd then go about planting seeds with the local authorities. He'd call in pretending to have seen his character in some sort of danger. Then he'd wait for them to make contact, which I think is maybe one of the creepiest things. It's incredibly creepy. Every phone call about him made to the authorities was made by him for the record.

Oh, yeah. It's so, it's terrible. Yeah. He relied on people's good hearts to do the work for him. People would see what they thought was a young boy who needed help, and he'd let them. Whenever he was caught, though, he would almost immediately admit it. Author David Graham wrote, Bordaunt often voluntarily disclosed the truth as if the attention that came from exposure were as thrilling as the con itself. I have no doubt of that. I'm going to talk more about that later. By the time he was 18, he'd taken on the identities of over a dozen children. Then he was turned out into the wide world, wholly unprepared to actually be an adult. When he was 19, he laid down in the middle of a French town and pretended to have some kind of medical emergency. Again, he was mute and allowed firemen to take him to the hospital. As the years went on, he racked up quite the rap sheet. Most of his crimes were just lying to authorities, but the breadth and distance of his crimes drew the attention of Interpol.

he was doing this in pretty much every European country. Like, if you see a list of everywhere he went, it's like everywhere in Europe. And you know, if there's somebody's attention that you don't want to draw, it's probably Interpol, just a tip. Yeah, like that's like the, it feels like every time like in a, in a like international thriller, it's like when Interpol is involved. Oh shit. Yeah.

Yeah. The public also started to notice, Frederic. He appeared on a French television show. called Everything is Possible, which is like a daytime talk show, like The View, to talk about his crimes and his technique. He told the hosts that he took on these identities because he wanted to create some kind of love and family for himself. And that's what he says to this day, that all of his lying and scheming was just because in his heart, he was just a lonely boy from the French countryside and he really just wanted to find a home. That might be true to some

extent, but the lengths he goes to in order to reinvent himself are disturbing. His story pulls on a lot of heartstrings. In fact, the Everything is Possible producers even offered him a job working for them, but that didn't last long at all. He ran off to pretend to be someone else. Yeah, and see, that's a problem for me. You say you're doing all this because you're desperate and you don't know how to make a real life, but then you get offered a great job and you bail? Like, I don't know. I just wonder if this guy is just in it for the love of the game. He just enjoys the con. And we've seen that before. You know, what was his name, Stephen, somebody who was one of the master conmen that we covered that was always escaping from prison. And, you know, he, I think he also

was in it for the love of the game. I would definitely agree to that. And something that I think is interesting about Bordaun is that I think a lot of conmen act like fooling people is really hard. And Bordawn's like, no, it's really easy actually, which I think is really interesting about him. Because he's one of the, he's one of the few cons that are like, No, this is actually not that hard. Yeah. There are people that sort of idolize him still. There's even a website dedicated to him that said he is an actor of life and an apostle of new philosophy of human identity. Yeah.

Well, you say that till he cons you personally. Then check back with me. Until the 1997 incident in Spain, Friedrich had never pretended to be a real person. By the time Nicholas's sister Carrie had arrived in Spain, I mean, Friedrich was, I think the technical term is shitting bricks. Frederick knew that he looked nothing like Nicholas. The day she was set to arrive, he locked himself in the room at the youth home and pondered what to do. He put a scarf over his mouth and nose and wore a hat and sunglasses as he emerged to meet his sister.

That was when the jig would be up. This woman would take one look at him and see that he was an imposter. But Carrie didn't. When she saw him, she held his face in her hands, touched his nose and said, I remember that nose. You kind of looked like your uncle Pat. Then they sat down together, and she showed him photographs of the family, reminding him of all the people left behind. He spoke with a strange accent, always in a whisper,

but Carrie chalked it up to whatever he'd been through. Later, under oath in front of a judge, Carrie swore that Frederic was her brother. The judge wasn't fully convinced and asked Frederik to identify some of the Barclay family from photographs. And he passed the test with only one mistake, which was brushed off as it was years since he saw his family and a victim of a horrific crime. Of course, it was just because Carrie had shown him the photos. Frederick was released into the custody of Carrie and they headed to Texas. Later, in an interview, Frederick said about Carrie, she came for me and she wanted me back.

She did not come for you. she came for her brother, you absolute asshole. I'm actually really surprised that the judge didn't order him to be fingerprinted. That would have fixed it right there, you know, if the judge had just said, I'm not entirely convinced, let's just get fingerprints. And then, you know, if nothing comes back, we're good. On the plane to America, the enormity of the lie finally got to him. He started hyperventilating and sweating buckets.

He told Carrie that he was afraid the plane was going to go down, but in reality he just didn't see a way out of this one. He'd been issued a passport by the American embassy under Nicholas Barkley's name. At the airport, almost the entire family was waiting for him. Pretty much everyone but Jason, Nicholas's older brother. The whole family, excluding Beverly Nicholas's mom, rushed to greet him. Eventually, Beverly did come to say hello, but it was much more lukewarm than Frederique was expecting. Jason did eventually visit his...

his brother over a month after he came home. All he did was say hello and give Bourdain a gold cross necklace that Bordin thought might have belonged to Nicholas. It was off-putting, and then Jason never went back and visited. Eventually, he was taken home with Carrie and her family. He'd share a room with her 14-year-old son. Beverly said that since she worked nights, it would be best for Nicholas to stay somewhere else. She didn't want to leave him alone. That's his mom. Strange, right? Once at Carrie's house, Frederick got to work. He knew that he had to get to know who Nicholas was.

When he could, he searched the house for details, looking through paperwork and photographs. He watched home movies taken of Nicholas to better imitate his mannerisms. If someone told him a story about Nicholas, he'd make sure to repeat it to someone else as if it was his own memory. Bordeaux said that the more he got to know who Nicholas was,

the more he noticed how similar they were. Nicholas also came from a poor dysfunctional family. He also didn't know his dad. Nicholas was a lonely kid with behavioral problems like Frederick had been. Nicholas loved Michael Jackson and collected all of his albums. Nicholas was reported missing on Frederick's birthday. Frederick was, of course, interviewed by the FBI in his first days back. He told them that he was abducted from the street and shoved into a van, then taken on an airplane.

He was never sure where he was. Eventually, he was taken to a room with several other kids. Men would come in and chloroform them and take them away. He told the FBI agent that he was sexually abused every night, and they were sold to high-ranking military. He said they broke his hands and his foot, burned him, fed him insects. He told her that some of the children were murdered right in front of him. He said that his captors tortured him, using loud noises over him.

headphones. A voice in Spanish would repeat, you are not you. They would beat him if he spoke English. They injected his eyes with some sort of solution to make them change color. Just I can't. This story. Oh, honey. Frederique was trying to do a couple things here. First, he was, as always, trying to elicit sympathy. He claimed to be a victim of a mind-bogglingly horrific crime. Stuff out of an Eli Roth film. Yeah, it reminds you. It reminds you. It reminds me of the kind of horrible fan fiction a middle schooler would write along the same lines as my mom sold me to one direction. Why are there so many of those stories?

I went down a rabbit hole of those one time. It was just hilarious. Like, it was a whole genre. It's an entire genre. Any famous person has a fan fiction written about them as my mom sold me to X. It's hilarious. And they were always just thrilled to pieces about it, you know, that their mom sold. them to one direction. Just tickled pink.

Second, Frederick needed to explain why his eyes had changed color and his accent was so different. Despite speaking pretty good English, his accent was obvious to anybody who spoke to him. He tried to hide his eyes with sunglasses, but he couldn't wear sunglasses 100% of the time. The FBI agent that interviewed him said that this was one that stuck with her for a long time. She lost sleep over it. And I think it's easy for us to dismiss this story as ridiculous, but you have to remember, no one suspected him of making any of this up.

We know it didn't happen. We know he's lying. But this woman saw a scared, traumatized kid and told him that she was going to do everything in her power to catch the people that did this to him. And to be fair, some of it just sounds like the Epstein files, you know? I mean, shit like this does happen. She later said, I mean, a normal person doesn't sit down with a story and make up horrendous, Like, that's not what you lie about.

You don't go into detail about torture and murdering of children or whatever. None of that seemed normal. He was tortured. I mean, he had torture written all over him. He had a broken hand that was never medically attended to. He walked with a limp. He had cigarette burns down the back of his head to the back of his ankles. This person is either had been the victim himself or he was a fantastic actor.

Yeah. Well, Agent, he's obviously. really good at what he does. But as we'll find out, talking to the FBI about all this Taken-style shit would be his biggest oopsie. When a little too far with it. Frederick and con artists like him rely on people's goodness. Everyone that Frederick encountered was trying to help someone that they thought needed help. And I think that's unbelievably insidious. He's just preying on people's empathy. And the thing is, we don't know if the burns and other injuries were self-inflicted or from previous incidents,

we will find out that Frederic is more than capable of hurting himself in a bit. That being said, the FBI was suspicious of Frederick. His roots were growing out, and she knew it wasn't possible to change someone's eye color. She resolved to keep investigating while telling him that she would investigate his captors. Meanwhile, Frederick started school. He would spend hours doing homework and studying, even scolding Carrie's son when he slacked off. He also made friends. Beverly even reported that there was a girl he liked and would call on the phone. Yeah, that's the weird thing to me about Frederick. His emmo seemed to be

centered on getting attention from adults, but of course he was always surrounded by children, people who considered him a peer. One director at a shelter that Bordaunt infiltrated said he would never change in front of anyone and was standoffish, but would sometimes talk to the other kids. He's not a pedophile as far as we can tell, but there's something something. so creepy about him creating all these scenarios where he would inevitably be around kids and just hang out with them. Yeah, before this, his big thing was he wanted to be put in to shelters and youth homes. So, like, that's, I think, one of the most terrifying things is he's putting himself in situations with vulnerable children. Like you said, he always seen more focus on gaining

sympathy from people in positions of authority than trying to be around kids, but it's not great optics, to say the very least. As time went on, Bordaunt chafed against the constraints of living a teenager's life. He didn't like having to report his whereabouts to anyone. He was often moody and

snappish. And I remember having to reacclimate to living at my parents' house when I was home from university. I was living a whole adult life for the most of the year, and then I'd get home and I was expected to report my comings and going. It is jarring. Like, reminder that Friedrich was a

23-year-old pretending to be a teenager. Oh, yeah. He would later say, I was not used to being in someone else's family to live with them like I'm one of theirs. I wasn't ready for it, which I think is fascinating. This is exactly what he wanted. He wanted a family, a home. And when he finally got it, he realized it wasn't what he thought it would be.

When throughout his career, people suggested that he become an actor, he said, I think I would be a very good actor, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stil. Lester Salone, but I don't want to play somebody. I want to be somebody. Yeah. And isn't that just the rub? Frederick didn't want a family to love him as Nicholas. He wanted them to love him as him. And by pretending to be Nicholas, he ensured that that would never happen. Hi, I'm Whitney. And I'm Katie. And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire. We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to. We get right to the story. We don't do a lot of extra

talk in, and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker? B.T.K. in his awful poetry. Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was. We look for the stranger than fiction stories, like the case of Patty James, a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing. Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry who convinced his town he'd won the lottery, fleeced local businesses out of thousands, and then became a romance scammer. We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of, cults, scammers, killers.

So come find your next great binge. Listen to True Crime Campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Friday. The Tudors were probably the most scandalous dynasty in British history. names like Henry the 8th and Bloody Mary are still known today. This season on Vulgar History were spilling the historical tea on the messy Tudor era. We'll get into the Anne Boleyn of it all, figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays? Was Elizabeth really a virgin queen?

And why was Henry the 8th the fucking worst? Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts. Frederic started slacking off in school, earning himself a suspension. He called his real mother, Glenn, and confessed that he was pretending to be someone's son. She hung up on him. He stole Carrie's car and took it to Oklahoma, blasting Michael Jackson the whole way. Eventually, he was pulled over for speeding and arrested. Over Christmas, he mutilated his face with a razor blade and was placed in the hospital on a psychiatric hold. The Barclays got more and more desperate to get him help. Of course, the story of a young boy

snatched from the street and sold to military officials in Europe got a lot of national attention. News anchors around the country reported the story. The show Hard Copy wanted to interview Nicholas and his family. The Barclays initially declined, but Bordeaux insisted on it. He later said, I wanted the attention at the time. It was a psychological need. Today, I wouldn't do it. Okay. I don't know if I believe him on that. And there's a clip. there's a clip of of the interview in the documentary

about this case and he's wearing like a big hat and sunglasses and his has his scarf it's so weird because he looks like I don't know

he just looks fake you know what it reminds me of is JT. Leroy if you guys remember that episode about the fake author who was an adult pretending to be a child and same thing

always sunglasses and big bulky clothes and slumping down in the seat same thing the hard copy producer is wanted someone to look into Nicholas's disappearance. So they hired a private investigator named Charlie Parker. Parker, I know we say this a lot, but Parker is literally the platonic ideal of a private

investigator. I wonder if to become a private investigator, you have to, like, check these boxes. He's like a little rough around the edges. He wears a shoulder holster, and he talks like he's straight out of central casting. He's good at what he does, too. In 1994, he solved the cold case rape and murder of a young woman who's parents. parents hired him. He and his murders club, which is just a group of

lay people who could probably be campers, also helped solve the case of a 14-year-old girl who was strangled by a member of the Air Force. During the hard copy interview, Parker was there watching the whole thing go down. Bordan's body language gave away nothing, but Parker thought his accent

was a little odd. Then he noticed the ears. On a shelf was a photo of Nicholas Barkley, where his ears were visible, and when he looked at the person sitting in front of him, he could see that they weren't the same. He asked the cameraman to get a good shot of the kid's ears. Ears are a little like fingerprints. They're unique to each person, and Parker could see that the Nicholas Barkley in front of him was not the same kid, peering at him from the photos.

He also listened as the boy told the story of captivity, the eye injections, and being forced to stop using English. Later, he consulted with ophthalmologists who told him it was impossible to change eye color with injections. Well, it was then anyway. Now, there's a doctor who can do it, but it makes you look like something out of a low-budget werewolf movie. It's so terrifying. So I wouldn't recommend it. And people's first reaction, like coming out of the anesthesia, seeing their new look, tends to be, is this permanent? I don't know why you wouldn't ask that beforehand, but look it up. It is wild. It's just the creepiest looking shit in the world. It's this flat color, you know, so it just doesn't

look real at all. But anyway, in the 90s, yeah, that was not possible. Linguistics experts told Parker that someone held in captivity might pick up an accent, but it would revert back to their native accent once they got home. Parker tried to tell both the local authorities and Nicholas's family, but he noticed that neither seemed to believe him. Shortly after he called Beverly Barclay, he said he got a call from Bourdain himself. He said Bordaum was angry and asked, Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? Are you serious? You ask that question with a strange face? A straight face. My dude. Parker told Bordaun that he didn't believe he was Nicholas. And Bordaun replied, Immigration thinks it's me. The family thinks it's me. Congrats. I'm not falling for your shit. Bordaunt denies making this call at all. And he hates Charlie Parker for the record. He hates him.

But if this did happen, saying the family, it's as good as admitting it, isn't it? Yeah, that leakage big time. Parker consulted with the FBI agent in charge of the case, Nancy Fisher, and she was having the same doubts as he was. Telling Bourdine that she wanted him to get help for the trauma he'd undergone, she had him speak with a forensic psychiatrist. The psychiatrist reported that from his syntax and grammar that he could not be American and was most likely French or Spanish. She reported all this to Beverly and Carrie, but they weren't moved. They insisted that Nicholas had returned. Both Parker and the FBI agent believed that Nicholas could be a spy or a terrorist. The FBI consulted with the CIA who said that unless they could prove Bordaan was European,

they couldn't help. So Fisher asked Bordin and Nicholas's mother to give a DNA sample. Beverly was furious. She said, how dare you say he's not my son? When Fisher went to her house to get the sample, she laid on the floor and refused to move. It's like, what are you doing? Eventually, they succeeded and Bordin's DNA and fingerprints were sent for testing with Interpol. Really should have done that in the first place. Bordeaux, for his part, said that he was getting increasingly paranoid. At first, he worried that Nicholas would come back, revealing his con. But as time wore on, he started getting suspicious of the family.

Both Beverly and Jason's behavior was just odd. At one point, a drunk Beverly screamed at him, 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? Yeah, this is his, we're not trapped in here with you. You're trapped in here with us moment. Yeah, that's kind of how it felt, you know, in the documentary,

which is fantastic, by the way. It's one of the best true crime docs I've ever seen. Finally, Beverly called Part. Parker up and told him that she believed him. He took Bordaun to a diner and ordered them both pancakes and eventually he said, Nicholas, you've upset your mother. And Nicholas responded, She's not my mother and you know it. Parker asked who he was and Frederic, who'd been coming unglued for weeks, told him, I'm Frederic Borda and I'm wanted by Interpol. Parker stepped a way to call up Nancy Fisher. During breakfast, he asked Bourdain about his life and they spoke a bit

about his past. Even Parker, who's nothing but a consummate professional, said he felt a little bad for the guy. By the time Parker drove Bordin home, the FBI was there waiting for him. While being questioned, he told the authorities that he thought Beverly and Jason might know where the real Nicholas was. He thought that Beverly and Jason believed him too eagerly. He told them, I'm a good imposter, but I'm not that good. On one hand, if your child, who had been missing for years, suddenly appeared out of thin air, wouldn't you be willing to overlook some things? On the other, I would hope you couldn't just overlook his entire face. Right.

Bordaunt said that he thought that Carrie was just naive. After her brother's disappearance, she solely consumed media about abductions, and it was easy for her. to believe that her brother had been taken away by an international crime syndicate. But Jason and Beverly's behavior had been, like you said, odd. They were standoffish and sometimes acted like they knew something more than they let on. Yeah. The authorities interviewed both Beverly and Jason. Beverly took a lie detector test.

Actually, she took two. During the first, she passed with flying colors. Agent Fisher couldn't believe it, and the proctor told her that if she was lying, she was probably on drugs. Then the examiner gave her the same test again after waiting a while, presumably to let any drugs wear off. To the same questions, Beverly failed miserably. Fisher recalled she blew the instruments practically off the table. When she was told she failed, Beverly stormed out, saying,

this is so typical of Nicholas. Look at the hell he's putting me through. Oh, wow. Whoa. There are a lot of reasons someone could fail a polygraph. Nancy admitted to using heroin, methadone, and drinking alcohol prior to the exam. When it had worn off, she might have had a physiological response. There's a reason lie detectors aren't admissible in court.

Right. Jason did not submit to a lie detector. He was calcitrant in his interview and did the bare minimum to cooperate. To the question, weren't you glad to see that your brother was home? He said, well, no. A few weeks later, he was found dead of an over. overdose. Both Fisher and Parker suspect that it was a suicide since he'd been sober for over a year.

Unfortunately, Nicholas's disappearance is still unsolved, made all the more difficult by Friedrich Bordaun's lies. In 1998, Bordaigne pleaded guilty to perjury and obtaining and possessing false documents. During the victim impact statement, Carrie told the court that she had a nervous breakdown after his lies were exposed. She said, he has lied and lied and lied again, and to this day he continues to lie. He bears no remorse. During sentencing, the judge called Frederick a murderer. He resurrected a missing boy, brought him back to his family, and then tore him away again. He was sentenced to six years in prison, which was three times longer than the sentencing guidelines dictate. Dang. I think it's easy to empathize with Frederick. He clearly, um,

underwent some trauma in his childhood. And he obviously feels like he needs attention to soothe that old wound. But here's the thing. He hurt real people. In this case, he didn't just invent a kid out of whole cloth. He took on the identity of a real missing and endangered child. And even when he did invent a new identity, he was taking resources that could otherwise be used to help an actual child in need. Absolutely. If you are wondering if Frederick learned his lesson, I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that he did it again. No. In 2006, he infiltrated a French shelter for foster children under the name Francisco Hernandez-Fernandez,

a child whose parents and brother were killed in an accident, which left him in a coma. The school tried to help him while he larked being a teenager and made friends with kids half his age. It wasn't until a staff member saw a television special on Frederique Bourdain that he was caught. Bordaun is now a free man, and he seems to enjoy giving him. interviews. Surprise, surprise. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't tune into this episode. Hey man, how's it going? Hi, Frederic. He's a little too old at this point to pretend to be a child, but I'd stay frosty just in case. It can be easy hearing about someone like this to take it as a cautionary tale to say that you'll never open your heart up or believe a sob story, but I don't

think that's the lesson here. Con artists will always take advantage of kindness, but kindness is also what makes this god-awful planet bearable to live on, right? I think instead, just remember that there are people like this out there, and you just need to trust your instincts when they're telling you that something is off. Don't let one asshole make the world a shittier place. If you know anything about the disappearance of Nicholas Barkley, please contact the San Antonio Police Department at 21020-207-7-484. Now, before we go, don't forget about our two amazing live shows coming up. First, we've got summer camp.

Oh, it's coming up so soon. We're excited. September 10th through 13th, an amazing four-day festival in Equinunk, Pennsylvania. It's at a real summer camp with like all the summer camp activities, but also nice air-conditioned cabin, so it's glamping, you know, more than camping. It's hosted by Dan. and Lindsay Cummins of Time Suck and Scared to Death. Just two of the coolest people I've ever met. They're both awesome. I can't. I just can't wait. It's going to be so much fun. We're going to be

performing live alongside them and the podcast, Astonishing Legends, in addition to a roster of awesome stand-up comics and local bands. So go to Bad Magic Productions.com for more info and to buy tickets. And then we've got our True Crime Cruise, Crime Wave 2.0, February 8th through the 12th, 27, dead of winter, we're going to the Bahamas. What could be better? If you want to come with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal podcasts in the world, like case file, no sleep, last podcast on the left, Sinisterhood, True Crime Garage, here's what you got to do. Tickets are on sale now, but they're 90% sold out at this point. So if you want to go, make sure you get over to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and book your cabin ASAP. You'll get $100 off, plus a private meet and greet with us.

And the great thing is you can pay all at once or you can set up a payment plan and pay it off over time. So get on at y'all. That's crimewave at sea.com slash campfire. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters. Thank you so much to Alexis, David, Jessica, Angela, and wait for it. Ace boogie. Ace boogie.

We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes two, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you join the $5 and up categories, you get a bit more cool stuff. A free sticker, a rad enamel pin, or fridge magnet while supplies last virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.

For eight years, we've been asking the same question over and over again. How did this happen? My name's Mandy. And I'm Melissa, and we're the host of Moms and Mysteries, the True Crime podcast with over 55 million downloads. We're two Florida moms who are obsessed with mysteries. Each week, we do deep dives into fascinating true crime stories. We cover everything from infamous cases like Casey Anthony to the bizarre and complex crimes. right here in our home state, like the shocking murder of FSU professor Dan Markell. We bring you the facts, but with warmth and width, you'd only get from two friends who have

been hooked on mysteries since childhood. Join us for new episodes of Moms and Mysteries every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You've watched them from the outside your whole life. On TV, on stage, on the cover. The success that always looks like it happened to someone on a different planet. But what if it didn't? I'm Evelyn and I've spent over 25 years in entertainment,

producing for some of the biggest names in Hollywood. And here's what I learned. The distance between you and them, it's a lot shorter than anyone's letting on. On my podcast, Repen, I sit down with the people you've been watching, and I ask them who they actually are. Not the brand, the person, where they started, what it costs them, what almost broke them.

Their grit, their courage, their resilience. and the lessons they've learned, it's all yours for the taking. Repen, wherever you listen.