The Imposter (2012)

I want to get a good picture, some more pictures. This is Carey's room, her bed. This is the birthday girl's mattress and everything else. She's even got a TV in her room. Ain't she lucky? That's my sister. The birthday girl. Ain't she beautiful? And here is her brother. Nick. The thought of what somebody could have done to him... It gives you nightmares. It really does. His disappearance never made the news. It wasn't news to them, it was just news to us. It came to the point where, you know, you're not gonna find him alive, but you just want to find what happened to him. They called me at work when I wasn't there and they wrote a message and said, "Someone from Spain has Nicholas." He wants to come home. My mom called me. I was at work. And she says, "Sitting down? You're not going to believe this." Course. It was mysterious, it was er... exciting, it was worrisome, er, it was all mixed emotions, you know? Ecstatic. Bewildered. You know, Spain! Isn't that like across the country? Um, how did he get there? You want... you have like a hundred thousand questions that you want answered immediately. I felt wonderful, you know, excited. You wanna see him, touch him, you know what I mean? And you want it all to happen now. From as long as I remember, I wanted to be someone else. Someone who was acceptable. The most important thing for me and what I learned very fast was to be convincing. When the police arrive, I have immediately to put into their mind they have a kid in front of them, not an adult. So it was very important for me to behave like one. They would see me with... in a big coat with younger clothes. And they would see a kid with a hat, which is very low in the eyes. They couldn't see my eyes. I wanted to provoke on them a sense of guilt... ...of being adults and to be close to a kid which is dead scared. When you see a kid that, you know, got nervous reflexes, that you can't touch them, you can't approach them, then you understand, you understand that something is wrong. I wasn't the one who was telling them I've been sexually abused. I made them ask me that by my attitude, by my way of doing things. They were the one thinking about it and that gave me power. I didn't speak much. It's very hard to read a kid that doesn't speak a word sometime. If a cop don't know who a kid is and where he comes from, he just can't keep him in the police station. And I knew that eventually they would have to put me into a children's home... ...and that's all I wanted. Nobody ever gave a damn about me and to know that if I change my identity the reward was eventually to be put in a place where actually they really cared about me... then, hell, yeah. I mean, I was reborn. I mean... I was born again. Nobody ever gave me a childhood, because to give a kid a childhood you need to, to love that kid. I felt like I belonged there. They didn't know that I was 23, 23 years old. I was considered like one of them. I told him to be home by dinner and gave him five bucks to go play basketball, and... he took off. He called home, asking for a ride, er... which was probably, I don't know, he's within a couple of miles from his house and his mother works late and sleeps during the day and his older brother Jason answered the phone. When I woke up Jason was there and said that he had called and wanted a ride home, but Jason didn't want to wake me up, so told him he had to walk home. And that's... was the day, the last time we heard from him. You spend 24 hours crying, sick, worried, then you get mad, then you get scared, and then you try to get empowered. You know, "OK, what can we do? We have to do flyers, we'll do this, we'll..." You know, so instead of... you don't cry, you do something positive and try to work towards, I guess, a solution of finding him. I thought somebody offered him a ride, and he got in the car. I dunno, I think he would have got in a car with someone that he didn't know. What are you looking at? I could see the worry and the pain they were going through, so I always said, you know, "He's out there," you know. "He'll resurface," you know. Unfortunately for me, it was one of those places which is very rare in Spain where actually they can't stand having a kid with no identity card, er, no proof of who he is. They wanted absolutely to know who I was, where do I come from, erm, they needed to know precise. "If you don't tell us, if can't prove us who you are, I'm gonna have you fingerprinted and your pictures taken." I couldn't allow that to happen. I had to find a way out of that. So the only, only thing left there was was 1) go to prison 2) prove to them that I'm someone. I said that I was American. That er... I ran away and I was willing to contact my family for them but I wanted to do it myself. I didn't want my family to receive a phone call from the police or the persecutor or the judge in Spain. I wanted to do it myself. And I said I would need to be in the office for the night because I live in the States. The States is, you know, the times is different, it's er... So erm, you know, just leave me in the office and tomorrow you will have all you need. In this office nobody could hear me. I knew that I could pass myself for anyone on the phone, could convince anyone of anything. So I call the American Police. County South, Detective Fowler. The New York Police. Lieutenant Kojak's office. Different police stations in the States. - Dobie here. - Who is this, please? I told them every time that I was a policeman from Spain called Jonathan Dorian, that we had found a kid, we are sure he's from the States but we don't know where. How long ago was this? He's been maybe missing for a few years, that someone must be looking for him. So the police say, well, you know, we got hundreds of posters of missing persons on the wall and we just can't go through each of them. But what we can do for you is to give you the number of the centre for missing and exploited children of Arlington, Virginia. Centre for missing and exploited children. Lorraine speaking. How may I help you? Er, we have a kid in a shelter, certainly is American, who is about 14, 15 years old but the problem is we don't know who he is... I describe myself. Every detail I gave was details that I know that I could handle. I wanted to be vague enough for her to look at many different things. I wanted her to have many possibilities. Let me just take a look here. "I got maybe something," she said. "Maybe, you know, we got a kid from San Antonio missing since June 131994. His name is Nicholas Barclay." I said, "Could you send me a fax of what he looks like?" In my head, I was just a police officer with, with Nicholas Barclay next to me, trying to confirm his identity and like any other policeman would do. Let's see if it's him. I thought, let's see if it's him. I look at it, black and white picture, old picture. Well, missing for three or four years, guarantee one thing, there will be a change. If there is a change, there will be doubt. If there is doubt, then I got a chance. Something in my head decided I could do it, that I had to try. I took the phone and I told her that this is Nicholas. We got him, it's him. It's incredible, it's him. My mom called me and she says, "Are you sitting down? You're not gonna believe this." And I said, "What, Mom?" She goes, "The police department called me and they think they found Nicholas in Linares." So I'm like, "OK, where in Texas is Linares?" Because Texas has a lot of small towns. And then she was like, "No, Spain." I'm like, "Spain?" Oh, God, how to explain the emotions. It's like all these different emotions, from excitement to bewilderment, to what do we do? What's the next step? How do we get him? When do we get to talk to him? I knew that after that they would contact me. They would try to verify, to call, to see, to... Is it true? Is it here? Is it, you know... Carey, the family and all that. Well, when I first got, you know, got a hold of the shelter, they put me on the phone with Jonathan Dorian who said that he worked for the, a shelter, and that he was the one who was talking with Nicholas and had got the information from Nicholas on who he really was. When she called, I said that Nicholas was seated next to me. But he was very scared, he was very traumatised and he didn't want to talk to no-one. He sounded very responsible, very concerned. Er, he claims that he has been abused, that he's been hurt, that erm... certainly he's been abducted. I kind of thought he was like a social worker type of person. Um, very reassuring. She said, "Is he saying anything? Is he talking about us? Does he remember?" Well, actually, I think he forgot about everything, you know. He doesn't remember very much. He remember you but not very much. We were told he was held by some kind of like a sex slave kind of ring, and that he had escaped from there and that he was found wandering the streets. She was heartbroken but at the same time she was very happy. I wanted to hear his voice. No! Absolutely, there was no way I was going to talk to her pretending to be Nicholas because I wasn't Nicholas and she was his sister, so er... it would have been a risk, too big a risk for me, but I did say a few words. "Hello, Nicholas. You hear me, Nicholas?" Nothing. "I love you, Nicholas. I want to take you back home with me. I'm gonna take you, baby. I'm gonna come and get you and..." And maybe you hear "Love you" or something like that, you know. Very far away. It, it... "Was it him?" I said, "Yeah. He said 'I love you." Oh. And then she started crying on the phone. You start crying, you tell him, "We're going to come and get you, bring you home. We'll get there, we're going to bring you home, and I love you too." I erm... I washed her brain. I didn't stop, because I didn't think of stopping. I didn't watch myself in the mirror and say, "What the fuck are you doing? Stop that immediately." I realised that I've crossed the line. I wasn't pretending no more to have another identity. I stole one. "Would you please call a Carey Gibson?" Well, I was astounded by what Carey said, so one of the first things I said to her was, when the FBI and the US State Department assist you and uh... get you and your brother back here, I have to interview him immediately. When the welfare of a minor, er... is in jeopardy, our reaction has to be very quick, er... very responsive. We have to put ourselves in the position of the child or the child's parents or guardians. Generally when a child is missing for years, either the child is dead or the child is not found and to find that child in another country is extremely rare. That made it all the more compelling for us to make sure that we did everything right in terms of er... establishing who he was and getting him back to his family. My main concern was getting him back, so that my part could start, the investigation could start... we could find out what had happened to this child. I sent somebody out there as quickly as possible. The next day... The next day, it got beyond my control. The centre for missing and exploited children sent me a flyer. There was the picture of Nicholas at the time of his disappearance... And I saw what real Nicholas looked like, really with colours and everything. He was very blond, very... He had blue eyes. He looked nothing like me! Nothing! There's, you know, the only thing he had in common with me was that he had five fingers at each hands. Then I said, fuck, let's burn myself. You know, I burned the flyer. If I could have burned the identity that I said and every word that had been out of my mouth for the past few days, I would have burned them too! When everyone tells me that the American Embassy is coming and er... everybody's, you know... and don't worry, Nicholas, we're gonna take care of you. Well, yeah, OK, you know, I... I couldn't do nothing. The only thing I could do was think of how was going to be the prison where I was going to be. I didn't know what to do. I really didn't know what to do. When the Vice Consul first arrived in Linares, he got to the centre and found Nicholas Barclay had disappeared. I said, you've got to find him. So he essentially, with somebody from the Linares Centre, went around looking for him. Our priority was his safety and to make sure he was reunited with the family. I tried to run away like I would do anywhere else. Nicholas Barclay? God didn't want me to leave this place. I spoke with the vice consul and asked him about his interactions with Nicholas. He reported at the time that he spoke English, that he, he was, he was at least at that moment convinced that this was an American. When I woke up the next morning, everything was normal. Then I saw the director of the shelter that said, "Well, you know, you must be happy, your sister is on the way." So I said, "What do you mean?" He say, "Well, your sister, you know, from San Antonio, she's on the plane, she's coming to get you." Fuck, you know. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I'd never left the country. I didn't know even what it entailed. I knew Mom couldn't handle the flight. She can't, she couldn't do it. I have to do this. I just gotta go get him and get him back here where he's safe. I should have thought of that. I should have thought of the consequences. If you do that, imagine for a second that you're the father of a kid that's been missing for three years, four months, and that they find him in Columbia, er... what would you do? What would be the first thing you'd do? I would jump on a fucking plane. I didn't sleep for two days before I got on the plane. Fear, but also anticipation, cos you want to get there, get there. You want to see him, hold him, smell him, just get there. You can't prepare to play a role of a person that you don't know. I couldn't be Nicholas Barclay because I didn't know Nicholas Barclay. I didn't even know at that moment if he was left or right-handed. So, er, that was a problem. I got on the plane and tried to sleep. Didn't work. The director... This is Nick, mwhah. He thought he was an adult. We called him 13 going on 30. Very difficult to discipline him. If he made up his mind he was gonna do something, pretty much there wasn't a lot you could do. Put the lighter down. He'd run away before for a night or two, mad at Mom. "I'm leaving, I'll find a new mom, a new home. Kiss my ass," kind of thing. And he, you know... would leave and she would hunt him down and find out where he is and he'd show up the next day. He was not, um, you know, this perfect nice sweet innocent, he was a very street-smart city boy. - It's nice to meet ya. I am the director. - In here, Nick. See, ain't I beautiful? He had beautiful blond hair. Kind of looked like, erm, a little pixie. He had blond hair and blue eyes and a bit of a gap between his teeth. When he smiled, you could see it. Finally I'm on the ground. "Who, who, who am I looking for? What do they look like? Are they in suits? Oh, damn, you can smoke here. Thank God!" The air smelt different. Erm, it was a lot less crowded than I thought. I did everything I could to give myself a chance. I bought product to colour my hair totally blond. The gentlemen and a lady approached me, cos I wasn't sure where to go and we went straight into a car and started driving. On the flyers it said that Nicholas Barclay had three tattoos. There was a girl inside the shelter that did small tattoos just like that. She was no pro, she was just a kid. And I asked her to put those tattoos that were on the flyers on me. I was quiet and that's when the lady started talking to me. She kept my mind busy with explaining the countryside to me the whole way down there on the drive. I took big sunglasses, I took a hat, I took a scarf, I took a glove. I thought that if she couldn't see me, then she wouldn't be able to say I'm not her brother. We stopped for a Coca-Cola, which I thought was really cool. They had coke there and it was the anxiety of how long it was taking. Minutes before she arrived I was convinced it was finished. That I was gonna get arrested and maybe beat up also because they were not going to be happy about it. I remember going into like a waiting area. I'm speaking with a couple of people from the home saying that he was in his room. He'd been locked in his room all day. He wouldn't let anyone go in. Finally when I heard someone knocking at the door and saying, "Hey, Nicholas, your sister is downstairs, er... she's waiting for you, she's there..." I went downstairs and into like a courtyard. There were some kids playing like ball against a wall and looked up at the window and told him, "I'm here, come here. I want to see you, I want to hold you." I remember seeing him look out the window. I was sure that as soon as the sister was gonna see me, she was going to say "What the fuck is that?" You know. That's not... that's not Nicholas. I waited maybe 10 minutes. I knew I was about to lose everything. I knew I couldn't wait no more, that I couldn't go away, that I couldn't just disappear, so I opened the door and I went down. It was just this sense of immense relief. Just seeing, touching, kissing, holding him. I said, "What the hell?" You know. He's here, we're here, I have him. She didn't even wait a second or two seconds. She jump on me, she jump on me, she took me in her arms and she said, "Nicholas, oh, and you were afraid I wouldn't recognise you. I would remember that nose." So I just... I remember touching his nose and telling him, um, "I remember that nose, you kind of look like your Uncle Pat." She said, "Don't worry" like she always say, "everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to be perfect. I know it's you." He was just... just basically told me he loved me, and he didn't say a whole lot until all the people left. Only God know why she would do something like that, but... but I know one thing for sure is there was no other way. She came for me and she wanted me back. We went to the visit room and she showed me dozens of pictures. Pictures, pictures, pictures. You remember, this was with Mom at the, at the house we were living in before you, you went missing. Remember this was when you were playing with Scotty. Remember this was... And he was like, "Jason looks the same, Codey's gotten pretty big, huh? Mom, God, Mom looks exactly the same. Has she put on weight? Wanted to know if Grandpa was still an asshole, um, told me how much he loved Grandma and he missed her. I remember seeing the tattoo, the cross between his, you know, right here on his hand. I just kept thinking how much he looks like Uncle Pat and how mom was going to be really surprised how tall he was. She said that he looked very different, that he had, you know, grown up... ...and erm... he's very quiet, you know, kinda held back. He talked with a funny accent. But it was always a whisper and very quiet like he was hiding from something. I mean, God, look what he had been through. He wasn't the same person. He wasn't the same Nicholas that disappeared four years before. He had been held and tortured and God knows what else. He wasn't that same person. The judge in Linares wanted to make sure that there was in fact some legal basis for Nicholas claiming to be er... Carey Gibson's lost brother. So now the problem was that they had the sister and the embassy official that were swearing that I was Nicholas Barclay and there was the police and the prosecutor and the judge who were not convinced at all. The judge insisted on separate interviews and part of the evidence that was in those interviews was a family photo album. And the judge said, "Listen, the only way for you to prove that you're really Nicholas is we got pictures here that you've never seen before. I'm gonna show you five of them." Number one, OK. Number two, OK. Number three, OK. Number four, OK. On the five one I made a mistake, but it was too late. She was already convinced I was Nicholas Barclay. At that point I didn't see how I could not document him as a US citizen. I would not have been able to do anything if Carey didn't show me those pictures. They took picture of me, with no hat, with nothing. Which was, you know, they saw my eyes. Erm, the constitution of the United States. I swear to be a US citizen. You know, it wasn't real but I did it. We didn't do a whole lot of talking the night before we got on the plane. Not uncomfortable, just silence, and it was almost like a peaceful silence. You know, I could hear him breathing and I just felt pretty peaceful. I'd been thinking about running away even before I met her. All I got to do was take a taxi cab and, going to a train station, buy myself a ticket out of Spain. I could have done that in a couple of minutes. Nothing was stopping me, nothing. I went down a few times in the hallway, always wondering if I was doing the right thing, the wrong thing. Should I go, shouldn't I go, should I go, shouldn't I go? When I was born, I don't think there was much love. My mother was very, very young at the time and she was, she was only 17 years old, met er... older man, which was my father, from Algeria. My grandfather was a very racist person and knowing that the man my mother spent the night with is an Algerian, he wanted absolutely my mother to have an abortion. Er, to get rid of me even before I was born. For him an Arab should be dealt with a nuclear weapon and a black man is a monkey. Before I was born, I definitely I had the wrong identity. Er, I already didn't know... I was already prepared not to know who I really was. A new identity with a real passport, an American passport. I could go to the US, go to school there. Live with that family and just being someone. And don't have never again to worry about being identified. I saw the opportunity. A woman that could go through so much to get me with her back in a family which got kids, which seem a fam... a loving family, gotta be some... somebody good, You know, I had conflicting rules inside my own head. Carey want me to be Nicholas but what about the others? Are they going to want me to be Nicholas too? I didn't understand why he was so... like, nervous, you know what I mean? He was like, you know, constantly moving and to the bathroom, and watching people, watching me, he was always watching me. She was always looking at me. I attested it to him just being scared. You know, he's going back home and we don't know what's happened to him, how his mind's working. Um, but he was just... maybe he was afraid that, that he wouldn't be recognised or, or Mom wouldn't love him any more. I'm gonna get killed. And I want... And I say, well, maybe the plane better crash. When they said it was time for us to board, I... nudged Nick and I said, "You ready? You ready to go home?" He said, "I'm ready to go home." "Let's get the fuck out of here, and go home." And we got on the plane. I was really nervous, anticipation, pretty happy. You know, we had made it... It was a family thing, we all went together. I remember that night, minute by minute. It was me, my grandma, my sister and my dad, I believe. We all loaded up in my Lincoln to go get my mom and Nicholas. It was a wait and see but everybody was excited, you know. We didn't know what to expect... I didn't want to go out of the plane. I wanted to wait. I wanted to prepare myself. I didn't have no plan. I didn't have no strategy. I knew there was no way out. I could not turn back. We had no idea what kind of person we were getting, who was coming back. I wanted to run and grab and hold him but he held back. So I walked down and grabbed his hand and hugged him and told him I missed him. He had changed so much. It was like mind-boggling. But then I realised, you know, you tell yourself, well, he's been through all this horrendous stuff, so he's absolutely gonna be different. I just remember my kids and my mom and erm, my husband and just, God, we were so happy. He was like totally covered up, so then I got scared, thinking that this kid's really messed up, just by his appearance. He was very quiet and erm, standoffish. I never liked people to touch me. And I can't change that. So when she put her hands around me, she must have felt that I wasn't enjoying it at all. I was very cold, very closed. I didn't speak to people. As much as I was happy... I didn't show it. I had a border in front of me. I didn't want to screw up. Of course, it was welcome with open arms and let's get you home attitude. Talk about the rest later, you know, let's just go home. I just watched him all the way home in the car and you could tell he was uneasy. So we put on a tape, tried to make him as comfortable as possible. Listen To The Music It was a quiet ride home, you know, and everybody, you know, quiet but yet excited. I couldn't keep the smile off my face at that point in time, honestly. I just had a grin and all the way home. It was just a happy good feeling that... our long lost Nicholas was home. I had a family and even more. I never... I never dreamed of so much. I never dreamed to be able to not only stay in a place where I'm loved but actually to have a family. When I woke up in Texas country... .. what I saw wasn't exactly what I expected to see. The States for me was big city, it was big buildings and, and people everywhere. The first thing when you open your eyes is official, your name is Nicholas Patrick Barclay, that you're born December 31st 1980, and that every family member is calling me Nicholas and not "Nicholas, but what is your real name?" No! Nicholas. "OK, we're going to go shopping, Nicholas." They drove me around, and, you know, I knew I had to recognise something, so... and I also knew that I couldn't because I'd never been there before. Hey, Kirk, how are you doin'? We met some people that knew Nicholas before he disappeared. I told them I didn't remember them, there was something but I didn't remember them. Like I had lost my memory, which is what I told them. He's traumatised. That's why he wasn't remembering anything, because of all, all of the things that had happened to him. I remember a sign. I saw Nicholas in the picture doing this with his fingers, you know, his, his way to say "hello", you know, and I did it a few times with them. When I was there. That was one of the only things I knew what to do. I was thinking to myself that Nicholas Barclay could come back at his house any day. That was my first worry. I was really worried about that. I couldn't help it. I said, "Man, what if he show up?" What if you opened the door and say, "Hey, I'm back." You know. We thought the best thing for him was just to have a normal routine. You get up, you eat breakfast, you do this, you eat lunch, you eat dinner, we'd watch a movie, just the normal family atmosphere. Me and him hung out. I'd just take him for drives and talk to him and turn up the music and stuff. He'd hang out with Codey and his friends and after school they'd go to the park and play, and, I mean, they would do what teenagers do. He actually kinda started liking a girl in the neighbourhood, Amy. They would hang out, talk on the phone and he'd kinda get blushy-red when we talked about her. The only person I hadn't met in the Barclays' family was, erm, Jason, his other brother, the brother of, erm, Carey. And finally he came to see me. He didn't look at me like Nicholas and he didn't pretend to look at me like Nicholas and, er, he said good luck to me and he left. We didn't even talk about what had happened to him over there, because we felt, like, when the time was right, he would open up to us. I did not receive any telephone calls from the family saying, you know, "Nicholas is back. Please come over and talk to us. We need help." And I felt like it was imperative that he be interviewed quickly. So I'd agreed to meet Nicholas at the San Antonio missing children's centre to conduct our first interview. I introduced myself to Nicholas and then told him why I was there, and that the purpose of this interview was to get his account of his kidnapping and for his assistance in locating his abductors. All I knew about Nicholas was what I had read on some of the missing posters. Not that people can't change in three years, but this person in general did not appear to be 16. He had a shadow of a beard, a dark beard, that I doubt if Nicholas would have had a shadow of a dark beard at the age of 16 since he had blond hair. He appeared to be quite nervous and he just seemed very uncomfortable this entire time. I told them that, um, I was taken by military overseas and I was abducted and put in a van, then fly over to some places that I never knew where it was. That, er, we were kept in a room with different kids. They'd get chloroformed, and, er, they wake up and they're, er... you know, in a place they don't know where they're at. They were subjected by high-ranking military to sexual abuse. Every night all of the kids were raped and molested by men. These men were American, Mexican and European. They broke my hands, especially my right hand, with a baseball bat. They kept burning him and giving him insects to eat. - We were tortured. - They broke his fingers. - His left foot was broken with a crowbar. - I was raped. They keep these kids in line by doing military scare tactics. We were experimented on. They would put needles in his eyes. Headphones on their heads screaming and yelling, er, different languages. Spanish kept playing over and over and a voice kept saying, "You are not you". If he spoke English, he was beaten. They moved these kids around in military planes. We never saw where we were going. The boys' identities were changed by either changing their hair colour, eye colour or other ways. They were always in uniform. A solution was put in his eyes. They would sell him for money for sex. His eye colour was changed from blue to brown by the use of this solution. The door wasn't shut and I left by that door. I ran in the big hallway and there was another door. Somehow I managed to go outside and outside I ran, I ran, I ran and hours after that, I discovered that I was in Spain. We've got a kid here which is about 14, 15 years old. He doesn't have no ID. He's no documents on him but you can see he's very young. And he's very scared. She was professional but you could see that she was horrified. This was a horrendous interview and when I left I was shaken by it because it had all the horrific, emotional side effects that go with listening to such a story. He knew about this type of activity. I mean, a normal person doesn't sit down with a story and make up horrendous... that's not what you lie about. You don't go into detail about torture and the murdering of children or whatever. None of that seemed normal. He was tortured. I mean, he had torture written all... He had a broken hand that was never medically attended to, he walked with a limp, erm, he had cigarette burns down the back of his head to the back of his ankles. This person is either, erm, had been the victim himself or he was a fantastic actor and I didn't know which of those titles applied to him. I let them know that I was very sorry about what had happened and we were going to locate the people who had done this and put an end to the trauma that he had been through. This was the last border. It's like you... I won. You know, the game is over. I had passports, everybody in the family say I am Nicholas Barclay. Nobody was investigating me. Nobody was suspicious that I know. Hell, I was happy. I was, you know... I couldn't believe my luck. My name is Charlie Parker. I'm a private investigator. Hey, how are you doin'? Say, I want you... I want you to do something for me. are gonna gather around me just before me... I got a call back in November and, erm, from a television producer for Hard Copy and he said that a boy who had been missing earlier for four years had turned up and he wanted me to track him down so they could get an interview with him. First I had to find out where his mother lived. Found her and then we drove out to the north of San Antonio to do the interview. I had repeatedly asked him, please do not contact the media. If anything that Nicholas was telling us was true, if any of it had any accuracy, and if there was any military officer possibly involved, the last thing that we wanted it to be put was on the front page of the newspaper or on television so that that abductor would know something about our investigation. This is Eyewitness News at 10. He disappeared without a trace three years ago. Tonight a San Antonio boy is back home. Nicholas Barclay is now 16 years old. He vanished when he was 13... Nicholas says he was kidnapped and taken to Spain. He says for three years he was repeatedly drugged, beaten and raped, all part of a sex slave operation involving dozens of missing children. Well, Bob, the FBI is not taking this case lightly... The reason? Somehow a 13-year-old boy from San Antonio ended up in Spain without a passport. June 19th 1994, Nicholas got into a fight with his family, so he came here to Fort Sam Houston to play basketball. Two young boys approached him, they started talking. The next thing he knew, there was a cloth over his mouth and Nicholas passed out. He claims his captors changed his appearance to make him unrecognisable. He was no longer allowed to speak English. Did they rape you all every night? Me? No. Because they didn't rape me every night. Some of them, they liked more. Some of the kids they liked more. They rape them usually two or three times a week. I wanted the media's attention, so that I would make Nicholas even more real, that people would really believe that I'm Nicholas and they would love me even more for that. They set him up, put a microphone on him and had the cameras on him and I moved over behind a booth. And it was almost fate. Behind that booth was a picture of the actual Nicholas Barclay. And I could look at that picture and look at him at the same time. And as I looked at the picture, I noticed that the boy had blue-grey-looking eyes and this man had brown eyes. Here was a moment where the hair stood up on the back of your neck, and, and er... there was just something wrong about it. I did what they wanted me to do. Something was wrong. I said, "Can you get me a picture of his ears?" I need to get... get that. And I had read about Scotland Yard using that method to trace down a man, James Earl Ray, that had killed Martin Luther King. They had caught him in Heathrow Airport by identifying his ears. And I knew the ears were a means of identity, almost like fingerprints. I put the picture in my pocket and took it... When I got back to the office, I put the pictures in Adobe Photoshop. They, they were different ears. And so I knew right away that absolutely he was not Nicholas Barclay. I thought I had a spy. I thought I had real, honest to God spy. Why else would a guy come here and take the place of another person? What would be his reason? I phoned Nancy Fisher. I said, "This guy's a fake. It's not him." I said, "The ears don't match." And my comment to him was, "You need to be very careful that you don't intrude on the federal investigation." People aren't used to hearing you talk about somebody's ears and I think she was taken back by that. She didn't know what I was talking about. I thought I didn't have a right to question, you know, their statement that this was their family member because how, how could they be wrong? I mean, no-one would be wrong about something like that. What do they want? I've already got the fact he doesn't have the same ears. Why would you ever, ever take in a stranger? Not just a stranger from this country but a stranger from another country who speaks with a French accent. This has to be Nicholas Barclay. It was an outrageous thing. I cannot have talked to anyone that hasn't read about this that has said, "Wait a minute. I know my own kid. I know my own son. I can look in his eyes and tell..." It's like when you go to a class reunion and you see the kids you went to school with in 19... Queen Bitch It really began for me, the American dream, when I took that big yellow bus to go to school with others, with other students. and I'm watching the cruisers below How many French adults go to American schools for kids, into a yellow bus... That was impossible. You could do that in a movie, you could do that in a... but you can't do that for real. I finally succeeded to become a kid again, officially, with a passport, to have a second chance, to be able this time to go to school and to succeed this time. Well, he started back to high school. I really was worried. I didn't know what he was going to do. This was a case. I mean, a real case. This guy was lying about who he said he was and here the family was accepting him. I expected him any day to blow up something at the airbase or do something at the army base. I was pulling teeth trying to determine who had kidnapped Nicholas, when and where and under what circumstances. I had almost no information because all the information he gave us was very, very general. He couldn't give names, he couldn't give places, he couldn't give times, he couldn't give anything. The family was told that the reason we were taking Nicholas to Houston was because he'd been through trauma. So he deserved to see a forensic expert to deal with the trauma. Initially I thought that this was going to be a forensic interview, er, with the intent of finding out more information about the people who abducted him. Here was this pale white kid and I introduced myself and, as he spoke back, immediately my... Something in me just said, this is not right, there's something wrong here. I speak with him for a long time. He asked me to repeat all the stories I'd been telling everybody. I remember people grabbing me and putting me in the van. I went to sleep and I woke up in a room. There was other kids... I didn't see the same physiological change in his body posture, in his pupil size, in his heart rate, that I would normally see with somebody who's talking about a traumatic experience. He couldn't speak English without an accent. That told me about the development of his brain, and the development of language. You just cannot be raised for the first six, seven years of your life in an English-speaking home and later on, you know, eight, nine years later, even 10 years later, not be able to speak English without an accent. I can guarantee you that this kid was not raised in an English-speaking family. You know, I don't know who he is but the person who was... I was interviewing could not have been Nicholas Barclay. OK, the worst scenario just showed up and I don't like that. This investigation did a 90 degree. It just went from one, one place all the way up to another. I immediately called Carey Gibson and I said to her, "Carey, Dr Perry has just stated that this person cannot be your brother, for the fact that he cannot be an American. This could be a very dangerous person." She shrieked or screamed and said, "Oh, my gosh!" So I said, "Don't be at the airport," you know. "I'll handle it. I will take care of this individual" and that she did not have to take him home, you know, back to her home to live with them and she says, "OK, OK." We fly back into San Antonio and there's Carey standing there. What? She acted like we'd never had that conversation. And she acted excited to see him, asked him how his trip was. I think I just stared for a minute... And I called the US Attorneys' Office right then and there and I said, "What do I do?" And the Assistant US Attorney said, "Let him return to her temporarily." She welcomed this person home just like he was her brother. I didn't have any clue as to why she behaved in this manner. Because in my conversation with her, I had said, "This person is not your brother." I don't think... I don't remember her putting it in those words. Well, maybe they wanted him so badly to be their son that they said he was their son, but it was starting to get ridiculous. I couldn't let it go. There was no way in the world I could let it go. I started going into the neighbourhood, and finding out about the real Nicholas Barclay, interviewing the neighbours, trying to find out what I could about that boy and about that family. And what's going on? You know, why would Nicholas have left? The police used to usually come maybe like twice or three times a month. Either it was argument with the kids or with their boyfriend or with the other son. I spoke to everyone and they all said that Nicholas had caused trouble, had come home late at night. We've all had arguments in our family, but it's rare that we call the police, that it is so bad that they have to come. It, it made me think there was something going on, more than meets the eye. Of course it did. I knew that DNA samples would prove that he wasn't Nicholas Barclay. Mrs Dollarhide said, "This is my son. I don't have to provide blood samples for you for DNA and she laid down on the floor, literally laid down on the floor, and said, "No, and you can't pick me up, and you can't make me." I did not want to go anywhere with the FBI, but I don't remember refusing. I was stunned. I've never had that reaction before. She wasn't just apathetic, she was hostile. To be honest with you, I really have no idea what I was thinking at that time. My main goal in life was not, not to think. We didn't need to prove who he was. We knew who he was. I no longer saw them as a grieving erm... victimised family. I saw them as a very questionable family. There would be no reason for them to accept a stranger into their lives... ...unless there was something to hide. That would be the only reason. Something was being hidden and I didn't know what that was. When Beverly refused to give her blood sample, I started to become suspicious. They knew that I wasn't Nicholas. Whatever I was telling them, they didn't believe a word of it. But they were good at not showing it. I mean, who wouldn't see it? That's about four, five years ago now. I remember in Spain, Carey did everything for me. When I didn't know something, she told me. "You forgot everything but you're going to remember it now and, you know, this was Mom at the place we're living in with... Do you remember? Oh, this was Chantelle. You remember Chantelle. That's your niece, my daughter. Do you remember that? Do you remember that? Do you remember that?" Over and over and over again. That's Jason. She wanted to put it in my head. She wanted to put it in my head so I would never forget. She just could not say it's not Nicholas. Did she believe it or not? If you asked me, I would say, no, not for a second did she believe I was her brother. She decided I was gonna be her brother. It's like I woke up in a place where... Lies even bigger than what I did. You know, it's... they pretended as much as I did and even more. I kept thinking about the kid, Nicholas Barclay. At the time of his disappearance, he was living with Beverly in the house on Swallow Street and his brother Jason was also living there. Jason, Nick's older brother, when he moved into their house, that house changed, because before he got there, Nick and his mom seemed pretty close to me. She loved him to death. I mean, she loved him, you could tell... She, she... He was the light of her life. This guy moved in, he was a bum, a drug addict and he only cared about himself. And when he got into that house, it just made things that much more worse. In fact, I think it even pushed his mom into doing drugs herself when he moved into the house. That house just became a volatile situation altogether. I discovered from the police files, a couple of months after the disappearance, that Jason had called the police and said that his brother had tried to break into the house. Well, we see that kind of thing all the time. People, people are constantly doing stuff like that to make people think that person's alive. I started to put two and two together and I thought something happened inside that house to that boy. I didn't need to be Columbo to put all the pieces together. They killed him. Some of them did it, some of them knew of it, and some of them chose to ignore it. I wasn't worried about Nicholas coming back no more. Neither Nicholas Barclay or his mother were cooperating, so we were going to have to have a search warrant executed in order to obtain those blood samples. I couldn't pretend no more to be Nicholas and act like Nicholas. I took two or three other agents with me to go pick him up. So inside me, I started getting, you know, more and more aggressive, weird. I couldn't go on. We got the fingerprints and we got the palm prints. Within a few weeks, we would be sending them out to Interpol, to the embassies, to see if any of these fingerprints matched anything that they had on record. I was trying to find a way out, not only a way out in San Antonio, Texas, but a way out, out of my mind. Nicholas was becoming much more agitated and angry and I really felt like he was going to run away and if he ran away we might have a very hard time locating him. I started tailing him, I started following him. I started sitting up on Beverly's place where she lived and writing down licence numbers of all the cars that came to her, to see her. So I took a razor blade and I slit my face. Everything was snowballing and snowballing and snowballing. I show them, show them that I was under a great deal of pressure. On March 3rd of 1998, the legate in Madrid, Spain, called me and he said, "We've just identified him." And I said, "You're kidding?" I knew that everything was going down and it was just a matter of weeks. He said, "What I'm gonna do right now is fax to you the records that I have." He agreed to meet with me. We ordered hot cakes. And we started to eat. And he said... I said, "You really made your mother angry." And he said, "She's not my mother and you know it." And I thought, well, I'll be damned. And so I stood over the fax machine, waiting for, of course, them to come in because I was screaming and jumping up and down. I actually said, "Well, I'll be damned, you're going to finally tell me who you are." I was like doing a dance and everybody was high-fiving. It was like, you know, we finally, we finally know who this person is. And my heart was beating fast, just like it is now thinking about it. And... And I said, "Who are you?" He said, "I'm Frederic Bourdin and I'm wanted by Interpol." The fingerprint cards told me that he was not 16, he was 23. That he was not American, he was French. That he was not Nicholas Barclay, he was Frederic Bourdin. We grow up in America thinking Interpol is kind of the God of the cops. You follow me? That's the highest step you can get in "Copland". And so I thought, Jesus Christ, if he's wanted by Interpol, what has he done? You know. There is no limit to what he's done. So he began to tell me. Frederic Bourdin is delinquent. Activities and modus operandi... He has travelled throughout Europe appearing at shelters for minors under different aliases. Spain, 1992. Spain, September 1993. Barcelona... .. stated that he'd run away from his adoptive parents' house. Brussels, '95. Pyrenees... Milan, 1993. Glasgow. I sat there. I could hardly eat, I could hardly swallow my food. He always wore glasses. Giovanni Petrullo. Michelangelo Martini. Donovan MacNeph. - Peter Samson. - William Thomas. Jimmy Sale. Peter Robin. James Markey. Frederic Cassis. '93. Hernandez Fernandez. '95. Edgar Guteyere. '97. Spain, 1997. It's possible he may need psychiatric help. Settle in tonight because we are about to share with you a story so bizarre, it's hard to believe it's true. This is the tale of a master imposter who managed to lie his way into the United States and prey upon the most vulnerable of people. He is the only person in US history ever to have assumed the identity of a missing child. He fooled even the lost boy's mother. It's hard to imagine how he could have gotten away with it. We knew it was going to be, you know, heart-wrenching and... you know... but we never thought it wouldn't be him. You know, why would you even think that? The first feeling was complete sadness. Because it wasn't Nicholas. Which took us back to square one. Where is Nicholas? That was the first one. The second emotion was, how could I be so fucking stupid? I mean, seriously. I contacted the SAPD, the San Antonio Police Department, and told them, decided to tell them, that, hey, they killed him. Based upon Frederic Bourdin's allegations, a homicide investigation was opened and the allegation was against the family members as being... participating in the disappearance of the child. It was related to us that while Frederic was in jail that he said that my mom confessed to him that her and Jason killed Nicholas and hid the body. They accused me first and it totally freaked me out. Because I, I... have been crazy but never violent. This is the street the kid lived on when he went missing. There's the house right there. I think the boy's buried here. I want to talk to Darryl inside. He's agreed to let me dig and see if Nicholas Barclay's here. If Beverly knew that this individual was not her son, then she had to have some type of ulterior motive and it had to be something very scary for her to accept a stranger into her household posing as her own son. I agreed to take a lie detector test. She passed the polygraph. And I said to the polygraph examiner, "I don't understand this, I don't understand it at all. Will you give it to her again?" So he gave it to her again and she passed the polygraph. I said, "No, there is something wrong." The third time he gave it to her, she flunked every question. I mean, like, big-time. The polygrapher said the machine practically jumped off the table. Her answers appeared to be false on everything. And he turned to her and he said, "Mrs Dollarhide, it appears that you know where your son is. It appears that you know what happened to him" and some other questions. And that's when she became very aggravated, very agitated, jumped up and ran out and was screaming. I lied about being... stealing, and I had... so that's why I failed. I didn't lie about anything to do with Nicholas. It was the other questions. - Darryl? Charlie Parker. - Mr Parker. How are you doin'? It's nice in here. So this is the house, huh? Yes, sir. The polygraph led us to believe that she did have some information... ...she could provide that she refused to and we felt like Jason had information. If Jason did something to Nicholas, I didn't know about it and I can't imagine Jason ever doing that. It's just not in his makeup, but... I don't know. I know my brother or my mother did not kill Nicholas, accidentally, on purpose. Whatever Frederic said, it never happened. When we first got my dog, he was always digging in the back corner over there where the, the tree is. And one day I was mowing and saw, like, pieces of, like, plastic, - kind of like a tarp kind of material... - OK. ...sticking out of the ground. I tried to pull it up to get it out, and it just kept ripping on me as it was stuck in the ground. So I never paid any attention to it or gave it any thought, until last night when we were speaking on the phone. And the bush has been there a while? I had initially tried to get a hold of Jason prior to Frederic's arrest and couldn't. And then when I finally did get a hold of him, I asked him about the disappearance of his brother. He just seemed totally apathetic about the disappearance of his younger brother. Extremely apathetic. And didn't care that he'd been returned but when he did see him, no, that wasn't his brother, but he didn't seem interested enough or excited enough to tell his mother and sister, "That's not my brother. No, no, they just wanted to believe." Yeah, it's a good spot. Let's see. Say he dumps him here first... ...and then, if he looks up, yeah, yeah, this is good, this is good. He was very hostile, refused to help in any way, and then he later left the drug rehabilitation centre and was found having died from a drug overdose. I think that Jason became a perfect scapegoat, because he's not here. He died, so he can't be questioned or, you know, anything. I mean, he can't, he can't even defend himself. It's kinda like a nightmare. All this stuff is coming at you and none of it's true but nobody believes you. Or they think that you had something to do with it. And it's like getting in trouble for something you didn't do. You know, when kids tell you, "I didn't do it!" You're going, "Yeah, right." But I didn't do it. I do feel like the family knows the whereabouts of Nicholas Barclay. I think that Beverly Dollarhide and Jason Dollarhide knew at one time what happened to Nicholas Barclay. Show me one piece of evidence, show me one thing that will lock anybody in our family up over this, just one shred of actual proof. Back here. Let's go back here. The biggest, funniest one to me, hilarious, is that we went and picked up a complete stranger to hide the fact that we killed Nicholas or someone in my family killed Nicholas. When through four years that Nicholas was disappeared, we were the only ones looking for him. Why would we go pick up a stranger to hide something that didn't need to be hidden? Just another one of his lies. Even from behind bars, he continued to lie to families of other missing children. From this phone in his cell, Bourdin made hundreds of collect calls claiming to have information about lost children. He even said he could help solve the highly publicised case of Sabrina Aisenberg, an infant who was taken from her home in Tampa, Florida, last year. No. Yes. He's a habitual liar and it blows my mind that anybody can take anything that is said out of his mouth as truth. What? This kid comes and says he's Nicholas, and then turns around and says, "You... these people that took care of me killed him." Hm. How do you come up with that conclusion? He put us through enough already and then for him to do this while he's in jail for what he's done and to cause more pain to our family? Fuck him. Wayfaring Stranger I didn't give a damn what other people were thinking, or what they were feeling. I care about myself, just about myself... ...and fuck the rest of it. are gonna gather around me He Had A Long Chain On
 * 1) Don't you feel it growin', day by day
 * 2) People gettin' ready for the news
 * Oh, oh, listen to the music
 * Oh, oh, listen to the music
 * 1) I listen to the wind
 * 2) To the wind of my soul
 * 1) I swam upon the Devil's lake
 * 2) But never, never never never...
 * 1) I know dark clouds
 * 1) I know my way'll be rough and steep
 * 2) Yet beautiful fields lie
 * 1) I'm up on the 11th floor
 * 1) My heart's in the basement
 * 2) My weekend's at an all-time low
 * 1) Letting him go
 * 2) Walk out of her heart
 * 3) Walk out of her mind...
 * Oh, yeah
 * 1) She's an old-time ambassador
 * 2) Of sweet-talking, night-walking games
 * 1) I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
 * 2) Travellin' through a world of woe
 * 3) Ain't no sickness, toil or danger
 * 4) In that bright land to which I go
 * 5) I'm goin' there to see my father
 * 6) Said he'd meet me when I come
 * 7) I'm only goin' over Jordan
 * 8) I'm only goin' over home
 * 9) I know dark clouds
 * 1) I know my way'll be rough and steep
 * 2) Yet beautiful fields lie just before me
 * 3) Where God's redeemed their vigils keep
 * 4) I'm goin' there to see my loved ones
 * 5) Gone before me one by one
 * 6) I'm only goin' over Jordan
 * 7) I'm only goin' over home
 * 8) I'll soon be free from earthly trials
 * 9) This body rest in the old churchyard
 * 10) I'll drop this cross of self-denial
 * 11) And go singing home to God
 * 12) I'm goin' there to see my saviour
 * 13) To dwell with Him, no more to roam
 * 14) I'm only goin' over Jordan
 * 15) I'm only goin' over home
 * 16) I'm only goin' over home
 * 1) One night as I lay on my pillow
 * 2) Moonlight as bright as the dawn
 * 3) I saw a man a-walkin'
 * 4) He had a long chain on
 * 5) I heard his chain a-clankin'
 * 6) It made a mournful sound
 * 7) Welded around his body
 * 8) Dragging along on the ground
 * 9) He had a long chain on
 * 10) He had a long chain on
 * 11) He had a long chain on
 * 12) He stood beside my window
 * 13) He looked at me and he said
 * 14) "I am so tired and hungry
 * 15) Give me a bite of your bread"
 * 16) He didn't look like a robber
 * 17) He didn't look like a thief
 * 18) His voice was as soft as the moonlight
 * 19) His face full of sorrow and grief
 * 20) He had a long chain on
 * 21) He had a long chain on
 * 22) He had a long chain on
 * 23) He had a long chain on
 * 24) He had a long chain on
 * 25) He had a long chain on