The following is based on a true story. One documentary I recently watched was called the Imposter. In this documentary, a man named Frederic Bourdin tricked a Texas family into believing that he was their son. It all starts in Spain where the police find Frederic and believe he's 16 although he's 23. They threaten to have him fingerprinted if he does not answer questions about his identity so he says he's from the United States and because of the time difference, he's not able to call his family. Thus, the police let him stay in the station. Frederic goes into a room and starts calling several missing child agencies, acting like a police officer, in the USA where he finds the name Nicholas Barclay. He asks them to fax him a picture and when he sees the picture, he thinks he can pull it off even though the picture is only in black and white. The next day, the police call the missing child agency and claim that they have Nicholas Barclay. The agency calls the family and Nicholas's sister comes to pick him up from Spain.
SPOILER ALERTS: While waiting, Frederic gets a colored photo of Nicholas and see he has blue eyes and blonde hair while Frederic has brown eyes and black hair. Frederic quickly dyes his hair and makes up a story that he was sexually abused and chemically treated to change his eye color. Furthermore, he claims his accent came from being trained to speak another language for the 3 years he was missing. Despite all of these inconsistencies, Nicholas's family believes that it is actually Nicholas and take him to Texas where everyone believes it is him.
Frederic goes several months without anyone questioning him. He attends high school and all of his friends think he's returned. Frederic claims that he was finally able to re-do his childhood. However, the crucial mistake Frederic made was going on TV and telling a story of how high military officials took him into their supposed sex ring and tortured him. The FBI obviously becomes interested to find this group but they also open an investigation on "Nicholas Barclay". A common identifying tool used back then was ear analysis. Ears were compared and used as fingerprints. Through ear analysis, they find that it is not Nicholas and have his fingerprints done. Through the Interpol (international police) data base, they find out he was Frederic. They send him back to Spain where he's given prison for 6 years. They also find out he's been doing this for several years and even in prison, he was calling missing children centers and giving false information. He claims he's been pulling these schemes because as a child, he was never loved so he wanted a proper childhood.
As for the family, they are investigated in the death of Nicholas because it seemed like a cover up but they are found innocent. Sadly, the real Nicholas Barclay remains on the missing persons list. However, I find it incredible that they accepted a man who looked nothing like Nicholas, had an accent, and didn't remember key events of his life into their family without questioning it. Do you think grief caused them to act like this?
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