8 Things To Know About The Nicholas Barclay Disappearance And Ensuing Deception

Nicholas Barclay vanished without a trace

Barclay was a 13-year-old living in San Antonio, Texas, when he went missing on June 10, 1994. According to reports, he had been playing basketball with friends and called for a ride. His older half-brother, Jason, told him to walk the 1.5 miles home. Barclay was never seen again.

The Barclay home was reportedly very dysfunctional

Barclay was reportedly a troubled kid who was likely headed to a juvenile detention facility that summer. He often fought with his mother, already had three tattoos, and would regularly disappear for a couple days at a time. According to an in-depth report from the New Yorker, both Barclay’s half brother and mother, Beverly, struggled with substance abuse. Because of those issues, it wasn’t immediately obvious that Barclay was truly missing, and his mother didn’t even make the missing person report until June 13, three days after Barclay was last seen.

Authorities were unbothered; according to the Casual Criminalist, the cops were at the home so frequently because of domestic disturbances, drug cases, and misbehavior on the part of Barclay that the disappearance didn’t even get reported in the local news.

Jason said he Saw Barclay try to come home three months later, but he ran away again

In September of 1994, Jason called the police and said he saw his younger brother breaking into the home’s garage. He claimed that the teen ran when spotted. Authorities searched the area for Barclay but never found any sign that he had been there.

There was a glimmer of hope in 1997

Barclay had been gone for more than three years when authorities in Spain called in October of 1997 to say they had Barclay at a youth shelter. Now 16, the teen said he’d been kidnapped by someone in the military and forced into human trafficking in Europe. When he finally escaped in an unfamiliar city, he said he learned he was in Spain. Barclay’s half sister flew to Spain to claim her little brother and took him home to live with her.

Something was very, very wrong

Barclay’s sister thought the young man in front of her could be her brother despite the fact that his eyes were now brown instead of blue. He also spoke with a European accent. He explained both of those things away as a result of captivity — medical experiments had changed the color of his eyes, and being forced to learn a new language had given him an accent.

The horrifying truth

It didn’t take long for an American reality show to hear about the boy’s dramatic return, and they planned to showcase the story on an upcoming episode. As part of their reporting, they hired a private investigator to look into the disappearance.

As the PI worked the case, he had a sickening realization — the person living as Barclay was 23-year-old Frederic Pierre Bourdin from France.

This was not Bourdin’s first con

By the time Bourdin assumed Barclay’s identity, he was already an experienced conman who had impersonated children in more than a dozen countries where he found himself enrolled in various schools or tended to in foster homes or at hospitals. According to the New Yorker, investigations into Bourdin never revealed a good motive. He was not a sexual predator, nor was he trying to get money. He appeared to be a conman simply because he could.

Nicholas Barclay is still missing

Ultimately, Bourdin was arrested and sentenced to six years for passport fraud and forgery for impersonating Barclay. Jason, Barclay’s half-brother, reportedly died of a drug overdose in 1998. If Barclay is still alive, he would be 42 years old as of early 2023.

If you have any information about Nicholas Barclay, please call the San Antonio, Texas, Police Department at 210-207-7484.