News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

THE Barclay family were euphoric when missing teenage son Nicholas was found alive and well.

Texas schoolboy Nicholas, who disappeared aged 13, turned up three years later thousands of miles away in Spain.

For mum Beverly it was like a miracle, and she showered him with affection after he was flown home.

The family seemed unconcerned that Nicholas now had blue eyes, not brown as before, his ears had changed shape and he had a French accent.

It took a private investigator to unearth the truth – the new Nicholas was an impostor.

He was Frenchman Frederic Bourdin who had never set foot on US soil before. And he wasn’t 16, but 23.

The amazing story has now been made into a British documentary called The Imposter explaining how for five months Bourdin convinced family and friends that he really was Nicholas.

The film, which had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival this week, tells how the conman kept up the deception in 1997 by dyeing his brown hair blond, going back to school, and using a pen to fake a tattoo on his hand.

And when the real identity of the man who would later be called The Chameleon was revealed, the truth about his life seemed even more incredible than the story he had invented.

Bourdin had spent years pretending to be orphans across Europe.

From the age of 16 he conned himself into foster homes, orphanages, schools and kids’ hospitals, each time using a different name and an elaborate sob story.

In 1991 when he was 20, Bourdin stayed at a Glasgow care home for two months after convincing staff he was 14 and had been sold to Irish child abusers.

Over the years he is believed to have taken on more than 40 false identities, in at least 16 countries including England, Germany, Sweden and Denmark.

(Image: Internet)

Mostly he masqueraded as a destitute child, changing his appearance by using hair removal cream, altering his deep voice, and adopting the walk and mannerisms of a teenager.

He became such an expert that when he pretended to be 14 in 2004, a doctor who examined him at the request of authorities in the French city of Grenoble concluded he was a indeed a teenager – even though he was 30.

His most recent deception was a year later when he successfully pretended to be a 15-year-old Spanish orphan to get into a French boarding school.

He had to dye his grey hair and wear a baseball cap to cover his bald patch.

Described as a pathological liar and a performing genius, he has appalled and impressed victims in equal measure.

The US State Department called him an “exceedingly clever man” who posed as a desperate child “to win sympathy”.

But he didn’t only pretend to be children. His other guises have reportedly included a rich English tourist, a lecturer, a trainee priest and a tiger healer.

Born in June 1974 on the outskirts of Paris, Bourdin never knew his dad – an Algerian immigrant – and was abandoned by his mum when he was aged two.

Raised by his poor grandparents in a hamlet near Nantes, he began inventing stories about himself to impress friends, claiming his dad was never around because he was a British secret agent.

(Image: Getty)

He began misbehaving at school and stealing from neighbours, so aged 12 he was sent to a school for young troublemakers.

Aged 16, Bourdin ran away and hitchhiked to Paris where he invented his first character, telling a police officer he was a lost British teenager.

He later recalled: “I dreamt they would send me to England where I always imagined life was more beautiful.”

When police discovered he spoke almost no English he admitted his deceit and was sent back to the orphanage.

As he repeated his game dozens of times across Europe, Bourdin found he could pretend to be anyone, winning the trust and sympathy of people who would take him in, feed and clothe him.

Along the way he became fluent in five languages including English.

As one French police captain recalled: “When he talked in Spanish, he became a Spaniard. When he talked in English, he was English.”

By the time he turned 18 he had posed as more than a dozen fictional children.And he didn’t let adulthood stop him.

He later said: “I’d been in shelters and foster homes most of my life. Suddenly I was told ‘You’re free’. How could I become something I couldn’t imagine?”

Bourdin moved from one youth shelter to the next until in 1997, while staying at a shelter in Linares, Spain, he came up with a new scheme – to impersonate a missing boy in the US.

Posing as a staff member he called US authorities saying he was trying to identify an American boy who was too frightened to say who he was.

Bourdin gave a description of himself and he was told it sounded like missing Nicholas Barclay.

Bourdin requested more information, then phoned the US office back, saying Nicholas had been found.

And despite the clear physical differences, when Nicholas’ sister flew to Spain she accepted him, just as the rest of the family would when he arrived in San Antonio in Texas.

The only one to doubt his story was PI Charlie Parker, who was hired by a TV show to investigate the amazing story.

Bourdin said his differently coloured eyes, new shaped ears and accent were a result of abuse and experiments done by his captors who punished him unless he spoke French.

When Parker confronted him, the impostor admitted: “I’m Frederic Bourdin and I’m wanted by Interpol.”

Bourdin said at the subsequent trial: “I am not a criminal. I never wanted to be an adult. I’m just a boy who needs love and attention.”

He was sentenced to six years in jail, and authorities began again to search for Nicholas.

Mum Beverly, a recovering heroin addict, took two lie detector tests and said she did not know where he was. She passed one test and failed the other.

Nicholas’ brother died of a drug overdose in 1998, and with that the investigation into the disappearance went on hold.

Soon after Bourdin was released in 2003, he returned to France and tried to pass himself off as a boy who had gone missing in 1996, aged seven.

In the end only a DNA test exposed him.

A year later, he claimed to be a teenager whose mum supposedly died in the Madrid train bombings of March 2004.

And in 2005 when he started living in the French boarding school with pupils half his age, he was only exposed after a teacher saw him in a documentary.

Bourdin married two years later and has vowed he will never impersonate anyone again.

Today, aged 38, he is a dad-of-three and finally The Chameleon seems to be comfortable in his own skin.

* The Imposter opens in cinemas on August 24.