A grown man with brown eyes and a French accent walked into a Texas home, and a family called him their son. The real Nicholas Barclay had blue eyes. He's still missing.
A Difficult Home Life
Nicholas Patrick Barclay was born December 31, 1980, the youngest of three children raised by his mother, Beverly Dollarhide, in San Antonio, Texas, alongside his older siblings Carey and Jason. By most accounts, including his mother's own statements to investigators, Nicholas had a turbulent relationship with his family — he had reportedly been verbally and physically aggressive toward his mother at times, with police called to the home on multiple occasions over family arguments. His mother had Jason move back into the house at one point specifically to help manage Nicholas's behavior.
Nicholas had a history of skipping school and a minor juvenile record, including a break-in at a convenience store and a confrontation with a teacher. A sentencing hearing tied to those incidents — with one possible outcome being placement in a group home, something Nicholas strongly objected to — was scheduled for June 14, 1994. He disappeared the day before it.
The Last Day Anyone Saw Him
On June 13, 1994, Nicholas was playing basketball with friends near his San Antonio home. He called the house asking for a ride home; his mother was asleep after working a night shift, and Jason, who took the call, declined to wake her. Nicholas never made it home.
Investigators initially assumed he might be a runaway, given his history — though he'd never previously been gone more than a day. About three months later, Jason called police, saying he believed he'd seen Nicholas trying to break into the family's garage before fleeing when he realized he'd been spotted. Police searched the area and found no sign of him, and came away skeptical of Jason's account, though the reason for that skepticism was never fully resolved.
A Call From Spain
In October 1997 — more than three years after Nicholas disappeared — police received a call from a youth shelter in Linares, Spain. A young man there was claiming to be Nicholas, saying he had escaped a child trafficking operation that had drugged and abused him for years, and that his captors had chemically altered his hair and eye color.
Nicholas's older sister, Carey, traveled to Spain and identified the young man as her brother. He was brought back to the United States, and Beverly accepted him as her son. Others, including Nicholas's uncle, were far more skeptical from the start — the young man had brown eyes rather than Nicholas's blue, spoke with a noticeable French accent, and used unfamiliar European phrasing, which he explained away as a result of years spent abroad.
The Investigator Who Looked at His Ears
The case might have ended there had it not been for a private investigator, Charlie Parker, brought in by a documentary producer covering the story, and an FBI agent who both grew suspicious almost immediately. Parker has since described his doubt forming the moment he compared the young man's ear shape — a feature considered nearly as individually distinctive as a fingerprint — against childhood photographs of Nicholas. They didn't match.
The man refused to voluntarily provide blood or fingerprints to confirm his identity, and declined to name the people he claimed had abducted and abused him. In February 1998, the FBI obtained a court order to collect both. The results identified him as Frédéric Pierre Bourdin, a 23-year-old French national with a long history of assuming false identities across Europe — sometimes referred to in media coverage as "The Chameleon."
Confronted directly by Parker during a period of surveillance, Bourdin reportedly admitted his real identity outright: "My name is Frédéric Bourdin, and I'm wanted by Interpol."
A Confession, and Then Contradictions
Bourdin pleaded guilty to passport fraud and perjury in 1998. He was sentenced to six years in prison — far longer than sentencing guidelines typically called for, with the court citing the severity of the emotional harm caused to the Barclay family. He served his sentence and was returned to France in 2003.
His account of what he actually knew about Nicholas has shifted repeatedly over the years — at different points claiming he believed Nicholas was still alive somewhere in Spain, claiming he had evidence Nicholas had died, and at other points denying ever having any real knowledge of the case at all. It's worth being direct about something here: Bourdin has, at various points, suggested he suspected Nicholas's mother or brother may have been involved in his disappearance and were using his impersonation to maintain a cover story. This is Bourdin's own claim, made by a man with an extensively documented history of fabrication and self-serving deception, and it has never been substantiated by any investigation. It should be treated as exactly that — an unproven allegation from an unreliable source, not an established fact.
Bourdin didn't stop impersonating missing children after his release. He later assumed the identity of a missing French teenager, and still later posed as a Spanish orphan, each time eventually exposed through DNA testing.
A Family Investigated, A Brother Who Can No Longer Answer
After Bourdin's true identity was revealed, investigators did turn their attention to whether Nicholas's own family might have had something to do with his original disappearance. Beverly Dollarhide, who had struggled with addiction around the time Nicholas vanished and entered recovery afterward, took two polygraph examinations regarding her son's disappearance — passing the first, but failing or declining a follow-up test, depending on the account. Jason, who had been quietly considered a person of interest at points during the investigation, developed serious substance abuse problems in the years after his brother's disappearance and died of a cocaine overdose in 1998, before the case could be fully resolved with him.
Where Things Stand
Nicholas Barclay has never been found, and his case remains formally unsolved more than three decades later. Some agencies have continued to list him as a runaway; others classify him as an endangered missing person, given foul play has never been ruled out. He may still be in the San Antonio area, or he may not be.
The case became internationally known through Bart Layton's 2012 documentary, The Imposter, which features extensive interviews with Bourdin himself and remains one of the most widely discussed true-crime documentaries of the past two decades — a story less about who took Nicholas, ultimately, than about how completely a stranger was able to walk into his place.
If you have any information about the disappearance of Nicholas Barclay, you're encouraged to contact the San Antonio Police Department.
Sources
The Disappearance of Nicholas Barclay — Disappeared Blog
https://disappearedblog.com/nicholas-barclay/
The Imposter: How the Nicholas Barclay Case Shocked the World — River City Ghosts
https://rivercityghosts.com/the-imposter-how-the-nicholas-barclay-case-shocked-the-world/
Conman impersonated missing teen and lived with Texas family for five months before confessing — The Mirror US
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/conman-impersonated-missing-teen-lived-666482
The disturbing disappearance of Nicholas Patrick Barclay from Texas and the imposter — StrangeOutdoors.com
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/nicholas-barclay