Disappearance And Reappearance Of Nicholas

Thirteen-year-old Nicholas was last noticed on June 13, 1994, in San Antonio, Texas enjoying basketball with his buddies.

He called home and asked his mama to pick him up, but she was sleeping and Nicholas's older brother refused to wake her. Nicholas never came home. The police initially thought Nicholas left of his own accord because he had done so in the past, but he was never gone for more than a day.

Nicholas' mother declared that he sometimes hit & cursed at her, and the authorities were often called to the home in response to arguments. His mama had had her brother move into their residence to keep her son under control.

Nicholas was often truant and got into trouble when he went to school. He has a minor criminal record: he broke into a convenience store, snatched a pair of shoes, and terrified a teacher. The sentencing hearing was set for June 14, 1994 (the day after he disappeared), and one chance was placement in a group home which Nicholas was very different too.

On September 25, 1994, Nicholas's older half-brother phoned the authorities and told them he believed he saw Nicholas attempting to break into the family's garage, but Nicholas left when he felt his brother had seen him. The police checked the neighborhood, but couldn't discover him. They don't think Nicholas's brother had seen him and neither does their mum.

In October of 1997 (three years after Nicholas disappeared), police received a phone call from a man at a youth shelter in Linares, Spain. The caller told that Nicholas was living at the Spanish shelter after breaking out from a child sex ring operation. The man told that the person thought that Nicholas had been abused for years. Nicholas's sister went to Spain, recognized the person as her brother, and brought him back to Texas.

Nicholas's mother thought the man was her kid, but many other people (including his uncle) were doubtful of his claims. The person had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and talked with a French accent & European wording. He said his abductors had chemically changed his hair & eye color and that he picked up various speech patterns from living in Europe for so long.

The person rejected to voluntarily give blood samples or have his fingerprints used to confirm his personality, and he declined to name his abductors. In February of 1998, the FBI brought a court order to take the individual's fingerprints & blood and determine a match with Nicholas. The fingerprints recognized the man as Frederic Pierre Bourdin, a 23-year-old French citizen who was posing as Nicholas. Bourdin has a criminal history in Europe and has used many nicknames.

Bourdin pleaded guilty to passport crime and perjury in 1998, admitting that he had posed as Nicholas after receiving the missing boy's data from a missing child center. After Bourdin was uncovered, he made many contradicting declarations about Nicholas: he said he had realized Nicholas in Spain and that he was alive, he said he had evidence that Nicholas died, and later he rejected having ever met Nicholas at all and confessed he knew nothing about the case. Bourdin was sentenced to six years in jail (which more than three times what the convicting guidelines suggested) due to the damage that he caused the Barclay family.

After Bourdin's identity was found, authorities started investigating Nicholas's family for probable involvement in his disappearance. His mama was addicted to heroin in 1994, but she got on into recovery after her son disappeared. She passed one polygraph about Nicholas's case, but she declined the second one. Nicholas's older brother created a drug issue after his disappearance & died of a cocaine overdose later in 1998. He had been supposed a possible suspect in his brother's disappearance, and with his death, the inquiry slowed.

Nicholas has never been found and his case remains unsolved. He may still be staying in the San Antonio area. While many agencies proceed to categorize Nicholas as a runaway, foul play is suspected in his disappearance & he is categorized as an endangered missing person.