Frédéric Bourdin: The Chameleon from Nantes

But today our impostor is Frederic Bourdon. Frederic was born to Guillain Burdon on June four, so she was eighteen years old at the time, and she was living in monte Au dessin France, that is, a suburb of Paris. His father's identity was unknown. Elaine would later stay in a two thousand and eight interview with The New Worker that Frederic's father was actually an Algerian man named Casey. Now my name pronunciation isn't going to be nearly as

delightful as Holly's, so just bear with me. One of us speaks French, one of us does not only enough to get into trouble only enough to make it sound great. So Gilan recalled that they had met at a factory, and if you're curious, that was a margarine factory. They both worked there at the time that she got pregnant. But after she found out she was pregnant, she learned that Casey was married, and because of that, she never told him about their son. As she got older, she

could no longer remember Casey's last name, she stated. Gilane raised Frederic for about two years until child services intervened, and at that point he was placed with Elaine's parents. Relatives spoke out about this whole situation, saying, quote, she liked to drink and dance and stay out at night. She didn't want anything to do with that child. Years after he was removed from her home, Gilayne wrote her son a letter saying, quote, you are my son, and they stole you from me at the age of two.

They did everything to separate us from each other, and we have become two strangers. Frederic later spoke of his mother's overwhelming need for attention, in particular his attention, describing how she would feign illness or a grave circumstance to get that attention. Guilaine, though she felt her son was overreacting about her need for this constant attention, did acknowledge that she had faked illness and had once attempted suicide, so he would be attentive to her. There are layers

of messed upness in play already. He is. Frederic began impersonating people when he was still a kid. When he was just five years old, he moved with his grandparents to known He considered himself to kind of be the village outcast, and perhaps he was, and because of that, he began telling stories, fabricated stories about himself and about his family. For instance, he explained to his fellow children that his father was never around because he was actually

according to Frederic, a British secret agents. One of his elementary school teachers described Frederic as quote a precocious and captivating child who had an extraordinary imagination and visual sense, drawing wild, beautiful comic strips. He further recalled he had this way of making you connect to him. This is a little bit of a difficult topic involving child abuse. So if that is something that you are not ready to hear about, hit mute for you. Know about thirty

seconds or so or just skip ahead. Yes. So. When he was still quite young, Frederic confessed to his grandparents that he had been molested by a neighbor, but no one in the village seemed to believe the allegation, and neither his grandparents nor anyone else ever looked into the matter, and perhaps not coincidentally, this is when Frederic began misbehaving

in school and stealing from the neighbors. Before long, he was sent to a juvenile home not too far away from his grandparents house, and at his new school, teachers referred to his stories as quote little dramas, and that they became more and more detailed as he made each one up. Throughout his childhood and into his adolescence, he often pretended that he was an amnesiac, intentionally getting lost

in the streets to make it feel real. In sixteen year old Frederick hitch hike to Paris, where he invented and inhabited his first baked character. Pretending to be a British teenager named Jimmy Stale. He approached a police officer for directions, explaining he was lost as it appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary nothing came of it other than a big boost to his boldness. It is said Frederick has used forty identities, and if you ask him,

possibly as many a five hundred. By the time he became an adult, the French press had nicknamed him Chameleon Monte or the chameleon from Some of his aliases were real people, but some were not. And we're going to talk about some of his big impersonations to really major scams, with a smattering of others along the way. Otherwise we would be here all day talking about those five hundred aliases.

But of those many, here are a few. Alex Dole, Benjamin Kent, Michelangelo Martini, Jimmy morns are No Ourient, Giovanni Petrulo, and Sladyon Roskovich. And that is just a tiny sample of who he pretended to be. You'll notice he also switched nationalities a few times, picking names in different languages. He was apparently good at that as well. A police captain once noted quote, when he talked in Spanish, he became a Spaniard. When he talked in English, he was

an Englishman. Of course, he lied, But what an actor. So this I'm starting with a quote people always say to me, why don't you become an actor, Frederick once said in an interview, which the police captain too agrees with. So Frederic goes on to say, I think I would be a very good actor like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. But I don't want to play somebody. I want to be somebody. He was always honest why he did what

he did. He wanted attention, He craved it. He acknowledged what all pretenders know but don't often admit, and that is quote, it is not that hard to fool people. He thought of his career this way. Quote. I know it can be cruel, he said, of his methods, but I don't want to become a monster. Yeah. There are a couple of these stories we'll talk about that do, when you really look at them with the broad view,

feel very cruel in a weird way. He transformed into his characters with specific details for each He would include things like what kind of soap they used, their heritage, and even things like whether or not they had a speech disorder or some sort of physical impairment. He was meticulous with each character's outward appearance. He would or would not have facial hair, he plucked his eyebrows. Anything that he could do, he did that would help bring that

character to life. So he talked on about how he considered prepping a character to how he imagined a spy might do so, and that you change your superficial details to become that character, but you never change the core of who you are. So he once said, I don't want to make myself into somebody I'm not. The story is good enough without embellishment, and he continued, the worst thing you can do is deceive yourself. He went on to say, quote, the key is actually not lying about everything,

otherwise you'll just mix things up. He claimed to live his life with inspirational quotes that helped him along with all of this, like keep it simple, and a good liar uses the truth. The one thing you better not forget, he advised, is your name. I've never actually seen the inspirational quote A good liar uses the truth. I've seen him or as a warning. Right, you know, not qualify it as an inspirational quote. Right, it's a good piece

of information. Like, let's just leave it at that. For a person who described himself as a professional liar, one interviewer once said about Frederic, he seemed oddly fastidious about the facts of his own life. In order to try to bring his developed character to life in the real world, he did this thing that I have to concede is ingenious. He would first try to create the illusion among the

local authorities that his character was real. That's smart. He would interact with police and thus create a record of this person. He would call, sometimes more than once, under different aliases, to report his character was in some sort of trouble. Nobody, he later explained, expects a seemingly vulnerable

child to be lying. Still, characters can have flaws. So here we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and by the time we're back, Frederic will probably have something like six hundred and fifty two new identities. We'll see, welcome back to criminally in Okay, let's talk about Frederick's first big deception. By June, Frederick had pretended to be more than a dozen children and teenagers who were all imaginary. That June, as well, he

also turned eighteen. Becoming an adult meant he could no longer stay in the places where he'd grown accustomed to staying. I've been in shelters and foster homes most of my life, and suddenly I was told that's it, You're free to go, has said in interviews. By the mid nineties, Frederic had a criminal record for crimes, including lying to police and other authorities. Interpol and others were looking for him. He was, unfortunately also getting media attention, which is never a good

thing for an impostor. One of my favorite quotes that he has said so far is I'd rather leave on my own than be taken away, which is something he flatly stated in an interview. So we're gonna jump ahead a little bit to France in two thousand three, and at this point, Frederick assumed the identity of a fourteen year old French boy named Leo Balis, who had been missing since n When it was suspected that Frederic was not actually Leo, authorities tested his DNA, and of course

that test proved that the authorities were right. Frederic was sentenced to four months in prison for stealing and using Leo Bali's identity. There was also a time in August of two thousand and four when Frederic was in Spain claiming to be a teenager named Reuben Sanchez Espinosa. Rubin's mother had been killed in the Madrid bomb attacks. And here we are the inevitable thing happened to Frederic. When the local authorities found out the truth, they deported him

to France. So let's get into Frederick's first really big scam. On May three, two thousand five, multiple calls were placed to the authorities about a teenage boy alone in the local train station. That boy, who was Frederic in disguise, found his way to the local government child welfare office. The boy was described as slim and short, with pale skin. He wore a scarf wound around much of his face and a baseball cap that was pulled over his eyes. He had no money with him, but he did have

a phone, and he did have identification. His name was Francisco Hernandez Fernandez, a fifteen year old from Spain. He was quiet, but he did say that his parents and younger brother had been killed than a car accident. He had been in a coma for several weeks. After he recovered, he had lived with an uncle, but when his uncle became abusive, Francisco left. He was then sent to live at a state run shelter that housed thirty five girls and boys, almost all of whom had been removed from

their homes or abandoned by their parents. When he did speak, he spoke very softly, and he would flinch if anyone tried to touch him. The shelter he was at was described as an old stone building with peeling white wooden shutters. Kind of to set this scene, Francisco was given a single room. He was enrolled at the local secondary school, where there were about four hundred or so students, mostly from tough neighborhoods, and most of whom had a reputation

for violence. Educators at the school would later say he looked like every other teenager who passed through the school, but that they felt protective of him. His literature teacher asked another student, Raphael Passoa, deal made up to help Francisco with his coursework, as he had enrolled mid term and he was trying to catch up. Quote this guy

can learn like lightning, Raphael later recalled. Gradually, Francisco began hanging out with his classmates, and it didn't actually take very long before he was one of the most popular kids at his school. Quote The students loved him. He had this aura about him, this charisma. One of his teachers recall he knew a lot of American slang and idioms, and he seemed to have a deep knowledge of music, not just American music, just music. And he could dance

just like Michael Jackson at a talent show. Quote. He didn't just look like Michael Jackson dancing. His music teacher recalled, he was Michael Jackson. About a month later, however, on June eight, a school administrator discovered who Francisco really was.

She had been watching a TV show that happened to be about one of the world's most famous impostors, Frederic Bourdon, a thirty year old Frenchman who impersonated children and teenagers, and she immediately told the principal quote, I swear to god, Bourdon looks exactly like Francisco Hernandez Fernandez. So she also did a quick Internet search, and she was surprised at

the amount of information about the possible impostor. The press called Frederick the King of impostors and described him as we quote, the master of new identities who didn't want to grow up. The press also claimed that Frederick had impersonated everything from a tiger tamer to a priest, and whether those two things are fact or fiction. There was no question that Frederick had pretended his way through many things.

But we can see though through our research and reading so many of stories about him, is that he almost always played one character over and over that was an abused or abandoned child. So when all of this came to light, the school notified the lease, and when he was arrested, the incidentally balding fake teenager stated, in a much deeper voice than Francisco normally spoke, quote, I want

a lawyer. He did admit to the police that he was actually Frederic Bourdon, and he admitted that over the past fifteen years he had invented scores of identity, many of whom were children or teenagers. His trail included, among other places, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States. I was counting along, but I ran out of fingers. She had to go to toes.

It became very awkward. Those countries. Wow, So we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor. And when we're back, we'll talk about why Frederic ended up in the United States, in Texas and in San Antonio. Welcome back to Criminalia. In just a minute, we're going to explain why it was the years and not the eyes. It's important. At this point in his career, it wasn't

just Interpol watching Frederick. The U s State Department warned he was quote an exceedingly clever man who posed as exploited children and teenagers to garner sympathy, and in posing as those children, he had raised some flags with government offices. So at one point he had assumed the identity of a teenager and was staying at a youth house in Spain. And when he was exposed as a fraud, a child welfare judge was assigned to his case, and she correctly

did not believe he was a teenager. She gave him twenty four hours to prove it, and if he couldn't, she warned him that she would collect and run his fingerprints. Those fingerprints were on file with Interpol because they, as we noted earlier, were watching him, so he couldn't risk it and there for he couldn't prove if he was or was not a teenager. Because of his criminal record, he was given a prison sentence. This here is the

next big scam that we mentioned earlier. Here. Frederic chose to pretend to be a real person named Nicholas Barclay, who was a missing teenage boy from Texas. So with his new identity in place, he'd have to convince Nicholas's family as well as the local authorities, but he felt he could do it, and in an effort to pull this charade off, he started by calling the National Center

for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia. He had picked up some English over the years, which made things a little bit easier, and he said that his name was Jonathan Durian, the director of the Linares Shelter. He claimed that a boy who spoke English but would not say who he was, had arrived at the shelter, and he described the boy as having a prominent brown hair

and eye and a gap between his teeth. That also was an exact match for Bourdon, and a woman at the center found a similar boy in the organization's database, and that description was a fairly close match to Nicholas Barclay. The actual story about Nicholas Barclay is that he was reported missing from his home near San Antonio, Texas. It was the summer of and Nicholas was thirteen. He'd been

playing basketball with friends, but he never arrived back home afterwards. Nikki, as his family called him, was last seen, according to his National Center for Missing an exploited file, wearing we quote, a white T shirt, purple pants, black shoes, and he was carrying a pink backpack. So, because of the wheels set in motion by Frederic making that phone call to Virginia, eventually Nicholas's mother, Beverly was told that her son had been found, but not in Texas. He was in Spain,

and that was, of course not Nikki. Just why this does seem incredibly cruel. It was Frederic who, then, as a consequence, traveled to San Antonio and actually lived with the Barclay family for about five months, which is amazing because Frederick had been in his twenties at the time and he didn't really resemble Nikki at all. So the first problem was that Frederick spoke with a thick French accent.

The second problem was that he had brown eyes, which was actually a really big obstacle to overcome because Nikki had blue eyes. And the third problem was that Frederic had a tattoo on his forearm. Nikki was also tattooed, but none of his tattoos were on his forearm. There was a J on his left shoulder, a T on his left hand between his thumb and his index finger, and the letters L and N on his left ankle. But despite these facts, the Barclay family welcomed the impostor

into their home as their son Nikki. So to explain that change in eye color, because you kind of have to have an answer for that, right, Frederic's explanation was that he again posting as Nikki, had been taken kidnapped essentially by a child sex trafficking ring, and that the traffickers were the ones who altered his eye color, and they did that before he managed to escape. But we were uncovering all sorts of things about him, stated a local private investigator who was working with a local TV

news crew. All that noise about eye color, and it actually wasn't eye color that ended this impersonation. It was ears, as Holly mentioned earlier, When the private investigator compared a photo of Nikki with a photo of Frederick. He noted that the ears of the teenager and the man claiming

to be that teenager didn't match. So, just in case you think that the Barclay family was so completely blinded by their possible joel at having their child back with them, there were some red flags that they started to notice. They were not just completely bought into the illusion. When Nikki's mother, Beverly, drove the impostor Nikki by his old school, she became convinced it was not her son. She later

told a private investigator quote, it's not him. He didn't recognize the school he went by, and that was how it all unraveled. The FBI was granted a court order to take Frederick's fingerprints and a sample of his DNA. They did not match Nicholas Barclay, but they were a perfect match for Nicki's impostor. Frederick pleaded guilty to passport

fraud and perjury and his San Antonio Federal court. He was sentenced to six years in prison, which was more than twice as long as recommended by the sentencing guidelines, and after his release, he was deported to France. A French prosecutor called Frederick, we quote, an incredible illusionist whose perversity is matched only by his intelligence. That prosecutor went on to say, quote, in my twenty two years on the job, I've never seen a case like it. Usually

people can for money. His profit seems to have been purely emotional. And Frederick kind of backed this up with his own statement because he always said, and we're quoting here, I am a manipulator. My job is to manipulate. And many of the accusations and cases against him, and this is interesting, authorities were never sure of the best punishment for his crimes. Psychiatrists would be brought in to evaluate him, and he was always determined sane. When one doctor was

asked in court, is he a psychopath? He testified and we quote absolutely not. On August eight, two thousand seven, Frederic married a frenchwoman named Isabelle, and the couple reside still in France. They have five children together, and after the birth of his first child, Frederick was asked by the press if he had become a new person now that he was a father and a husband, and he replied, quote, no,

this is who I am. And since getting married and having children, Frederic has said he would we quote never impersonate anyone again. His only goal, as he had always claimed, was to have a home where he quote could be love. Frederic, what a hard life, right, hard childhood? Yeah, you have

to balance the normal. I think reaction of outrage at the cruel nature of him pretending to be children that people had genuinely lost against like this is obviously someone hunting for something themselves that they did not feel like they ever had, right, And he always, through all the research that I saw, always maintained he just wanted a home and he just wanted to be loved since he was a kid. That was what he said, and as

we watch his story unfold, I completely believe him. So with his story, said Holly, I hear the mock tail this week has a baked good in it. It does. And it was partially because I wanted to do something that was a little bit more fun, because this is a little bit of a heavier story in some ways, and because we talked so much about, you know, him wanting to be a kid, I thought I would come up with something that has a that hearkens back a

little bit to childhood. But also I wanted to, you know, think about his specific story, which of course made me think of French things, which are delicious. Many French things are, And so I came up. This is actually a milkshake this week, and it's called like a Kid Again. It's simple to make. There's one ingredient that can be a pain in the neck, and I will tell you my saga. So it's very very simple. Uh, you're gonna want to

blender for this one. So you're gonna put in that blender two thirds of a cup of vanilla ice cream, just a plain one, a score of caramel syrup, a pinch of sea salt, and then I use a quarter cup of milk, and I used oat milk, And you add about half of it and start blending. And when it gets to the consistency you like, like, you just keep adding a little bit of time until you get there.

I like mine, in this instance a little thinner than I normally would want a milkshake because I want to sip it through a straw, and because you're about to add something that's going to thicken it up anyway. So once you have that to a consistency you like, you're gonna throw in two salted caramel macaron. Now you didn't mention the flavor. Oh yeah, you're gonna do these at the end, m because you only want to put them in the blender for just a brief period of time.

You just want to break them up into little bits, but not pulverize them, so that as you're you're having your milkshake, you're getting some yummy crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside bits of macaron and some of that yummy filling which uh, you know was a caramel butter cream in my case, with a little bit of sea salt in it. Oh my god, stop, it's so delicious.

And then you're gonna garnish this with a drizzle of caramel if you want, and I actually recommend just a little sprinkling of flaked sea salt on top, which just makes it super yummy. And if you want to go really hog wild, you can also garnish it, you know, with a third maca at all. But that's a lot of it's a lot of bakery and ice cream time at that point. I mean, this is a smallish milkshake and it still was very very filling. So does it

stay crunchy in the in the milkshake. Um no, I mean it also depends on how how quick you consume it immediately. It doesn't stay super crunchy for me, and I found um, particularly once I added alcohol to it, the macat on stuff tended to float on the top of it and it got quite soft. But it was delicious, delicious. Yeah, if you want to make this an adult drink, and if you do consume alcohol, I recommend try and this

because wow, was it delicious. I just I just put in an ounce of conak and let me tell you, did it take it to a new level? It did well because something interesting happened. I hadn't really thought about it interplaying in this way, but it's like the konak really heightened that juxtaposition between the sweetness and the salt in it, and it was just like I felt like Remi and Ratatui because I was like, look at how

the flavors interact. I was very excited and actually I can see this happening in your kitchen, Sime, like running around excitedly and thinking like, gosh, I should eat some protein to counteract all the sugar. Think you're like like in an hour and then you never get to it. Yes, yeah, but it was super duper yummy. Here's what I will tell you is that think ahead, maybe call ahead before you go looking for your salted caramel mac at all, because maybe your bakery doesn't have them that day. I

wouldn't know this from experience. I may have had to throw together some macadon very quickly and in a great bit of irony. Macanon, as you know, very complex to make a lot of steps. They're not hard, but they're tricky, and there's just a lot of doing and sifting and careful measuring. And this was my sloppiest batch ever and they came out more beautiful than any other macadon I

have ever made in my life. So now you know how to make them in the future, which is to pay no attention and only, like you know, halfheartedly think about measurements and apparently the magic will happen. Um Here, I've been slaving over really trying to be very careful all the time. I will say if you if you want to try your hand at maccadon, they are sort of notoriously finicky, and you'll often see people be like I tried and failed, and it's very depressing because you

put in so much work. Usually even if they're hideous, they're delicious. But the best recipe I have found ever, the one that almost always turns out really really nicely for me, even if it's not perfect, is the one from Binging with Babbish. That is the best mac recipe. So look that one up. That was one that came out in December of because he was doing it because Macana has showed up on the Mandalorian. But it is absolutely my most successful repeated Macana recipe. That's great, Thanks

for sharing that. Try that if you want to try baking them, and just know they may not come out and that's okay. They'll probably still be delicious. And if if you're doing it for this you're gonna throw them with the blunder anyway, it's fine, exactly. You're just crushing him up. They're doomed to be broken apart in any case.

So if they don't, if they're little ps the feet on the bottom don't pop up properly, or if they you know, aren't quite right in the dome shape, or if they stick to the the mat a little bit. When they come up, they're supposed to come up clean. But sometimes you leave behind like a little chunk of cookie and that's not great. But again, it's going in the blender. It's fine. Tell everybody they looked perfect when before you did. That's fine. That is my baking experience

in play. Little did you know this is going to be a long baking segment. Uh, but thank you. I hope if anybody tries this one tagged me on Twitter because I want to see here your maccao and your your milkshakes. Yes, please tag us. I hope that you absolutely love it, and I hope that you have enjoyed spending this time with us this week, despite this being a little bit of a downer in some ways, which I hope our sweet treat at the end helped mitigate

just a little bit. But we will be back here again next week with another impostor and another hopefully delicious libation. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you send to your favorite shows.