5 chilling details about Frédéric Bourdin

The Imposter, which covers the bizarre chronicles of the French serial impostor Frédéric Bourdin, was recently released on Netflix UK.

Bourdin claimed to have assumed the identities of at least five hundred people, including three missing people. The Frenchman is most popularly known for his identity theft of 13-year-old American teen Nicholas Barclay.

Nicholas went missing on June 13, 1994, while playing basketball with his friends.

Born to Ghislaine Bourdin, a poor French woman, on June 13, 1974, Frédéric spent most of his childhood in poverty facing hardships. The identity of his father was never known in his early life. Government forms simply listed his father as "X."

Let's take a look at 5 chilling details about the notorious Frédéric Bourdin.

---

Frédéric Bourdin played sick games with his family and had the habit of lying to them

1) Frédéric Bourdin had an abusive mother

While it was initially unknown who Bourdin's father was, it was later discovered that his father was a man named Kaci. Kaci was already married when Bourdin's mother got pregnant with him.

Ghislaine abandoned her son's father and began raising Bourdin on her own. However she wasn't the best role model for her son, as she was known to drink and go about town while her son was all alone, left to his own devices.

All of this was revealed during the custody battle for him when he was three. His grandparents won the custody battle and they took him in. During the fight for Bourdin, it was also revealed that his mother threatened to take her own life in front of him.

---

2) Frédéric Bourdin fabricated stories from a very young age

Bourdin was known to lie a lot from a very young age. After his grandparents won the custody battle, they took him to live with them in a very bad town where he realized how terrible people could be.

When he was in school, he would tell people that his father was a spy and wasn't around because he was out on duty. His fictional stories often fascinated his teachers and others around him.

---

3) The first fake identity he used was that of a non-existent British teenager

After he ran off to Paris, Frédéric assumed his first fake identity - that of a British teenager named Jimmy Sale. He approached a police officer and told him that he was lost.

Unfortunately, this couldn't go on for long as his inexperience caught up to him. He couldn't speak a word of English, which ended up blowing his cover. The boy who wanted to flee to England to start over was returned to the juvenile facility he escaped from.

---

4. He had fun playing stomach-churning games with his family

In one instance, Bourdin's family received a tragic phone call that stated that German authorities had found Bourdin's lifeless body. Burdened by grief, the family waited for the coffin to arrive but that never happened. They later realized what Bourdin had done.

He had a tendency to play sick games with his own family for attention and soon he seemed to become more and more deranged.

---

5) He assumed the identity of a 13-year-old American teenager named Nicholas Barclay

Bourdin was perhaps best known for stealing the identity of Nicholas Barclay, a 13-year-old American boy from Texas.

Frédéric Bourdin spawned an elaborate tale of how he (Nicholas) got involved in a child pr*stitution racket that changed the color of his eyes. He even dyed his hair brown and got a tattoo on his finger to cement his story.

With a little bit of confidence and a lot of planning, he managed to convince authorities and Nicholas' family that he was indeed their lost boy. However, Frédéric Bourdin was only with the Barclay family for five months before his real identity came out.

---

The Imposter is now streaming on Netflix UK.