#oddity blog

[coralines-oddities]

Disappearance of Nicholas Barclay/Frederic Bourdin

Nicholas Barclay is a missing child from San Antonio, Texas. His case became of note when serial imposter and confidence trickster Frederic Bourdin assumed Barclay’s identity for five months.

Barclay was last seen on June 13, 1994. He was playing a game of basketball with friends and called home for a ride. His mother worked nights at the time, so his brother did not want to wake her and Nicholas walked home. He did not make it home and was never seen again. He was 13 years old at the time of his disappearance.

Authorities did not take the case seriously at first, as Barclay had been a problem child. He was diagnosed with ADHD, and had ran away many times before going missing. He had a very tumultuous relationship with his mother. He also had several small tattoos done by friends at their homes. By the age of 13, he had already been in trouble with authorities for breaking into a store, stealing a pair of shoes, and threatening a teacher. His sentencing hearing was the day after he went missing, and it was a possibility that he was going to be put into a group home, which Barclay had been upset about. In September, his brother called the police, claiming that he had saw Nicholas break into the garage at home. Nicholas had not been found, and police and Nicholas’s family did not take this claim seriously.

Frederic Bourdin was born in Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, on June 13, 1974. His birth was a result of a one night stand between his teenage mother and a married Algerian immigrant; Bourdin never knew his father. Because of his mixed race and illegitimacy, he had a strained relationship with his grandfather. Bourdin has said that, because of this, he felt like he “didn’t have a real childhood”.

In October 1997, Bourdin was picked up by authorities in Linares, Spain for not having identification on him. After going back to the station and gaining the trust of the officers, he was left overnight in the station, alone, with access to a missing persons database. After going through the database, he decided to assume the identity of Barclay. However, this wouldn’t be easy, as Barclay would have only been 16 years old and Bourdin was 23 years old; Barclay was blonde with blue eyes and fair skin, where Bourdin had all dark features; and Bourdin spoke with a thick French accent. Bourdin went forward with claiming to be Barclay, and told the authorities that he was kidnapped and put into sex slavery, and was shipped to Spain by his captors. He claimed to be abused by American, Mexican, and European military members. Bourdin told authorities that his captors changed his eye color with chemicals, and he picked up the accent from being around French men. Later, he would bleach his hair with peroxide and had tattoos done to match Barclay’s. His impersonation fooled officials in both Spain and the US and he was granted Barclay’s identity, including his passport, social security number, and birth certificate.

Nicholas’s sister flew to Spain to pick up Bourdin. She first expressed doubt as to it really being him, but chalked the oddities of it to puberty and the years of abuse he experienced. Bourdin deliberately covered himself up as much as possible with multiple layers of clothing, hats, and sunglasses, as to cover up his image; he also did not talk much to Barclay’s family and did not make physical contact. Nicholas’s mother believed that Bourdin was her son, but others, including Nicholas’s uncle, were suspicious. Bourdin assumed Barclay’s identity completely, including going to high school.

In late 1997, a private investigator grew suspicious of Bourdin after seeing him on a news report about Barclay being found. He noticed differences between the two’s appearances; he compared photos of both of their ears and concluded that Bourdin was not Barclay. In February 1998, the FBI asked Bourdin and Barclay’s mother for blood samples to confirm his identity. Barclay’s mother refused for both, since technically Barclay was underage and needed parental consent. The FBI then obtained a court order for blood samples, which proved that Bourdin was an imposter.

Bourdin was charged with passport fraud and perjury in 1998 and he pleaded guilty. Bourdin admitted to finding information on Barclay on the database and assuming his identity. Bourdin made many claims about Barclay and his family during the trial - including having evidence that Barclay was dead, that Barclay’s family were involved in his disappearance, that he met Barclay in Spain and he was still alive, and later denied ever meeting Barclay or knowing anything about him. He was sentenced to six years; the judge gave him three times the standard sentence due to the harm he caused Nicholas’s family.

After Bourdin had been found to be an imposter, police began investigating Barclay’s family in regard to his disappearance. Barclay’s mother was a heroin addict at the time of his disappearance, but went to rehab after he disappeared. She was given two polygraph tests about his disappearance and failed one of them. Barclay’s brother had been considered a person of interest in the case, but he died from a cocaine overdose in 1998; the case grew cold after.

Barclay has never been seen and his case still remains unsolved. His case is still being considered a missing persons case, but foul play is suspected. If you have any information regarding Barclay, please contact the San Antonio police department.

Bourdin was released in 2003 and he returned to France. He again assumed the identity of a missing 14 year old named Leo Bailey. DNA proved he was not Bailey. In 2004, he was again in Spain, and assumed the identity of a child named Ruben Sanchez Espinoza, who became orphaned in the Madrid terrorist bombings. He was soon found to be an imposter and sent back to France. In 2005, he assumed the identity of Francisco Hernandez-Fernandez, a 15 year old orphan from Spain. As Francisco, he attended college; a professor outed him as an imposter after seeing a news report on Bourdin’s impersonations. In September 2005, he was sentenced to four months in prison for stealing Leo Bailey’s identity.

In August 2007, he married a French woman named Isabelle; they have four children and live in Le Mans, France. The Daily Mirror claimed that Bourdin said he would not impersonate anyone again. However, David Grann from the New Yorker, who has written about the case before, claimed that when asked if having children made Bourdin a new man, said “No. This [an imposter] is who I am.”

Barclay’s case was fictionalized in the 2010 French film the Chameleon. The film is based on the authorized biography of Bourdin of the same name. The Imposter, a documentary about Barclay’s case, was released in 2012; this documentary is available to watch on Netflix.

Links and reference:

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/barclay_nicholas.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bourdin

The documentary about the case, the Imposter, on Youtube:

[coralines-oddities]

Karin Catherine Waldegrave

Karin Catherine Waldegrave was a person of note for posting hundreds of cryptic posts and comments on her personal Facebook page. Karin was born in London and studied at the University of Toronto, where she received a PhD. She then settled in Toronto. She was known for being smart and well versed, with high profile connections in the academic world. She is also known for speaking several languages.

In 2011, she began to post long, rambling posts in her Facebook, and would comment on her own posts, up to 700 times within a 12 hour period; her comments would almost all be posted within a single minute. Her posts mention conspiracies of the FBI and CIA mind controlling her. She claimed to be privy to the illegal doings of the “Elite”, as well as knowing of several criminal networks. Karin’s profile had a few personal photos, but all photos appeared to be water damaged.

Readers speculated that she was schizophrenic, or was a spy posting espionage communications. It was also speculated that she may have had a mental breakdown under the pressure of academia, or that her account was in control by several people.

As of 2016, there are no known whereabouts of Karin and her Facebook profile has been deleted. People have said she was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was in an institution, though there is no proof of that. A fan page exists that attempts to keep track of her.

Links and reference:

http://listverse.com/2016/03/02/10-strange-attempts-to-start-internet-mysteries/

https://m.facebook.com/karincatherinwaldegravefirstfanpage/

http://uproxx.com/webculture/who-is-karin-catherine-waldegrave/

http://www.oddityworld.net/2014/12/what-happened-to-karin-catherine.html?m=0

https://m.reddit.com/r/UnexplainedPhotos/comments/34v5r3/the_strange_case_of_karin_catherine_waldegrave_in/

[coralines-oddities]

The Taman Shud case/the Somerton Man

The Taman Shud case, also known as the Somerton Man, in an unsolved case. The man, who is still unidentified, died on December 1, 1948 on Somerton Beach, south of Adelaide, Australia. The case is often referred to as the Taman Shud case because the man was found with a scrap of paper in his pocket that said “taman shud”, which means “ended” or “finished”, which was from a specific translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The case is considered one of Australia’s most profound mysteries, and the case still attracts attention to this day due to the secret code discovered, his lack of identification, and a possible unrequited love being involved.

On December 1, 1948, at 6:30 AM, the police were called after a man’s body was found on the Somerton Beach, in Glenelg. He was found with his head resting against a wall, with his legs outstretched and his feet crossed. It is believed he died in his sleep. A couple came forward saying they saw him alive at 7 PM the night before, and another couple saw him between 7:30 and 8, and said they did not see him move and assumed he was sleeping or was drunk.

According to the pathologist, the man was of British descent, was around 40 - 45 years old, and was in good health and good physical condition. All labels from his clothing were removed. He carried no identification and his dental records didn’t match anyone. The autopsy found congestion that is usually associated with poisoning, but there was no poison found in his system. A half eaten pastry was found in his stomach but it had no poison in it. The corner couldn’t find a definitive cause of death or identity. His fingerprints were not in any Australian records, so they expanded their search. Scotland Yard was called to help the case but they found nothing as well.

The Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser reported a possible identity on December 2 - they believed it to be a man named EC Johnson. Johnson came to the police the next day, alive and well. Newspapers published photos of the man. Many possible identifications of the man were made but none were positive. By 1953, police received over 250 possible identifications.

The scrap of paper with the phrase “taman shud” is considered the biggest, and one of the few, pieces of evidence in the case. Police conducted a continent-wide search for the book the scrap came from. A man came forward saying he found a 1859 translation of the Rubaiyat in the backseat of his unlocked car around the time the Somerton Man’s body was found. The book was given to police who discovered that the “taman shud” phrase was ripped out of his copy, and microscopic tests proved it came from that copy.

In the back of the book were five lines of handwritten capitalized text with the second line crossed out. Code experts were unable to decipher it, and the Australian Department of Defense said there were insufficient characters to provide a decipher code and that it would be impossible to provide an adequate solution to the code.

A phone number was found in the back of the book that belonged to a nurse who lived near the beach where the body was found. She said she owned a copy of the Rubaiyat, but she gave it to a man named Alfred Boxall, a lieutenant in the Australian Army, in 1945. She received letters from Boxall, but she was now married. A stranger was talking to her neighbor about her on the day of the Somerton Man’s death as well. Police believed Boxall to be the Somerton Man, until he was discovered in July 1948, in Sydney, still having possession of his copy of the Rubaiyat with the “taman shud” phrase still intact.

The woman denied all knowledge of the Somerton Man and why a stranger would be looking for her the same day he died. Investigators showed her a photo of the Somerton Man’s corpse; she denied knowing who it was, but was reported to be very distressed over the photo and was on the verge of fainting. She asked to not have her name released to the media. However, a television program about the case referred to her as “Jestyn”, which was a name written in the copy of the Rubaiyat. It could have been a pet name for her. The investigator claimed Jestyn was cold and evasive, and believes she knows more than she is letting on. It is also speculated that Jestyn’s son was a love child between the two. Jestyn died in 2007, and her son died in 2009.

The Somerton Man’s body was buried in the West Terrace Cemetery, in Adelaide, in 1949.

In 1994, the chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine reviewed the case and believed the man died from digitalis poisoning. It is also speculated that he could have been poisoned through his cigarettes, as the cigarettes he was found with were more expensive than the box they were in (a common practice in the army at the time was to buy cheap cigarettes and put them in an expensive box).

In 2001, an Adelaide woman contacted a biological anthropologist about an ID card she found in her father’s possession of a man named HC Reynolds. The card was a card given to foreign seamen by the US. It was used in comparison to the Somerton Man, and came back as a “very good” match, as they both had moles in specific places and the same shape of ears. HC Reynolds was given the card in 1918, was 18 years old at the time, and gave British as his nationality. However, this lead went nowhere, as searches of Reynolds in the US, UK, and Australian military databases failed to find any records of him.

Links and reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case

http://www.ciphermysteries.com/tamam-shud-somerton-man

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2f1qt0/i_am_professor_derek_abbott_a_researcher_of_the/

http://thinkingsidewayspodcast.com/taman-shud/

[coralines-oddities]

Hi! This is Coraline's Oddities - my blog where I post about my weird, unusual interests, including true crime, weird events, unusual disappearances, among other things. I love to read and research these topics, so doing an informative blog about them comes naturally to me. I'm starting it as a blog, but will also be doing videos eventually as well. Please follow this blog and send me your ideas for topics! :)