This podcast is intended for mature audiences.

Listener discretion is advised. One day, in October, One day, in October 1997, several police stations across the U.S. received phone calls from a youth center in Spain.

The caller identified himself as the director of the facility, and stated that a teenage boy from America was there asking for help.

The police in the U.S. put the caller in touch with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The caller from Spain went on to give a brief physical description of the boy

and asked if there were any missing teenagers matching their records. The agent checked the

database and provided the caller with the name of a teenage boy who had been reported missing

several years earlier. The descriptions were similar enough to be a possible match, so the case

details were sent over

right away. Not long after the file arrived, the Center for Missing Children received a follow-up

call from the person claiming to be the director of the youth facility. He told the agent that

the missing boy in the file and the scared boy standing in his office were, in fact, the same.

When the call ended, the man calling himself the director, studied the missing boy's file

carefully. It wouldn't be long now before he would have to convince the world that he

was the missing teenager.

My name is Eric Crosby. Welcome to True.

Frédéric Bourdain was born in 1974, in a suburb just outside of Paris.

He was a disruptive child both at home and at school, preferring to live in a fantasy world.

He was raised by his grandparents until, when he was just aged 12, he was sent to a home for juveniles.

Years later, at 16, he ran away from another

center and headed to the streets of Paris. It's there that he started to create and assume

false identities. He quickly found that telling people he was a 14-year-old runaway got their

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