The solutions he found to this problem are a masterclass in the exploitation of grief and the manipulation of expectation.

The eye color problem was perhaps the most glaring physical discrepancy.

Nicholas had distinctly blue eyes.

Bourdin had brown eyes.

No story about trauma, growth, or time could change the color of a person’s eyes.

Bourdin’s solution was audacious: he claimed that the sex traffickers who had held him captive had injected chemicals into his eyes as part of experiments — that the injections had permanently changed his eye color.

This is not a plausible explanation by any medical standard.