An amateur investigator named Charlie Parker — who worked with the TV program Hard Copy and who was deeply skeptical of the official account — began looking at the case.

Parker studied photographs and compared ear shapes.

Human ears have consistent proportions from early childhood through adulthood; they do not change shape significantly as a person grows.

The ears in photographs of Bourdin did not match the ears in photographs of Nicholas Barclay.

Parker contacted Interpol.

The match came back: the fingerprints belonged to Frédéric Bourdin.

The Unraveling

Bourdin was arrested in January 1998, approximately sixteen months after he had called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children from Spain.