The Barclay-Bourdin case offers crime (the fraud), investigation, and resolution (Bourdin’s arrest and conviction) for one dimension of the story.

But for the underlying story — the disappearance of Nicholas Barclay — there is no investigation leading to resolution.

There is only the enduring absence of a thirteen-year-old boy and the enduring presence of questions that haven’t been answered.

This structural incompleteness is part of what makes the case so persistently interesting.

It doesn’t end.

The fraud ended.

The missing persons case did not.

The documentary treatment — specifically The Imposter — is widely considered one of the better examples of the form precisely because it acknowledges this incompleteness.