Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue? The Imposter

If you want to despair about the intelligence of the American populace, with all the implications for the current election, and beyond, I submit for your consideration of the movie, "The Imposter," a documentary about the disappearance of a 13 year old boy in San Antonio, Texas, who, ostensibly, surfaces in Spain 3 years later.

The folks in this flick make the families, the police, the community in "Making of a Murderer" look like Harvard faculty.

In brief, the disappeared kid is a blue eye blond from a family with, shall we say, problems. For one thing, his mother a fifty something floozy with a thirty something daughter and son by another and the kid who disappears is 13. So she has had a late pregnancy. The 13 year old had a nephew in his 20's.  The neighbors confirm police are regularly called to the home and the 13 year old's half brother is a drug addict who has recently returned to live at home. 

The half sister flies to Spain to retrieve the "boy,"  now said to be 16.  Thing is, this 16 year old "boy" has brown eyes, black hair and looks nothing like the 13 year old when he went missing and speaks with a distinct French accent. He is in fact in his early 20's. 

The Spanish officials are suspicious but when the "boy" is able to identify family members from photos provided by the sister, (who had previously gone over these photos with the "boy") they relent. 

The American consulate officials are eager to re unite the child with his family and take the sister's word this is her brother, apparently never bothering to question the difference in eye color or the French accent. No fingerprints, dental records are requested for the missing boy and apparently no fingerprints are done on the "boy" who claims to be the American boy.

When the "boy" arrives in San Antonio, it makes the evening news and a private detective starts snooping around and compares photos of the 13 year old's ears to those of the returned "boy" and there is no similarity.

But the question in my mind is the FBI agent who interviews the "boy" and fails to question the boy's story that the  change in eye color was the result of drugs his abductors gave him.  She never picks up a phone and calls her doctor to ask if such a thing is biologically possible. I read an on line interview with this special agent, Nancy Fisher, and it became clear that her actions in the case were not fully presented in the documentary. It is also pretty clear she is not the sharpest blade in the drawer, although she was a special agent for 26 years. 

To my mind, the question was why she did not see, as the doctor who interviewed the "boy" saw immediately, that this brown eyed imposter was in fact not the blue eyed boy who had disappeared. 
It all seemed to take her too long. 

The private investigator saw it immediately, first time he saw the imposter, but she was simply struck that something smelled funny about all this.  Why she didn't have this guy in handcuffs at the first interview is what had alarm bells going off in my head.  As someone who interviews people every day, you become quite sensitive to inconsistencies in their stories.


She does notice his dark beard shadow in a boy she knows was blonde at age 13. 

It's not entirely clear how long it took her to take this guy down, but clearly significant time passed--enough for this guy to take a long joy ride in a stolen car. Meanwhile, she's had phone calls from the private detective who she warns not to interfere. 

 It is only when she takes the "boy" to a doctor in Houston when anyone questions how a boy who had been raised speaking English until age 13 now cannot shake a French accent, which he says his abductors drilled into him.

But once the doctor says this cannot be the missing boy, the FBI agent says, "Oh!" And when she goes for blood samples from the mother the mother falls to the floor and refuses to give blood.

Only when the "boy" who has now been fingerprinted and identified as a French serial impersonator wanted by Interpol, is arrested does he tell the American authorities the mother has admitted that her older son killed the 13 year old.

Of course, the impersonator turns out to be quite a nut case, and his accusations are not taken on face value. 

But the level of incompetence of any of the Americans involved, from the family (whose motives remain suspect) to the FBI agent, to the American consular officials (who never even bother to fingerprint the "boy")  is mind boggling. Only the private detective seems to have two neurons rubbing together.

It's not exactly "The Return of Martin Guerre," or even Don Draper in "Mad Men" but in a time of identity theft, we can only look at the folks on camera and wonder.

It may in fact be an argument for more immigrants. Perhaps we need some fresh infusion of new genes into our gene pool here in the USA.