Justin Chapman was the toast of the world: the cleverest little boy on the planet who played the violin at two, chess at three and embarked on a course at Stanford University aged four. In April 2000, a psychologist called Linda Silverman in Colorado conferred on him an IQ of 298, the highest on record for a child.
As a result, Justin featured in a BBC documentary and was feted by the governor of his mother's home state, New York. He was the world's highest-profile prodigy; commercial sponsorship descended upon his genius - his precious brain safely protected, in one advertisement, by a cycle helmet.
But it was all a cruel lie, and Justin's world is now shattered. He is suicidal and suffering 'violent tantrums'; his mother - whose fantasy fiction this was - is charged with neglect, and the hothouse world of nurturing prodigy and 'gifted' children is called into question.
'I just don't want to be me any more,' Justin recently told psychologists after begin admitted to hospital when found with an empty bottle of pills.
The first crack came during a treat to see the Harry Potter film last November: Justin, aged eight, began to scream the cinema down. The incident set a train of events in tow that included confessions by the boy to psychiatrists that he no longer wished to live, and now a custody battle after separation from his mother, Elizabeth.
'The child,' his court-appointed guardian Michael Grills told the judge in one hearing, 'does not seem to have the degree of intellectual capacity he is purported to have. Either these folks who did the testing are flat wrong, or the extraordinary gifts this child currently has are a fiction.'
The report from an evaluation at a children's hospital near Denver - which found Chapman to be of 'average intelligence' - was more disturbing: 'His recent suicidal gesture,' it said, 'exemplifies his inability to continue the existence that has been assigned by his mother, the gifted community and most likely by himself.'
The unveiling of the fraud was achieved because Elizabeth Chapman felt that by speaking the truth she might get custody of her son. She confessed in interviews with her local newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.
Justin Chapman was born in July 1993 to the then 20-year-old woman and James Maurer, 24, who soon left her life. Elizabeth was herself a troubled child, anxious that her son avoid the childhood she called 'totalitarian', in a strict Catholic home. Chapman claimed to have graduated from the State University of New York, but there is no record of her having actively enrolled.
Soon after her move west, Elizabeth began to baffle her adopted community with stories about her son. Some of her claims were ratified: one test by a psychologist called Thomas Arnold gave Justin an IQ 160 when he was only three - a score within the 'exceptionally gifted' range.
Aged four, Justin was enrolled on a computer maths course at Stanford University near San Francisco, securing honours grades over the internet. He then burst into the media limelight by entering a full-time degree course at Rochester University, New York, receiving grade B for a course on the Ancient World..
His dazzling performances continued, almost entirely by email. Yet investigations by the Rocky Mountain News and New York Times to find objective evidence of Justin's remarkable scores have been unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the boy became a superstar - he had a regular column in the gifted community's Paradigm News called 'The Justin Report', and became a figurehead for the movement against discrimination by age.
He toured the country to give prepared speeches, standing on a box, but his audiences were intrigued by an apparent inability to answer questions. When mother and son were invited for 'live' testing at Johns Hopkins University, Ms Chapman declined.
In November, after Justin's breakdown, his mother had him admitted to the children's hospital in the Colorado town of Broomfield. He was transferred to a clinic treating child psychiatric cases and diagnosed by Dr Cathy Collins as being mentally ill, 'gravely disabled' and 'a danger to himself'. Her report says he suffers 'violent tantrums', 'regression to infantile behaviour and suicidal ideation' - meaning fantasy notions of ending his own life. When talking about his attempted overdose, Justin reportedly says he only swallowed one pill: 'The cats ate the rest.'
When given intelligence tests, the child becomes frustrated and tearful if he does not know the answers. He comes out 'approximately average', says one doctor, Harriet Stern.
Doctors say Justin should be reunited with his mother if she can be judged as mentally fit to care for the boy. But further disturbing reports pertain to Elizabeth herself. The document discharging Justin says that she held 'unsupportable beliefs' that her son could move objects with his mind, and 'possibly alter the outcome of the future, including the future of the world associated with World War III'.
He has been found a foster home, but the burning questions remain: how clever is Justin Chapman? And if he is of only average intelligence, how did he get to be acclaimed as a genius?
He has his believers, such as Tracy Neal, director of the gifted children's Malone Family Foundation who thinks he is 'exactly what he was claimed to be'.
But the so-called 'SAT' school scores that showed remarkable mental prowess were, says Elizabeth herself, faked.
She insists her child is exceptional. 'I know what I did is wrong,' she says, 'but what social services is doing now by treating him like an average eight-year-old is also harmful'.
The psychiatrist's report concludes by saying that the boy can 'no longer meet the expectations that have now become his identity'. Justin, it reads, 'has not either been given a chance or has chosen not to develop his own self'.