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Charles Sobhraj also known as The Serpent or The Bikini Killer, was a serial killer who murdered tourists on South Asia's hippie trail in the 1970s. The hippie trail was a route that travelers followed from Europe and West Asia via South Asia. Travelers used the hippie trail from the 1950s to the 1970s as an inexpensive way on their journey across the sub-continent.
In the 1970s, Charles Sobhraj posed as a rich young man and lured tourists into his schemes before drugging and eventually killing them. Throughout his career as a criminal, Sobhraj had multiple partners in crime and they were responsible for killing multiple people in Thailand and on the hippie trail.
According to Al-Jazeera, Sobhraj was arrested in India in July 1976 after he allegedly tried to drug more than 20 French tourists in New Delhi. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and was sent to Tihar Jail. He broke out of Tihar and although he was captured by the Indian police in 1986, he was released in 1997.
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Following that, he went to France but returned to Nepal in 2003 where he was captured on September 19. According to The Kathmandu Post, Charles Sobhraj spent 19 years in prison in Nepal, before receiving bail from the Supreme Court of Nepal on December 21, 2022.
He was granted bail due to his age and deteriorating health and was given 15 days to go back to France, where he currently resides. He was freed from the Nepalese prison at the age of 80, on December 23, 2022, and was sent back to France.
The complete timeline of Charles Sobhraj's murders and crimes is documented in World's Most Notorious Killers season 1 spisode 5 titled The Serpent. The episode was aired on December 30, 2024, at 8 pm on Oxygen. The official synopsis of the episode reads:
"In the '70s, tourists in Thailand were brutally killed; years later, the alleged murderer speaks out."
What is the story of Charles Sobhraj?
Charles Sobhraj was born in the French-occupied colony in Vietnam's Saignon on April 6, 1944. According to a Scroll article, his mother was a Vietnamese woman and his father was an Indian man. However, his biological father refused to accept Charles and after the couple separated, Charles was adopted by his mother's French boyfriend, who was an Army Lieutenant in French Indo-China.
Soon after his mother married the Army Lieutenant, Sobhraj reportedly began facing abuse, especially after they had their own children. Charles Sobhraj began getting involved in petty crimes while growing up and ended up in the Poissy prison after he was caught in a robbery in 1963. However, even in the prison, Sobhraj led a comfortable lifestyle, by bribing its police officers.
He eventually managed to earn the favor of a wealthy prison visitor named Felix d'Escogne, who took him to Paris after his bail. Once he got out of prison, Sobhraj began building connections among the wealthy people of the city and also among the crime underworld. As per a GQ article, while living in Paris, Charles Sobhraj charmed a young woman named Chantal Compagnon.
By 1970, Sobhraj earned French citizenship owing to his mother being a French woman. However, he had to flee to the country as he was evading police arrest the same day that he proposed to Chantal and they traveled through Europe and South Asia. The couple kept moving and robbing backpackers along the hippie trail before they reached Bombay, which is now called Mumbai.
Compagnon gave birth to her and Charles' daughter in Bombay and the couple went on a crime spree where they stole cars and dabbled in burglary. According to a Crime Plus Investigation article, Sobhraj traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan in December 1971, where he made connections in the illegal ammunition business. He then moved to Pakistan, where he drugged and killed a driver in Rawalpindi.
Sobhraj also ran a curio shop in Bangkok where he deceived his customers before drugging and stealing their belongings. Charles Sobhraj returned to India where in 1973 and developed a gambling addiction.
The New Delhi police arrested him while he was trying to rob a jewelry store but he managed to get bail and escaped to Kabul before leaving for Iran, without his family. Compagnon and their daughter then went back to France.
Sobhraj was on the run for the next two years and took refuge in Turkey, Greece, and Thailand where he defrauded civilians and authorities with fabricated documents. When he moved back to India in 1975, he met his second wife, a Canadian woman, Marie-Andrée Leclerc in Srinagar. It was also when he met his partner in crime, Ajay Chowdhury, according to Star Article.
Ajay Chowdhury and Charles Sobhraj soon began committing crimes together and killed Sobhraj's first known victim, Teresa Knowlton. Teresa was a 21-year-old from Seattle who met Charles while she was on her way to join a Buddhist monastery. She was found floating in a tidal pool in Pattaya wearing a bikini.
Charles' next victim was Vitali Hakim, whose body was found on a burnt road in Pattaya. After realizing that Hakim was missing, his girlfriend reached Bangkok trying to understand where he was. However, Sobhraj drowned and killed her on December 16, 1975. The woman's body was found in a bikini and floating in a pool, which led to Sobhraj being given the name, The Bikini Killer.
Following that, Ajay and Charles continued their crime spree across South Asia, where they deceived, robbed, and killed tourists, especially along the Hippie Trial.
While in Thailand, they met and befriended two Dutch students named Henk Bintanja and his fiancé, Cornelia Hemker. Charles and Ajay invited the two to Hong Kong and tried to control and defraud them. However, when they realized that Henk and Cornelia knew too much and could incriminate them, the couple was strangled to death. Their burnt remains were discovered on December 16, 1975, and identified two days later.
Later in the same month, Charles Sobhraj and Marie-Andrée Leclerc entered Nepal, using Bintanja and Hemker's passports. There they married tourists named Laurent Carrière and Connie Jo Bronzich and flew to Thailand. The trio, Ajay Chowdhury, Charles Sobhraj, and Marie-Andrée Leclerc, became wanted in Thailand. They eventually fled to Malaysia, where Ajay Chowdhury was tasked with stealing gems.
Sobhraj and Leclerc disguised themselves as gem merchants defrauding civilians, leaving behind a trail of murders. However, Ajay soon disappeared and it was believed that Sobhraj was behind his murder and disappearance.
Sobhraj was declared an international criminal by May 1976 and ran to Bombay again, where he committed crimes with Mary Ellen Eather and Barbara Smith. In July 1976, the trio planned to deceive a group of French post-graduate students.
They gave the students drugs under the pretext of dysentery medication and rendered them unconscious. However, two students managed to escape and inform Delhi police, who apprehended Charles Sobhraj and his accomplices. Sobhraj was caught and sent to Tihar Prison where he spent around 20 years.
What happened to Charles Sobhraj?
According to India Times, Sobhraj entered the prison with costly gems hidden on his body. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison but bribed the prison guards and officers to lead a luxurious lifestyle behind bars. As per an article in UPI Archives, after Marie-Andrée Leclerc was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in July 1983, she was permitted to return to Canada. Her bail amount was set at $18,000. However, she died on April 20, 1984.
Charles Sobhraj was released from prison on February 19, 1997, and returned to Paris, France, where he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. He gained popularity and money after selling the rights to his story and giving multiple interviews.
He returned to Kathmandu, Nepal in 2003 intending to set up a shawl export company under a different identity, according to Al-Jazeera. However, he was wanted in the country for the murders of two tourists, a backpacker from Canada, named Laurent Armand Carriere and Connie Joe Bronzich, an American tourist.
He was captured by the police and kept in a high-security prison in September 2003, as he awaited the trials for the murders. Police caught him after spotting him in a casino he frequented to fuel his gambling addiction.
As per BBC News, Charles Sobhraj was sentenced to life in prison in August 2004 for the 1975 murder of Bronzich However, as per The Kathmandu Post, the Supreme Court of Nepal granted Sobhraj bail in December 2022 due to his old age.
He was released from prison on December 23, 2022, and was given 15 days to leave Nepal and return to France. As reported by BBC News, Charles Sobhraj can't return to Nepal for the next 10 years.
To know more about the story of Charles Sobhraj, watch World's Most Notorious Killers season 1 episode 5 titled The Serpent.
