India PoliceThe Serpent Charles Sobhraj was known for his ability to evade capture.Often called The Serpent and the Bikini Killer, Charles Sobhraj was one of the most elusive and manipulative serial killers of the 20th century. During the 1970s, the French murderer charmed, drugged, robbed, and slaughtered unsuspecting tourists and backpackers on the famous Hippie Trail that stretched between Europe and Southeast Asia.He slipped through borders and eluded authorities, leaving a trail of bodies behind him. By the time he was captured in India, he had committed multiple crimes in several countries. He would later be linked to 20 murders.But despite a years-long crime spree, numerous arrests, several escapes from prison, and the fact that he was supposed to serve a life sentence in Nepal, he was released in 2022 and he walks free in France today.The Origins Of The Serpent Charles SobhrajSteve Fallon/AlamyCharles Sobhraj often shed his skin between crimes by taking on false identities.Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj was born on April 6, 1944 in Saigon, Vietnam, to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father. His parents separated shortly after his birth, and his mother later married a French army officer.Life wasnt easy for Sobhraj as a child. Not only did he move around a lot between countries like Vietnam, France, and Senegal, but it took him years to officially gain French citizenship, as his stepfather refused to claim him as his own. He also faced racism among his peers when he was in France.By his teens, Sobhraj had already begun a life of crime. At age 18, he stole a car, even though he didnt know how to drive. He was soon arrested, and he said he spent six months in jail for the theft. By age 19, he was arrested again for burglary. These early incarcerations didnt dissuade him from committing crimes in fact, he used his time behind bars to learn more about the art of deception and how to charm people in order to control them.In 1969, Sobhraj met and married a Frenchwoman named Chantal Compagnon. Despite Sobhrajs criminal record, Compagnon followed him to Asia. While in India, he soon began committing more crimes, including smuggling luxury goods and robbing tourists of money and passports. He sometimes posed as a gem dealer to attract victims and lure them in.Later, in Kabul, Afghanistan, he was arrested for car theft, crossing a border illegally, and refusing to pay a hotel bill, but he managed to escape jail. Sometime after this incident, Compagnon apparently grew tired of her husbands life of crime and divorced him, taking their child with her. Drifting through numerous countries, Sobhraj teamed up with his half-brother to smuggle passports and commit a variety of other crimes. They were eventually both arrested in Greece, but Sobhraj was able to escape, leaving his half-sibling behind to serve out his sentence alone.Sobhraj eventually arrived in Thailand. Up until then, he hadnt resorted to murder in any known cases. But as he saw more and more Western backpackers along the Hippie Trail which stretched from Europe all the way to Southeast Asia his encounters with them soon became deadly.Becoming Infamous As The Bikini Killer And The Serpent On The Hippie TrailBruce Barrett/FlickrAsias Hippie Trail attracted many Western tourists in the 1970s, some of whom became victims of the Bikini Killer.In the 1970s, many travelers from Europe and America followed the popular Hippie Trail to places like India, Nepal, and Thailand. Many were strangers in an unfamiliar country. Charles Sobhraj took advantage of this, often by using an alias or disguise, and offering them guidance and a place to stay. One of his earliest known victims was Teresa Knowlton, an American whose body was discovered in a tidal pool in Pattaya in 1975. She had been drugged and drowned, and was found only wearing a bikini. Not long after that, a young man named Vitali Hakim was discovered burned on a roadside, near where Sobhraj often sold gems. Hakims girlfriend soon came looking for him. She, too, was later found dead, and she was also wearing a bikini. This later earned Sobhraj the nickname Bikini Killer.Sobhraj didnt always work alone. His new Canadian girlfriend, Marie-Andre Leclerc, and an Indian accomplice named Ajay Chowdhury helped Sobhraj build a deadly inner circle during his travels. (Notably, Chowdhury mysteriously disappeared at some point along the way.)Charles Sobhraj often stole his victims passports and used them to travel freely. Leclerc would also use stolen passports to get from place to place.Although it seemed like no one could stop him, a man named Herman Knippenberg vowed to find the Bikini Killer. Knippenberg, a Dutch diplomat in Bangkok, began investigating the brutal murders of two Dutch nationals. Thailand PoliceThe Serpent Charles Sobhrajs suspected victims Cornelia Hemker (left) and Henricus Bintanja. Hemker and Bintanja were Dutch backpackers who disappeared and were later found murdered and burned in Thailand in 1975. As reported by CNN, Knippenberg learned from a friend at the Belgian embassy that a French gem dealer named Alain Gautier had a suspicious amount of passports in his Bangkok apartment, which belonged to missing and murdered people including two Dutch passports.Knippenberg soon discovered that Alain Gautier was actually Charles Sobhraj. He also learned that some of Sobhrajs former associates had fled after finding his collection of passports. In March 1976, Knippenberg found out that Sobhraj and his girlfriend, Leclerc, were planning to head to Europe, so Knippenberg alerted police, and they raided Sobhrajs apartment. Unfortunately, Sobhraj used a stolen passport with his own photo inserted, convinced them he was an American citizen, and was ultimately released. By the next morning, Sobhraj and Leclerc were on a flight to Malaysia, once again slipping through the authorities fingers, in true serpent style.The Dramatic Capture Of Charles Sobhraj And His Infamous Prison EscapeBangkok Post/Herman KnippenbergThe Bangkok Posts front page on May 8, 1976, covering murders linked to Bikini Killer Charles Sobhraj.While on the run, Charles Sobhraj began recruiting new associates, allegedly in the hopes of forming a Charles Manson-style cult of his own. He continued his old tricks of drugging and robbing tourists, but his major downfall came in July 1976, when he tried to drug 60 French university students so he could rob them in Delhi, India. Many students began to suffer from the effects in their hotel lobby, not their rooms, leading staff to panic.Sobhraj was soon arrested. He was later convicted not only of the drugging of the students, but also the culpable homicide of Jean-Luc Solomon, who he had poisoned just days before his arrest in Delhi. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but even while behind bars for serious crimes, he found a way to manipulate the system. At Tihar Jail in Delhi, he bribed and blackmailed guards and lived in relative comfort. In 1986, shortly before his sentence was up, Sobhraj pulled off his most infamous prison escape. To do this, he handed out sweets laced with sleeping pills to guards and then fled the prison with the help of a few fellow inmates and accomplices. Just days later, he was recaptured in Goa.Its believed that true escape was never Sobhrajs goal. At the time, Thailand was pushing for his extradition, so he could stand trial for multiple murder charges. Thailand was also pursuing the death penalty. So his escape from the Indian prison ensured hed have more time added to his existing sentence enough time for the statute of limitations to expire in Thailand.Sobhrajs extended sentence in India ended in 1997, and he returned to Paris a free man. His infamy as a serial killer soon made him a millionaire. He sold the movie and book rights to his story for $15 million, and he embraced his time in the spotlight. Apparently feeling like he was untouchable, he later decided to travel to Nepal, where he was still a wanted man.The Serpents Return To Nepal And His Last Time Behind BarsFrederick Noronha/Wikimedia CommonsA statue of Charles Sobhraj at OCoqueiro restaurant in Porvorim, Goa, India, where he was arrested in 1986.In 2003, Charles Sobhraj flew to Kathmandu, Nepal, where he still faced active murder charges. He later called this decision a fatal error. Unlike Thailand, Nepal had no statute of limitations for those allegations. He was spotted at a casino and quickly arrested. By 2004, he was convicted of murdering an American named Connie Jo Bronzich in Nepal back in 1975. A decade later, in 2014, he was also found guilty of murdering a Canadian named Laurent Carrire, a crime that also took place in Nepal in 1975. Sobhraj was sentenced to two life terms for the killings, and for a while, it seemed that he would spend the rest of his days behind bars. Then, in 2021, his story resurfaced in the public eye thanks to the release of Netflixs limited series The Serpent, which dramatized his murders. Around the same time, it was reported that Sobhraj had become frail behind bars.Shockingly, in December 2022, Nepals Supreme Court ordered Sobhrajs release from prison on humanitarian grounds, due to his advanced age and worsening health. Then 78, he left Nepal for the last time, en route to France.Now 81 years old, Sobhraj remains a free man in France today, and despite his weakened state, hes been spotted sightseeing in London.To this day, its still not clear exactly how many people Sobhraj killed. Though Sobhraj has made a variety of confessions at one point admitting to 12 killings hes often recanted his statements. Authorities believe he most likely killed about 20 people, but only Sobhraj knows the real number.While his number of victims and his motives are uncertain, one thing that is clear is that Sobhraj feels no remorse for his crimes. As he once said: I consider myself a businessman, not a criminal I never killed good people.After reading about Charles Sobhraj, the serial killer known as The Serpent and the Bikini Killer, learn about 33 of the worst serial killers of all time. Then, go inside the case of Amarjeet Sada, the worlds youngest serial killer.The post Inside The Crimes Of Charles Sobhraj, The French Serial Killer Known As The Serpent appeared first on All That's Interesting.