I left Paris bemused and wondering what hed do next. Will your friends in the US intelligence be helping you in your rehabilitation after release from jail? When he came out they embarked on a manic crime spree across Europe and Asia. He is obsessed with preventing anyone from exploiting his life for financial gain and threatened to sue the writer. The pair struck up what Dhondy describes as an "acquaintanceship", as the commissioning editor was intrigued to see where the story might lead. Originally published in the April 2014 issue of British GQ. "I was looking to set up a heroin deal on behalf of the Taliban.". If you haven't heard of his story, Sobhraj is a Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian descent who drugged, robbed, and murdered travellers going through Asia in the '70s. He took it, got into the car, drove to Holland and gambled it all away. With the single exception of his confessions to Neville, which he later retracted, he has always held to the legal argument that, as hed not been found guilty of any murders, it meant he hadnt committed any murders. "He finds himself not famous, whereas in prison he's a somebody. A former commissioning editor at Channel 4, he is now a playwright, novelist and documentary maker. A martial-arts fanatic, he seemed to be physically, psychologically and philosophically armed with everything required to dominate others. For his part, Ganesh claimed that as a young boy he had been traumatised by seeing Connie Jo Bronzich's burnt and naked corpse in a field near his home. ", Dhondy repeated the details that Sobhraj had told me in Kathmandu, the difference being that he had learned of them before Sobhraj went to prison. He was relying on Dhondy to put his case. In 1979 Thomas Thompson added an equally disturbing portrait with. In any case, it requires no great intellect to kill someone. Sobhraj made sure he had those connections. "He's an old friend of mine," she said, "and he admitted it was all a lie. I had never been much interested in serial killers but I happened to read Richard Nevilles and Julie Clarkes extraordinary account of the killings, The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj, just before Sobhrajs release was announced. In The Guardian, Observer reporter Andrew Anthony detailed his own experience talking with Sobhraj. Yet almost 30 years later Sobhraj returned to Nepal and was arrested, tried and sentenced to 20 years in jail. When captured, he feigned appendicitis and escaped from hospital. How are your finances? 'He finds himself not famous, whereas in prison he's a somebody' "I'm almost 70," he said. Like some bizarre real-life combination of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley and Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter, he was handsome, charming and utterly without scruple. Complaining that he had paid all the necessary bribes, Sobhraj still insisted he was about to be released any day. Now 76 years old, he is reportedly in poor health while serving a life sentence in Nepal. He was a patriarchal figure who demanded obedience. Now you can ask your questions.. Sometimes he would complete the murder by setting the body on fire - in more than one case, investigators found that the victim was not dead when he or she was set alight. Sobhraj denied all knowledge of the plot, but the prison authorities claimed that the gunman had visited him 21 times in the preceding months. The Serpent starts on BBC One, 9pm, New Years Day, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Definitely. "I don't think so," says Biswas, when I ask her if she thinks Sobhraj has ever killed anyone. "However, if you use that power to make people do right, it's OK.". The authorities were mystified by the incorrigible recidivist who was in and out of reform school and prison during his teens. He. The 'Karma' question He was spotted in a casino playing baccarat by journalist. In July 1976 Sobhraj was on the run in India, wanted for several murders in Thailand and two in Nepal. Such a clip from ABC isn't readily available to view, but many other profiles with Sobhraj can be found on the internet. He told me he was about to be released. The crazy thing is he did have contacts in the Taliban, through a former Islamist cellmate in Delhi, and he probably knew Chinese gangsters from his time flitting about in Hong Kong. Two years ago Ansari was shot, but not fatally injured, by a would-be assassin who was said to be visiting Sobhraj in the prison. Every cent. If you haven't heard of his story, Sobhraj is a Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian descent who drugged, robbed, and murdered travelers going through Asia in the '70s. Up until episode six, his lead romantic entanglement is with his girlfriend and accomplice, Marie-Andre Leclerc, brilliantly played by Jenna Coleman. The explanation he gave to the press at the time didn't ring true. He fancied himself as a kind of streetwise intellect, a superman resisting the imperialist order. "I'd heard of him all through my life, being Indian, and his great escape from Tihar jail," said Dhondy. Charles Sobhraj was once Interpol's most wanted man. Sometimes he would gamble away huge sums of money - he once lost $200,000 at the tables in Rouen. 184K views 12 years ago Serial killer Charles Sobhraj, behind bars, is still trying to get attention via his naive wife. He told me that he's been thinking of me recently because he's looking for someone to ghost his autobiography. He had been captured in 1976 while drugging 60 French engineering students in Delhi. On the eve of the interview, the Nepali authorities changed their minds, and we returned home empty-handed. That didn't sound like Sobhraj. He was criminal. Excerpts from Sobhrajs interview with The Indian Express. As Leclerc wrote in her diary, "I swore to myself to try all means to make him love me, but little by little I became his slave." The man himself was careful not to shed any light on the matter. This may be just as well because there is a law in Nepal that says when prisoners reach the age 70 their sentence is cut in half. Sobhraj turns 70 in April, by which time he will already have served half his sentence, so in theory he will be free once more. "'This is Charles Sobhraj,'" said Dhondy with pitch-perfect mimicry. It will be a bestseller. Charles Sobhraj (born 6 April 1944), also known as the Bikini Killer, is a French serial killer of Vietnamese and Indian origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. No, of course. Are you in contact with anyone else in Pakistan? At first, he sent an envoy to meet me in Paris. It was from prison that Sobhraj phoned me out of the blue in 2016. The couple soon split up and Sobhraj lived with his mother and her new boyfriend, a French soldier. Charles Sobhraj (The Serpent), is a French thief, fraudster, and serial killer of Vietnamese and Indian origin who preyed on Western tourists, mainly beatnik. He looked small and inconsequential, but better than any 68-. year-old who's spent the last ten years in a decrepit prison has any right to look. How do you want to spend the next few years of your life? He returned to Nepal and was . \r\rSobhraj was born in Vietnam when it was ruled by France. After all, it's not often that renowned multiple killers are at liberty and available to talk. Of course, my first priority will be to return to France. I called Jaswant Singh, told him that in my opinion, no passenger would be harmed for 11 days, so India had 11 days to negotiate. A Bollywood film (Main Aur Charles) has been made on you. The filmmaker got a researcher- to look into it and they sent the findings to Sobhraj. In nearly all his murders, he first disabled his victims by spiking their drinks. He told the police that he had come to make a documentary about Nepali handicrafts. But Sobhraj was not political. Actor Randeep Hooda met you in Kathmandu Jail. Sobhraj took Johnson's advice and went to the Telegraph, but while he was still in talks with that paper, he went off to Nepal. Linked with at least ten sadistic murders, Charles Sobhraj is a narcissistic pedlar of fantasies who has spent his life on the run or in prison across Southeast Asia, France and the subcontinent. There seems little doubt that had the same quality of evidence produced in the Kathmandu court been put to a judge and jury in Britain, the case would have been dismissed. This time they are holding him, in the end they will be forced to release him and they are going to lose face for the second time. The Casino Royale at Hotel Yak & Yeti in central Kathmandu does not entirely live up to its James Bond billing. As Neville noted: "Whatever life he touches, he wrecks. The child of an affair between an Indian businessman-tailor and one of his Vietnamese shop assistants, Sobhraj (played in the BBC drama by French actor Tahar Rahim) had grown up in Saigon during the Vietnamese war of independence from France. Whether or not he was working for the CIA, surely he must have realised that there was a risk of arrest, given that he was wanted for two murders in Nepal. The reporter says, "There are those who would say you got away with it." Mention Charles Sobhraj in India, everybody knows, north to south. Really, as the plane was in Kandahar, the Indian government had no choice but to release Masood to save the passengers. His mother then married an occupying French soldier who, suffering from PTSD, returned to France with his young family. "This is Charles, Charles Sobhraj." And then we pulled up at a cheap brasserie on some kind of industrial estate. Humanitarian work? The only certainty is that the Serpent will not slip away to a quiet retirement in the French countryside. I was to leave but someone warned me to be careful, saying Nepal was then facing a Maoist insurgency and the police and courts didnt respect any law or rules. I am going straight back to France to my family. Serial killer Charles Sobhraj portrayed on screen Credit: BBC Press Handout. Charles Sobhraj exclusive interview: 'I am going straight back to France to my family I hope to live for many years to come' With the master of guile set to take his flight to freedom at age 78, the world may finally get to hear from the man himself - the chronicles, claims and conspiracy theories that make up Charles Sobhraj. He conducted numerous interviews and reportedly sold the rights to a movie about his life. Referencing the title card, Anthony wrote, "The ABC team were not the only ones back then to speak to Sobhraj, who was suspected of committing at least 12 murders. Its a bottomless pit. Ill devote my life to my daughter and will probably keep myself busy with books writing and business. Since then, however, his release kept getting delayed in 2017, he had a heart surgery and then came the Covid pandemic. I doubt that day will ever arrive. Having successfully persuaded a killer to acknowledge his guilt on screen in a previous documentary they had made, they were interested in making a film about Sobhraj. Sobhraj insisted that he had never been to Nepal before in his life. The Serpent takes a close look at the year 1976, when a young Dutch diplomat named Herman Knippenberg followed the murders of Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker in Thailand. I have written a manuscript with a co-writer, Jean Charles Deniau, and the book will be publishedIll be busy with the promotion and the making of some documentaries. He didn't show Dhondy the emails but asked him to help him sell the story. In one way or another, casinos have often proved Sobhraj's downfall. Criminologists tend to define serial killers as people who have murdered three or more times over an extended period. IMDb, the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. Compagnon was replaced by a French-Canadian, Marie-Andre Leclerc. Sobhraj conformed to many but not all of these characteristics. Dhondy had spoken to Chantal Compagnon who told him that Sobhraj had wanted to move to the US with a new identity and money provided by the CIA. Perhaps it's true. In Charles and I, he gave an excellent performance. Photograph: Krishnan Guruswamy/AP The Observer TV crime drama Speaking with the Serpent: my. At first it led to the M25, where Dhondy was directed one morning by Sobhraj. In Greece he swapped identities with his brother, leaving him to serve an 18-year sentence. (Supplied) Sobhraj was sentenced to 20 years behind bars in New Dehli. If Sobhraj has a deep craving for liberty, he also appears to possess an unhealthy appetite for incarceration, having spent more than 35 years in prison. The petition dragged on for months and finally, on August 10 (2016), the court directed the government to increase the daily food allowance. I was a little anxious that he had taken objection to my portrayal of him as a dissembling if captivating psychopath. I met Hooda last October and I like him as a person. Simply put, the conditions in Nepali jails are primitive, awful. We spoke for almost two hours, in which Sobhraj jumped back and forth between countries and decades, never showing the slightest regret for the devastation he had wrought or the lives he'd ruined. The pair ended up in Bangkok, where he posed as a gem dealer and befriended young travellers. So, have things worked according to plan? We said our goodbyes and he told me to call him. So Dhondy set up a meeting with Boris Johnson, the current mayor of London, who was then editor of the Spectator, at the Islington house of Peter Oborne, then the magazine's political editor. I couldnt see Sobhraj ever coming clean he would positively savour the drama of withholding a confession but they entered discussions with him. His story is one of deception and mass murder. So much so, I came on a business visa as an assistant producer for a French production company, Gentleman Films Prod. On her release in Kabul, she met an American and moved with him and her daughter to the US. They had just had a daughter, who was sent back to live with Compagnons parents in France. He actually received time for drugging and trying to rob a group of French engineering students in India but wasn't convicted for any murders prior to 1997. It's a priceless scene, the man who many expect to replace David Cameron as Tory leader and a serial killer in discussion in an Islington drawing room. Viewed from a political perspective, it was a story of the times, a symbolic tale of colonial backlash, an uprooted war child fighting against an oppressive and uncaring system. They fell in love. Nepal is a strange and mystifying society. For how long remains to be seen. He said, 'We're here to set up an antique furniture shop. He talked of making money from his story, whose financial worth he lavishly -overvalued, and he also mentioned ambitions in film. In Paris he told me that when it gets hot, I go to the kitchen. "Hello, Andrew," whispered a distinctive French accent. He was caught in Nepal in 2003 and sentenced for murder again. I think hell become one of the top actors in Bollywood. Although he tried to keep me off balance by, for example, driving me to an empty restaurant in the outer suburbs of Paris, he didn't seem scary. He called me at the Observer after my piece appeared and said he was coming to London. Please select the topics you're interested in: The Serpent: Is the 1997 Charles Sobhraj Interview Real?