Chantal Compagnon was a French woman and the first wife of French serial killer and con man Charles Sobhraj.
Wiki/Biography and Family
Chantal Compagnon was born in 1945 (2021) in Paris into a conservative Catholic family.
Sobhraj
In 1969, she met Charles at a party, and he told her about his adventures in the Orient and Dakar, and about his imaginary wealthy family in Saigon. At the time, Charles was dating Chantal Denoyes. He broke up with Denoyes and married Compagnon. Soon, Charles proposed to Chantal, but that same day, he was arrested for car theft. Chantal’s parents were against her marrying Charles, but they agreed after Charles showed her the wealth he had accumulated through a series of scams. Eight months later, Charles was released from prison and married her.
Charles Sobhraj
In 1970, Compagnon and Sobhraj, who were pregnant with their child, left France for Asia using forged documents. Along the way, Chantal helped Charles rob tourists. In 1970, the couple arrived in Mumbai, where they decided to start over and abandon their criminal ways. However, Charles failed to stay away from crime and became involved in car theft and smuggling. Compagnon gave birth to her first child there, a daughter named Usha Sobhraj, who was later sent to live with Chantal’s parents. In 1971, Chantal and Charles fled to Kabul, where Charles became involved with arms smugglers. Chantal fled from place to place with Charles. In 1973, Charles was arrested after an attempted armed robbery at a jewelry store in Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel and was imprisoned in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Two weeks later, Charles was taken to the hospital with fake appendicitis, and Chantal drugged the guards to help him escape. The couple then moved to Kabul. Chantal accompanied Charles in his crimes and helped him rob travelers on the hippie trail between Europe and East Asia. The couple was arrested and imprisoned by Afghan police. Charles managed to escape, traveled to France, kidnapped his daughter, and then returned to Afghanistan to rescue Chantal. In the process, he was arrested again. After his release, Charles traveled to Iran, leaving Chantal and his daughter in Kabul. After the incident, Chantal returned to France and vowed to cut off ties with Charles and never contact him again.
Facts/Trivia
- Charles and Chantal Denoyes had a daughter, Muriel Anouk, and a son, Planck. In fact, Muriel Anouk was born on the day Charles married Compagnon.
Charles Sobhraj and his daughter Muriel Anouk
- According to GQ magazine, Chantal met an American in Kabul and moved to the United States with him and their daughter. Charles told GQ that when Chantal heard that he was going back to France in 1997, she left her husband and was with him.
- During a meeting with Farrukh Dhondy, an Indian-British writer who had known Charles, Chantal claimed that Sobhraj confessed to her the murder and described it in detail. Dhondy shared his conversation with Chantal in an interview and said:
When she came back for Sobhraj, he took her to the French-Swiss border and forced her to sell some land she had inherited. She got about £40,000. Sobhraj took the money, got in his car, drove to Holland and gambled away all the money. Every penny. I asked her why she went back to him and she said, ‘I loved him. ’”
- After Charles was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in Nepal, Chantal appealed his double murder conviction and sued the French government at the European Court of Human Rights for refusing to aid her husband in 2003.
- In 2021, BBC One and Netflix produced a series titled Snakes based on the life of Charles Sobhraj. In the series, Chantal was renamed “Juliette Voclain” and her character was played by British-French actress Stacy Martin.
Stacey Martin plays Chantal Compagnon, renamed Juliette Voclain, in Snakes (2021)
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education