SERIAL killer Charles Sobhraj has broken his silence in a bombshell new interview to outrageously claim he “hasn’t killed a single person” despite being jailed for horrifying murders.
The sadistic conman – dubbed The Serpent – has a history of drugging and killing victims and has been linked to the murders of up to 30 backpackers on the hippie trail across Asia in the 1970s.
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Charles Sobhraj is now a free man and appears in a new Channel 4 showCredit: Channel 4
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Jenna Coleman and Tahar Rahim starred as ‘Monique’ and Sobhraj in the 2021 drama The SerpentCredit: Supplied by LMK
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The serial killer sight-seeing in London after his releaseCredit: Channel 4
His shocking crime spree inspired the 2021 BBC drama series The Serpent, which starred Tahar Rahim as Sobhraj and Jenna Coleman as his girlfriend and accomplice ‘Monique’.
But the French killer, 79, is now a free man after being released in December 2022 from a prison in Nepal, where he served 19 years for the brutal 1975 murders of Canadian Laurent Carriere and American Connie Jo Bronzich, in Kathmandu.
He has even been seen sight-seeing in London in a crude disguise.
Now a new Channel 4 documentary, The Real Serpent, puts his crimes under the spotlight with unprecedented access to the man himself, who took part in a series of searching interviews over the course of months since his release.
Sobhraj, who posed as a gem dealer before drugging travellers, stealing passports and money and killing them, is questioned by two former homicide detectives, Jackie Malton and Gary Copson.
They are also joined by one of the UK’s leading forensic psychologists, Professor Paul Britton, in a bid to ascertain the true story of his “life and crimes” and determine whether he is still a danger to society.
The three-parter, which we have seen in an exclusive sneak preview, is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a callous killer, who revels in his notoriety while displaying an arrogance that sees him demanding to be interviewed only by “the best from each field”.
There is one thing I will regret all my life
Charles Sobhraj
As slippery as his reptile namesake, Sobhraj denies all the murders and shockingly tries to claim the media has “brainwashed” people into believing he is a monster – despite confessing to ten murders in a 1979 book for which he was paid £15,000, the equivalent of £90,000 today.
While he admits drugging and stealing from victims – who he chillingly refers to as “clients” – he dismisses accusations he killed the backpackers as “a lot of imagination.”
“I did wrong to some people and those wrongs were immoral but I didn’t go to the length of killing anyone,” he says. “I didn’t kill a single person.
Chilling trailer for The Serpent sees Jenna Coleman drug backpackers before murdering them in epic new BBC drama
“I’m fed up with all the allegations so I decided I’m going to put forward my facts and (the public) can decide.”
The only ‘emotion’ he shows is at the mention of Marie-Andree Leclerc – AKA Monique – who died of cancer in 1983, after the couple were jailed in India.
“It’s because she was with me that it was not detected,” he says, wiping tears away as he breaks for the first time.
“That is the thing I will regret all my life. I’m really sorry… because she was such a nice person.”
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Marie-Andree Leclerc – AKA Monique – with Sobhraj in the midst of their crime spreeCredit: Shutterstock
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Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker were allegedly murdered by Charles Sobhraj
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He was jailed for the 1975 murders of Canadian Laurent Carriere and American Connie Jo Bronzich in KathmanduCredit: Thailand Police
The documentary also features interviews with witnesses including Nadine Geris, a neighbour and friend of the couple during their time in Bangkok, who claims “Monique” was too frightened to leave Sobhraj, telling her “he will kill me”.
Retired Detective Chief Inspector Jackie interviewed Sobhraj several times over the six months the film was being made.
“He’s a very complicated man. He’s highly intelligent, he’s very plausible, he wants to control the narrative,” she says.
“If he doesn’t like the question he goes off on a tangent and I found him a little dismissive of those people who died, whether he’s done it or not.”
Body in the boot
Sobhraj had an unhappy childhood shuttling between his father’s home in Vietnam and his mother’s in Paris, where she lived with her army officer husband.
After taking to petty crime as a teenager he was estranged from his family and, in interviews with Professor Britton, he refuses to delve into his relationship with his mother, who he calls a “very selfish woman”.
He will only say he felt “rejected by the family I was in” and that he “cannot bring myself to forgive” his mother, who is still alive at 100.
Jailed at 19 for an armed robbery, he married at 23 and, three years later, he and his pregnant wife Chantal Compagnon fled France to evade arrest for a series of thefts.
After daughter Usha was born and sent to live with Chantal’s parents, the pair were arrested in Afghanistan for an unpaid hotel bill but Sobhraj escaped after drugging the guard’s tea and left his wife in prison.
He then returned to France, drugging his mother-in-law’s tea to prevent her raising the alarm, before fleeing to Iran with his infant daughter.
The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer
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Charles Sobhraj is now free and enjoying lifeCredit: Channel 4
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Retired Detective Chief Inspector Jackie MaltonCredit: Channel 4
Dutch woman Georgina Nunez, then an 18-year-old backpacker, met Sobhraj in Goa in 1972 and began travelling with him but she says he became controlling.
“He was very intense,” she says. “I had a ring in my nose and he pulled it out and there was blood everywhere. His eyes had no emotion. They were bad eyes. He had a killer stare.”
She was also a witness to the first suspected murder.
After their car broke down in Pakistan, Sobhraj turned up with a taxi which was stolen from a local driver – who was later found dead in the boot.
His eyes had no emotion. They were bad eyes. He had a killer stare
Georgina Nunez
Charles claims a man called Fez stole the car for him and only later told him he had put the driver “in the back.”
He told the filmmakers the driver “died of dehydration” adding: “I didn’t feel I was part of that because I didn’t put him there” but said he felt bad, “as my daughter was there.”
But Georgina disputes the “pathological liar”, saying driver Mohammed was a “nice man with a number of children,” and that Sobhraj told her: “I’m going to give him sleeping pills and put him at the side of the road.”
He stopped several times on the journey to inject his victim, she says, adding that when she insisted on checking the boot herself: “I saw Mohammed in a pool of blood and I could tell he was dead. I flipped out”.
She alleges Sobhraj told her: “You better not testify against me because I will kill you.”
Victims drugged and murdered
The French conman met Marie-Andree Leclerc in Thailand, in 1975, shortly before the murders of the five backpackers.
He admits posing as a gem dealer and befriending travellers before inviting him back to his apartment, Kanit House, in the centre of Bangkok where he would drug and rob them.
But on October 18, the body of 18-year-old American Teresa Knowlton was found floating in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a floral bikini – a detail that later saw Sobhraj dubbed the ‘Bikini Killer’.
Her traveller’s cheques worth £1,250 – or £29,000 today – were cashed in by Leclerc two days after she disappeared.
In chilling audio, recorded by authors Richard Neville and Julie Clarke for their 1979 book, Sobhraj confesses to her murder, saying: “She said ‘did you give me something because I feel very funny?’ I said ‘I’m sorry Teresa but I have to do something bad to you.’”
Another tape reveals his confession for the murder of Turkish man Vitali Hakim, whose charred body was found a few weeks later, at the beach resort of Pattaya.
Sobhraj’s confession, which he has now retracted, said: “I took one of his clothes, I put it on his face, I poured gasoline on it. I started running to the car because it will be a big flame and then woosh.”
He even laughs as he adds: “I hope this stuff won’t hang me one day.”
Listening to the tapes, Jackie says: “He takes huge delight in saying that. There’s no remorse. He’s showing off.”
Hakim’s girlfriend, Stephané Parry, who came looking for him after he disappeared, was also strangled and found floating in the Gulf.
But it was the disappearance of the Dutch couple Henk Bintanja, 29, and Cornelia Hemker, 25 – allegedly drugged, strangled and burned by Sobhraj and his accomplice Ajay Chowdhury – which sparked the investigation by diplomat Herman Knippenberg and his wife Angela which would lead to his arrest.
The Serpent Crimeline
March 1961 – Aged 16, Sobrhraj is arrested for armed robberies on two women in Paris. Received a six month suspended sentence.
November 1962 – Arrested for stealing a car. Spends six months in prison.
Spring 1964 – Sentenced to three years for muggings on Paris Metro, shoplifting & vehicle break-ins.
June 1970 – Steals car and leaves France for India.
Autumn 1970 – Began stealing passports and possessions of western tourists.
October 1971 – Jailed for jewellery robbery in Delhi hotel.
January 1972 – Granted bail and fled to Afghanistan with wife.
July 1972 – Jailed by Afghan police for failing to pay a hotel bill and stealing a car. Escaped by faking illness. Travelled to Paris, drugged his mother-in-law and took daughter Usha, then travelled to Pakistan where he killed allegedly taxi driver ‘Mohammed’.
October 1972 – Jailed for muggings, robberies and passport thefts in Iran.
November 1973 – Arrested and jailed for thefts in Athens.
April 1975 – Escaped prison and moved to Bangkok.
October 1975 – Allegedly murdered Teresa Knowlton and Vitali Hakim, near Pattaya, Thailand.
December 1975 – Allegedly murdered Stéphane Parry, Cornelia Hemker and Henricus Bitanja in Thailand and Connie Jo Bronzich and Laurent Carrière in Nepal.
January 1976 – Met Alan Aaron Jacobs, Israeli tourist, in Varanasi, India, who was later found dead. Sobhraj was subsequently acquitted of his murder.
March 1976 – Incriminating evidence found in Bangkok flat lead to his arrest but he is released.
May 1976 – Interpol issued a Red Notice (international arrest warrant) for Sobhraj under his alias ‘Alain Gautier’.
June 1976 – Sobhraj or an accomplice drugged Jean Luc Solomon, a French tourist, in Delhi, India, who later died.
July 1976 – Sobhraj drugged a party of 60 French students in Delhi, with aim of robbing them but was arrested and subsequently charged with druggings and murders of Solomon and Jacobs.
July 1978 – Convicted in Delhi of culpable homicide “not amounting to murder” of Solomon and robbery leading to injury. Sentenced to 12 years in prison.
November 1983 – Acquitted of murder of Alan Aaron Jacobs.
December 1986 – Delhi High Court clears legal path for Sobhraj to be extradited to Thailand to face murder charges.
March 1986 – Escapes from Tihar jail, Delhi. Recaptured the following month and given extra sentence, taking him beyond expiry of Thai extradition warrant.
December 1996 – Thai extradition warrant expired due to statute of limitations.
April 1997 – Returned to Paris.
September 2003 – Sobhraj travelled to Nepal where he was arrested for the murders of Connie Jo Bronzich and Laurent Carrière
October 2004 – Sentenced to life for Bronzich murder
September 2014 – Sentenced to life for Carrière murder.
December 2022 – Sobhraj released from prison in Nepal on health and age grounds and returns to France.
Neighbour Nadine, who befriended Sobhraj and Leclerc before working with the Knippenbergs on the investigation – which featured heavily in the hit BBC drama – says she saw the Dutch couple in Sobhraj’s apartment and heard them moaning and vomiting and Leclerc told her they were “sick.”
After they were found dead, strangled and burned, on December 16, 2016, Leclerc showed Nadine a hosepipe smelling of petrol and headlines about the murders, telling her Sobhraj and Chowdhury were “killing people” and had returned that night with shoes caked in mud.
Nadine claimed Leclerc was terrified of Sobhraj.
“I was shocked,” she says. “She told me, ‘I have no passport. I have no money. So I said, ‘You can go to the embassy and get a new passport’. She said ‘He would find me and he will kill me.’”
Burned bodies
In the same month, Sobhraj and Leclerc travelled to Nepal, using the Dutch couple’s passports, where he stabbed Laurent Carriere, 26, and Connie Jo Bronzich, 29, to death before setting light to their bodies.
Their charred remains were so unrecognisable that fellow traveller Kent Anschutz identified 6ft 6in Laurent purely from his height and Connie could only be identified by her jewellery.
Although he was arrested by Thai police in March 1976, he was later released and fled to India where two tourists he met – Alan Aaron Jacobs and Jean-Luc Solomon – died.
In a raid on Sobhraj’s apartment, the Knippenbergs found a diary written by Cornelia, a book on Buddhism with the name Teresa written inside, Stephane Parry’s passport, a rubber pipe smelling of petrol, a syringe and ten passports.
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Sobhraj pictured in Delhi in 1997Credit: Reuters
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Leclerc was played by Jenna in the dramaCredit: BBC/© Mammoth Screen
With an Interpol arrest warrant out on Sobhraj, he was finally arrested in Delhi, in July 1976, when he drugged an entire party of 60 French students at a banquet, after persuading them the drinking water was unsafe and handing them doctored antibiotic capsules.
“We bought capsules of antibiotics and in it, we put the drugs,” he boasts. “As I almost reached the end of the 60 students, the first one started to fall down. The scene was like something in a horror movie.
“The police came and I got arrested so they took me to a police station then they realised I was the second most wanted man in the world. The first one was Carlos the Jackal.”
Sobhraj and Leclerc were jailed for the culpable homicide “not amounting to murder” of Soloman and acquitted for the murder of Jacobs.
As I reached the end of the 60 students, the first one started to fall down. The scene was like something in a horror movie
Charles Sobhraj
Leclerc was allowed to return home to Canada after being diagnosed with cancer in 1980 and died in 1983.
While Sobhraj expresses grief over her death, Jackie dismisses it as “crocodile tears”, revealing he sent a letter to his mistress after Leclerc left, saying “she is gone so you don’t have to worry about her anymore”.
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Sobhraj prays in Notre Dame cathedral after his 1997 releaseCredit: Shutterstock
Avoiding execution
Sentenced to 12 years, Sobhraj was set to be extradited to Thailand on murder charges – which carries a death sentence – on his release.
But in a cunning ploy, he escaped from India’s Tihar Jail and, on being recaptured, was given an additional sentence of ten years – taking him past Thailand’s 20 year statute of limitations.
Released in 1997, four months after the Thai warrant expired, he returned to France but, inexplicably, decided to travel to Nepal, six years later, where he was still a wanted man.
He was arrested in Kathmandu and, in 2004, was convicted of the murder of Connie Jo Bronzich, with the conviction for Laurent Carriere’s murder coming ten years later.
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Sobhraj is led to Tihar Jail after an extradition hearingCredit: Rex
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He was released in 2022 and flew home from NepalCredit: AFP
Released on health grounds, two days before Christmas in 2022, he now claims he has been exonerated on all counts of murder “in court”, despite never standing trial for the five connected Thai killings.
When told he is connected to 30 murders he proudly corrects it to “37”, while simultaneously claiming his links to the deaths are coincidental.
Without a hint of irony, he tells the documentary that the person who committed the heinous crimes is a “lunatic and psychopath” and he wants to see this man caught “because he has caused me so many problems”.
“Whoever has done it deserves to be executed,” he adds.
The Real Serpent airs on Channel 4 for three nights, from Tuesday March 19.
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education