Charles Sobhraj is bundled into a police van in Delhi in 1997, shortly after his release from jail. Read the Book Spoilers Now, drugging and trying to rob a group of French engineering students in India, wasn't convicted for any murders prior to 1997, statute of limitations on his arrest was up, paid $5 million for his life story and reportedly gave interviews for $6,000 each, detailed his own experience talking with Sobhraj. A martial-arts fanatic, he seemed to be physically, psychologically and philosophically armed with everything required to dominate others. I too made the journey to Paris and managed to arrange an interview for the Observer with the Vietnamese-Indian Frenchman. After a special plea to the prison minister, two meetings with the prison governor, three body searches and an armed escort, I entered the inner sanctum of the prison, which is run by the prisoners. 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. BBC's (and now Netflix's) The Serpent opens with a title card that reads, "In 1997 an American news crew tracked Charles Sobhraj down to Paris where he was living as a free man." The. He has made a continual fuss about his conviction, appealing to everyone from the UN downwards, and is demanding 7m (5.8) compensation for unlawful imprisonment. He denied the murders, fed a media frenzy, and eventually went to trial. As The Serpent shows, Bangkok in 1976 was a place where anyone with the right connections and spare cash could evade unwanted police attention. BBC's (and now Netflix's) The Serpent opens with a title card that reads, "In 1997 an American news crew tracked Charles Sobhraj down to Paris where he was living as . As recently as 2014, GQ magazine ran an interview with Sobhraj, calling the killer "funny . In any case, it requires no great intellect to kill someone. Even if the hired killer had been in collusion with Sobhraj, that didn't explain how he entered the prison with a gun - unless someone at the self-same prison authorities turned a blind eye. I wanted to know what he thought about his past deeds. That way, the previous ten journalist requests had been successfully steered into a dead end. Then he headed back to Asia with a plan to bust Compagnon out of jail. Nepal is a strange and mystifying society. As she would later write from her prison cell: I swore to myself to try all means to make him love me, but little by little I became his slave.. In 1997, after attending a Royal Gala evening, Geri Halliwell kissed Prince Charles on the cheek. Sobhraj was arrested and imprisoned multiple times for various crimes from burglary to armed robbery, but he would always be released or manage to escape, such as when he pretended to be ill,. He told the police that he had come to make a documentary about Nepali handicrafts. 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. Sobhraj prided himself on his ability to read people. "She said he did them all," he said. Death Stalks the Hippy trail! read one headline. But my head was beginning to spin. (In case those names don't sound familiar, they're renamed Willem and Helena in the series.) When tourists began going missing, or turning up dead, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg was tasked with investigating the disappearances. Herman Knippenberg now lives in New Zealand, where he keeps a large archive on Sobhrajs crimes in his home. Sobhraj. One night a drill bit appeared through the wooden door of our room. A REAL LIFE hero backpacker who escaped a serial killer in BBC drama The Serpent is alive, well - and helping to run his local billiards club. GQ talks to the serial killer who beguiled the delusional and needy and wrecked the lives of almost everyone he knew - and who may be about to be released from Nepalese jail. ", I asked him in Paris about the power he held over those who came under his influence. The couple married when Sobhraj was released and embarked on an epic crime spree across Europe and Asia, before settling in Mumbai with a newborn child and a profitable trade in stolen cars. In The Guardian, Observer reporter Andrew Anthony detailed his own experience talking with Sobhraj. Back in London I got in touch with Dhondy. He looked a curiously slight figure, his skin remarkably smooth, even youthful, given that hed spent the past two decades in an Indian jail. He was always studying character, alive to any signs of weakness that could be exploited. He even denied meeting a number of his victims when I raised their names, although there were witness statements placing them in his apartment. Several times when different police forces had him within their grasp, he coolly assumed the identity of another person - usually one of his victims - and talked his way out. He killed them by first drugging their drinks and then stabbing or choking them. The Serpent is on BBC1. Here's where Sobhraj is now. He met her when he was 24 and fresh out of prison in Paris. He asked Dhondy to investigate the availability of hot-air balloons. Certainly a young French-Canadian nurse named Marie-Andre Leclerc was impressed when she met him travelling in India. For example, when he was cornered by police in Nepal in 1975 he assumed the identity of a Dutch teacher he had already killed in Bangkok, and was able to talk himself out of arrest. Floral dream: The Pose star, 31, donned a flower-inspired . Afterwards, he would steal their belongings and identities, often travelling the world on their passports and money. Since then, however, his release kept getting delayed in 2017, he had a heart surgery and then came the Covid pandemic. On her release in Kabul, she met an American and moved with him and her daughter to the US. "Mention David Beckham in England, everybody knows. He cant deal with the outside world, said Dhondy. He became known as the Bikini Killer after the swimsuit one of his victims was wearing when she was discovered. I changed the topic and asked about Chantal Compagnon. "If you use it to make people do wrong it's an abuse," he said. James McAvoys lowkey watch is a people's champion, 10 of the best GQ-approved first watches money can buy, Meet the men paying to have their jaws broken in the name of manliness, The 18 greatest live sport experiences on earth, The big GQ guide to Spring/Summer 2023 menswear trends, Tom Hardy will be a Hannibal Lecter-esque serial killer in Apple TV+'s, The GQ Car Awards 2023: together in electric dreams, What to wear to a wedding as the clued-up guest, Print copies & Digital access for only 1. 11 hours ago, by Sarah Wasilak However, he broke out of prison and faced another decade in jail after he was caught. I couldnt quite believe that someone who had confessed to a number of the murders to Neville, and against whom there was a wealth of compelling evidence, was free to walk the streets of a European capital. But what could he do? Complaining that he had paid all the necessary bribes, Sobhraj still insisted he was about to be released any day. Despite my pressing, he refused to speak about the murders, only allowing that there were things in his past that he regretted but they were now behind him and he wanted to start life anew. She was a little-travelled medical secretary, quiet and emotionally needy. In one way or another, casinos have often proved Sobhraj's downfall. Richard speedily learned the arts of bribery and corruption and arranged regular access to interview him. 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. , Awesome, Youre All Set! In mid-70s Bangkok, Dutchman Herman Knippenberg was tasked with finding two missing travellers. I met Masood. Everyone has good and bad sides. "He can't deal with the outside world," said Dhondy. The real Charles Sobhraj is still alive and is now serving time in prison after a long time evading punishment, while Marie Andre Leclerc was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 1983 and died the. Nepal's Supreme Court upheld . So, have things worked according to plan? "I was looking to set up a heroin deal on behalf of the Taliban.". Of course, my first priority will be to return to France. NFTs to create awareness about mental health at Art Dubai, ChatSonic launches ChatGPT-like 'super powerful' Chrome extension, Women's Premier League: Boundary length to be a maximum of 60 metres, 5 metres less than the distance at Women's T20 World Cup, Motorolas Rizr rises above everything else on show at MWC 2023, Meta lowers Quest VR headsets prices to lure customers, Quick Style grooves to Kala Chashma again, this time with an 'Aye Ayo' twist, Creativity at its peak! "He finds himself not famous, whereas in prison he's a somebody. When he left prison, the statute of limitations on his arrest was up. Soon recognised by a journalist, Sobhraj found himself in the Himalayan Times. He held a flamenco dancer hostage in a New Delhi hotel while he used her room to break into a gem store on the floor below. "Ask Nietzsche," he replied with a grin. But by his lights, he was a victim all over again, this time of the war against terror, protesting that he had been callously abandoned by the Americans. '", Dhondy turned down the offer, but became convinced that Sobhraj was involved in the illegal arms trade. But Sobhraj himself remains impenetrable. "But I was also working for the CIA," he added, as I'm still trying to put the pieces together. 2 weeks ago, by Eden Arielle Gordon Sobhraj was born into the turmoil and violence of Saigon in 1944. Richard died four years ago and its now been more than 40 years since Bungles and Mishap, two amusingly naive youngsters, got to write a classic true crime book, about which in retrospect, I now feel enormous pride. I declined the offer but asked him to tell me why hed come to Nepal. Many sleep on the ground under the sky. I think hell become one of the top actors in Bollywood. Sobhraj conformed to many but not all of these characteristics. You have spent time in Tihar Jail as well. After 20 years in a New Delhi jail, the man who had confessed to . Instead he was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran on suspicion of selling arms to the anti-Shah underground. In The Serpent he is accurately portrayed as a dogged if novice investigator. In one of the rooms hed abandoned, just before the police had arrived, he had left a copy of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil. You even visited a casino. Even bad deeds with good intentions can be good deeds.. Frenchman. He claimed he had emails with coded references to red mercury that he could get from Belarus. "I'm looking for a literary agent," he told me. ", Nevertheless a few years ago, while he was working in India, Dhondy received a phone call from Sobhraj in Kathmandu Central Jail. 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. After many false starts, a year later I found myself back in Kathmandu, where the producers had secured a prison interview. The hit TV show The Serpent is available now on BBC iPlayer and Netflix. Both in and out of jail, Sobhraj has always had a way with women. Not subtle, but clearly we were under surveillance. 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. He played it both ways. But the very same day he was arrested for car theft and served eight months back inside. There is usually also a psychological - rather than purely material - aspect to the killings, and perhaps a ritualised element too.