12 Things You Didn¡¯t Know About The Infamous Charles Sobhraj

12 Things You Didn¡¯t Know About The Infamous Charles Sobhraj

1. His full name is Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj.

2. Charles Sobhraj was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father. His parents separated later which meant that he spent his childhood shuttling between them. His mother later married a French Army officer and he was sent to a boarding school in France. As a kid he tried, at least twice, to escape to Saigon from France by sea, reaching as far as Djibouti on one occasion.

3. Charles Sobhraj is one of the most notorious serial killers ever, he is said to have killed anywhere between 12 to 24 people in south-east Asia, in the 70s and the 80s. Most of them were young backpackers from western countries, travelling the ¡®Asian Hippie Trail¡¯.

4. Sobhraj was fluent in several languages, was a charmer, and known for his way with women. His mode of operation was to befriend his victims and later either drug-and-loot or drug-and-kill. His first known murder victim was American Teresa Knowlton who was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand.

5. He was given many nicknames including ¡®The Serpent¡¯ Charles Sobhraj which was given to him by the press because of his numerous escapes from jail. He was also labelled the ¡®Bikini Killer¡¯. This was thanks to the similarity in the swimsuits his victims, Teresa Knowlton and Charmayne Carrou, were wearing when their bodies was discovered.

6. Although Charles Sobhraj was jailed earlier for crimes like theft of cars and non-payment of bills, his undoing proved to be the attempted poisoning of French students in Delhi in 1976. He, along with two women, Barbara Smith and Mary Ellen Eather, were arrested and tried for the crime. He was sentenced to 7 years in jail and couldn¡¯t be extradited to Thailand where he was to face murder charges.

7. In 1979, the book The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj by Richard Neville came out. It was based on an extended taped conversation Sobhraj had with Neville. Sobhraj later denied everything he told Neville.

8. During his stay in Tihar, he is said to have been engaged to two women and have sexual relations with his lawyer, Sneha Senger. But he was plotting his escape all this while, which he managed a little later. In a calculated move though, he was caught a month after his ¡®escape¡¯ and was jailed till 1997. This meant that the statute of limitations on his punishments in Thailand, that of 20 years, ran out.

9. Charles Sobhraj has spent more than 35 years behind bars but also has a penchant for running away from his sentence. His escape from Tihar wasn't his first. He escaped from previous jail terms as well, in Afghanistan and Greece. One other time he feigned appendicitis and managed to slither his way out of a hospital.

10. After his release from Tihar in 1997, he went back to France, where he would charge money for interviews. He allegedly sold the rights to a movie based on his life.

11. He would never have been caught in Nepal, had it not been for a journalist who recognised him in Katmandu in 2003. He was arrested for the 1975 murders of Connie Jo Bronzich and Laurent Carri¨¨re. When arrested, he said he had never been to Nepal before and that he was there to make a TV documentary.

12. In Nepal Charles Sobhraj was sentenced to life imprisonment for one murder. The other case is still pending. During the trial, he got engaged to his lawyer¡¯s daughter Nihita Biswas. The two allegedly married in jail, though Nepalese authorities deny that.

12 Things You Didn¡¯t Know About The Infamous Charles Sobhraj