Charles Sobhraj
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Charles (Gurumukh) Sobhraj (born April 6, 1944 in Saigon, Vietnam) is a French serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Nicknamed "the Serpent" and "the Bikini killer" for his skills at deception and evasion, he allegedly committed at least 12 murders and was jailed in India from 1976 to 1997, but managed to live a life of leisure in prison. He retired as a celebrity in Paris, then unexpectedly returned to Nepal, where he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on August 12, 2004.
While Sobhraj is widely believed to be a psychopath—he has a manipulative personality and is incapable of remorse—his motives for killing differed from those of most serial killers. Sobhraj was not driven to murder by deep-seated, violent impulses, but rather for personal gain, as a means among many to sustain his lifestyle of adventure. That lifestyle, as well as his cunning and cultured personality, made him a celebrity long before his release from prison. Sobhraj immensely enjoyed the attention, charging large amounts of money for interviews and film rights; his life has already been the object of four books and three documentaries. This search for attention and overconfidence in his own intelligence are named as causes of his unexpected return to one of the few places on Earth where authorities were still willing and able to arrest him, and his subsequent downfall.
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[edit] Early years
Sobhraj was born Gurmukh Sobhraj in Saigon to an unwed Vietnamese mother and an Indian (Sindhi) father who soon deserted the family, for which the mother blamed the child. Stateless at first,[1] he was then adopted by his mother's new boyfriend, a French lieutenant stationed in Indochina, but was not given as much attention as the couple's later children. Moving back and forth between France and Indochina with his family, not feeling at home in either place, Sobhraj developed discipline and personality problems growing up and soon turned to petty crime as a teenager.
Sobhraj got his first jail sentence (for burglary) in 1963 at Poissy prison near Paris. He weathered the harsh detention conditions using a combination of self-defense and manipulation. The latter earned him special favors from prison officials, such as keeping books in his cell, and endeared him to visitor Felix d'Escogne.
When paroled, Sobhraj moved in with d'Escogne and shared his time between the high society of Paris and the criminal underworld. He started to accumulate money through a series of scams and burglaries, and began a relationship with Chantal, a woman from a conservative Parisian family. He was arrested for evading police in a stolen car on the very night he proposed to her, and sent back to Poissy for eight months, while a supportive Chantal waited for him.
Sobhraj and Chantal were married upon his release. Soon after, facing mounting suspicions by French authorities, he and a now pregnant Chantal left France for Asia to escape arrest. Traveling through Eastern Europe using fake documents and robbing people who befriended them, they arrived around 1970 in Bombay, where Chantal gave birth to a baby girl.
The couple made a good impression on the expatriate community in India, while Sobhraj resumed his criminal lifestyle by running a car theft and smuggling operation, the profits of which were plowed into his growing gambling addiction. A botched armed robbery at a jewelry store in Hotel Ashoka in 1973 led to his arrest and imprisonment. Faking illness, he escaped with Chantal's help, but both were captured shortly after. Borrowing money from his father in Saigon to bail them out, they fled India for Afghanistan.
In Kabul, the couple resumed their habit of robbing tourists following the "hippie trail." Arrested once again, Sobhraj escaped in a similar manner as in India, pretending illness and drugging the hospital guard, then fleeing to Iran, leaving his family behind. Chantal, although still loyal to him, wanted to leave their criminal past behind, and returned to France, vowing to never see him again.
Sobhraj spent the next two years on the run, using as many as 10 stolen passports and visiting several countries in East Europe and the Middle East. He was joined in Istanbul by his younger brother André, who quickly became a pawn in many crimes in Turkey and Greece; both were eventually arrested in Athens. After an identity-switch plan gone awry, Sobhraj escaped in his usual manner, leaving his brother to serve an 18-year sentence after being turned over to the Turkish police by Greek authorities.
[edit] Murders
On the run again, Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as a mysterious drug dealer to impress tourists and defrauding them when they let their guard down. In Thailand, he met Marie-Andrée Leclerc from Lévis, Quebec, one of many tourists looking for adventure in the East. Subjugated by Sobhraj's personality, Leclerc quickly became his most devoted follower, turning a blind eye to his crimes and philandering with local women.
Sobhraj started gathering followers by helping them out of difficult situations, indebting them to him while he actually was the very cause of their misery. In one case, he helped two former French policemen, named Yannick and Jacques, to recover their passports that he himself had stolen; in another, he provided shelter and comfort to another Frenchman named Dominique Rennelleau, whose apparent dysentery illness was actually the results of poisoning by Sobhraj. He was also joined by a young Indian named Ajay Chowdhury, a fellow criminal who became his lieutenant. Sobhraj wanted to start a criminal "family" of sorts, in the style of Charles Manson's.
It was then that Sobhraj and Chowdhury committed their first (known) murders in 1975. Most of the victims had spent some time with the "clan" before their deaths and were, according to some investigators, potential recruits who had threatened to expose Sobhraj. The first victim was a young woman from Seattle, Teresa Knowlton, who was found burned like many of Sobhraj's other victims. Soon thereafter, a young American Jennie Bollivar, was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a flowered bikini. It was only months later that the autopsy and forensic evidence revealed the drowning to be murder.
The next victim was a young, nomadic Sephardic Jew named Vitali Hakim, whose burned body was found on the road to the Pattaya resort where Sobhraj and his clan were staying.
Dutch students Henk Bintanja, 29, and his fiancée Cornelia Hemker, 25, were invited to Thailand after meeting Sobhraj in Hong Kong. Just as he had done to Dominique, Sobhraj poisoned them, and then nurtured them back to health to gain their obedience. As they recovered, Sobhraj was visited by his previous victim Hakim's French girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, coming to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. Fearing exposure, Sobhraj and Chowdhury quickly hustled the couple out; their bodies were found strangled and burned on December 16, 1975. Soon after, Carrou was found drowned in circumstances similar to Jennie's, and wearing a similar-styled swimsuit. Although the murders of both women were not connected by investigations at the time, they would later earn Sobhraj the nickname of "the bikini killer."
On December 18, the day the bodies of Bintanja and Hemker were identified, Sobhraj and Leclerc entered Nepal using the couple's passports. There they met and, on December 21-22, murdered Canadian Laurent Ormond Carrière, 26 and Californian Connie Bronzich, 29. (The two victims were incorrectly identified in some sources as Laddie DuParr and Annabella Tremont.) Sobhraj and Leclerc then returned to Thailand, once again using their latest victims' passport before their bodies could be identified.
Upon his return to Thailand, Sobhraj discovered that his three French companions had started to suspect him, found documents belonging to the murder victims, and fled to Paris after notifying local authorities.
Sobhraj then went to Calcutta, where he murdered Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob for his passport, and used it to move to Singapore with Leclerc and Chowdhury, then to India and - rather boldly - back to Bangkok in March 1976. There they were interrogated by Thai policemen in connection with the murders, but easily let off the hook because authorities feared that the negative publicity accompanying a murder trial would harm the country's tourist trade.
Not so easily silenced, however, was Dutch embassy diplomat Herman Knippenberg, who was investigating the murder of the two Dutch backpackers, and suspected Sobhraj even though he did not know his real name. Knippenberg started to build a case against him, partly with the help of Sobhraj's neighbour. Given police permission to conduct his own search of Sobhraj's apartment (a full month after the suspect had left the country), Knippenberg found a great deal of evidence, such as victims' documents and poison-laced medicines. He would from then on accumulate evidence against Sobhraj for decades, despite the lack of cooperation by law enforcement.
The trio's next stop was in Malaysia, where Chowdhury was sent on a gem-stealing errand, and disappeared after giving the jewels to Sobhraj. No trace of him was ever found, and it is widely believed that Sobhraj murdered his former accomplice before leaving with Leclerc to sell the jewels in Geneva.
Soon back in Asia, Sobhraj started rebuilding his clan, starting in Bombay with two lost Western women named Barbara Sheryl Smith and Mary Ellen Eather. His next victim was Frenchman Jean-Luc Solomon, who succumbed to the poison intended to incapacitate him during a robbery.
In July 1976 in New Delhi, Sobhraj and the three women tricked a tour group of post-graduate French students into accepting them as guides. He then drugged them with pills which he pretended were anti-dysentery medicine. However, when the drugs started acting too quickly and the students started dropping unconscious where they stood, three of them quickly realized what was happening and overcame Sobhraj, leading to his capture by police. During interrogation, Barbara and Mary Ellen quickly cracked and confessed everything. Sobhraj was charged with the murder of Solomon, and all four were sent to Tihar prison outside New Delhi while awaiting formal trial.
[edit] Prison time
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Conditions inside the notorious prison were unbearable; both Barbara and Mary Ellen attempted suicide during the two years before their trial. Sobhraj, however, had entered with precious gems concealed in his body and was experienced in bribing captors and living comfortably in jail.
Sobhraj turned his trial into a show, hiring and firing lawyers at whim, bringing in his recently-paroled and still-loyal brother André to help, and eventually going on a hunger strike. He was nonetheless sentenced to 12 years in prison instead of the expected death penalty. Leclerc was found guilty of the drugging of the French students, then later paroled and returned to Canada when she developed ovarian cancer. She was still claiming her innocence, and reportedly still loyal to Sobhraj, when she died at home in April 1984.
Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with TV, and gourmet food, having befriended both the guards and the prisoners. He would walk in and out of jail whenever he wanted.[citation needed] Revelling in his notoriety, he gave interviews to Western authors and journalists, such as Oz magazine's Richard Neville in the late 1970s, and Alan Dawson in 1984. He freely talked about his murders, while never actually admitting to them, and pretended that his actions were in retaliation against Western imperialism in Asia, an excuse which most criminologists find highly doubtful.
He also needed to find a way to prolong his sentence, since the 20-year Thai arrest warrant against him would still be valid on his intended release date, leading to his deportation and almost certain execution. So in March 1986, on his tenth year in prison, he threw a big party for his prisoner and guard friends and, having drugged them with sleeping pills, walked out of the jail.
Sobhraj was quickly caught in Goa and had his prison term prolonged by 10 years, just as he had hoped. On February 17, 1997, 52-year old Sobhraj was released, with most warrants, evidence and even witnesses against him long lost. Without any country to deport him to, Indian authorities let him return to France.
[edit] Celebrity and re-capture
Sobhraj then lived in the suburbs of Paris, enjoying a comfortable retirement. He hired an agent and charged thousands of dollars for interviews and photographs, and upwards of $15 million for a movie deal based on his life. Meanwhile, families of victims, and investigators such as Knippenberg, despaired of seeing justice served.
Then, on September 17, 2003, Sobhraj was unexpectedly spotted by a journalist in a street of Kathmandu and quickly reported to the local authorities. He was arrested two days later by Nepalese police in the casino of the Yak and Yeti hotel. On August 20, 2004, the Kathmandu District Court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the 1975 murders of Bronzich and Carrière. Most of the evidence against him came from the painstaking accumulation of documents by Knippenberg and Interpol.
Sobhraj's motives for returning to Nepal remain unknown, although arrogance and need for attention likely had a part in it. He appealed the conviction, claiming he was sentenced without trial. In September, his lawyer announced Sobhraj's wife in France would file a case against the French government before the European Court of Human Rights, for refusing to provide him with any assistance. His conviction was confirmed in 2005 by Kathmandu's Court of Appeals.
[edit] Current status
In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with the Nepalese in his case, as he waited in prison for a retrial ordered by the Nepal Supreme Court. His lawyer claims that Sobhraj has been the victim of racial prejudice.[2]
[edit] Pop culture
In the episode "Slither," part of the fifth season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the character of Bernard Fremont (played by Michael York) is clearly[citation needed] based on Charles Sobhraj. Fremont is killed (offscreen), most likely by his former lover and accomplice Nicole Wallace (played by Olivia d'Abo), who may have been partly based on Leclerc or Chantal.
[edit] Biographies
- Julie Clarke & Richard Neville (1980). The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0-330-27001-X.
- Thomas Thompson (1979). Serpentine. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-0749-6.
[edit] Films
- The made for TV movie Shadow of the Cobra (1989) is based on Sobhraj[1]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Global Circumstantial Evidence Government of Nepal vs Charles Sobhraj Gurumukh
- Return of the Serpent
- All about Charles Sobraj, by Mark Gribben on Crime Library
- Asia's most infamous serial killer gets life...
- Shadow of the Cobra on IMDB.
