Ill devote my life to my daughter and will probably keep myself busy with books writing and business. Investigators believe that Sobhraj killed at least a dozen people, including young travellers, whom he would drug and trap in Kanit House in Bangkok. The suggestion was that Sobhraj was part of another murder plot. 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. 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. . "But I don't feel it. What skills could he employ in France and who would employ him? He was always studying character, alive to any signs of weakness that could be exploited. He had just been released from jail in India, where he had spent 20 years on various charges (but not for any of the murders for which he was alleged to be responsible). I too made the journey to Paris and managed to arrange an interview for the Observer with the Vietnamese-Indian Frenchman. '", Dhondy turned down the offer, but became convinced that Sobhraj was involved in the illegal arms trade. But Sobhraj himself remains impenetrable. After that, she cut contact with Sobhraj. We were both having nightmares that Sobhraj was chasing us, or suddenly appearing in our room. We said our goodbyes and he told me to call him. (In case those names don't sound familiar, they're renamed Willem and Helena in the series.) Also, while in Kathmandu, you married your lawyers daughter. Hes not responsible. In early 2013 I entered Kathmandu prison, the only journalist to get access to him after the attempted murder. While you might not be able to track down the interview footage, Sobhraj definitely became a media star following his release, reportedly talking to reporters for hefty sums after settling down in Paris. The honeymoon ended in 1973 when Sobhraj was arrested for holding a flamenco dancer prisoner for three days in her New Delhi hotel room, while he and an accomplice tried to drill through her ceiling to a gem store below. But it was on his supposed role in trying to secure the release of the hijacked passengers of IC-814 that Sobhraj was most forthcoming. He cant deal with the outside world, said Dhondy. And then we pulled up at a cheap brasserie on some kind of industrial estate. Charles Sobhraj told AFP in an exclusive interview on Friday that he was no serial killer and that he was innocent of the two murders that he served almost 20 years for in Nepal. Its a sensitive matter. I had never been much interested in serial killers but I happened to read Richard Nevilles and Julie Clarkes extraordinary account of the killings, The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj, just before Sobhrajs release was announced. In any case, Sobhraj, perhaps surprisingly, is not a man to bear a grudge. This urge to run away can perhaps be traced back to his disrupted childhood. He greeted me warmly as if I were an old friend. Mr Jaswant Singh was in direct contact with me. Sobhraj described Dhondy as a "petty middleman", while Dhondy called the threat to sue him "extortion and blackmail". I doubt that day will ever arrive. Jenna Coleman, as Marie-Andre Leclerc, with Rahim in The Serpent. We suggested he try the Telegraph.". Like Patricia Highsmiths Tom Ripley, he assumed different identities, using stolen passports and creating a trail of havoc wherever he went. Sobhraj has always been provocative in his choice of lawyers. They are the only things in his misspent life that hes ever been able to hold on to. According to royal protocol and etiquette, you're only allowed to shake a royal's hand, so the . It was 1977 and my boyfriend and I were working as journalists in New York. All the same, he said he continued to see Compagnon while he was with his wife, who appears to have vanished from the scene. He claimed he had emails with coded references to red mercury that he could get from Belarus. And such was the richly implausible nature of his exploits that Sobhraj generated his own impressive literary testaments. After many false starts, a year later I found myself back in Kathmandu, where the producers had secured a prison interview. Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj in The Serpent. I met Thapa and Biswas together in Kathmandu to discuss Sobhraj and his case. They were working on serious matters: politics, saving the world. By chance, shortly after the call, a couple of documentary makers got in touch with me. It proved the last straw for his wife. He grew up amid terror on the city streets and fierce disputes at home. Uncheckable. We're going to the launder the money through the antiques job. First Richard Neville, the celebrated chronicler of the Sixties counterculture, drew an extended taped confession from Sobhraj in, The Life And Crimes Of Charles Sobhraj - later renamed, The Shadow Of The Cobra. I hope to live for many years to come. 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. Ashe once explained to the same brother: "Always remember that their desire to keep me locked up is no match to my will to be free.". Dhondy had spoken to Chantal Compagnon who told him that Sobhraj had wanted to move to the US with a new identity and money provided by the CIA. A martial-arts fanatic, he seemed to be physically, psychologically and philosophically armed with everything required to dominate others. The notorious murderer who preyed on 70s backpackers is the subject of a new BBC drama. Here's where Sobhraj is now. A bright but delinquent teenager, he was irresistibly drawn to crime car theft, street muggings, and then holding up housewives with a gun. They fell in love. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. She also became his accomplice in theft and murder and ended up in an Indian prison, and died of cancer four years after her release. "He wrote back asking if it could fit into two suitcases. There had to be another reason, something vaguely plausible at least. He was narcissistic, amusing, teasing and, it had to be said, a psychopath. So much so, I came on a business visa as an assistant producer for a French production company, Gentleman Films Prod. "He didn't bet high stakes and he didn't talk to anyone," the manager Ramesh Babu Shreastha told me. Certainly a young French-Canadian nurse named Marie-Andre Leclerc was impressed when she met him travelling in India. According to the Bangkok Post, he underwent heart surgery in 2017. by Lindsay Kimble "They couldn't help me because I was undercover.". But my guess is that hes biding his time, thinking out his next move.. It was a psychological test, the first of several that afternoon. Since then, however, his release kept getting delayed in 2017, he had a heart surgery and then came the Covid pandemic. After politely sidestepping his offer, I got on to the question I'd been waiting a long time to ask: whatever made him come back to Nepal? Nepal's Supreme Court upheld . He became known as the Bikini Killer after the swimsuit one of his victims was wearing when she was discovered. Now 76 years old, he is reportedly in poor health while serving a life sentence in Nepal. "She left her husband and came back to Paris when she heard that I was back," he said with proprietorial pride, referring to his return in 1997. Sobhraj prided himself on his ability to read people. Subs offer. In 1975, when the Nepal police raided Sobhraj's hastily abandoned hotel room after Bronzich's body was discovered, among the few items they found was a copy of Nietzsche's Beyond Good And Evil. At times he could be articulate, thoughtful, sensitive; yet he was also wilful, stubborn and recklessly compulsive. He became a famous outlaw in India. In Afghanistan, he drugged his prison guard and disappeared, leaving his young wife in a cramped and dirty cell in Kabul prison. There seems little doubt that had the same quality of evidence produced in the Kathmandu court been put to a judge and jury in Britain, the case would have been dismissed. His pattern is to befriend, then drug and rob, or drug and murder, or manipulate and betray' (Biographer Richard Neville). I dont think he realises what he does. If he did realise, he didnt appear weighed down by the knowledge. I dont know, lets see after the publication of my bookThere could be a future Hindi movie. 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,. 1 day ago, by Lindsay Kimble After all, it's not often that renowned multiple killers are at liberty and available to talk. It was a little playful test, and one I politely turned down. Many have speculated that Sobhraj murdered him, though he denied it when I asked him. Nonetheless, even the police eventually took notice. Floral dream: The Pose star, 31, donned a flower-inspired . Is G20 meet Indias NAM moment with a difference? On August 15, 2016, when his release seemed imminent, Sobhraj replied to questions I sent him on email, with a caveat: the interview, he insisted, should be published only on his release from Kathmandu Jail. There is a great deal of mythology surrounding serial killers and, indeed, the term itself is not exactly a scientific designation. In the interview, Sobhraj spoke about his arrest from a casino in Nepal in 2003, his stint in Delhis Tihar Jail between 1976 and 1997, and the book and movie releases that he was part of then. I was 23 and Richard Neville, who later became my husband, was 33. I asked her why she came back to him, and she said 'I love him. And he said, 'You could put it that way.'". "But it was too hot. His father was a successful Indian tailor and his mother was his father's mistress, a local Vietnamese woman. We sat in a booth, the two men on either side of me. He said, 'We're here to set up an antique furniture shop. OK, he said. There was a narcissism about him, perhaps best captured in a photograph of him that police found in which he is lying naked on a bed, proudly displaying an erection for the camera. Getting to see Sobhraj in Kathmandu was not easy. "Everyone has good and bad sides. Young idealists, trusting backpackers and hash-smoking stoners were looking to get lost, and Sobhraj made sure some of them were never found. 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. This is an interview of Charles being sarcastic about his murders Show more Show more Tahar Rahim on Why He'd Meet with the Real Serial Killer He Played in 'The Serpent' TheEllenShow 135K views. Are you in contact with anyone else in Pakistan? "Think about the money," he said. But his first and abiding love was Chantal Compagnon, a French woman from a deeply conservative background. I didnt commit any offence in Nepal so I didnt apprehend any problems. I couldnt see Sobhraj ever coming clean he would positively savour the drama of withholding a confession but they entered discussions with him. He was criminal. Neville, who is now dead, told me from Australia that his wife was anxious that Sobhraj was at large. After all, I cannot now face trial . Again, Dhondy believes the meeting in Nepal was a real one. In 1979 Thomas Thompson added an equally disturbing portrait with. . We went around and around the subject, and it became clear that he was more interested in portraying himself as a victim: of western imperialism, a dysfunctional childhood, racism and institutionalisation. Sobhraj conformed to many but not all of these characteristics. Accused of murdering dozens of Western tourists across Thailand, Nepal and India in the 1970s, Charles Sobhraj's life story has spawned multiple books, a movie, and a new BBC miniseries on Netflix. In August 2004, serial killer Charles Sobhraj was convicted to life in prison for the murder of Bronzich on evidence collected by a Dutch diplomat 30 years earlier. Photograph: Krishnan Guruswamy/AP How I wrote On the Trail of The Serpent: the story behind. This, then, was the man outside whose hotel room I stood on a warm spring day in Paris in 1997. Towards the end, when he could perhaps sense my scepticism about the story he had told me, he insisted that I speak to the writer and filmmaker Farrukh Dhondy. I declined the offer but asked him to tell me why hed come to Nepal. I hope to live for many years to come', Charles Sobhraj (left); his cell in a Kathmandu prison in 2016. '", Sobhraj wanted Dhondy to lease the shop as a British citizen and took him up to his hotel to show him a Russian manual full of armaments. Sobhraj replies, "That's what Time magazine said. He was given a life sentence in 1999 for taking an art teacher hostage in prison. A week after I published a damning profile, Sobhraj called me at the Observer office. One wonders, why did you take the risk of returning to Nepal where you were a wanted man? There will be film rights too.". When we flew out of Delhi I had never felt so relieved. Afterwards, he would steal their belongings and identities, often travelling the world on their passports and money. "It's an incredible story. Settling in Paris, Sobhraj was allegedly paid $5 million for his life story and reportedly gave interviews for $6,000 each. In an astonishing interview from his cell in Nepal, Charles Sobhraj says he wants Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson and the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to bankroll a movie. But presumably that's what his victims thought as well. "I had a lot of female visitors," he told me, "mainly journalists and MA students. 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. 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. The only topic that aroused his sense of injustice was his imprisonment, which he took to be one of the great judicial miscarriages of modern times. He even denied meeting a number of his victims when I raised their names, although there were witness statements placing them in his apartment. "He's an old friend of mine," she said, "and he admitted it was all a lie. He called me at the Observer after my piece appeared and said he was coming to London. Instead it was left to a junior Dutch diplomat looking for the missing Dutch couple, Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker, who became Sobhrajs nemesis. The said news quoted the Nepal Police as declaring that they had no case or file against me. A Bollywood film (Main Aur Charles) has been made on you. (In case those names don't sound familiar, they're renamed Willem and Helena in the series.) I still have a strict physical and mental discipline. On 17 February 1997, 52-year-old Sobhraj was released with most warrants, evidence, and even witnesses against him long lost. Its a bottomless pit. He called a friend, an ageing French-Vietnamese character whom he treated as a manservant-cum-bodyguard. The Midnight Hour: The Serpent (Charles Sobhraj) 133,134 views Feb 4, 2020 200 Dislike Share Save UTD TV 2.37K subscribers This week in the season 2 premiere of The Midnight Hour, your fellow. But the very same day he was arrested for car theft and served eight months back inside. The child of an affair between an Indian businessman-tailor and one of his Vietnamese shop assistants, Sobhraj (played in the BBC drama by French actor Tahar Rahim) had grown up in Saigon during the Vietnamese war of independence from France. Photograph: Krishnan Guruswamy/AP The Observer TV crime drama Speaking with the Serpent: my. Charles Sobhraj exclusive interview: 'I am going straight back to France to my family I hope to live for many years to come' With the master of guile set to take his flight to freedom at age 78, the world may finally get to hear from the man himself - the chronicles, claims and conspiracy theories that make up Charles Sobhraj. He thought that, secretly, he harboured a wish to return to prison, even if once there he would spend all his time trying to get out. Then I didnt hear of him for six years, until I read that he had been arrested in Kathmandu for the murders of a Canadian called Laurent Carrire and an American Connie Jo Bronzich, who had been killed in December 1975. He told me he was about to be released. Whats not known is that after that call, I had a very long conversation with Jaswant Singh and suggested to him a second solution: that the Government of India gives an official undertaking, endorsed by Parliament, that Masood would be released within six months, and I would try my best to negotiate with Harkat ul Ansar on that ground. Now his main lawyer is Isabelle Coutant-Peyne, who is married to the renowned international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. Sobhraj made sure he had those connections. The Serpent is on BBC1. He twice tried to return to Vietnam by stowing away on a ship - once he got as far as Djibouti before being discovered and sent back to France. The idea that the Americans would make such provisions for a serial killer seems far-fetched, to say the least, although it's fair to say that in the past they have done business with people who are even more disreputable than Sobhraj. At first, he sent an envoy to meet me in Paris. Well, you already know about it After Masood Azhars release following the Indian Airline hijacking incident (in 1999), The Indian Express had mentioned my role with the Government of India at that time. There was also the small matter of Yousuf Ansari, a local media baron who shared the same block in the prison with Sobhraj. If that didn't put her off him, you'd have thought she might have been disabused by his abuse of her. In its latest report, Transparency International has classified Nepal as the third most corrupt country after Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Sobhraj was a nuisance for both the Nepalese and French, and neither wanted to afford him the opportunity for publicity. The filmmaker got a researcher- to look into it and they sent the findings to Sobhraj. My programme was to be in Kathmandu for only a few days for that meeting, and leave. 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." He told me that he's been thinking of me recently because he's looking for someone to ghost his autobiography. On her release in Kabul, she met an American and moved with him and her daughter to the US. There are disturbing descriptions throughout this episode. ", Dhondy repeated the details that Sobhraj had told me in Kathmandu, the difference being that he had learned of them before Sobhraj went to prison. Moreover, when I was released from India, the Indian government had asked Nepal whether I was wanted. Nepal to release The Serpent serial killer Charles Sobhraj, TheSerpent: a slow-burn TV success that's more than a killer thriller, TVtonight: Charles Sobhraj's life of crime, Speaking with the Serpent: my encounters with serial killer Charles Sobhraj, 'I saw him as an animal': Tahar Rahim on playing a real-life serial killer. Its OK. Are you in contact with Indian intelligence agencies? When I met him in Paris he boasted of his exploits in Tihar prison in New Delhi. Charles Bronson is Britain's most notorious criminal. Two years ago Ansari was shot, but not fatally injured, by a would-be assassin who was said to be visiting Sobhraj in the prison. He was by turns funny, enigmatic, absurd and engaging. When captured, he feigned appendicitis and escaped from hospital. According to the Bangkok Post, he underwent heart surgery in 2017. by Njera Perkins "That's when she cut my money off," complained Sobhraj, shaking his head. He thinks the Chinese didn't turn up because they suspected that Sobhraj was double-crossing them. Will your friends in the US intelligence be helping you in your rehabilitation after release from jail? 1 day ago, by Samantha Brodsky It was like a personal motto. Back in the Seventies, Sobhraj murdered at least ten people, mostly Western travellers along the Asian hippie trail. Both titles played on the Serpent, the nickname Sobhraj had been given by the press because he was cunning and slippery, capable of beguiling sang-froid and poisonous violence. "The charges are rubbish," he complained in 2004. He analysed character according to a system devised by the French psychologist Rene Le Senne, a method he used to impose himself on the gullible. He told me in Paris that he had regrets but he wouldnt say what they were. Please select the topics you're interested in: Would you like to turn on POPSUGAR desktop notifications to get breaking news ASAP? "'You'll get 100,000 if you do this for us,' he said, 'because we're not selling furniture. When tourists began going missing, or turning up dead, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg was tasked with investigating the disappearances. I was to leave but someone warned me to be careful, saying Nepal was then facing a Maoist insurgency and the police and courts didnt respect any law or rules. He didnt seem dangerous to me, but then he didnt seem dangerous to those he killed, either. When the Nepalese police questioned "Gautier", he claimed he was a Dutchman called Henricus Bintanja - who happened to be dead in Bangkok, another victim, it is thought, of Sobhraj. At one moment he would lapse into philosophical musings, the next make a blackly mordant joke. The Serpent takes a close look at the year 1976, when a young Dutch diplomat named Herman Knippenberg followed the murders of Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker in Thailand. Our writer recalls his bizarre meetings with a charmer and psychopath, At the beginning of The Serpent, the new BBC drama series based on the exploits of a real-life serial killer, a title page declares: In 1997 an American TV crew tracked Charles Sobhraj down to Paris where he was living as a free man.. He wore a playful but challenging smile as I politely declined his offer. Definitely. His first wife was once asked by an Indian journalist how she could have feelings for a killer. He eventually made off with thousands of pounds worth of jewels. Watch, Couple sets deer caught in barbed wires free. He had been captured in 1976 while drugging 60 French engineering students in Delhi. Sign up for our Celebrity & Entertainment newsletter. He is obsessed with preventing anyone from exploiting his life for financial gain and threatened to sue the writer. That didn't sound like Sobhraj. The limited series then dives into a chilling 1997 interview with Sobhraj, who's played by Tahar Rahim. I want to meet my three (friends who I consider) sisters in Pune. What had driven him to risk lengthy imprisonment in this impoverished mountain state? While you might not be able to track down the interview footage, Sobhraj definitely became a media star following his release, reportedly talking to reporters for hefty sums after settling down in Paris. Simply put, the conditions in Nepali jails are primitive, awful. My philosophy in life is that we are masters of our own destiny and responsible for our own actions.. For his part, Ganesh claimed that as a young boy he had been traumatised by seeing Connie Jo Bronzich's burnt and naked corpse in a field near his home. In any case, it requires no great intellect to kill someone. With the single exception of his confessions to Neville, which he later retracted, he has always held to the legal argument that, as hed not been found guilty of any murders, it meant he hadnt committed any murders. In July 1976 Sobhraj was on the run in India, wanted for several murders in Thailand and two in Nepal. And nor do I think that any coherent explanation for why he killed so many young travellers will ever emerge. I told him what I knew, that the Russians said that they had an isotope that could act as a trigger for nuclear bombs "It was a hotel on the M20 junction," Dhondy recalled. But is the opening interview in the limited series based on actual events? BBC primetime drama has moved into the true-crime genre with the release of The Serpent, an eight-part thriller telling the real-life story of the mass murderer, Charles Sobhraj. He told the police that he had come to make a documentary about Nepali handicrafts. A foreign diplomat told me that the French embassy made no secret of its arrangement with Kathamandu Central Jail, in which the two institutions referred potential visitors back and forth to each other until they gave up. All of which meant that in 1997 he returned to Paris, where I went to interview him for the Observer.
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