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"He finds himself not famous, whereas in prison he's a somebody. But exactly why he then killed these harmless young travellers remains a mystery. I too made the journey to Paris and managed to arrange an interview for the Observer with the Vietnamese-Indian Frenchman." I met Masood. Some estimates number his victims as high as 24, but the truth is no one will ever know the exact figure. On the eve of the interview, the Nepali authorities changed their minds, and we returned home empty-handed. He was always studying character, alive to any signs of weakness that could be exploited. "She said he did them all," he said. They fell in love. Sobhraj's other main partner in crime was Ajay Chowdhury, an Indian man with whom he carried out the most brutal murders. So will you return to France or spend time as a free man with your family in Nepal? 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. Actor Randeep Hooda met you in Kathmandu Jail. Whether or not he was working for the CIA, surely he must have realised that there was a risk of arrest, given that he was wanted for two murders in Nepal. "Ask Nietzsche," he replied with a grin. What had driven him to risk lengthy imprisonment in this impoverished mountain state? And then we pulled up at a cheap brasserie on some kind of industrial estate. And such was the richly implausible nature of his exploits that Sobhraj generated his own impressive literary testaments. Linked with at least ten sadistic murders, Charles Sobhraj is a narcissistic pedlar of fantasies who has spent his life on the run or in prison across Southeast Asia, France and the subcontinent. 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. 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. The crazy thing is he did have contacts in the Taliban, through a former Islamist cellmate in Delhi, and he probably knew Chinese gangsters from his time flitting about in Hong Kong. In one of the rooms hed abandoned, just before the police had arrived, he had left a copy of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil. 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. A week after I published a damning profile, Sobhraj called me at the Observer office. It was our connection with the so called hippy trail that had landed Richard the contract; the fact that crime reporting, and indeed the world of crime, was alien to us had seemed of no consequence. Sobhraj denied all knowledge of the plot, but the prison authorities claimed that the gunman had visited him 21 times in the preceding months. After that, she cut contact with Sobhraj. Now 76 years old, he is reportedly in poor health while serving a life sentence in Nepal. She was a little-travelled medical secretary, quiet and emotionally needy. "He took me aside and said this is too big a story for the Spectator.". Back in the Seventies, Sobhraj murdered at least ten people, mostly Western travellers along the Asian hippie trail. I came here to make a TV documentary on local handicrafts and to see if I can do some humanitarian work.". He told me in Paris that he had regrets but he wouldnt say what they were. "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 proved the last straw for his wife. 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. 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. Serpentine. The whole story from the Taliban to Saddam sounded like the product of an international-class fantasist's imagination. It was from prison that Sobhraj phoned me out of the blue in 2016. Leclerc, who is played by Jenna Coleman in the BBC series, was imprisoned and died of cancer. A generation was looking to find itself by getting lost or high somewhere off the beaten track. Often with the former nurse Leclercs help, he drugged them, led them to believe they had contracted a tropical bug, and prevented them from leaving his apartments on the top floor of Kanit House in Bangkok. When Compagnon finally got out, she was able to take the child and flee to America to escape Sobhrajs destructive hold. You must be thirsty, he said, and held out an already opened bottle of Coke. Charles Sobhraj, pictured in 1997, the year he was released after 21 years in a New Delhi jail. So when travellers who he had met began disappearing, the Thai police didnt bother investigating. "I said, 'You're the serial killer.' A couple of months later, Al Faran went silent and until today, the whereabouts of those remaining foreign hostages remain unknown. His first killing had been of a taxi driver in Pakistan several years before, but between October 1975 and March 1976 he is believed to have committed 11 more murders, nearly all of them young backpackers. You can ask for confirmation from Jaswant Singh. His pattern is to befriend, then drug and rob, or drug and murder, or manipulate and betray' (Biographer Richard Neville). How are your finances? It was 1977 and my boyfriend and I were working as journalists in New York. "I'd heard of him all through my life, being Indian, and his great escape from Tihar jail," said Dhondy. 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). 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. Such a clip from ABC isn't readily available to view, but many other profiles with Sobhraj can be found on the internet. Yet almost 30 years later Sobhraj returned to Nepal and was arrested, tried and sentenced to 20 years in jail. "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. After all, I cannot now face trial . Perhaps it's true. He told the police that he had come to make a documentary about Nepali handicrafts. I couldnt see Sobhraj ever coming clean he would positively savour the drama of withholding a confession but they entered discussions with him. 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. Nepal is a strange and mystifying society. I didnt commit any offence in Nepal so I didnt apprehend any problems. Even bad deeds with good intentions can be good deeds.". The monarchy never recovered, and under the added pressure of a Maoist insurgency, Nepal was declared a republic in 2008. I still have a strict physical and mental discipline. Here's What We Know, Are the "Daisy Jones & The Six" Cast Really Singing in the Show? I straightaway refused, saying Masood would never agree, and again, I told them that I was convinced that after 11 days, they would start executing some passengers. 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. "I don't think we need to go into all that," he said, as if they were merely tiresome details. We needed our little jokes because actually we were a long way out of our depth. Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police say is responsible for a string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from a Nepal prison on Friday after nearly two decades behind bars. At first, he sent an envoy to meet me in Paris. "Everyone has good and bad sides. Definitely. Frenchman. ", 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. 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. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. And he said, 'You could put it that way.'". Thapa was adamant that Ganesh, the policeman, had made the story up about seeing Bronzich's body when he was a boy to create greater publicity for himself. For how long remains to be seen. I still believed if at that time the government had accepted the suggestion of six months (that Masood would be released in six months), most probably, I could have persuaded Harkat ul Ansar to accept it. Settling in Paris, Sobhraj was allegedly paid $5 million for his life story and reportedly gave interviews for $6,000 each. He also escaped from three prisons in three different countries. The calls from Kathmandu were mostly when he was taken out of jail for a court hearing or a visit to the hospital. Humanitarian work? In Afghanistan, he drugged his prison guard and disappeared, leaving his young wife in a cramped and dirty cell in Kabul prison. Lets say only that meeting was in relation to some matter linked to Pakistan. Back in London I got in touch with Dhondy. After 20 years in a New Delhi jail, the man who had confessed to . All he really possesses are the secrets of his crimes. He thinks the Chinese didn't turn up because they suspected that Sobhraj was double-crossing them. He was staying in a tiny room at the Lutetia, the Left Bank hotel that was requisitioned by the Nazi secret service during the war. Certainly a young French-Canadian nurse named Marie-Andre Leclerc was impressed when she met him travelling in India. 1 day ago, by Samantha Brodsky How do you want to spend the next few years of your life? This urge to run away can perhaps be traced back to his disrupted childhood. This, then, was the man outside whose hotel room I stood on a warm spring day in Paris in 1997. Biswas had already traded on her notoriety to appear on Bigg Boss, Indias equivalent of Celebrity Big Brother. Moi, le Serpent Charles Sobhraj Babelio . Like Patricia Highsmiths Tom Ripley, he assumed different identities, using stolen passports and creating a trail of havoc wherever he went. "But I don't feel it. His is a dark and tragic story that lies between what he might have been and what he became, said Neville. And Sobhraj was not unaware of his magnetic appeal. Boris Johnson, arms dealing, drug trafficking, the Taliban, the Triads, the CIA, the Iraq war and Saddam's secret search for a nuclear bomb: when my phone rang in the lobby of the Shanker Hotel, I knew nothing of these aspects of the story that had brought me to Kathmandu. But regardless of how he was defined, I wanted to know what he thought about his past deeds. He greeted me warmly as if I were an old friend. Excerpts from Sobhrajs interview with The Indian Express. President Reagan: 17-23 February 1986 The case would become a sensation, involving trickery, drugs, gems, gun running, corruption, dramatic prison escapes and a glamorous female accomplice who was photographed wearing big sunglasses and holding a fluffy dog. They are the only things in his misspent life that hes ever been able to hold on to. In our hotel room we met with scarfaced crims bringing messages from Sobhraj in Tihar prison. Now his main lawyer is Isabelle Coutant-Peyne, who is married to the renowned international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. They had just had a daughter, who was sent back to live with Compagnons parents in France. In one way or another, casinos have often proved Sobhraj's downfall. He called a friend, an ageing French-Vietnamese character whom he treated as a manservant-cum-bodyguard. 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. He said, 'We're here to set up an antique furniture shop. But hed acquired a third wife, an attractive 24-year-old, Nikita Biswas, the daughter of his Nepali lawyer. I feel 30!" With an obedient Indian accomplice called Ajay Chowdhury, he murdered them in a variety of fashions, including in one case setting fire to a young Dutch couple while they were still alive. IMDb, the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. How does that compare with your experience in Kathmandu Jail? 2 weeks ago, by Eden Arielle Gordon 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. When tourists began going missing, or turning up dead, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg was tasked with investigating the disappearances. When he came out they embarked on a manic crime spree across Europe and Asia. But someone leaked to the media my presence in Kathmandu and it hit the front pages. anywhere in the world." 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. Charles Sobhraj is bundled into a police van in Delhi in 1997, shortly after his release from jail. Sobhraj was born into the turmoil and violence of Saigon in 1944. In 2003, Sobhraj was arrested once more in Nepal, then later convicted for the 1975 murders of American Connie Jo Bronzich and Canadian Laurent Carrire. The couple soon split up and Sobhraj lived with his mother and her new boyfriend, a French soldier. The chilling evidence he uncovered put Sobhraj behind bars with a life sentence. A bright but delinquent teenager, he was irresistibly drawn to crime car theft, street muggings, and then holding up housewives with a gun. He was narcissistic, amusing, teasing and, it had to be said, a psychopath. The book was published in 1979, after the Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian parentage had been on trial in India in 1977, when he thought the admission couldn't hurt him. Compagnon was replaced by a French-Canadian, Marie-Andre Leclerc. "I would see," she said, unflustered.