The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. But many of his alleged murders remain unresolved - and for Knippenberg, the case still doesn't feel. That didn't sound like Sobhraj. Sobhraj met his current Nepalese lawyer, Shakuntala Thapa, through her daughter, 24-year-old Nihita Biswas, who acted as his translator during one of the Frenchman's many appeals. Pretty good. You even visited a casino. He greeted me like an old friend, and told me that he wanted me to write his autobiography, as though his life was filled with achievement. Then he and Compagnon were imprisoned in Afghanistan. . We suggested he try the Telegraph.". Frenchman. It will be a bestseller. 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. "I don't think we need to go into all that," he said, as if they were merely tiresome details. 'He finds himself not famous, whereas in prison he's a somebody' "I'm almost 70," he said. The limited series then dives into a chilling 1997 interview with Sobhraj, who's played by Tahar Rahim. In early 2013 I entered Kathmandu prison, the only journalist to get access to him after the attempted murder. He went on to explain that he had been working as an arms dealer to, among others, the Taliban, courtesy of an introduction from the Islamist terrorist leader Masood Azhar, a friend from his days in Tihar prison. I too made the journey to Paris and managed to arrange an interview for The Observer with the Vietnamese-Indian Frenchman." It was like a personal motto. 10 hours ago, by Eden Arielle Gordon "He's too stupid for that. Sobhraj wanted payment for the interview but I refused and, to my surprise, he agreed to talk. Nepal to release The Serpent serial killer Charles Sobhraj, Onthe Trail of The Serpent: the story behind the true crime classic, TheSerpent: a slow-burn TV success that's more than a killer thriller, TVtonight: Charles Sobhraj's life of crime, 'I saw him as an animal': Tahar Rahim on playing a real-life serial killer. He looked small and inconsequential, but better than any 68-. year-old who's spent the last ten years in a decrepit prison has any right to look. With the pair of them I got into a small car and we drove around Paris, heading out to the suburbs beyond the Priphrique. 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.. He claimed he had emails with coded references to red mercury that he could get from Belarus. Actor Randeep Hooda met you in Kathmandu Jail. A former commissioning editor at Channel 4, he is now a playwright, novelist and documentary maker. , Awesome, Youre All Set! He escaped from three prisons in three different countries. The authorities were mystified by the incorrigible recidivist who was in and out of reform school and prison during his teens. I still have a strict physical and mental discipline. After many false starts, a year later I found myself back in Kathmandu, where the producers had secured a prison interview. They typically have a background in crime and they tend to select their victims from a particular social group or demographic. They had just had a daughter, who was sent back to live with Compagnons parents in France. And he said, 'You could put it that way.'". 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. At times he could be articulate, thoughtful, sensitive; yet he was also wilful, stubborn and recklessly compulsive. Photograph: Krishnan Guruswamy/AP The Observer TV crime drama Speaking with the Serpent: my. Thanks to evidence preserved and provided by his old adversary Knippenberg, he was found guilty and given a life sentence. 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. 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. So not Nepali handicrafts, after all. The suggestion was that Sobhraj was part of another murder plot. Now he dreams of retiring to Devon to paint pictures. But like so many women who were to follow, she had fallen under his spell. On the Trail of the Serpent by Julie Clarke and Richard Neville is published by Vintage. "Think about the money," he said. 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." Now 76 years old, he is reportedly in poor health while serving a life sentence in Nepal. Its prison administration? I called Jaswant Singh, told him that in my opinion, no passenger would be harmed for 11 days, so India had 11 days to negotiate. 1 day ago. When tourists began going missing, or turning up dead, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg was tasked with investigating the disappearances. I asked whether he'd be prepared to discuss the murders in this bestseller. But first he was imprisoned in Greece he escaped by swapping identities with his younger brother. No, of course. He loved nothing better than talking about his legal appeals. "'This is Charles Sobhraj,'" said Dhondy with pitch-perfect mimicry. An embittered Sobhraj upped the crime stakes. And such was the richly implausible nature of his exploits that Sobhraj generated his own impressive literary testaments. A generation was looking to find itself by getting lost or high somewhere off the beaten track. 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. "That's when she cut my money off," complained Sobhraj, shaking his head. And if so, I would very much have Randeep Hooda to again play my role. Charles Sobhraj spoke to press on a plane after being freed Sobhraj has been linked to more than 20 killings between 1972 and 1982, in which the victims were drugged, strangled, beaten or burned. He greeted me warmly as if I were an old friend. In one of the rooms hed abandoned, just before the police had arrived, he had left a copy of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil. Certainly a young French-Canadian nurse named Marie-Andre Leclerc was impressed when she met him travelling in India. Criminologists tend to define serial killers as people who have murdered three or more times over an extended period. A martial-arts fanatic, he seemed to be physically, psychologically and philosophically armed with everything required to dominate others. His is a dark and tragic story that lies between what he might have been and what he became, said Neville. Knippenberg has his own theory. You have spent time in Tihar Jail as well. He promised her that he was a reformed character and they got engaged, only for him to go back to prison for car theft. I met Masood. We were way out of our depth Richard Neville and Julie Clarke. I was 23 and Richard Neville, who later became my husband, was 33. He then told me about being approached by an agent for Saddam Hussein's regime, before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to buy red mercury, a semi-mythical substance that was said, without credible attribution, to be used in the creation of nuclear weapons. 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.. Chowdury, the only other person who could shed light on why petty theft escalated to brutal murder, disappeared in 1976 after travelling with Sobhraj to Malaysia. Like Patricia Highsmiths Tom Ripley, he assumed different identities, using stolen passports and creating a trail of havoc wherever he went. 11 hours ago, by Sarah Wasilak He actually received time for drugging and trying to rob a group of French engineering students in India but wasn't convicted for any murders prior to 1997. I asked Biswas how she would feel if she discovered that her husband was indeed a killer. The couple soon split up and Sobhraj lived with his mother and her new boyfriend, a French soldier. 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. 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. 1 day ago, by Lindsay Kimble Between 2000 and 2003, I made several trips to Pakistan. He was also a student of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's "will to power". It's debatable whether or not Sobhraj is a psychopath - he certainly doesn't seem constrained by an overdeveloped sense of empathy - but he is clearly not stupid, despite his prison record. He proposed to her within weeks and promised to go straight. 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. And then we pulled up at a cheap brasserie on some kind of industrial estate. He was by turns funny, enigmatic, absurd and engaging. 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. With BBC drama The Serpent now streaming on Netflix in the US, Nige Tassell reveals the story of the brazen career criminal who graduated from petty theft to cold-blooded murder. Later, he realised that the confession might prove problematic and denied everything he told Neville about the murders. 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. 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. By signing up, I agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive emails from POPSUGAR. He looked a curiously slight figure, his skin remarkably smooth, even youthful, given that hed spent the past two decades in an Indian jail. (Credit: Charles Sobhraj), Charles Sobhraj exclusive interview: I am going straight back to France to my family I hope to live for many years to come, An Express Investigation Part Four | Compensatory afforestation neither compensates nor forest: 60% funds unused, An Express Investigation Part Three: Red flags, Indias green certification under cloud, Conflict Wood: Under sanctions, prized Myanmar teak finds its way to US, EU markets via India, Recalling the life and crimes of Bikini killer Charles Sobhraj, A brash fellow: retired cop who arrested Sobhraj recalls how he nabbed him at a Goa restaurant. In fact, his relationship with Compagnon continued until less than three years ago, when she was threatened on the phone by an angry Nihita Biswas. He told me that he's been thinking of me recently because he's looking for someone to ghost his autobiography. He cant deal with the outside world, said Dhondy. But regardless of how he was defined, I wanted to know what he thought about his past deeds. IMDb, the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. But the very same day he was arrested for car theft and served eight months back inside. "I kept trying to find out what he was doing, but he wouldn't say. He used to be represented by Jacques Vergs, the "devil's advocate", who has defended every tyrant and war criminal from Klaus Barbie to Slobodan Milosevic. 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. They are the only things in his misspent life that hes ever been able to hold on to. We were both having nightmares that Sobhraj was chasing us, or suddenly appearing in our room. . "Hello, Andrew," whispered a distinctive French accent. Six years ago, when she just 20, Biswas married Sobhraj in a ceremony inside Kathamandu Central Jail. He told me, as a number of criminals looked on, that he had had to issue beatings to defend himself and establish his seniority. "He finds himself not famous, whereas in prison he's a somebody. 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. They were working on serious matters: politics, saving the world. The first thing he did when I knocked on the door was offer me an open bottle of Coke, which was also the way he had incapacitated many of his victims. Finally we did. The explanation he gave to the press at the time didn't ring true. What had driven him to risk lengthy imprisonment in this impoverished mountain state? ", 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. "Sobhraj took her to the border of France and Switzerland when she came back for him," said Dhondy, "and forced her to sell some land she had inherited. If that didn't put her off him, you'd have thought she might have been disabused by his abuse of her. 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. "She said he did them all," he said. Sobhraj took Johnson's advice and went to the Telegraph, but while he was still in talks with that paper, he went off to Nepal. Also, as the inmates are kept on a starving diet, the yearly incidence of death is quite high. 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. Its OK. Are you in contact with Indian intelligence agencies? He is obsessed with preventing anyone from exploiting his life for financial gain and threatened to sue the writer. OK, he said. You were arrested in Nepal in 2003. Ill devote my life to my daughter and will probably keep myself busy with books writing and business. Sobhraj is now serving a life sentence in a Nepalese jail for killing two tourists in 1975. How does that compare with your experience in Kathmandu Jail? 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. "I don't think so," says Biswas, when I ask her if she thinks Sobhraj has ever killed anyone. The notorious murderer who preyed on 70s backpackers is the subject of a new BBC drama. Confused by the ploy, the Nepalese police had allowed Gautier/Bintanja to escape to Bangkok, this time using Carrire's passport.