The Serpent : Part 1
Hey guys,
Welcome to the offbeat.
This blog is gonna cover a notorious killer, conman, drug dealer, jewel thief, a fraudster with Vietnamese and Indian origin, and french national by adaption. This case is bonkers and huge that we didn’t have any option but to make it a two-parter. So in this blog, we shall talk about the details of his childhood as well as his early life along with the petty crimes he committed.
Without further ado, let's dig into the mind and life of a scandalous serial slayer known by the name Charles Sobhraj, aka The bikini killer due to the attire of his victims, as well as The splitting killer and The serpent, due to his skill at deception and evasion. He preyed on western tourists, primarily beatniks throughout the hippie trail of Southeast Asia during the 1970s.
Childhood and early life:
Sobhraj was born as Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj on April 6, 1944 (during the world war 2), in Saigon, in former French Indochina (present-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). His father, Sobhraj Hatchard Bavani, was a Sindhi Indian expatriate, while his mother, Tran Loang Phun, was a Vietnamese native. His mother was abandoned by the Indian businessman soon after her first son was born and she blamed him for her lover's shortcomings. Later his mom marries a french military officer a lieutenant stationed in Indochina out of revenge against her ex-lover, who adopted Charles but refused to give him his last name. The couple had their own set of kids which led to Charles being neglected. The land of Indochina was in turmoil at the time, with French colonial troops fighting a hopeless rearguard action against Viet Minh communist rebels, and Sobhraj witnessed countless acts of violence before his stepfather took the family to France in 1953. |
| Tran Loang Phun, Charles mother |
Sobhraj hated Europe and catholic boarding schools in Paris. He was always a prey for bullying and insults because of his east and south Asian descent. This had a huge repercussion, which lead to him renaming himself as Charles impersonating Charlie Chaplin. At first,he expressed his indignation through tantrums and bed-wetting, and on two counts ran away to Saigon in his teens, but his biological father always sent him back and promised him to pay for his travel as a trail visit to home and not unexpectedly his father turned his back on him and the ticket never arrived. This abandonment from his father led to him falling into the clutches of robbery.
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| Sobhraj in France in 1956 |
He finally reached Saigon on his own but he was thrown out on his ear to India to live with his relatives, but Charles was reluctant to give up and went back to Saigon uninvited. His father couldn’t take it anymore and ousted Charles back to France. In Paris, Charles was locked up twice for auto theft, emerging from jail the second time with a short-lived desire to "go straight".
Beginning of the mania:
His life as a criminal began quite early as well. He was still a teenager when he started committing petty crimes and in 1963, he served his first jail sentence for burglary at the Poissy prison near Paris. Charming and manipulative even then, he convinced the prison officials to let him have reading materials. This was the period when he became acquainted with Felix d'Escogne, a wealthy and impressionable young man who volunteered in the prison.
After his parole, d'Escogne took him under his wing and introduced him to both the high society of Paris and the criminal underworld. He started collecting lots of riches and was a part of a bunch of scams and burglary. Later he started a passionate relationship with a young Parisian woman called Chantal Compagnon from a very conservative family. Sobhraj served eight months in prison for stealing during which Compagnon remained loyal to him. They married upon his release and not long after this she became pregnant and they moved to Asia as his crimes and scams started to catch up with him.
Chantal Compagnon
They worked their way through eastern Europe carrying fake documents, conning foreigners out of their money, and eventually arriving in Mumbai. Their daughter Usha was born in the same year in Mumbai and in 1973 Charles was arrested again on charges of attempt to robbery at a jewelry store at hotel Ashoka and was imprisoned in Tihar jail. From there he staged his first very dramatic prison break. He pretended to have a bleeding ulcer and was thus taken to a local hospital where he escapes the hospital with the help of Chantal by drugging his guards. None the less both Chantal and Charles were caught.
He was granted bail in spite of his attempt to escape. He immediately fled India and his conning continued in Pakistan,Tehran, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Copenhagen, Afghanistan between the years 1972 and 1973. This chapter of his life comes to an end in Kabul when he abandons his family and Chanthal washes her hands off this whole situation, tired of having such a lifestyle as the Interpol was getting involved.
His mobility started getting restricted now as he had left all the trails of conning and robbery behind him. His next significant partner in crime was André, his half brother, who joined him in Istanbul. They soon gained notoriety in Turkey and Greece. The authorities caught them in Athens, but Sobhraj managed to escape once more but left his brother behind. André was extradited to Turkey where he served 18 years in jail.
As he was perfecting the scheme of being a fraudster he meets his most trusted confidant Marie Andrée Leclerc , a French Canadian in India. They meet their 3rd accomplice Ajay Chowdhury in 1975. The group grew even larger as more people joined in, drawn by Sobhraj’s enigmatic personality. This was the beginning of the escalation of his crimes to murder. In countries such as Thailand, Pakistan,, and Nepal, Sobhraj murdered at least 12 people, most of them young travelers. He stole not just their money but also, frequently, their identities – often leaving the country using the passport of one of his victims.
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| Ajay Chowdhury,Marie-Andree Leclerc, and C.Sobhraj. |
Sobhraj suffered a horribly dislocated childhood. It is a known fact that some people are born serial killers and some are conditioned to become one during their lifetime. This coincides with the theory of nature vs nurture, which is about the genetic and environmental influences on a person. The same thing can be applied to Charles where he experienced the denial of paternity by his biological father was something which hurt him deeply. In his diary, he wrote, “I will make you regret that you have missed your father's duty”.This act of abandonment from his father, resentment from his mother, and being exposed to violence during the world war 2, could have been the trigger for his violent behavior.
We shall discuss the murders, his sentencing, life in jail,, and his celebrity status in the next blog.
Stay tuned
Until then, stay snoopy, stay spooky
Goodbye...
Source:
- https://www.noted.co.nz/currently/currently-crime/the-serpent-charles-sobhraj-my-encounter-with-serial-killer
- https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/charles-sobhraj-11624.php
- https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/sobhraj-charles.htm
- https://www.indiatvnews.com/crime/news/charles-sobhraj-bikini-killer-7651.html
- https://www.scoopwhoop.com/inothernews/charles-sobhraj-facts/
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