The Serpent : Part 2

October 1975, 21-year-old Teresa Knowlton traveled to Bangkok, Thailand looking for enlightenment along the hippie trail. She marveled at the beauty of the Buddhist monasteries that trailed the region and on October 15 her last night in the city Teresa met a group of travelers with a handsome leader who called himself Alain Gauthier with whom she drank and danced into the night, eventually, Alain proclaimed his love for her and declared that they should venture out to Pat Pong along(a red light district)with the rest of their troupe, where they spend the rest of their night partying and get to know each other. 3 days later a farmer rode his bike along the gulf of Thailand around 45 km from Bangkok and as he peddled he noticed a white woman wearing a flower bikini face down in the rising tide and on seeing this he jumped off his bike and into the water to help her. It was then he realized this young woman was dead. Teresa Knowlton was the first victim to die in the hands of Alain Gauthier, a con artist whose real name was Charles Sobhraj and in less than a year at least 10 more people would die at his hand and with this, the life long conman would start his journey as a serial killer. 

Welcome to the offbeat.  

This is the second part of Charles Sobhraj -the serpent. Last week we explored Charles' troubled origins where he turned to petty crimes as a cry for attention. This week we will follow Charles as he transforms from a small-time con scammer to a serial killer and see how he recruited a family of his own to commit crimes. 

Disclaimer: Contains elements of violence, murder, and drugs. Readers discretion is advised.

His acquaintances:

By 1974 30-year-old Charles Sobhraj was imprisoned in France for grand theft in Mumbai and had abandoned his brother in Turkey. He was ruthless and impossible to tie down and his criminal behavior had only just begun. In 1974 he perfected a simple yet effective scam where Charles stationed himself in the hippie trail which was a road between Bangkok, Thailand, and Istanbul, Turkey. He easily blended in due to the added advantage of his Indian and Vietnamese origin and he often claimed to be a local gem dealer or a photographer. Here he picked his victims and would offer them help, and once he gained their trust he would rob them blind.

In May 1975, he was in the midst of executing this exact scam when he met a young Canadian woman, Marie-Andree Leclerc, in northern India. She was a 29 years old French Canadian who had never traveled outside of her home country which made her a perfect target and in 1975 when she decided to travel to India she met the French-speaking photographer Alain Gauthier or so he claimed to be. Charles pursued Marie and she fell head over heels for him as a part of his charm. She had to go back to Quebec, but could never forget about this mysterious man Alain. As months passed by her love for him became harder to resist and she decided that he was the man of her dreams and so in August 1975 she returned and reunited with her lover. She unknowingly committed herself to a ruthless criminal and was soon a partner to his crimes.

That fall they met an Australian couple vacationing at Pattaya. Charles and Marie invested themselves into the vacation of these two couples and later invited them to a secluded beach where sedatives were slipped into their coconut milk and soon enough the couple was unconscious. Charles and Marie ransacked them, stealing their jewelry, wedding ring, passport and money and by the time the couple woke up and phoned the police, Charles and Marie were long gone.

Soon after Charles started constructing his own crime family. To gather more members into his clan, Sobhraj formed a new con where he would select his victims, create a troublesome situation for them and then pose as the knight in shining armor who would solve the problem which may have been seen as a con had the victims looked into it more carefully but everyone trusts a knight in shining armor and along with his charm they never stood a chance. Having no idea Sobhraj was the cause of their misery in the first place they felt indebted to him for his aid. Using his fluency in French, he honed in on French tourists. Sobhraj stole former French policemen, Yannick and Jacques’ passports, and then helped the men retrieve them. Dominique Rennelleau from France thought he had dysentery when in fact Sobhraj had given him poisoned dysentery medication and then nursed him back to health. 

Sobhraj and his ‘family’ were staying at a resort in the beach town of Pattaya, where Sobhraj met a fellow criminal, Ajay Chowdhury. He soon becomes Charles number 2. 

Sometime in 1975 when Charles was trying to lease a house which he wanted to convert into a legitimate gem business he needed $25000 by January of 1976 or the deal would fall through. This was when he found it more efficient to murder than to con. 

Murders:

His first known victim was Teresa Knowlton who was found dead in a water body wearing only her flower bikini. The killer's next victim was a young nomadic Sephardi Jew, Vitali Hakim. His body was found burned on the road to the Pattaya resort where the ‘family’ were staying.
Henk Bintanja 29, and his fiancee Cornelia Hemker 25, were Dutch students who had met Sobhraj in Hong Kong. He had invited them to Thailand and they took him up on his offer. When they arrived, Sobhraj poisoned them then nursed them back to health.
During this time, Charmayne Carrou, the girlfriend of Sobhraj’s previous victim, Hakim, came to investigate his disappearance. Anxious that she may discover what they had done, Sobhraj and Chowdhury swiftly dealt with the problem. Bintanja and Hemker’s bodies were found strangled and burned on 16th December 1975.
Later that same month, Carrou was found drowned in similar circumstances to Bollivar, wearing a similar flower-patterned bikini. At first, police investigators did not connect the two cases but when they did, Sobhraj became known as ‘The Bikini Killer’.

Sobhraj's victims: clockwise from top left:
Connie Bronzich,Cornelia Hemker,Laurent carrier,
Ajay Chowdhury, Vitali Hakim, and Henricus Bitanja


Sobhraj decided it was time to move again and on 18th December 1975, he and Leclerc used Bintanja and Hemker’s Dutch passports to enter Nepal. It was here they met two travelers, Laurent Ormond Carriere 26, from Canada and Connie Bronzich 29, from California, whom they befriended. Carriere and Bronzich were murdered and their burned bodies were found on 22nd December 1975. Some sources claim these victims were Laddie DuParr and Annabella Tremont. Sobhraj was questioned and then released by police in Kathmandu.

Teresa Knowlton

Sobhraj and Leclerc used Carriere and Bronzich’s passports to return to Thailand before their victims were identified. Once there, Sobhraj discovered his French ‘family members’, Yannick, Jacques, and Rennelleau had begun to suspect him of being involved in the Pattaya murders. In Sobhraj’s absence, they had discovered documents belonging to the victims in the resort at which they stayed.
Sobhraj fled to Calcutta, India, where he murdered an Israeli student, Avoni Jacob, for his passport. He used this to travel to Singapore, Malaysia with Leclerc and Chowdhury, then on to India and back to Bangkok, Thailand in March 1976. Sobhraj was questioned by Thai police in connection with the ‘Bikini Murders’ but was not charged. Some sources claim the reason for this was their fear of the potential negative publicity, adversely affecting the country’s tourist trade such an action could create. Sobhraj immediately left Thailand for Malaysia. 

The end of his crimes:

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 neighbor, and was 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 then start accumulating evidence against Sobhraj for decades, despite the lack of cooperation by law enforcement. 
Herman Knippenberg
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 they escaped Sobhraj, leading to his capture by police. During interrogation, Barbara and Mary Ellen quickly cracked and confessed everything.

Now the police turned their attention to Marie Leclerc, but she refused to give up her man. The police leveled with Marie saying that Mary Ellen and Barbra had already confessed and that Charles was facing prison time no matter what and Marie staying silent would do nothing to help him but maybe she could help herself and after thinking it over she gave a 32-page statement detailing her life with Charles Sobhraj and every crime she had seen him commit. Charles, on the other hand, refused to cooperate and for 2 weeks he maintained that he was a Parisian merchant, but no one was buying it.

Law enforcement from across the globe had collected mountains of evidence against him and all of his alias. The Interpol wanted him for trying to rob a jewelry shop in Ashoka hotel, the Thai wanted him for the bikini murder, the dutch wanted justice for the murder of Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker, Nepal was interested in discussing the murder of Carriere and Bronzich but at the end of the day, it was India's justice that Charles would face, as they were the ones who had captured him. He was charged with the murder of Jean-Luc-Solomon. However even as the justice system presented incontrovertible evidence of his guilt, Charles never confessed to any of his other murders but instead blamed them all on Ajay Chowdhary.

Prison time and the trial :

Charles and the girls were taken to the notorious Indian prison of Tihar to await their trial. Tihar is India's largest prison and home to murderers and gangsters. Water and food were scarce and if a prisoner wished even the tiniest bit more to eat it was up to them to purchase it. Charles quickly went to work, befriended the guards and inmates, and within a few days he was able to manipulate them into smuggling in more food than anyone could imagine and despite radios being banned, Charles somehow had 3 in his cell. The looming question of course was buy them off with what and it isn't exactly clear how Charles was able to do this but before going to Tihar he managed to smuggle by his own estimation 68 carats worth of rubies and sapphires via ingestion and when the time came, he used those gems as his currency and the jewels weren’t just used to secure a life of luxury but was also a part of his plan to escape prison once more.

Charles and others waited for a year before going to trial much of it had to do with the state of Indian politics at the time and India was in the midst of a so-called emergency. In 1975 civil unrest over electoral malpractice broke out across the country and this pushed Charles case to the side and it wasn’t until 1977 the 3 yr old case of Charles was finally brought to trial where Marie Ellen and Barbara testified against him, however, their testimony almost didn’t come to be because in the weeks leading up to the trial Charles allegedly sent them threatening notes, though we don’t know specifically what Charles said that the two felt compelled to attempt suicide but it is quite possible that Charles either threatened to have them killed or manipulated them into attempting it.
 
Charles Sobhraj in New Delhi in April 1977
The word goes that for serial killers empathy is voluntary. This may be the reason why they are so charming and manipulative. Once they have used you for their greed, their powerful empathy will disappear. Whether it was the manipulation by Charles or the impending pressure of the mitigating circumstances, they both survived and were forced to testify. Barbara went through all of her details about her relationship with Charles and the crimes she witnessed him committing. Marie Ellen on the other hand shocked the court by recanting most of her statements of the police. Originally she admitted to the poisoning plot but in court, she changed her testimony and despite this, the prosecution had nearly 40 different witnesses to Charles crimes. They were confident that they would secure the death penalty against him and on Aug 8, 1978, the court gave its ruling. Charles was found guilty on 3 counts in the death of Jean Luc Soloman, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, drugging, and administering stupefying drugs for the purpose of robbery, and voluntarily causing hurt to commit robbery. He was sentenced to only 12 years, and Marie Leclerc was found not guilty. Though Charles had escaped the death penalty, that didn’t mean he was finished being punished for some of his crimes not long after the Soloman trial both Charles and Marie were convicted for the poisoning of French tourists at the Vikram hotel and it tagged another 5 years to Charles' sentence in Tihar but unfortunately, we don't know the length of Marie's sentence, just that she also stayed in Tihar but what we do know is that in early 1980 Marie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer because of which she was released on mercy and went back to Canada. In April of 1984 she passed away and it is said that until her dying breath she was in love with Charles.
 
Smith and ether accomplices of Charles

There was still a warrant out for Charles in Thailand, and it was valid for 20 years and so after his release from Tihar, it was most likely that he would be extradited to Thailand, where he would have to face the death penalty. So in March of 1986, he threw a party during which he spiked the punch and when everyone passed out Charles simply walked out the front door and after a few days of his escape, he willingly got himself caught. He was convicted for the drugging and escape and enough time was added to his sentence, that the warrant in Thailand would have expired.

On Feb 17, 1997, 52 yr old Sohbraj the serpent left Tihar prison a free man, but then most warrants for him were expired, any other evidence from the other cases had gone missing and much to Charles' delight, in 20 years the world had forgotten him and he eventually made his way to France. 

Celebrity status and re-capture:

Sobhraj 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 not dealt. 

Charles sculpture at the O'Coqueo restaurant

Then, on September 17, 2003,59-year-old 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.

Current status:

In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for intervention with Nepal.

In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to Nihita Biswas (aged 20) from Nepal. On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancee Nihita, he claimed that he was never convicted of murder by any court and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer. Later, it was claimed that he married his fiancee on October 9, 2008, on the occasion of Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival, in a much famed, but not publicized event and the wedding took place in the jail itself.

In July 2010, the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict on an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the district court's verdict in 2006, calling it unfair and accusing the judges of racism while handing out the sentence.

On July 30, 2010, the Nepalese Supreme Court upheld the verdict issued by the district court in Kathmandu of a 20-year life term for the murder of US citizen Connie Jo Bronzich and another year plus a Rs 2,000 fine for using a fake passport to travel. The seizure of all his properties was also ordered by the court. His mother-in-law/lawyer and his wife, Nihita, expressed that they were dissatisfied with the verdict and they claimed that Sobhraj had been "denied" justice.

In 2014,60 yrs old Charles was convicted for the death of Laurent Armand Carrière and for now it is assumed that Charles remains in a Nepalese prison.

Charles Sobhraj was a master criminal with no regard to anyone else but himself and after a childhood of neglect, he realized that the only person he could rely on to survive was himself even if that meant lying, cheating, and killing but despite being known as the serpent for his ability to slip in and out of prison it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out.

sources:
further, reads:
  • Books: Serpentine (1979) by Thomas Thompson The Life, and Crimes of Charles Sobrhaj (1980) by Richard Neville and Julie Clarke. and the section titled "The Bikini Murders" by Noel Barber in the Reader's Digest collection Great Case of Interpol (1982). Neville and Clarke's book was the basis for a 1989 made-for-TV movie, Shadow of the cobra
  • Movie: Main Aur Charles
  • Documentaries: The Serpent focusing on Sobhraj's capture and trial.
  • Podcasts: Talk murder to me, True crime astrology, Amateur investigator, True crime island, Con artists.

until next timestay snoopy stay spooky

goodbye...

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