#CHARLES SOBHRAJ VICTIMS SERIAL#
#CHARLES SOBHRAJ VICTIMS TRIAL#

#CHARLES SOBHRAJ VICTIMS TRIAL#

Sobhraj was put on trial for the 1975 murder of Connie Jo Bronzich, whose burned and stabbed body had been found in Kathmandu. Six years later, in 2003, he was seen in Nepal once again and arrested by local authorities in a casino a few days later. Following his release in 1997, Sobhraj moved to Paris, where he gave interviews about his dark criminal exploits. Sobhraj would ultimately spend 21 years in prison except for a brief escape in 1986. Indian authorities arrested Sobhraj and he was sentenced to 12 years for the poisoning and other charges, including for the culpable homicide of Frenchman Jean-Luc Solomon. The scheme went awry and some of the victims raised the alarm. In India in 1976, Sobhraj tried to steal a group of French students’ passports by giving them sleeping pills under the pretense that they were antibiotics. His killings were at times facilitated by an Indian accomplice, Ajay Chowdhury, and Sobhraj’s Quebecois lover, Marie-Andrée Leclerc.

It’s unclear how many victims were poisoned, strangled, or burned by Sobhraj. At different times, he posed as a gem salesman or a drug dealer and even assumed the identities of some of his victims to travel and escape capture. “As long as I can talk to people, I can manipulate them,” Sobhraj once bragged to his biographer. His better-known “Serpent” moniker derived from his snake-like skill in evading law enforcement and his ability to charm his victims into trusting him. Knowlton was found wearing a floral bikini after another of his female victims was found in swimwear, Sobhraj became known as the “Bikini Killer.” His first known murder victim was Teresa Knowlton-a 21-year-old backpacker from Seattle who was found drowned.

#CHARLES SOBHRAJ VICTIMS SERIAL#

The Serial Killer Who Murdered Hippies on Southeast Asia’s ‘Pot Trail’īut his crimes eventually escalated in violence. He started traveling the Hippie Trail himself in the ’70s, charming and robbing young travelers along the way. A Frenchman with Indian and Vietnamese parentage, Sobhraj served several stints in prison in France as a teenager for petty crimes. Sobhraj, 78, has been linked with over two dozen deaths, specifically targeting people traveling the “Hippie Trail” through Southeast Asia. The court also ordered that the murderer return to his own country within 15 days, according to the Kathmandu Post. Sobhraj, whose crimes inspired the Netflix drama series The Serpent, had been serving a life sentence for killing American Connie Jo Bronzich, 29, in Nepal in 1975.

Nepal’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer who murdered a string of Western tourists traveling through Asia in the 1970s.

Charles sobhraj victims