Charles Sobhraj: Bikini Killer

Charles Sobhraj was born on April 6, 1944 in Ho Chi Minh City, known as Saigon, Vietnam. He is part Vietnamese and Indian origin since his mother was born in Vietnam and his father in India. Sobhraj’s parents never married and his father later parted from him and his mother. He grew up with his mother’s boyfriend who was a French Army officer stationed in French Indochina (Charles Sobhraj Biography). When he was a child, he was living in France with his mother and step father who decided to send him to boarding school. As a kid he was mischievous, he tried escaping from France twice in order to go back to Saigon by sea but failed. At the young age of 15, Sobhraj first served time at Poissy prison in 1963 for burglary charges. Sobhraj’s charisma

granted prison officials into befriending and assisting him on whatever he needed. When imprisoned he met Felix d'Escogne, a wealthy young man who was a prison volunteer. He received lots of help from him even after he got released from prison. After Sobhraj was paroled, he began living with d'Escogne and initiated an illicit journey in Paris.
Sobhraj started accumulating money through a sequence of scams and robberies from tourists. Tourists were an easy target for them as they were gullible thinking Sobhraj was going to help them. While doing that he met Chantal Compagnon, a young Parisian woman, and fell in love with her. Sobhraj later proposed marriage to Compagnon the same day he was arrested. He was charged for escaping from the police while driving a stolen car. Consequently, he was sentenced to eight months in prison.
After serving the eight months, Sobhraj and Compagnon got married and later found out she was pregnant. Sobhraj and his wife left France and traveled to Asia. When traveling through Eastern Europe he consecutively robbed tourists and most importantly their documents. In Mumbai, Chantal gave birth to their baby girl in 1970 (Anthony, 2014). Sobhraj continued his criminal lifestyle, organizing thefts and smuggling operations.
While in Mumbai, he got arrested after attempting to rob a jewelry store in a hotel. Sobhraj was able to escape with Chantal's help, but both were quickly captured. He managed to borrow money for bail from his father and fled to Kabul where the couple continued robbing tourists on the famous "hippie trail” (Indiana, 2014). They were arrested once again and escaped to India then to Iran. After Chantal realized she could not raise her baby around a criminal man, she vowed to never see him again. She knew she was not going to be happy fleeing from the authorities everywhere she went with him and her baby. Sobhraj spent the next two years running from the authorities after his arrest, using many stolen passports. Henceforth his travels, Sobhraj’s younger brother, Andre, joined him in Istanbul where both engaged in criminal activities. Both were captured in Athens, but Sobhraj escaped exchanging identities with his brother leaving him to serve the 18 year sentence.
After all the crimes he committed, his first known murders were in 1975 with the help of his accomplice named Ajay Chowdury (Indiana, 2014).

The first victim was a young woman named Teresa Knowlton. She was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand by Sobhraj. He got one of his many nicknames, “The Bikini Killer” by the similarity of his victims wearing swimsuits during the murders, and Knowlton being one of them (Indiana, 2014). The second victim was Vitali Hakim whose burnt body was found on the road where Sobhraj and his emerging group of criminals living for a while. His next murder involved two Dutch students, Henk Bintanja, and his fiancé, Cornelia Hemker, who were invited to Thailand by Sobhraj after meeting him in Hong Kong. They fell for Sobhraj’s appeal and were poisoned by him. He then tried to keep them conscious in order to obtain beneficial information from them. After lying to them and telling them they would live if they shared information, Sobhraj and Chowdury immediately murdered them. Their bodies were found strangled and burned on December 16, 1975. Around the same time, Sobhraj was overwhelmed because he was also visited by one of his previous victim’s girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, who had arrived to investigate her boyfriend's death. Sobhraj and Chowdury drowned Carrou because she was trying to expose and threaten Sobhraj. She was found wearing a flowered

bikini.
Eventually Sobhraj and Chowdury met Maria-Andree Leclerc who became their partner in crime. On December 21st, all three murdered Laurent Ormond Carrier and Connie Bronzich in Nepal. They quickly escaped to Thailand taking advantage that their victim’s bodies could not be identified. When in Thailand, Sobhraj’s French acquaintances started to suspect that he was a serial killer because they found a variety of documents from people. He then fled from authorities and traveled to Kolkata.
In March of 1976, Sobhraj needed a new passport, since he left all the documents in Thailand. He decided to rob and kill Avoni Jacob, an Israeli, in order to obtain a new passport. At this point, it was becoming a habit to Sobhraj murdering people for their passports. Sobhraj used the passport to travel with his two partners Leclerc and Chowdhury to Singapore and India. Sobhraj’s group of criminal were questioned by who policemen aware of the murders, but were released because authorities feared that the negative publicity would harm the country's tourist industry.
Soon after that, a man from the dutch embassy named Herman Knippenber began investigating the murder of Bintanja and Hemker. He started a case against Sobhraj and got granted consent to search Sobhraj's apartment. Knippenberg found poisoning in the apartment and many victims’ passports.
Still on the run, the trio's next adventure was Malaysia where Chowdhury was sent to steal gems. According to the police, Chowdhury was observed delivering the gems to Sobhraj. This was the last time he was ever seen, and neither Chowdhury nor his remains were ever found. It is believed that Sobhraj murdered him before leaving Malaysia to continue his and Leclerc's roles as gem salesmen in Geneva (Sun, 2015). Sobhraj added two members to his small group, Barbara Smith and Mary Ellen Eather. The new members helped Sobhraj rob and poison another person by the name of Jean-Luc Solomon.
In July of 1976, Sobhraj and his group, fooled a tour group of French post-graduate students into accepting them as tour directors.

Sobhraj drugged them by tricking them into thinking they were anti-dysentery medicine. Three of the students were aware of what Sobhraj was doing and contacted the police. During the interrogation, Sobhraj's accomplices, Barbara and Mary Ellen quickly confessed about the crime. Sobhraj and Leclerc were charged with a count of murders and all four were sent to the Tihar prison (Anthony, 2014). They were all placed in a disreputable prison where the conditions were horrible. Barbara and Mary Ellen attempted suicide several times during the two years they served before their final trail. However, Sobhraj had it easier than the women for the reason that he had valuable gem stones hidden with him. That served him as a benefit. He bribed officers and inmates in order to live securely in jail without experiencing any problems. Sobhraj remarkably sought every opportunity to acquire money and turned his long trial into a television show. He craved attention and did not mind everyone ranting him. His moment of fame ended when he was sentenced to 12 years in prison (Anthony, 2014). His partner, Leclerc, served some time in prison for being found guilty of drugging the French students and later received paroled. She was then returned to her country Canada. She later died in April of 1984, while still remaining loyal to

Sobhraj.
Sobhraj remained imprisoned because of the corruption he was causing, but still led a high lifestyle in jail. He had the advantages that no one else had like for example, watching TV and eating high-class foods. The fall of his TV show did not stop him from chasing fame. He set up various interviews for authors and magazine journalists. Without any shame, he openly talked about the murders he committed and how they came to be. When Sobhraj's was on his tenth year in prison, in March 1986, he threw a big party for his guards and fellow inmates. He drugged them with sleeping pills and walked out of the jail. This is how he got his other nickname “The Serpent” by always escaping from jail. An inspector of the Mumbai police detained Sobhraj in a restaurant in Goa. Consequently, his prison duration was extended by ten years.
On 17 February 1997, Sobhraj was released with most warrants and him being 52 years of age. Since he had warrants in other countries, they could not send him anywhere else. Indian authorities extradited him to France where he retired as a celebrity figure in Paris. He loved publicity and hired an agent to schedule interviews and charge money for them.
On September 17, 2003 Sobhraj was seen by a journalist in Nepal and quickly reported this to the Nepalese. They quickly arrested him for being wanted, two days later when he was gambling at a casino (Kathmandu, 2001). When he was captured, he was not trialed but rather sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders he had committed there in 1975. Sobhraj opposed the conviction and claimed that he was sentenced without the court running a trial. After two years, Sobhraj's conviction was confirmed by the Patan Court of Appeals in 2005. He was in prison for about 5 years when the Supreme Court of Nepal found him guilty for the murder of Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975 (Charles Sobhraj Biography).
Currently, Sobhraj has another case pending against him in Bhaktapur, a royal city in Nepal, for the murder of Laurent Armand Carriere (Kathmandu, 2001). Aside from this pending case, he was convicted for another murder in September 18th, 2014. He has shown not feeling guilty of murdering by stating in an interview that he feels no remorse, “If someone will ask whether I feel remorse — and many will — I answer: ‘Does a professional soldier feel remorse after having killed a hundred men with a machinegun? No. I can justify the murders to myself’” (Sun, 2015).