New BBC Series: The Serpent
The Serpent is a new BBC series that tells the story of the 'bikini killer' Charles Sobhraj and his lover Marie-Andrée Leclerc.
The series starts a bit slow, requiring some time to get into, but soon you'll find yourself hoping that this sadistic killer is apprehended. It's Herman Knippenberg who gets on the trail of Sobhraj. Knippenberg was a Dutch diplomat working at the Dutch embassy in Bangkok in the '70s. Knippenberg discovered that two Dutch tourists had disappeared and were likely murdered. Soon, Knippenberg tracks down Charles Sobhraj.
Charles Sobhraj murdered at least 12 tourists in the '70s. He drugged his victims, making them believe they were sick and that he could help them with medication. However, the medicine he provided was the poison that made them even sicker. The 8-episode series depicts Sobhraj's murders from 1975 and how his girlfriend, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, helped him find and drug his victims under the alias Monique.
Charles Sobhraj was the son of an Indian father, Hatchand Sobhraj, and Vietnamese mother, Tran Loan Phung, growing up in Saigon until his parents divorced, and his father cut all contact. Later, Sobhraj was adopted by his mother's new boyfriend, a French Lieutenant, whom he is thought to have been neglected by.
As a teenager, Sobhraj started with smaller crimes like stealing cars and robbing women. In 1963, he served his first prison sentence for burglary in Paris. In prison, he met Felix d’Escogne, a wealthy young man with whom he moved in after his release. Through a series of break-ins and scams in Paris's high society, Sobhraj accumulated wealth.
After his release, Sobhraj met his first love, Chantal Compagnon, a young Parisian woman from a conservative family whom he later implicated in his crimes. He proposed to Compagnon but was arrested later the same day for attempting to evade the police while driving a stolen vehicle. He spent eight months in prison while pregnant Chantal remained faithful.
From 1970, the couple traveled the world with forged passports stolen from tourists they encountered on their travels. In 1973, Sobhraj escaped from prison after a failed armed robbery. He fled to Kabul, where he first targeted tourists on the hippie trail. Soon, he was arrested again. He escaped again and fled to Iran. His beloved Chantal Compagnon gave birth to a daughter behind bars in Afghanistan. She wanted to leave the life of crime and, upon her release, returned to Paris. Eventually, she was pursued by Sobhraj, forcing her to move to the US.
In the spring of 1975, Sobhraj met Marie-Andrée Leclerc, a medical secretary traveling in India. Sobhraj was her guide in India when they met.
Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as a seller or drug dealer to impress tourists, whom he then drugged, robbed, and often murdered. At this point, the murderer was accompanied by Ajay Chowdhury, a young Indian man who would help him scam tourists by assisting them out of situations he had caused, such as providing shelter to victims he had poisoned. While he claimed the murders often consisted of accidental overdoses, investigators later asserted that his motive for murder was to silence victims who threatened to expose him.
How Sobhraj, Ajay, and Marie-Andrée found their victims, how Herman Knippenberg got on their trail, and whether they were ever caught can be seen in the BBC series The Serpent. We can certainly recommend the series.
Committing murders as a duo is quite rare. As far as we have discovered, only 0.1% of murders worldwide are committed by duos. You can read more about duos who committed murder on the DNCIS website.