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The Serpent’s history
JUL 30 -
‘In the sunny country where you walk
My abandoned self could also go
If my body had wings to fly
Like my spirit has’
There is an eerie parallel between this verse and the man who wrote them. ‘Bikini Killer’ Charles Sobhraj may not have made it as a poet, but he certainly transformed the fantasy of his verse to reality, escaping country after country until bringing him back to Nepal. Now, after the Supreme Court’s verdict on Friday, which held him guilty in the murder of an American tourist in 1975, it seems Sobhraj’s story has taken a full circle.
But who exactly is Charles Sobhraj? And why exactly has his case gained the notoriety it has? The answers for these lie in two murders that happened exactly a quarter of a century ago in Kathmandu.
On Dec. 21, 1975, the Nepal Police found the charred and mutilated body of Canadian Laurent Ormond Carriere on the Araniko Highway in Sanga, and two days later, American Connie Jo Bronzich was found dead on the banks of the Manahara River in Kathmandu.
At the time, Kathmandu was part of the hippie trail and the two killings shattered an otherwise-unblemished record in the city’s tourist history. A Reuters story dated from the time was headlined, “Trouble in Kathmandu’s Freak Street”, and went on to state the killings were drug-related and carried out by a foreigner.
It was only after the bodies had been identified that the police found Carriere and Bronzich had been missing from the Oriental Lodge in Jhochhen since Dec. 21. But someone bearing Carriere’s passport had flown to Bangkok on the night of Dec. 23. Investigators realised a foreigner had stolen Carriere’s identity after the murder, and flown out of Kathmandu.
On Dec. 30 that year, The Bangkok Post carried a story about a French citizen called Charles Sobhraj Gurmukh who had murdered Dutch students Henricus Bintanja and Cornelia Henker in Bangkok and fled to Kathmandu with their passports along with an accomplice. That was when the Nepal Police got its biggest lead, for a foreigner had checked into the Soaltee Hotel in the name of Bintanja and then disappeared after the two foreigners disappeared.
Early career
Sobhraj was someone who always loved the limelight and seemed to enjoy the attention his killings brought. He was a flatterer; someone who travelled on the hippie trail of the 70’s to befriend unsuspecting foreigners by helping them out of sticky situations—situations that Sobhraj would himself create for them.
Born out of wedlock to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian trader, Sobhraj began his criminal career by robberies and car thefts in France (he was adopted by his mother’s second boyfriend, a French army lieutenant stationed in Saigon). He says about his disassociation with his parents in his biography The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj:
“Because a father has a duty to help his son builds a future…I will make you regret that you have missed your father’s duty…For me, my mother is dead…My mother took me away when I was nine to this wonderful country where I’m treated like shit.”
Sobhraj fled France with his fiancé Chantal Dupont to Asia, and arrived in Bombay in 1970. After a botched robbery attempt at a hotel, Sobhraj was arrested, but escaped to Kabul, where he was arrested again for robbing tourists. Chantal then left him behind, but Sobhraj continued, robbing tourists in Istanbul before reaching Bangkok in 1973.
In Bangkok, Sobhraj met Marie-Andree Leclerc, a Canadian tourist, who became his partner-in-crime, and began robbing and killing tourists, often young women, earning him the moniker ‘The Bikini Killer’.
Casino Trouble
What brought Sobhraj back to Kathmandu after so many years is still unknown. Sobhraj has maintained that he had never been in Kathmandu before, but conclusive evidence provided by Herman Knippenberg, a Dutch Embassy official in Bangkok who was investigating the murders of the two Dutch students, showed otherwise.
In September 2003, Sobhraj was arrested from a casino in the Capital for possessing a fake passport and on charges of murdering Bronzich. The Kathmandu District Court found Sobhraj guilty and sentenced him to 20 years—a verdict he challenged.
Sobhraj’s defence has always been that the documents that prove his hand in the murders are photocopies and thus not admissible in Nepali courts. “There is no strong evidence to corroborate his involvement in the crime,” says Sakuntala Thapa, Sobhraj’s lawyer and now also his mother-in-law.
However, handwriting analysis has played a significant part in the conviction, with signatures on the two hotel registration cards around the time of the murder matching Sobhraj’s. The police also had a confession by Leclerc which she had given to the Indian police.
Slithery serpent
The trail of bodies Sobhraj left in his wake was only discovered after the murders of the two Dutch students. But even before that, Sobhraj was said to have committed at least three murders. One of his victims, American Jennie Bollivar, was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a flowered bikini. Another victim, Frenchwoman Charmayne Carrou, was found in similar circumstances, but the police at the time failed to make any connections between the two deaths.
After returning to Thailand from Nepal, Sobhraj found himself on the run again after his French companions reported him to the police there. He criss-crossed across India, Malaysia and then back to India, where he was caught after he tried to poison a group of French students. Sobhraj was charged with the murder of another Frenchman, and was sent to Tihar Jail, but escaped by drugging the guards, only to be caught again (It is said that he got himself caught again because he did not want to be extradited to Thailand, where he would be surely executed).
On Feb. 17, 1997, after a 20-year jail term, Sobhraj returned to France without any country for the Indian authorities to deport him to.
‘an indomitable musketeer’
Between 1972 and 1982, Sobhraj has been associated with at least 20 murders. His capacity for violence was matched only by his ability to escape from prison.
Yet, Sobhraj isn’t a wanton psychopath. He is a voracious reader and meditates regularly, while loving the attention the media gave him. He sold the rights of a film based on his life to a French actor-producer for $15 million.
Sobhraj’s long time friend Alain Benard, who helped him get French citizenship, has said in the biography that Sobhraj was a man of great self-control, an indomitable musketeer, who celebrated a life of criminal adventure.
His friend’s opinion otherwise, Sobhraj “exploited the international camaraderie of the road and preyed upon innocents abroad”, according to his biographers Richard Neville and Julie Clarke. And for all the murders he has been associated with, he has been booked only for one.
Posted on: 2010-07-31 09:16
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