Serial killer 'The Serpent' poisoned hikers in chilling murder spree and is now free

A depraved serial killer murdered at least 20 backpackers across Asia, bragging, “I was like a shadow”.

Charles Sobhraj, known as ‘The Serpent’, orchestrated a reign of terror throughout the 1970s, horrifying the world before receiving merely a 20-year prison term.

Sobhraj poisoned, robbed, and murdered vacationers traveling through Thailand, India, and Nepal, drawing them in with his charisma and charm.

Sobhraj walked free from a Nepalese prison in 2022 with footage from Channel 4 documentary, The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer, capturing the 82 year old walking casually through London, stopping to photograph Big Ben.

The killer claimed he evaded capture repeatedly because he was, he says, “like a shadow”. Sobhraj was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father. He started acting out as a teenager in France and was jailed for the first time for burglary in 1963 in Paris, according to History Hit, reports the Irish Mirror.

He manipulated prison guards into granting him special privileges, such as having books in his cell. Sobhraj was a social chameleon, moving between elite circles, and criminals, where he met his future wife Chantal Compagnon.

On the very day he proposed to Chantal, a young woman from a conservative Parisian family, he ended up behind bars for attempting to evade police while driving a stolen car, serving eight months before marrying her as soon as he was released. Sobhraj and a pregnant Chantal fled France in 1970, preying on vacationers and falsifying documents as they traveled through Eastern Europe.

Chantal delivered their daughter, Usha, in Mumbai while Sobhraj operated a car theft and smuggling operation.

In 1973, Sobhraj landed back in prison after orchestrating an armed robbery targeting precious stones at Hotel Ashoka.

However, he escaped by faking illness, a tactic he would repeatedly employ throughout his criminal life, though he was swiftly recaptured. Following his father’s payment of bail, he relocated to Kabul where he was jailed once more for preying on tourists.

Sobhraj again claimed sickness before drugging a hospital guard to facilitate his getaway, escaping to Iran and deserting his young family, who went back to France. He remained a fugitive for the following two years across Eastern Europe and the Middle East before reconnecting with his younger half-brother Andre in Istanbul.

The duo were apprehended in Greece, but Sobhraj successfully switched identities with his sibling and avoided capture, leaving Andre to languish in a Turkish prison for 18 years.

This marked the turning point for The Serpent – and the moment he escalated his crimes into outright murder. He posed as a drug dealer to lure Western tourists and robbed them, murdering them if he believed they might reveal his identity.

Among his earliest casualties was Seattle tourist Teresa Knowlton, found drowned in a tidal pool along Thailand’s Gulf coast in 1975, clad in a floral bikini. The discovery prompted the Bangkok Post to dub Sobhraj the ‘Bikini Killer’ after multiple female victims were recovered deceased while wearing swimwear.