Nicknamed the Serpent, Charles Sobhraj is accused of having committed several murders in the 1970s in Southeast Asia. In an interview with TF1, he claims not to have killed anyone.
Changes of identity, passages incognito from one country to another, repeated escapes… So many strategies and tricks that earned Charles Sobhraj the nickname of the Serpent. But behind the image of an unscrupulous manipulator, it is the personality of a serial killer that is scrutinized. In 2004, the 78-year-old was sentenced in Nepal to life in prison for the murders of young American tourist Connie Joe Bronzich and her Canadian friend Laurent Carrière in 1975.
Before that, Sobhraj had already spent twenty years in Indian jails, accused of having killed more than a dozen young backpackers in India and Thailand. Released in December by the Nepalese authorities for health reasons, the Serpent was repatriated to France. Back in his country of origin, he is now preparing the release of his book I, the Serpentand continues to claim his innocence.
“I am not a murderer, I did not kill anyone (…) I am not a serial killer and I will prove it”, he proclaims this Sunday evening in an interview with Seven to Eight on TF1.
Put tourists to sleep and steal their passports
The only misdeeds Charles Sobhraj admits to committing are stealing and scamming tourists and businessmen. “I made contact with them, we spent the day together, in the evening we drank, I put a drug in their glass, well dosed so that they fell asleep when they returned to their room, and that’s where I took their business,” he said. Nothing more, says the septuagenarian.
Asked about the death of the French tourist, Luc Salomon, whom he is suspected of having killed, Charles Sobhraj defends himself: “I needed a passport. I told a girl who worked with me to go put a guy to sleep and take his passport. She met Luc Salomon, we had dinner together. The next day, she put him to sleep and two days later, he was found dead. The autopsy revealed traces of old shots. He was shooting himself.” An argument rejected in block by the relatives of the victim who remain convinced the Serpent is the author of this murder.
Who is hiding behind behind these dead that litter the path of Charles Sobhraj? One of his friends and Indian henchman? “I asked myself the question, I had a doubt but I’m not sure”, slips the Snake.
