The podcast episode recounts the early life of Charles Sobhraj, a notorious con man and later serial killer, framing it as a darker counterpart to the fictionalized story of Frank Abagnale Jr. Sobhraj was born in Saigon in 1944 during French colonial rule, to Chun, a Vietnamese woman, and Sobhraj Hachard Banani, an Indian tailor who refused to acknowledge paternity. His mother later married a French officer, but Sobhraj was repeatedly abandoned by both parents, leaving him without a stable identity or legal papers. As a child, he ran away frequently, stole, and struggled with discipline, leading to confinement and boarding schools. In his teens, he moved to France, where he immersed himself in crime, serving multiple prison sentences. During one stint, he met Félix d'Escagnes, a wealthy philanthropist who helped him obtain French citizenship and supported him, but Sobhraj repaid him with theft and betrayal. He married Chantal Compagnon, with whom he had a daughter, but continued a life of fraud, including car scams and bad checks. The episode ends with Sobhraj fleeing France for Asia, setting the stage for his later murders, which will be detailed in subsequent episodes.
Do you remember the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can?
If you don't, it's the allegedly true story of Frank Abagnale Jr.'s criminal escapades during
the 1960s. Abagnale is a legendary con man. Some have described him as arguably the greatest con
man of all time. Starting in his teens, he successfully performed cons that in total
made him millions of dollars by doing stuff like posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot,
Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. He successfully forged hundreds if not thousands
of documents and checks, traveled extensively and luxuriously, and for a time evaded law
enforcement. Or did he? Perhaps Frank's greatest con was convincing enough people that he was a
good enough con man through a bullshit autobiography for his supposed life to be
made into a huge Hollywood movie. That's what some think. Journalists have never found any
evidence to back up the majority of his biggest claims. Today, though, we are going to be talking
about another con man who operated during the same time as
Abagnale, someone who also started young, someone who used many, many different identities,
forged countless documents, traveled extensively and luxuriously, pulled off a crazy amount of
crimes, kept roping more and more people into his crimes, including a line of beautiful women who
adored him, and who also evaded law enforcement over and over and over again. His story, way crazier
than Frank's. And unlike Frank, there is a lot of evidence that our subject did what he said he did,
including leaving enough dead bodies to be able to survive. So, let's get into the story.
The con man was a serial killer. He terrorized large parts of Asia and Europe in the 1960s and
70s, and his snake-like ability to evade capture earned him the moniker of The Serpent. This week,
the life and many, many crimes of The Serpent, the French fraudster, thief, and charming serial
killer Charles Sobhraj, but really the man of many, many names, on another true crime
international edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're
listening to Time Suck.
Happy Monday, and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins,
the Suckmaster, guy who now says, okay, too much, okay? Hopeful literary child of the
mother of Frankenstein, so I guess also hopeful monster brother?
You are listening to Time Suck.
Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M.
Recording this on August 6th, and my heart goes out to a lot of my neighbors in Spokane,
Washington, just a 30-minute drive away. My former home for many years were wildfires
that have covered us here in CDA in a cloud of smoke still rage. As of this moment,
it has been reported that over 900 structures, most of those being homes, have burned to the
ground. Thousands of people are currently displaced, the most destructive cluster of
fires in state history in terms of structural damage. And they are still burning at this
moment, with temperatures expected to rise and a fear of winds picking up. Hopefully this is all
over, and has been over for a while by the time you hear this, and hopefully a lot of aid has
already been given to those in need. We will be donating to those affected in the Spokane area
wildfires from bad magic this next month in September. Now let me tell you a little bit about
a different kind of destruction, one just as unnecessary as the Spokane fires, that some
asshole has already confessed to helping start at least one of the fires due to arson. Cool,
fuckface. Cool. Before we jump into the timeline, beginning in April of 1975, which will take us a
little while to get there, to talk about Charles Sobhraj's most infamous crimes, we'll first take a
look at the world he was born into, and his childhood, to help us understand why he did what
he did and how he was able to avoid detection for as long as he was. Given the messy record-keeping
that occurred during the end of the colonial powers, the actual dates of Charles's youthful
mayhem are pretty blurry, but the details of what happened, you know, more important than
exactly when they happened anyway. Charles was born in Saigon on April 6, 1944, when he was part
of French Indochina. And French Indochina was a group of French-dependent territories in Southeast
Asia, existing under that name from 1887 to 1954. Starting in the 1850s, France began to use the
persecution of French missionaries as an excuse to expand their colonial empire into Vietnam.
Classic false flag operation. The persecutor playing the victim. That is a strategy that
has worked so well for so many, unfortunately, bitching about how everybody is out to get you
while you are consistently taking everybody's shit. In 1859, Charles Sobhraj was born into a
French colony. In 1859, French troops destroyed the citadel of Jonin. Skirmishes continued until
1861, and the population of the city that would be known as Saigon, before its name would change
again to Ho Chi Minh City, a city with over 14 million people today, fell back then from 40,000
to around 8,000 as residents fled the fighting. It was barely left a town at all. After France
forced the Nguyen emperor to sign over control of Vietnam, the colonialists embarked on an
convict labor to fill canals, pave wide boulevards, build elegant government and residential buildings,
even erect a European-style cathedral. It is fucking crazy. I was just talking about this
with somebody else before this episode came along recently. It's crazy to think about that when you
travel around the world, how many of the old, beautiful, historical sites you see were literally
built with slave labor. The only way it was cost-effective to ever make such opulent structures.
Makes me think of that phrase when people complain about how we don't build comparatively
magnificent buildings anymore. They don't build them like they used to. Yeah, for good fucking
reason. The colonists created a segregated world inside of Saigon and a cozy little bubble for
themselves inside of it that felt more like a neighborhood in Paris than part of Asia at that
time. In Saigon at the turn of the 20th century, you could find French soldiers,
French businessmen, officials, and their wives shopping for the latest Parisian fashions
at upscale boutiques.
The colonists insulated themselves as much as possible from the poverty of the rest of the
quickly growing city's 100,000 or so inhabitants. Saigon was a city that told a tale of two very
different worlds. It was the capital city of the French colonial club, the French colonial club,
of French Indochina, and French Indochina was comprised of Cambodia, Laos, starting in 1899,
Guangzhouan from 1898 to 1945, which was a territory leased to France by China,
Cochin, China, what is now the southern tip of Vietnam, and the land that is now the Vietnamese
regions of Tonkin and Onam. Much like other colonized localities in the 20th century,
the French exploited the resources of this region during their rule brutally, while also contributing
to limited and unlawful colonization.
The French took control of the region, and the local population, as a whole. And this,
as it always has and always will, led to tensions, led to a deep divide between the colonists
and the native people, and a bunch of small rebellions and fights broke out during the
French control of the region, like rebellions always do when you oppress the local population
to the point that many of them feel like their lives are so fucking shitty that they can't
they're willing to risk them to try and create a better world for themselves to live in.
World War I then shook things up further for the natives living in French Indochina,
when nearly 100,000 Vietnamese were conscripted to fight for their oppressors and were sent off
to Europe to fight for a war that would not benefit them in any fucking way. They would
serve on the French battlefield or work as laborers for the French soldiers. By conscripting
French Indochinese people, most of whom were Vietnamese, France also gave them the unique
opportunity to live in a world where they could live in a world where they could live in a world
of direct access to the social life and the political debates that were occurring in
contemporary France. They got to see for the first time, you know, the world that the colonizers came
from. And this cultural exchange would eventually backfire on France. It resulted in more French
Indochinese aspiring to become masters of their own destiny. Returning to a colonial occupation
of their own country by a ruler that many of them had fought and died for in a war they did not ask
for resulted in increased dissatisfaction, of course, with colonial rule following the
war. And now a lot of dudes, newly trained in the art of killing other dudes, sought out and joined
a Vietnamese nationalist movement focused on overthrowing the French. Tensions in Saigon were
growing higher and higher in the two decades before Charles Sobhraj was born. The city was
increasingly the scene of civil unrest as communist labor unions protested French exploitation of
workers. The ICP was founded in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh and others who saw Marxism as the only hope for
salvation in the world. They began to plot the end of colonialism in Vietnam. Fucking crazy. That's where the insane
clown posse comes from, right? Did you know the ICP was founded in 1930 in Vietnam? I didn't.
That's where the insane clown posse comes from. Fucking crazy. Fucking crazy.
Fucking crazy.
Yeah, Vietnamese hip-hop was very advanced.
Wait a minute.
No, I forgot.
Sometimes two organizations can share the same acronym.
Talking about a different ICP today, of course.
The Indo-Chinese Communist Party.
Way less drugs.
Less dancing.
The revolution was slow.
I'm an idiot.
The revolution was slow to develop,
and by the start of World War II,
French Indochina was being slowly chipped away at
through internal rebellions and other nations such as Japan
vying to take control of the region.
You know, they had their own ambitions.
When Nazi Germany conquered France in 1940,
the citizens of Saigon suddenly found themselves
entering two new colonial masters.
Way less cool.
Not that the French were nice to them, but Nazis worse.
Then Japan took over governing Indochina
for the duration of World War II,
throwing French troops into jail and garrisoning thousands of soldiers
and converted schools and other buildings
in Saigon.
Japanese also not nice masters.
Any hopes the Japanese would be more sympathetic occupiers
very quickly dashed.
They were fucking brutal
and terrorized and looted the countryside.
1954, the year that Charles Sobhraj was born,
was objectively not a good time
to be Indo-Chinese and living in Saigon.
The U.S. and other allied nations
bombed roadways and other infrastructural targets
to cut off supplies to Saigon
in an attempt to weaken the Axis powers
controlling the region.
Supplies being cut off,
the history of misadventures,
the history of misadventures,
the history of misadventures,
mismanaged resources by the French government
to fund the war
and flooding in northern French Indochina
on top of everything else
created the perfect storm
for a man-made famine,
fun,
that swept through Vietnam in 1944-1945.
The exact number of deaths caused by this famine
is unknown and a matter of controversy and debate,
but between 400,000 and 2 million people
starved in northern Vietnam during that time.
Goddamn, that's a lot of people.
So many lives.
It is unfathomable to properly emotionally comprehend
how many others damn near starved as well.
I always think about that with famines, right?
If like 2 million people starved to death,
how many million other people almost starved to death?
Oof.
It was here in the capital city under this environment
during the start of the famine
that Charles Sobhraj's parents will meet.
Let's meet them now before properly jumping
into the timeline a little while later.
Actually quite a while later.
Chun Wong Fung was a native of French Indochina,
born into a rural village, excuse me,
not too far from Saigon.
And in the early 1940s, when she was just 15,
she moved on her own,
left home to go to Saigon for better life.
By better life, I mean, you know,
hopefully not starve or live in just abject poverty forever.
She initially found a job washing melons,
not a creepy euphemism,
for a merchant who sold fruit to restaurants.
She was one of roughly a thousand women
who worked in the open air fruit and vegetable markets,
Saigon, doing shit like shining up the produce.
There, Chun, of course, met new people.
One of those people helped her get a new job
at a restaurant as a host slash waitress.
It helped that Chun was said to be exceptionally pretty.
Her boss made it very clear, though,
that she was not to flirt, not to date,
the restaurant patrons.
And for over a year, Chun dodged numerous boys and men
flirting with her.
But then one day, a regular customer caught Chun's eye,
a quiet man who always kept to himself.
When he paid his bills, he never spoke
other than to murmur thank you
in broken Vietnamese with a smile.
Chun knew the man was a foreigner.
She assumed he was French,
but she addressed him in the new French words
she was learning from customers.
He didn't appear to understand what she was saying.
Then one evening, when he paid his bill,
he thrust this package towards Chun like a little gift,
hurried away, seemingly embarrassed.
The package contained an exquisite gown and a note,
painstakingly printed in French,
asking her if she would like to go for a boat ride with him
on the Dong Nai River.
When he returned the next night
and took his customary table
without even daring to look at her,
Chun now sent a note over to him.
Thank you so much, it read, and also yes.
And then dude let out a literal yip of joy,
like a squeal, heard around the restaurant.
Seems sweet right now.
Seems cute.
But was he?
This mystery customer's name
was Sobhraj Hachard Banani.
Sobhraj was an Indian immigrant in his early 40s
who grew up in a town near Bombay.
He was a tailor who lived and worked
in a one-room apartment in Saigon.
The machine on which he sewed was an old one
operated by a foot pedal, but from it,
emerged dress whites for officers
and soft, pretty blouses for the women.
Sobhraj, neither Vietnamese nor French,
which is important to note,
as French Indochina in 1944 was a society
organized around rigid racial and national classifications
that determined every aspect of one's existence,
from where one could live to what work one could do
to whom one could marry.
At the very top of the social pyramid
was the French colonial administrators
and military officers.
This group would govern through a combination
of direct control and collaboration with local elites.
And the next rung down, other Europeans,
just not in the government or the military,
and then below them, that tiny slice of local elites.
And then finally near the bottom of this pyramid
was the largest group, and this was the Vietnamese,
Cambodian, and Laotian people
who made up the vast majority of the population.
Sobhraj didn't fit cleanly into any of these groups.
Indian immigrants occupied an ambiguous
kind of middle position in this hierarchy.
They were Asian rather than European.
They also, though, came from a part of the British Empire
and often served colonial administrations
as merchants, moneylenders, or skilled craftsmen.
They were neither colonizers nor quite colonized
in the same way as the locals in Indochina,
existing in this liminal space
that granted them certain economic opportunities
while still marking them as fundamentally different from
and inferior to Europeans.
Aren't we a silly species, chopping shit up like this?
It's almost like it doesn't have to be this way.
It never has, because it doesn't, and it hasn't.
Some people apparently just can't have fun
unless their fun and their privilege
comes at somebody else's expense, right?
They just can't win unless somebody else loses.
There's a name for those kind of people.
It's on the tip of my tongue.
Cunt. Oh, cunt. They're cunts.
Some days, I just wish I could push a big reset button
and eliminate that kind of mentality from the world,
even if it also meant eliminating all the cunts who employ it.
Within a few weeks of their first date,
Chun moved into his small, single,
room and became this guy's lover.
He seemed to adore her,
often surprising Chun with little gifts
of gold buttons or flowers.
Gold button seems a little strange,
but I guess that was a gift back then.
But then after just a short while,
Chun got pregnant, and Sobhraj changed.
Oh, did he ever.
Now she met the real Sobhraj.
He was not happy.
Nor was he convinced that he was the father.
At least that's what he told her.
He heatedly reminded Chun that she flirted with every guy
who came to that restaurant, whether that was true or not.
She was young for Chun, extra hard,
because she had just been fired from her job
at the restaurant when her boss discovered
that she was dating Sobhraj.
Then on April 6, 1944,
in the charity ward of the Saigon Catholic Hospital,
Chun gave birth to a monster.
I mean, boy.
Her son Charles, who was not known by that name then,
he was born as Hachand Baonani Gurmukh Sobhraj.
His mom was in labor for 40 hours,
and during that time,
Chun was repeatedly shamed by the nurses,
who were nuns, for refusing,
for her refusing to give up the name of the child's father.
These nuns, these fucking dumb, nasty bitches,
who thought loving God meant hating his creation,
said shit like,
God is punishing you,
God does not make it easy for the fornicator,
and God wants you to suffer for breaking the commandments.
They sure made God sound like a dick.
Chun did not name a father on the birth certificate,
and Sobhraj did not visit the hospital,
nor was he receptive when Chun and the baby arrived at his shop.
And she didn't name the father because he told her not to.
Not a sweet guy, actually.
Not a sweet guy, after all.
He made one thing clear before he would allow them to live with him again.
He was not admitting paternity of this child,
nor would he ever accept responsibility for the child's upbringing.
A little more than a year after Gurmukh was born,
so Charles, now known as Gurmukh,
for this point in his life,
Ho Chi Minh seized control of Hanoi in the north
and proclaimed that his coalition of nationalist rebels,
called the Viet Minh,
would soon unite a country so long ravaged and abused by foreign colonial powers.
And again, this is Ho Chi Minh of,
the ICP.
They had a really kind of fun vibe in Vietnam back then.
One day in 1945,
Chun and baby Gurmukh left the tailor shop to run some errands
and got into a taxi.
And at a traffic light in a section of Saigon,
Chun did not know well the doors were suddenly yanked open
by Vietnamese men holding guns.
They dragged Chun and her baby out of the taxi.
One of them pressed a rough cloth,
smelling of fumes against Chun's nose,
and she lost consciousness.
These men were Viet Minh cohorts,
and by nightfall,
they had delivered a ransom note to Sobhraj the tailor.
Kidnapping had become pretty common in Saigon during 1945,
particularly against foreigners,
whom the Viet Minh felt were intruders
and should contribute in one way or another
towards cleansing the country of alien powers.
The ransom note sent to Sobhraj the tailor demanded $10,000,
sent along with the note was a scrap of the linen shirt
that the baby had worn,
torn and wet and flecked with red that sure looked like blood.
Several years later,
in a letter written to a friend,
Sobhraj the tailor communicated what happened next.
I'm just kind of adding tailor
since Charles also is kind of known by Sobhraj later in life.
But he wrote,
I could not have raised $1,000, much less $10,000.
And I was afraid to go to the police
because my visa to work in Saigon had always been a problem.
It happened that one of my customers was a British officer.
I was so angry,
him a suit of white linen when he came to get it that night,
I told him what had happened to my, quote, wife and the boy.
He rounded up a group of his soldier friends,
some Americans too, I believe,
and they raided the house where the kidnappers were living
and they freed Chun and Gurmukh.
I made all of these brave men, eight of them, I recall,
a new suit to thank them.
Even though I've often thought
it would have been better for the Viet Minh to keep Chun.
Ah, dude, why'd you have to say that shit at the end?
You're starting to seem like a kind of nice guy again.
It had been over three days
before Chun and the baby were rescued.
It took over three days.
During that time,
they were only given a few sips of water,
a few spoonfuls of cold rice,
any details regarding how either one of them
may have been assaulted, not shared in sources.
After Chun and Gurmukh came back to the shop,
the relationship between Chun and Sobhraj
rapidly deteriorated further
and they often would have loud screaming fights.
It came to light that Sobhraj had a wife back in India.
Of course he did.
She was never his lover.
She was his mistress.
Meanwhile, Sobhraj frequently accused Chun of infidelity.
How did this country,
how did this country girl become a bad woman so quickly?
Wrote Sobhraj to his cousin in Bombay.
She spends all of her time painting her nails and her face
and cares nothing about me or Gurmukh.
She also gambles.
Writes the dude about his mistress
that his wife doesn't know about.
Before Gurmukh's second birthday,
Chun packed up all of her belongings,
including a bunch of gowns,
each sewn by Sobhraj
and moved out on an afternoon
when the tailor was away at some Hindu temple
pretending to be a holy man, I guess.
That night, Sobhraj went to a cafe,
ordered an uncharacteristic bottle of champagne,
as a Hindu, he rarely drank,
and announced to the other customers
that he was celebrating the successful removal of a tumor.
Well, kind of funny, but also what a piece of shit.
About a week later,
Chun realized she was pregnant again.
Fuck.
And the only possible father was Sobhraj
because she was, uh,
or, you know, she was not seeing anybody else.
He was the only cheater in this relationship, actually.
She turned to her best friend for help
and her friend told her that she needed a new man stat.
And that if they hooked up right away,
maybe he would think the baby was his.
So now I guess maybe somebody else is gonna get fucked over
in this dog-eat-dog world.
Uh, abortion's not legal in French Indochina.
Uh, historically, interestingly,
nobody loves a mistress more than the French,
more than French men.
But also, they are historically Catholic
and were anti-abortion until 1975.
That was a fun, constructive combo for everybody.
Uh, Chun took her friend's advice to heart.
Went a-looking.
Uh, Saigon was a bustling city,
busiest port in Asia at this time,
luxury European-style,
hotel hotels like the Majestic,
had full bars with dancing and cocktails
for military officers.
Uh, so Chun wore, uh,
one of her most beautiful dresses,
went out as many nights as she could.
And now nearly three-year-old Gurmukh
is, uh, getting neglected.
One night, he got so mad at Mom,
he grabbed some scissors and cut up her best dress.
And you know what?
I can't blame him.
Uh, Chun's crazy plan did work, though.
Uh, worked without the lie, actually.
She met a French lieutenant named Jacques Rousseau
and he quickly fell in love with her.
And when Chun told him that she had one young son
and a son, he said,
and was pregnant with the second child
with his other dude,
he didn't care.
So she found a better dude
than that dirtbag Taylor.
On September 15th, 1948,
the two were married.
And shortly thereafter,
he legally accepted paternity
of Chun's second child, a daughter.
Interestingly, though,
he did not, uh, accept custody
or, you know, paternity.
Well, I guess he couldn't accept paternity.
But he did not adopt, uh, Gurmukh
and would not give his name to the boy.
Not sure exactly what the reasoning was there.
Uh, the new family,
he lived in a spacious military apartment
and Chun threw herself into learning French
and becoming the model culturally, uh,
you know, European housewife.
Gurmukh hated his new family.
As he grew older, he chatted incessantly
about how his real dad, the tailor,
uh, one day he would swoop into the house
and rescue him from his foreign stepfather.
Parental abandonment.
Does anything come up more
in the backstories of serial killers?
Little Gurmukh, uh, was an unruly child
who frequently misbehaved.
And to punish him, Chun would say,
spank him or even sometimes tie him to his bed,
would lock him in his room.
Uh, after one particularly bad punishment,
Gurmukh ran away from home.
And two days later, Chun received a call
from an annoyed Sobhraj, the tailor,
saying that her son, right, uh, had found him.
Uh, not, not their son.
Uh, he had made his way across the city of Saigon,
broken into the shop,
hidden for two days behind bolts of cloth,
peeping through a crack
and silently watching his dad sew.
So sad, actually.
Uh, when he returned the child,
Sobhraj scolded his son,
telling him not to ever try that again.
Because essentially, dad didn't want him.
The tailor had other responsibilities now,
he explained.
A new wife with a new kid on the way.
What a shitbag.
Uh, as punishment,
Chun tied little man to his bed again,
his arms and legs lashed to his bedpost,
uh, freeing him only when he swore tearfully
that he would never flee the house again.
Seems a little extreme.
I, I don't know.
Uh, 1949, Lieutenant Rousseau,
uh, received abrupt orders now,
Rousseau, uh, of transfer back in France.
And the family had just two weeks notice
before they needed to move.
Gourmouc cried for days,
sobbing that he would never, ever leave Saigon his home.
And then for a moment, it looked like he wouldn't.
Uh, Lieutenant Rousseau, uh,
came home with some troublesome news.
A serious problem of legality had arisen
with Gourmouc, who had no passport
and no identifying documents.
Uh, his birth certificate, if one ever existed,
could not be found, uh, as he was illegitimate.
Uh, Gourmouc not allowed to travel
on his mother's passport.
Uh, he did not technically legally exist.
I guess legally. He did technically exist.
That was a weird phrasing of mine.
Uh, he did technically exist.
I'll confidently say he technically did exist, but not legally.
Uh, his dad, Sobhraj, had done well for himself
since his breakup with Chun.
So, uh, you know, partly since he hadn't
paid, uh, child support.
Uh, she approached him with a request now,
as for, uh, I hate to say favor, but I think that's how she phrased it.
Uh, she wanted Gourmouc to stay
with his dad while her husband's lawyer
could establish a legal identity for the child.
When that was accomplished, then money would be sent
for Gourmouc's safe passage to France.
The tailor reluctantly
agreed. But then,
the money didn't come. Uh, the legal
papers necessary to establish his kid's
identity had fallen into some bureaucratic
crack somewhere, and eventually,
mom gave up. There would be no
safe passage. He had been
abandoned again to a dad who did
not want him. Uh, it would take
three years, uh, before he would see his
mom again. Uh, three years later, 1952,
when fighting between the Viet Minh and the French
military increased, and then
Lieutenant Rousseau was ordered back to Saigon
by the time the Rousseau family returned,
the city had grown significantly, and
so had a little man's family. In addition
to the full sibling of, uh, Gourmouc's,
uh, who was adopted by Lieutenant
Rousseau, uh, not even adopted, just
claimed, uh, Chun had given birth
to two more kids now. Likewise,
while Gourmouc had been living with his dad,
the tailor and his new wife had had three
kids, and were pregnant with the fourth.
Oh, the days before the
pill. How fucking horrible they were.
Also, Gourmouc's, uh, new stepmom
didn't like him, and resented his
presence. Gourmouc was already running
wild by this point, uh, refusing to help his dad
with work, plotting schemes against his stepmom,
usually out and about on the streets, hanging
with a gang of older boys, sometimes missing,
but not being missed, for
weeks at a time. And he is
not even nine years old. The
fuck? According to author
Thomas Thompson, that's a fun name.
Uh, sorry, Tom.
Sorry, Tom, that your fucking family couldn't think to name you anything
but fucking Tom, since your last name also
starts with Tom. Uh, according to
author Tom, Thomas Thompson, who wrote the
1970 book on this guy, Serpentine,
uh, Gourmouc was a liar, a thief, and
a danger to the younger children of the house.
He was the leader of a pack of Dickensian
uh, urchins, fucking street urchins,
uh, who lived by their wits,
hustling tourists, fording soldiers, stealing
food to eat and sell. They all carried
gleaming knives, and no, uh,
no one was over the age of twelve.
And once his dad heard that his mom was back in Saigon, he was like,
he's your problem again.
And now Chon, once again, worked to have his
identity confirmed by the government.
And I don't think it's a coincidence.
That the dude who will change identity so
frequently as an adult had such
a hard time establishing a legal identity
as a kid. This is just such a part of his
life. Uh, finally, after months of
slogging through the courts of bribing lawyers,
uh, of obtaining Sobhraj the tailor's
enthusiastic signature on a court order
that, one, acknowledged the tailor's paternity
of the boy, and two,
permitted him to relinquish parental responsibility
for his upbringing to Lieutenant
Rosul, a tribunal in Saigon
on January 10th, 1953,
decreed that this kid was the
legal custody of the French officer and
his wife. Only one
loose string remained, uh, uncut.
Lieutenant Rosul again refused,
at the last minute apparently, to award
his name to the boy.
They did not get along. And so now
his, uh, legal name is
Hachan, uh, Banani
Gurmukh Sobhraj. So it
remained that, but now it's legal.
And that is a mouthful. Uh, meanwhile, France's
position in Indochina worsened, and soldiers who
normally filed papers and type reports were
thrown into combat, including Lieutenant
Rosul, uh, who now volunteered
for front-line duty, uh, duty, excuse me.
Uh, and he did not fight very long
before he was taken off the front lines and put
in the hospital. Uh, he was injured,
and his injury was mental. Severe
shell shock. Very severe.
Uh, his face was blank, save
for, uh, this enormous pain you could
see in his eyes, eyes that had always been gentle
before. Uh, Rosul, unable
to speak, his only gestures, a continual
throwing up of his hands against his ears to
blot out the screaming assaults of bombs
that would not stop exploding in
inside his head. Uh, makes me think
of that song, Zombie, by the Cranberries.
The lieutenant was ordered to return
back to France to recuperate, and as
it was unlikely for him to return to Saigon
and fight, his family was to come with him.
The now ten-year-old Gourmouk,
uh, at first was completely ecstatic,
actually, bragging to friends about the good
fortune. But as the time neared
for departure, he began to panic, and
was insistent that he would not move. He repeatedly
ran away, to hide in the fabric of his father's
tailor shop, and his dad just kept bringing
him back to his mom, telling him, don't come back.
Years later
Gurmukha would write a letter to a friend and recall this time in his life. I look back and I
can't explain it. My stepfather was a kind man who was good to me, even after his injury, but I did
not want him. All I wanted was to be with my real father, my own flesh. I felt an emptiness without
him, something that I missed. Even when my mother would find me after I'd run away and tied me up
with ropes, I didn't mind her prison, for I felt I was suffering on behalf of my father. On the day
we were supposed to leave for France, I was confused. I had not slept the night before. I kept
telling myself that when the morning came, I would run away and hide until the boat left. But just
before dawn, I dozed off and it was in a half sleep that my mother took me away from my country and my
father. I never really forgave her. Man, dad not wanting him really fucked this kid up. After a few
months back in France, Lieutenant Rousseau was given a new cushy assignment in Dakar, then capital
of French West Africa, also known at that time.
South Paris. And before heading to Dakar, let's take today's first two Mitchell's sponsor breaks.
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make monthly charitable contributions. Get the catalog ad free. Episodes three days early and
more. Now let's head to Dakar, capital of French West Africa at this time. The family moved into
a large swanky villa. And by 1956, there were seven kids in the family, with Gurmukh being the oldest.
My God, just fucking everybody popping out kids back then. Lieutenant Rousseau found himself rarely
able to work full day because his head pains had returned. That from the being shell shocked. He
demanded absolute silence at the home. Oftentimes it was a tense house. During this time, Chun became
a devout Catholic. She had Gurmukh baptized and given a Christian name. In 1959, at the age of 15,
his name was entered into the records of the church as Charles now. So he has his, you know,
a name change. The guy who will later change his name constantly. Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj.
His report cards from this time in a, excuse me, would foreshadow who Charles would become.
One teacher said he has extraordinary abilities, but he is lazy, stubborn, and accepts no discipline.
Another said this boy learned so quickly that it is a scandal how poorly he behaves in class.
Yeah, very smart kid. Become a very smart man. Charles' best friend, Sarak, the son of a Wolof
tribesman who lived in a nearby native village. The two were often caught pilfering random shit
and causing mayhem. Then one after the other, Charles Gurmukh became a very smart man. Charles Gurmukh
became a very smart man. One afternoon, Chun awoke to find a police inspector at her home demanding to know the
whereabouts of her son, Charles. Charles and Sarak had went in search of a nice cooling swim. They
chose a reservoir, but Charles was annoyed at how low the water level was. The officer informed
Chun, this is kind of crazy, that her son then broke into the maintenance station, twisted the
flood locks, and created a substantial flood. Fucker flooded this area so he could have more
water to swim in. When the torrents of water rushed into the reservoir, Sarak, his buddy,
damn near drowned. After that incident, Chun had new locks installed on the door to his bedroom
that opened only from the outside, and bars put on his window. Mom literally turned his room into
a fucking prison cell. Meanwhile, his stepdad, Lieutenant Rousseau's condition continued to
worsen. He was transferred to Marseille, France on limited duty. He would remain on the military
payroll for some time, although most of his waking hours were spent in search of a civilian doctor
who could help with the pains that continued to pound within his head. So, he moves his family from the
great villa in Dakar to a small, cramped yellow house in a working class neighborhood of Marseille.
In December of 1950 now, now 15-year-old Charles is escorted home one afternoon by two Marseille
police officers. He'd been caught stealing, and now his parents had had it with him. Chun and
Lieutenant Rousseau get into a massive fight. They argue about whether or not to throw Charles out,
if they should ask the state to lock him up in an institution, should they send him back east
to Indochina, find his dad. Chun ended up even asking her priest for counsel, and he recommended
that Charles be placed in a strict Catholic boarding school. What? The priest recommended
a Catholic school? That's crazy. That's a twist. Charles, when asked, wanted to return to his dad.
Chun then, quote, locked the boy in his room until they could decide where to send him.
I feel like he got locked up in his room a lot. She also told him some hard truths. Basically,
that his dad didn't want him, that Sobhraj the tailor had not inquired about his son in almost
five years, that Sobhraj had not sent a single frank to put food in his son's mouth, that his dad now had
more children than he could count, more than he could care for. What a guy. Well, Charles ended up
getting sent to that Catholic boarding school, and while there, he would continue to run away.
The first time he escaped was just days after his arrival. He only managed to run as far as the
nearest village when one of the priests found and stopped him, brought him back. During his second
attempt, fell out of a tree, sounds like he broke his leg, said sources say hurt his leg, but sounds
like he probably broke it, grabbed again by the priest. Then when the doctor at the school infirmary
telephoned Chun in Marseilles to report he was hurt, he was taken to the hospital, and he was
somebody else answered the phone who told him that she and her husband were gone. They'd left to go
back to Saigon without him. Good God. This dude was treated like a fucking hot potato growing up.
Just nobody wanted to hold on to him for very long. When Charles was told the news that his
family had left him again, he supposedly went berserk, wailed and screamed, believing that he
had been, you know, again, abandoned because he had. Then before his leg was fully healed,
maybe it wasn't quite broken or it wasn't a bad break, he limped out of the clinic
and disappeared. Someone from the school sent Chun the following telegram.
Charles ran away Friday night, search in progress. A few nights later, in April of 1960,
just after his 16th birthday, Charles is found trying to slip aboard a freighter, a big ship,
while wearing the clothes of a merchant seaman. He was arrested and brought back to the Catholic
boarding school, and he would finish out the school year there. Charles would write a letter
years later detailing this time in his life. He wrote, actually, it wasn't too bad. I was at the
I've often wondered what could have happened if I could have pursued what I was on the edge of doing,
plunging into the library. But there is just so much horseshit a boy can shovel.
Fair. Less than two months later, Chun received an urgent midnight call from the school.
Charles had run away yet again. This time she told the person on the phone,
I don't care. Let him run. My husband and I want to turn him loose.
He's 16. Mom and stepdad are fucking done with him. For the moment. Charles fled back to Marston
Say, where he was stowed away in the hold of a ship bound for Djibouti this time in East Africa,
just a few miles across the sea from Yemen in the Middle East. So he gets on another ship.
His plan is to then find another ship in Africa, one that will bury him secretly across the world
of Saigon, where his real dad will be waiting with welcoming, warming, you know, open arms.
Man, fucking deadbeat dads. Mom, not the best of moments for sure in this episode. But at least
she, you know, tried more than dad. Several nights out, just after the ship had passed through the
sea, Charles is caught trying to steal the passport and papers, you know, from the trousers of a
sleeping seaman. For the rest of the journey, he is held in a makeshift brig, yelling that if the
captain will only cable his rich and doting father in Saigon, then money will be instantly sent to
pay for his passage. He's brought back to France, not to Saigon, where Chun has to pay for his
passage both ways on the ship, or he'll be sent to jail. To her credit, she does pay, but she's
fucking pissed. In Paris, amongst the Vietnamese refugee community, Chun had some friends now,
whom were in the restaurant business. So she makes a bunch of calls on her son's behalf,
asks for some favors, arranges for Charles to become a kitchen worker. Also gets a distant
cousin to agree to give him a room to stay in. Right, she wants to help him, but she also wants
him to get the fuck out of her house. So off to Paris he goes. Toward the end of 1960, Charles
works, you know, at one restaurant, then another, then another, and another. Unsurprisingly, he gets
fired a lot. He hates doing the grunt work they keep giving him, like peeling and chopping
vegetables, cleaning crusted sauces from dirty dishes, mopping floors, dodging the wrath of,
uh, chefs. Eventually, though, he gets hired at the famous, uh, La Coupole restaurant, uh, I guess,
uh, French for the Dome, a restaurant that opened back in 1920 and was a renowned dance hall and
regular haunt. It's a fucking cool place to be, you know, attended by the likes of writers, uh,
like Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, actresses like Marlene Dietrich, uh, Dietrich, excuse me,
uh, Ava Gardner around that time. And one night while working there, against all odds,
he runs into his dad. A waiter found Charles peeling vegetables, told him to the customer,
asked for him by name.
Who? Wonders Charles. Uh, the waiter shrugged. Customer had not identified himself. Some dude
dining alone. Seemed prosperous, though. Well-dressed and foreign. Gourmouk, the man said
tentatively, and Charles was confused because no one had called him by that name in years.
Then the man held out his hand in greeting, I am Sobhraj, right? His dad, Charles, breaks down,
buries himself in his father's arms and sobs. Sobhraj the tailor had been busy, and not just
busy pumping out fucking kids he shouldn't have had. Uh, business had actually been good, real
rich. Uh, his one-room shop was now three separate stores, scattered along a high-end shopping
district in Saigon. Sobhraj made his son a proposition, you know, after randomly popping
back into his life. Uh, he had asked his mom, Chun, for permission to take Charles back home
to Saigon, so I guess he did have some kind of conscience, uh, where he would train the boy in
the clothing business and pay him a salary for doing that. Uh, she, of course, agreed, and after
some difficulty getting him a temporary passport or travel document, not passport, temporary travel
document of some kind, uh, he is off.
His dad gave him a rigid work schedule in Saigon. He was expected to rise before the
sun, uh, to sweep away the scraps of cloth from the day before, clean and oil all the
sewing machines, wash the windows, prepare the tea, et cetera, that kind of work, uh,
be ready to welcome customers by 9 a.m. From there, his duties included translating French
customers' wishes and measurements, and his duty would not end until after sundown every
day. Charles did not respond well to this kind of grind. Uh, he started slipping away
from his duties after just a few weeks, and then the police would come to his dad's house
his dad's office one day to tell Shabraj that a boy who had no papers, but who
represented himself as the tailor's son,
was in jail on suspicion of car theft.
And now Subhraj decided that Charles had problems
because he, quote,
simply did not know who he was,
nor where he belonged,
or nor where he belonged.
He possessed no roots, no security,
no feeling of membership in either a family
or in a national culture.
Subhraj decided the solution
was that Charles needed to become an Indian citizen.
And so now he gets shipped off to stay with family
he has never met in Bombay,
where he will need to live for at least a year
to get Indian citizenship.
So off Charles goes,
alone on a ship to a country
where he does not speak the language or know anyone.
Once he arrives,
he finds out he's staying in a little village
more than an hour from the sophistication of Bombay,
actually, in a poor suburb near Pune.
Also, his cousin's house,
not really a house by Charles' definition,
more like a shed,
more like a one-room factory shed,
maybe 20 square feet in total.
That might be an exaggeration, but who knows,
where more than a dozen adults
and an uncounted number of children, he said,
would work, eat,
and sleep.
So now he's living in a fucking sweatshop.
And surprising to no one,
Charles fucking hates it.
And do you want to know what he does pretty soon?
Yeah, that's right.
Good guess.
He runs away.
First time he tries to flee,
he sneaks aboard another ship,
a freighter bound for Saigon,
but gets caught and thrown off immediately.
A few days later, tries again,
snakes up a rope after midnight,
finds a place to hide in the freighter's cargo chamber,
this time not found until the boat docks at Saigon,
but then gets arrested.
Now, daddy,
so brothers of Taylor,
is called down to the port
where he has to pay 45 francs
to keep his stowaway son from getting arrested.
And before Charles arrived,
he'd gotten a letter from the family
Charles had stayed with,
telling him that Charles was a fucking arrogant,
ungrateful, disobedient,
you know, thief who stole from them.
Some money had coincidentally vanished when he left.
So Raj now sat Charles down,
gave him some hard truths.
He was telling, he told him like,
you know, first off,
you only have a temporary visitor's permit
valid for six months in Vietnam.
It cannot be renewed.
Without proper papers,
you could be arrested and jailed.
Second, if you don't want to hide from the authorities
after six months,
you need to go back to India,
spend a year there like you were supposed to,
get a proper permanent Indian passport and citizenship.
Third, you've worn out your welcome
with fucking everybody.
Mom doesn't want you back
and I'm starting to regret trying to help you as well.
And also not going to waste any more money
on a kid who continually fucks up
all opportunities he has given.
After this lecture,
so Raj sends him back,
to Bombay for one last chance at a straight life.
If he can't work shit out with his cousins,
he's going to wash his hands of him.
So Raj wrote to his cousins,
if he does not stay there and obtain his citizenship,
then let the demons take him.
So off Charles goes back to India on the SS Laos,
but headed back to Bombay.
And it again won't work out.
This time I will say it wasn't Charles's fault.
In March of 1962,
he was not permitted to disembark the ship
because he did not have proper papers,
did not have a permanent passport.
This identity situation is fucking him up.
All that moving around as a kid
to so many different countries,
his lack of a proper birth certificate,
since his mom would not name his father,
since so Raj did not want to claim him initially.
The drama with his stepdad,
not giving him his name.
It all left Charles without a clear paper trail
as to which country he was actually a citizen of.
In the end,
rather than let him be jailed in Bombay indefinitely
while they tried to figure out
where the fuck to send him.
After his dad was again done trying to help him,
Chun, his mom cabled the authorities in Bombay,
money to bring him to France.
She also wrote her son,
I expect you to pay me back.
We are poor people
and you have caused us more trouble and money
than all the other children combined.
This is the last help I will ever give you.
Charles also not allowed to return to the family home.
They just want to get him out of jail.
Now, while he's at least not in jail,
and while he does end up back in France,
Charles' situation is still precarious.
He has a French visa,
but it's only good for 90 days.
And the French consul in India warns him
that under no conditions could it be extended
thanks in part to his history of arrests.
He also has no money.
But in order to find work,
he needs a work permit.
A work permit given to an alien
is a difficult document to obtain
and he is in bureaucratic hell.
He's in like no man's land.
So he says, fuck it, back to theft I go.
In the fall of 1962,
after his 90-day visa expired,
Charles, now 18 years old,
steals a parked car outside of a cathedral in Marseille
because he wanted to take a young lady on a joyride.
He gets pulled over for speeding
because he's young and stupid.
His first documented running with the law as an adult.
He ends up getting a job
getting a sentence to six months in prison.
And when his time is up,
France is going to expel him from the country.
My God, I feel so thankful that my life
has never been as messy as this dude's was.
Holy shit.
In a later letter,
Charles said he spent his six months in prison
working in a kitchen and learning karate and Italian.
So, you know, I guess at least he was productive.
The day he was released,
the courts told Charles that he had 30 days
to get his affairs in order before he had to leave France.
He was scheduled to be deported.
And so he calls his mom and asks for,
asks for some money and for this new plan of his.
He wants to leave voluntarily,
then sneak into Italy,
wait until his case dies down
from a lack of attention in France,
then obtain forged documents
that will enable him to return to France,
easy peasy, right?
And start a new life there.
He just needs a few hundred francs to start his journey.
He tells her, I want to stay in France.
I am French.
You made me French.
Mom says no.
And now she will not see him again for more than a decade.
Probably the most peaceful decade of her life.
Charles does not leave France.
Instead, he hitchhikes to Paris
where he loses himself easily
in the Vietnamese community for a little while
amongst the thousands of refugees
that have streamed into the city since 1954
when France began to withdraw from Southeast Asia.
He drifts from job to job,
getting paid under the table,
you know, lives in one cheap hotel after another,
always paying in cash.
And during this period in his life,
Charles immerses himself further
into the Parisian criminal underworld.
He meets a dude named Romain,
like the lettuce, I guess,
who became a sort of mentor for him,
guy who encouraged him to keep up with his karate training.
Uh, cause, uh, Romain and his associates
like to do, uh, face-to-face crimes
like mugging, carjacking.
Uh, this guy would also introduce Charles
to the world of proper high-end document forgery
due to Charles needing to get some identity papers
that would, uh, you know, wreak more havoc in his life
if he was arrested, if he did not have them.
Uh, one night he takes Charles to a secluded house
in the outskirts of Paris, uh, and, uh, you know,
shows him a guy who, uh, allows you
to buy a new life for yourself.
He's an older man who, uh, sold government ID cards
for $850.
$850 and passports for several nations
or from several nations, uh, like Switzerland
and the U.S., anywhere from
1,000 to 5,000 francs.
Charles' new life priority becomes
to buy himself a new identity now.
Towards that end, in a six-week period
in the early spring of 1964, by
police count, Charles committed
at least 11 different robberies.
Probably way more than that. Uh, he stole
a woman's coat from a restaurant, suitcase
from a train station, a sewing machine,
so random, 164, uh, cartons
of cigarettes, a purse,
a knife, a bit of change
from a merchant's cash box, and
probably much more. He sold his shit at
flea markets, trying to raise 3,000 francs
for that French passport, but then he gets caught
and gets sentenced to, uh,
three years now at the, uh,
Maison Centrale, uh,
Maison Centrale de Poisy,
this maximum security prison
near the Notre-Dame, uh, cathedral.
Uh, Poisy originally was built
in 1645 as a convent,
but then turned into a prison in 1821.
And life there was
fucking bleak. Uh, prisoners
not allowed to make a home out of their cells by, say,
tacking up family photographs or keeping a box
of personal possessions. Uh, during the day
when the men were in the common room, guards would like
to inspect individual cells, and they would just
tear them apart, sometimes for their own amusement.
Radios not permitted, nor
newspapers. Uh, letters
were ruthlessly censored and often withheld.
Charles had never been imprisoned in a place
quite like this before. But here
he would meet one of the most influential and central figures
of his life. Uh, Félix
Descagnes, the, uh,
eldest son and heir to a substantial
family fortune. His family
had a long history of philanthropy.
Most of his familial predecessors had preferred
to donate a lot of the family money. Uh,
Félix would take a more hands-on approach
to his detriment, oftentimes.
Uh, one day a week, he would volunteer his time
and be allowed into the prison, where he
was permitted to help inmates with letter
writing and other minor personal needs.
He would provide a caring, attentive ear
for the men he, uh, spent his time with.
He seemed like he was a really good dude. He met Charles
after he heard about the young man in solitary confinement,
not doing well mentally.
A man who had had zero visitors
come to see him, who had made zero
friends in the prison. Félix
initially asked Charles how he could, uh, be of help.
And Charles asked him to please
act as a mediator in negotiating
a reconciliation with his dad in Saigon.
He also asked Félix to
please keep coming back and visiting
him. For the next several Saturdays,
Félix came over to talk with Charles,
and he was told the story of Charles' life as if
it were a Greek tragedy. Soon
between these visits, Charles would send Félix letters.
Uh, since they were not destroyed,
we have some insight into his life around this time.
In one letter he wrote,
Please do not abandon me like everyone else.
You are the most important factor
of my life. I know I dream too much
and take leave of reality, but I swear to you,
I am perfectly aware of reality. After all
I've endured, after all of the sordid paths
I've traveled, uh, don't you think I recognize
reality? True, there is a certain
flexibility in my mind that wants to
escape now and then through a fanciful spirit.
I come back on Earth only when
it is necessary, but this gives me
strength. I am not a
double personality. Don't worry.
Ah, Félix, perhaps I am just a simple-minded
person who is condemned to the slag heap of life.
Perhaps I am stupid. On the
other hand, perhaps I can touch your soul.
Perhaps I can make my mark on
this world.
Ah, I first thought reading this
is that Charles is being manipulative as
fuck. Is that your first thought?
I mean, he knew he wasn't stupid. He was smart enough
to know that if he could get this nice guy to feel sorry
for him, no, he could get his money and
connections from him. Uh, on
On his business letterhead, Felix would soon write
eloquent letter on charles's behalf to subrash the tailor he did not hide the truth the tailor's son
was in prison serving a long sentence for robbery and theft but felix believed there were extenuating
circumstances months went by with no reply and charles got pretty fucking pissed off he then
wrote a letter to his dad and gave it to felix to send to saigon on his behalf before doing so
felix read the letter here's what it said dear papa it's really too sad that you're my father
that i was born of your flesh why is it sad because when a father has a son he has the duty
to love him educate him then help that son build a future in all history isn't that the traditional
duty of a father but you you pray to god and you go to your temple but where is your conscience
if you have one it must be heavy you gave birth to a son and you ignored him left him worse than
a dog worse than the lowest beast you are not my father anymore i renounce you live in your
abundance eat your rich food like a lion as for me i only ask for water and bread they fortify me
every day and give me that strong will to strengthen me and harden my goa i want to make you suffer
suffer again and again like a man with cuts all over his body i will make you regret having failed
the duties of a father fortune i will have even without you it will help me to pile stones on
your head you will remember and you will regret having ignored me all these years i have stayed
more days of my life in prison than out and the fault is yours i want this to live in you like a
you will take notice of me but by then it will be too late charles okay so you know he's like uh
you know pretty pissed off at dad fair uh felix never mailed that letter and charles was lucky
to have him hold on to it excuse me because the response from surbage uh arrived just before
christmas of 1966 when charles was now 22 at the end of his letter to felix he wrote since you tell
me in your letters that charles is a good boy now and wants to come to saigon it is all right with
me if we can
overcome the problem of passport and nationality but i do want to know just what is his idea in
returning here i don't like people who wander around the girls all the time man must work and
earn and get married and stand on his own feet i mean you know what i do like to stand on your own
feet part uh pretty crazy to write about how man though should get married and avoid other girls
without acknowledging that's exactly what he did to create charles uh in early 1967 charles
finally confided in felix that his mom lived in france and now felix planned to go to marseille
to meet chun uh when felix rang the bell at the lemon colored villa on the outskirts of marseille
the door was opened by a guy who looked a lot like charles it was andre his much younger half
brother after uh uh this guy andre introduced uh uh felix to his mom to uh you know charles's mom
uh felix and chun now come up with a plan to get charles uh french citizenship using felix's wealth
and connections he is able to utilize a clause within the french legal system that pertained to
citizens of french indo-china who had had a relationship with charles and he was able to
evacuate that country after france's withdrawal such persons were entitled to full french
citizenship provided they established permanent residence in france and this works while in prison
almost 25 years old roughly 25 years old uh he at last possessed what most men are given the
moment they're born a legal citizenship like a legal identity a fucking passport however charles
would not be permitted to live within the city of paris for a restricted period after release
from prison due to the several crimes he'd committed there and also charles would be
liable for service in the french military now like all sons of france still charles is pumped
and his mood is better for the rest of his sentence it was the beginning of 1968 soon
and charles was in the final year of his sentence now he started to use his time productively
teaches himself german so he can more fully comprehend the philosopher nietzsche of whom
he'd become enamored recently it really is true with that nature divides the strong and the weak
he wrote there are people who are weak from the moment they leave their mother's breast they are
condemned i believe i am in the
category of the strong all right uh from the confines of his cell charles plans his future
life takes elaborate measurements of his body dispatches him to saigon telling his dad to sew
half a dozen new suits for me come on daddy uh enclose a photo of the modest uh he clothes he
encloses oh my god he enclosed a photo of some kind of fashion the suit he wanted from a french
magazine uh they should be ready for the day of freedom he told his dad in a letter a letter he
wrote to felix on may 10th 1968 sheds more light uh on his headspace around this time
dear felix i have put myself on this such a fucking weird letter dear felix i've put myself
on the couch and here is a psychoanalysis of the patient subject is naturally sensual but he is
also intellectual and spiritual and these go counter to his nature the sensual versus the
spiritual a struggle as old as time and destined to continue subject went through his first love
which was not satisfying this love was only in the heart not physical now when subject has
relations with the woman he throws up an auto defense to the woman and she's like oh my god
think bad things about the woman an unconscious fear of new rejection like his mother hmm an
interesting case don't you think that's a fucking weird way to write about yourself in the third
person in the last few months of his imprisonment he wrote bitterly of his prison experience uh
one point saying i have stopped having illusions about humanity and the life in prison the guards
instead of trying to help prisoners rehabilitate themselves au contraire they only push you lower
into the dirt the ones who do not want to be rehabilitated the ones whom society fears
these are the guys that the guards give good reports on just to get them out of here fast
and as soon as they get out then society suffers don't speak to me ever of justice and reform
sooner or later they are back inside back home and they get the best treatment guards you see
respect fame even when it is fame of a garbage pile have i told you what it is like between
prisoners the life here there should be solidarity to help each other but they eat each other up like
wolves i live in a jungle even though you have seen much and heard much it is only half reality
for the time being i don't know what you're talking about i don't know what you're talking about
one has to live in hell ah but don't think i'm suicidal what gets me through each day is
intelligence my only weapon here is intelligence it lifts me above the others the strong man is
the smart man not the man who is muscle bound no fall can break a man like me all right so he is a
cocky egotistical motherfucker now uh dude has no shortage of hubris chip on his shoulder can
be seen from space he's a very insecure volatile human being uh on the day of his release charles
is met by felix he's a very insecure volatile human being he's a very insecure volatile human
being he's a very insecure volatile human being he's a very insecure volatile human being three suits of
three suits of hand-tailored clothing or uh uh in route from sobrage in saigon he didn't get him
but he didn't exactly wanted him but they're coming maybe not as many uh several job interviews are
lined up and there is a party this very night to which charles is invited what a reception what a
fresh start uh he was given a really good chance now what a reformed life will he take it of course
not uh felix takes charles to a barber and to a store to pick out an outfit as a loan until his
relief where he'll meet his future wife chantal compagnon a girl from a suburb of paris barely 20
years old brought up in a traditional conservative catholic french family daughter of a butcher and a
housemaker she has a job at an office in paris where she files papers performs office work for
financial invest a financial investment company charles flirts hard with chantal at the party
he tells her that he is the son of a vietnamese millionaire uh he sits on the couch whispering
about a cafe in the car he swore he would tell her that he was the son of a vietnamese millionaire
take a tour someday and quote poetry to her uh later that night he reads uh chantal's palm
and art he said i have learned from an old gypsy woman okay uh despite all his elevated talk
earlier he is not reformed at all uh charles stayed with felix in the coming weeks the man
who helped him so much done so much for him but then charles that shady motherfucker wears out
his welcome he steals a bunch of shit from this dude's house and sells it to pay for new clothes
and dates with chantal fucking
just you know biting the hand that feeds him he gets caught gets kicked out but felix uh does not
abandon him probably showed up but doesn't uh charles continued to drop by at all hours to ask
felix for money to wax poetically about his love for chantal uh when charles was not ripping off
uh somebody or begging from the man who had done more from him again than anybody else outside of
his parents probably more from his parents more than his parents in some ways uh he's also working
hard to secure chantal's hand in marriage he loved bomb the shit out of her writing her love
letter after sappy love letter and proposing over and over and i'll share some of this uh sappy shit
right after today's second and two mid-show sponsor breaks thanks for listening those sponsors uh hope
you heard some deals you like please use our landing pages and discount code save money help
us continue to get sponsored thank you very much and now let us get saccharine one of charles's
letters said i fucking hate people who write shit like this eternal woman little girl you are my
i simply cannot bear the hours we are not together i feel like i see this in a french
my shitty french accent eternal woman little girl you are mine i know my accents suck but
they i'm using myself i simply cannot bear the hours we are not together i toss in my bed unable
to sleep summoning portraits of you that fills the walls of my room there is a god sherry and
he sends me to you pretty cringy both accent and content uh chantal kept trying to slow things down
we've known each other only a few months uh beyond that she was also worried about telling her
parents about the demanding new man in her life then in august of 1968 just a few months after
his release from prison uh charles picked up chantal in a fancy sports car he had quote
borrowed from a friend uh-huh i bet you can guess what happens here uh he was taken to a casino for
a night of gambling and drinks and route he speaks again of his urgent desire for marriage to this
beautiful woman uh he says he will be soon leaving paris for the far east uh then his father that his
father is dead and he's going to be living in paris for the rest of his life and he's going to be
dangling some alluring partnership in front of him
for this import-export business
in Saigon. That is not true. Actually, Sobhraj, his dad, had recently
written a letter to Felix declaring that under no conditions was his son
going to be welcome in Saigon. In addition to the motherfucker
being nothing but trouble, a war there is intensifying with U.S. President Lyndon Johnson
sending in what seem to be tens of thousands of new soldiers every month, and business is just
too unpredictable. Back to his night out gambling, at one point
that evening, Charles is up 6,000 francs, which was half of Chantal's
annual salary. But then he lost it all because he continued to play, because that's
how it works. Then blames Chantal for his losses. Driving home,
he's all fucking moody and sullen. He starts driving recklessly while a light
mist is falling, turning the pavement into glass. Chantal begs him, please slow down,
this is dangerous, but instead he turns up the radio, blasts the music loud enough to drown her out.
And then finally she shouts, all right, you win! I'll still marry you!
And that's a fucking crazy decision to make under those circumstances.
But you know what? She won't regret it, because things are going to go
so great for her and her marriage, obviously.
Charles laughed, lifted his foot off the pedal, but then noticed a police car behind him.
Excuse me, siren screaming. He was driving, of course, a stolen car.
And also without a driver's license. Oh, and he got nailed for speeding and reckless
driving. So he gets sentenced to eight months in a prison in Rouen now.
Would have gotten more, but Felix helped him again. Should have cut ties with him,
but didn't. Felix actually paid for a psychiatrist to work with him.
After a consultation, Charles did
what he did and manipulated the psychiatrist, and they wrote an encouraging
report to the judge. Fascinating case. Obviously, there was a psychological
deformity of image here that could bring on psychopathic states. This has
not yet happened. The boy is intelligent, highly so, and I believe that psychotherapy
could help him, if not cure him. Uh-huh. Charles also wrote to the
judge with his own thoughts on himself.
This is even more third person than before. This fucking lunatic.
Charles wrote the following about Charles.
Charles is a human being with paradoxical qualities. He has an intuitive intelligence,
fast comprehension, inability to cultivate his mind. Yet he is introspective in a morbid way.
He is pessimistic, often worried, doesn't trust people easily, hides a very real lack of confidence
in himself, has a tormented nature. He exploits 100% the weaknesses of those around him, is capable
of the blind fidelity of the Asiatic, is hungry for money and success, considering these to be
noble emotions, ambitions.
He has a small conscience, if any. His vanity is extreme, with a passionate desire to be liked,
but he never admits any vulnerability. He possesses the sentimentality and sexuality of
Don Juan, is the pathological sense of the, oh, excuse me, in the pathological sense of the term,
is capable of politeness, but calculatedly so, impulsive and aggressive. His life is a history
of running away. His explanation is he's trying to find a better life in a better atmosphere,
but of course he is really running away.
He is running away from himself. Wants people to feel sorry for him. He is a judge administering
punishment to himself, trying to make his friends and family feel sad and sorry. A brilliant actor.
He is a poseur extraordinaire, always running away from reality.
How the fuck do you think that would help?
If I'm the judge and I'm reading that, I'm like, all right, this douchebag needs to stay in for a
while. While Charles served a sentence, he and Felix have a falling out. Felix is pissed. He
has accountability. Well, good on Felix. Charles does not take well to Felix's criticism. Much like
his previous prison stays, Charles uses his time to learn some new skills. This time around,
takes a course in French law, writes several eloquent papers, one of which merited a provocative
well-done response from the instructor. He also continued to write Chantal love letters.
Of course. One of these read, my dearest, from the depths of my cell, I hear the other prisoners
crying every night. I hear the other prisoners crying every night. Darkness is the lonely hour. Darkness is the moment when a man holds on to the
tightest, to keep from going insane. I would be one of them were it not for you, for the memories
that live in my heart. What a joy you are. What a marvel. What a wonder. And now in a shady French
accent. I just will see your last letter with three for the grass enclosed. Do you know which
one I prefer? Oh, little girl, you surely know. It is the pose of you in the bathing suits with all
the best clothes on. I would be one of them. I would
perspectives on your beautiful body revealed. Let us close our eyes and dream, dream, dream that we
are lying next to one another. I must have your beautiful love until the last breath of my life
and then beg God to leave it all over. God will protect our love for it is an act of purity and
perfection. I can see that you are making yourself beautiful for me when I return. I will find a
beautiful little woman so perfect that she will be like a deity, a goddess who dares present herself
in front of me. Uh, would that actually be romantic coming from like a better person or is that always
cringy? Are there any lady suckers out there who'd like to get that letter? Like, is there ever a
circumstance where it would not set off alarms, but like just be a good thing? I mean, I love love,
but that feels like something else. It feels so desperate and phony to me. You know, he reminds me
of
fucking Pepe Le Pew. Anybody else?
Guess who? It is me. Oh, but pardon me, but permit me to introduce you myself. I am Pepe Le Pew, your lover.
Uh, I cannot pull up any old Looney Tunes cartoons without smiling.
Uh, I love those cartoons so much, but also
I
do have to add the, I have to qualify this. Pepe Le Pew has got to be the creepiest, cringiest
Looney Tune character ever. He was literally just a stalker, his entire shtick grabbing women who
wanted nothing to do with him and forced himself on them. I mean, that's, that's it. Like he had
literally no other qualities. That's pretty crazy. Uh, also fitting to use him for this week's creep.
I think, uh, this time around in prison, Charles gets some visitors while Felix stopped visiting
him after they're falling out. An old friend from Saigon came often and he would bring a container
of stew.
Uh, in an insulated jug. Okay. All right. Interesting that you give a large quantities of stew to someone
in prison. Uh, the next week he would be allowed to reclaim the empty stew jug whose contents had
been gratefully devoured. Then as soon as this man left the prison and was able, uh, it was,
excuse me, it was in a safe place. He would remove the false bottom of the jug and find a drawn
blueprint of a home in Paris worth burglarizing. Uh, the plan suggested possible approach and
escape routes. Motherfucker. Uh, when Charles was nearing the end of his sentence, he had almost
15,000 francs being held in an escrow account by this friend, the proceeds of his heist planning
on May 29th, 1969. Uh, Charles wrote Felix and begged for forgiveness. He wrote only 23 more
days until freedom. I count every minute. I look back on eight lost months, wasted months,
months of falling down months of thinking about a destroyed future months of remembering a lost
friendship of irreplaceable value. I need you Felix. This syrupy motherfucker kills me. Uh,
he continued with,
I want to confess my ungratefulness so that I will not leave behind in your mind is the image
of an ungrateful person with your blessing. Chantal and I will build our lives. We will find
the joy and happiness that is due to us. And to reclaim your friendship, I promise to put aside
the superficial, the lies, the cheating, your son, Charles, your son. That's fucking weird.
I mean, I'm not surprised you guys, this guy's a walking pile of daddy issues. Uh, Felix at the
time determined to not let Charles back into his life. He does not respond, but then Charles,
when he gets released from prison, he collects Chantal. The two of them set off on a European
adventure, uh, that he will pay with for his burglary, plenty of money. He'll see Felix soon.
He will send Felix postcards from all of the places they visit and Felix will forgive him
and then attend their wedding as a Charles's best man in late 1969, freshly married.
The two were on cloud nine when in the spring of 1970, they learn that they will have their
first child by year's end.
But then that very afternoon, the government of France informs Charles that his presence
is needed in the military for a minimum of 18 months. Uh, Charles won't make it that long.
A fellow soldier will later share, uh, with the press every day. Charles was either sick
or acting crazy. This guy was incredible. He was able to make his face turn pale and his
temperature go up. The moment the doctor put the thermometer in his mouth, he convinced him he had
a bleeding ulcer. Maybe the doctors knew he was acting, but they also reasoned that he was more
trouble and expense than he was worth. I feel like that's a good way of, uh, describing the
trials just from a lot of people's perspective, just more trouble than he was worth. Uh, after
returning home from service, Charles nearly immediately stole 6,000 francs from his little
sister this time. Cause he's such a piece of shit. She's furious, finds out, reports him good
for her. He is arrested, goes back to jail to await judgment. But then fucking Felix, Mr.
Savior complex turned enabler convinces his sister to withdraw the charges and even pays
her a substantial down payment on the debt Charles owed. You're fucking not helping Felix. Uh, Felix
also went before the court in a pretrial hearing and one more time preached a sermon on behalf of
Charles. Uh, the, the judge apparently was convincing. He agreed to release Charles
provisionally. Uh, but unless the money was repaid in full and soon the charge would be
reinstituted. So did Charles pay his sister back? Of course not. Are you kidding? Uh, daddy was in
town and he used all his money to impress daddy. So brothers, the tailor whom Charles has not seen
for almost a decade, not since he was banished from Saigon and put aboard a ship bound for Bombay
comes to France. Charles is determined to impress him.
He takes him dinner. The first night he is in town to someplace called Maxim's is high end
restaurant. And on his plate, he finds a gold watch. Chantal sat beside him, dressed in an elegant
expensive gown. Charles insisted
that on driving his father to his
next destination in Geneva.
As they're driving, Charles impulsively
stops at a jewelry store
outside of Paris, invites his
dad and bride to pick out any trinket,
anything that catches their eye. When both
decline, Charles selects a gold watch
band and a Swiss watch priced at
3,800 francs. But when
he goes to write a check to pay, the saleswoman refuses
to accept it because it's a Saturday, banks
are closed, account can't be verified.
Charles then puts on a dazzling show,
a little tease of what he's going to do for so many years
ahead, convinces her that he's a
man of means. Would he write a bad check
in front of his wife, expect it with child and
his dad? A distinguished and
wealthy visitor from the East? Of course
not. Well, she's convinced.
She takes his check. Then hours
later, while Charles is washing his
hands in the bathroom in this roadside
restaurant they've stopped at, Chantal breaks
down and sobs in front of his dad.
She tells her father-in-law that she and Charles,
they don't have any fucking money. He had
spent the week prior to his dad's arrival in frantic
pursuit of some money. He'd sold
some of their furniture, some of their clothing.
Strange and disturbing men had showed up to their
apartment after midnight with hidden parcels.
She said their bank account was not only
overdrawn, but closed entirely.
That this entire outpouring
of gifts was a farce.
Chantal will later say that when he
heard all that, Sobhraj just shook his head in
despair and said, let me tell you something.
You are married to a
number one crook.
The rest of the trio's drive together?
A little tense, a little uncomfortable.
Then dad left again with no more
intention of ever working with his son or giving him money
than he had had when he'd showed up.
And then when Charles returned from Geneva,
that slimy fuck asked to borrow an
old MG sports car from Felix
for the afternoon. Supposedly
to buy and bring a table back to his place, because that makes
sense, right? When you're buying furniture. I mean, obviously
you need a small sports car to haul it around
in. Well, Phoenix
does loan him the car and we'll
never see it again. Of course.
By nightfall, his
old restored MG was speeding out of
Paris, heading south. Baron Charles,
his distraught wife, and their few
remaining possessions. They will drive
it all the way to Greece.
From Greece, Charles
long ways. Has a plan to drive over
10,000 more miles across half the world into rural
Turkey, down through the deserts of Iraq and Iran,
into Afghanistan,
dodging the Himalayas, across
the corner of India, into Thailand, through
Cambodia, and finally to Vietnam.
I'm back, daddy!
While he's out of the country,
the French police build a case against him,
based mostly on him bouncing checks
for various items. He is sentenced
to a year in prison and absentia, and after
that, permanent expulsion from
France. Meanwhile,
Chantal's parents are devastated he had taken
their daughter out of the country. Also, Felix
will receive a letter from Charles, postmarked
September 11th, 1970.
Oh, I think I recently, in an episode, by the way,
said September 11th,
2011, instead of 2001, for the terrorist
attacks. I. slip of the tongue. Anyway,
I think I recently, in an episode, by the way, said September 11th, 2011, instead of 2001, for the terrorist attacks. I. slip of the tongue. Anyway,
this September 11th was 1970,
and it was sent from New Delhi, India.
It said,
Forgive me. I did not have the
courage to tell you that I was leaving,
knowing it would make you sad. And if I
had seen you, I could not have kept my decision
to leave France. Please understand
that I only wanted to break with my awful past
and not with you. I can never
forget these years. We worked together,
and you pulled me out of the mud, where I
was mired. You helped me find myself,
my being, my potential, how
you brought me happiness,
and I was able to find myself, my being, my potential, how you brought me happiness,
and joy I had never known before.
I know now that my destiny
is here in the East. Chantal
and I are going to Saigon,
where we will join my father. P.S.
The car has served us well.
No mechanical problems. It is
like you whispered inside the engine
and told it to take us to India.
All the problem was going to Turkey.
1,500 kilometers of
bad roads, dirt, rocks, a wife
who kept throwing up.
Can you fucking imagine
getting that letter from a dude who just stole your
fucking car? Fucking balls
to tell you how the ride's been. Ah, I just
want to thank you for keeping your car in good condition.
I mean, I kind of roughed it up going through Turkey, but, you know,
it's not bad. A little beat up, but not bad.
It's going to be hard to feel
sorry for Felix
if he ever takes Charles back, which he will.
During their long
sojourn from France to Saigon,
Charles and his bride will stay in luxury hotels,
running up tabs in the bars, buying
luxury goods from boutiques by writing bad
checks, then skipping town
just over and over again.
As Chantal enters the final months of her pregnancy,
the couple moves from New Delhi to Bombay.
There, on November 15th, 1970,
Chantal will deliver a healthy baby
daughter in Bombay's finest hospital.
And they will name their daughter Usha.
The couple thrived in those
first few months in Bombay, off other people's
money. Charles was getting more and more skilled
at conning people. He found
immediate acceptance at the Alliance
Franchois, this international club
with, you know, chapters all over the world.
The goal of this club is to spread the French language
and culture as far and wide as possible
He ingratiates himself so much
here that the associate director offers
the handsome fuckface and his beautiful wife
and baby a guest apartment for very little rent
until Charles can find something more
suitable. For three months, he will live as a
guest, Charles will, and be
admitted to cocktail parties and official receptions
for various dignitaries.
Guessing he also never paid any rent.
And then Charles found a new business opportunity
in Bombay. A lot of wealthy people
there who wanted to drive expensive, ideally
American cars. These were
scarce, very expensive, basic
Chevy would cost 25 grand if obtained
legally, and only then after a
very, very long wait, and a lot of red tape.
Through his recent contacts
in the diplomatic world, Charles had met a bunch
of film stars and business execs who
wanted these cars, and did
not care how they got them.
So Charles would now take an order for
say a Mercedes, and request a
this is a scheme, you know, okay, take an
order for like a Mercedes, Mercedes, request
a $2,000 deposit in some hard currency
like Swiss francs. He would then fly
to Tehran, Iran, purchase a
stolen Mercedes that had been driven there from
Europe, after it had been picked off of some street
in a place like Paris, have new
ownership papers forged, making Charles
a legal owner, then drive it back to India,
where in Bombay, he would go to a
garage where he and a mechanic would strip it of its
radio, air conditioning unit, spare tire,
most of its vital innards, then
just barely able to drive it, he would take
the wounded car to a
I don't actually know what, I'm going to take the air
conditioning part back, I don't know if it had that.
But he would take a bunch of its little parts
off of it, and then drive the wounded car
to a forest outside of Bombay, where he would
stage a minor wreck, like a little fender bender,
something like that. He would then call the police
to report the car as stolen. And why
would he do all this? Well, to obscure
his name from the ownership records.
Pretty soon, the police would find it, notify
Charles, he would curse and sigh, consign
it to an auction dealer to sell his junk.
Charles would then know the day and moment it was
going to be auctioned. He would put in a secret bid
the name of his customer, buy the car
back for pennies in the customer's name,
put all the equipment back in, repair the fender,
transfer the papers, sell it to the customer,
for $20,000. And he'd
repeat that hard-to-trace crime
process five or six
times over. And he would use the money
he made to lease a swanky apartment for he and
his family in Bombay. But
while Charles is thriving now,
Chantal is starting to fall apart.
A letter she wrote to a friend back in France around
this time read,
I don't know if that's true or not, but that is kind of extreme.
I just point to things I need done.
Nobody understands me. My beloved
husband travels on business most of the time.
Usha is beautiful and my salvation.
If I didn't have my adorable daughter,
I would be very unhappy.
She's very lonely. She's lonely because
Charles, well, she doesn't know anybody there
other than Charles. And Charles is leaving
his family for long stretches of time to travel
for some scams or to gamble.
He's crisscrossing through Asia and Europe,
hitting casinos, you know. I imagine
fucking around with his wife, leaving Chantal
completely in the dark. Chantal's
diary, which later would fall into police hands,
reveals her desperation. On February
20th, 1971, she wrote,
Waiting for my husband with impatience.
February 21st, I'm a bit worried.
Where is he? February 22nd,
I'm more than worried.
February 23rd, I'm very anxious.
February 24th, God
help me, my baby. Where is Charles?
Please send him back to me.
March 4th, finally
news. My beloved is on his return
journey. March 12th,
at last he is here. My heart
sings. And then just two days
later, March 14th, despair.
Gone again. Bombay to
Hong Kong. Now we die a little
until he returns.
In June of 1971, Charles
moved his wife and daughter to a hotel in
Macau, a city that belongs to China
again at this time, but belonged to Portugal
in 1971. So he could be
near this big casino he preferred to gamble at.
And so Chantal would stop, you know,
complaining about him always being gone.
Well, this move does not help Chantal.
She comes down with dysentery.
And whenever Charles loses at the casino, he
blames her. You know, it's her fault. He has bad luck.
Takes it out on her. Gone are
his sweeping declarations of love and affection.
No more love bombing. Chantal
finally had enough, wrote her parents a desperate letter
asking them to please cable airfare
home to Paris for her and their child.
Back comes a prompt answer.
They would love to, but they don't have the money.
They can't afford those tickets.
Following that, Charles once again leaves his
wife and daughter behind and sets off on another
quote-unquote business trip.
In June of 1970,
Chantal writes four desperate and
impassioned letters to Charles,
her tears actually falling on the pages and
staining them. In each, she pleads for him
to please return, rescue his wife and daughter
from, quote, the psychological hell of Macau.
She begs him to abandon
his gambling, his, quote, violence towards
her, and his dreams of great wealth.
All she and the baby want is for Charles
to be with them. A thatched hut on a beach would
serve just as well as a palace.
Right? He gets another chance to fucking turn things
around. Charles now
instead, given his baby girl a taste of the
childhood that he had, right? Repeating
part of his cycle. He will not
return.
Macau, a dangerous city for him at the moment because he owes that casino there that he likes to go to that is not named $40,000.
To pay them back, he's planning quite the robbery.
He wants to rob the Grand Ashok Hotel and its jewelry store.
The Ashok, really just the jewelry store.
The Ashok had been built in 1956 by the first prime minister of India to house or to host, rather, world leaders and dignitaries for the ninth UNESCO conference held in New Delhi.
The Ashok showed the world that India could host presidents and royalty, that they were no longer an impoverished former colony but a world power, an equal, a dignified host.
It proved they didn't need to rely on British-run establishments to represent the country and that the state could create something modern, homegrown, and impressive without private capital or foreign branding.
During the summer of 1971, with Chantal and Usha still in Macau with almost no money to live on, Charles lived lavishly at the Obroi Intercontinental, a hotel that had opened in New Delhi in 1965.
The Obroi Intercontinental is India's first modern international five-star hotel, under assumed names, while the Ashok Hotel and its jewelry stores were scrutinized.
This heist Charles was planning would put George Clooney's Danny Ocean from Ocean's Eleven to shame, if he were to pull it off.
Charles partnered with a guy named Maurice to bankroll the heist.
He flew to Tehran to purchase a pneumatic drill, flashlights, walkie-talkies, other tools, the quality merchandise available in Tehran, considered by the underworld superior to that of any other Asian city at that time.
He recruited Charles to the Obroi Intercontinental.
He recruited two more guys in Karachi, Pakistan, both French, both named Pierre, Pierre One and Pierre Two.
From a New Delhi printer who did not ask questions, Charles had business cards of the highest quality printed up, introducing him in discreet raised script as J. Lobo, director of the casino at Macau.
On a late October night in 1971, he and his small crew put their plan into action.
They broke into the room of one of the hotel's Rouge Noir Cabaret nightclub, its most renowned performers.
This dancer, whose room just happened to sit directly above the jewelry store.
The men tied up the performer and told her that if she screamed, she'd be killed.
Then they started to drill through the floor.
They drilled all night, but the first drill bit snapped in two.
Then a second snapped as well.
They couldn't penetrate the floor.
Frustrated, Charles pulled out a building plan of the hotel from his briefcase, poured over it, came up with a new plan.
An air conditioning duct seemed to lead from the second floor of the ceiling just above the jewelry shop.
You know, down there you could crawl into it.
So he tried to crawl in, but it didn't work.
It was just a little too narrow, despite his slim frame.
So a third plan quickly devised.
He tried to obtain some acid to eat through the floor, but none of his underworld associates could get it to him fast enough.
So now he throws a Hail Mary.
He holds a gun to the dancer's head.
Tells her, call down to the jewelry store.
She does.
She asks the salesman, who answers the phone, to bring a sample of his best wares up to her suite.
She is indisposed, unable to come personally to the shop.
Her orders are explicit.
She sends back the first round of gin.
The next round of gems, then, saying they're not fine enough.
Not, you know, high quality enough.
The next time, the owner of the shop himself walks up personally.
He brings a breathtaking array of jewels, a necklace of gold and rubies, matching earrings that would cascade to the shoulders,
an elephant brooch of exquisite jade with emeralds, rings with sunbursts of sapphires.
Once the case is open, Charles pops out of the bathroom with a gun,
then leaves the owner and the dancer with the two Piers,
takes a key from the jewelry store owner, makes his way back down to the shop.
Downstairs, he robs the rest of the store,
then takes the jewelry store owner, makes his way back down to the shop.
Then he takes the jewels and a suitcase to fly out of New Delhi,
while the two Piers leave the city by train to Bombay.
From there, they will catch a flight.
They're all supposed to rendezvous shortly in Tehran.
But when Charles makes it to his airport gate, he runs into a problem.
He had paid for his ticket in Indian currency,
but that was not allowed except for citizens, which he is not.
Foreigners have to pay in hard currency, like American dollars, British pounds, you know, francs, the like.
Charles tries to bargain with them, but they will not make an exception.
Then, as the argument escalates, it attracts the attention,
of some nearby police.
Charles panics, tells the clerk he has a bathroom emergency,
runs in there, supposedly leaves the fucking briefcase with the jewels in the bathroom,
slips out of the airport, and catches a train to Bombay.
That's what he claims.
I bet he just fucking took that shit for himself.
Did he do that? Go through all that trouble, then ditch the jewels?
I doubt it.
He later wrote a friend about that night, saying,
I would have happily gone through that entire experience again.
I felt alive every moment and dead when it was over.
So he makes it to Tehran with no jewels, allegedly,
somehow his associates there don't murder him.
Maurice, his financial backer, instead wants him to rob a small bank in Bombay to make it up to him.
So Charles sends word to Chantal for her and Usha to meet him there.
But then, Charles will not make it.
Instead, on November 12th, 1971, he's arrested on charges of car theft and fraud.
One of his long-ago customers, a lawyer to whom he had sold one of the imported European automobiles,
had recently been arrested for illegal paperwork.
And he had revealed that the seller of the Mercedes he was driving,
had been one Charles Sobrash.
The lawyer had given police a detailed and accurate description of him.
Charles exploded with wrath.
He's outraged over this case of mistaken identity.
He reaches for his identification papers.
In his breast pocket, he normally carried a false passport to smooth over uncomfortable encounters like this.
But he inadvertently withdrew, as well, one of the calling cards,
saying,
As every newspaper in India had for the past week carried breathless details about the, you know,
Ashtook Hotel Jewelry Store robbery,
it did not take long for police to realize a major fish had ended up in their net.
At the time of Charles' arrest, police confiscated a number of revolvers, rifles, and other weapons from him.
Chantal's diary entry for that day read,
Charles quickly gave a detailed confession in French, hoping he could claim later it had been mistranslated.
Then, several days after his arrest, at a magistrate court appearance, Charles suddenly doubled over,
in what appeared to be excruciating and genuine pain.
A decision was made to perform an appendectomy.
It was more than Charles had bargained for, since, you know, he's faking all this.
He only wanted admittance to the hospital for, like, a stomach bug for a day or two,
during which he was, you know, going to try and find a way to escape.
Instead, now he has a surgery he does not need, and they actually do operate on him,
and remove a perfectly good appendix.
Then, a few days later, while Charles is recuperating in a private room, guarded 24 hours a day,
on the night of December 4th, 1971, Chantal is permitted to visit him.
And while they visit, the guard apparently falls asleep,
and Charles convinces Chantal to steal the handcuffed keys off the guard,
and to switch places with Charles.
Jesus Christ.
She does this, and it works.
For a day, he gets caught within 24 hours.
And now, not only is he put in jail, but so is Chantal,
and their baby is placed in state custody.
This guy's a non-stop menace.
To a friend in Paris, Chantal wrote,
All I want to do is leave this part of the world and come back to civilization.
Friends.
And I never. want to see Charles again.
Charles now obtained a private lawyer,
who visited Saigon on his behalf to ask his dad for help.
He found out Mr. Sabrage aged, obese, and dying.
The lawyer told him that his son was in prison,
and that he needed 40,000 rupees for bail,
that his son promised to pay back.
And his son, of course, loved him very much.
Charles' dad, surprisingly to me, gave him the money.
And with that money, Chantal was at least able to send Usha back to France
to be cared for by her parents, the baby.
And Charles posted bail for he and his wife.
And then they immediately skipped bail.
He and Chantal left New Delhi for Bombay,
where Charles purchased two crudely forged passports on the street,
used those to get into Pakistan,
where more genuine-looking passports were for sale.
And then they used those to get into Kabul, Afghanistan,
where Charles promised his wife that they would stay only briefly
while he attended to more business.
They would stay in Kabul for two months.
Then, when they finally tried to leave,
Charles is arrested again in the airport for not paying their hotel bill.
It fucking never ends.
Chantal, penniless, has to stay on the street,
has to sleep on the street for a couple days
until two men find her, men Charles had sent for her.
They give her a note, a false passport, another one, and some money.
And in the note, Charles apologizes for the small spot of trouble.
Charles is then sentenced to at least six months in a Kabul prison.
This terrifying place, the color of mud, built into a hillside
with huge, thick medieval doors with leather and studs.
A cellmate of Charles is called Red Eye.
That's fun.
And he apparently said,
that Dazang Prison was rock bottom.
That nothing was provided for prisoners save a cell to confine them,
no food was served,
and unless an inmate had funds to purchase it,
if not, he would just wither and die.
No blankets were available, no medicine,
no protection from the rats,
from occasional venomous snakes slithering about.
Unlike the French prisons that Charles had previously been in,
here, if a prisoner had money,
he could hire an errand boy, interesting,
who could be dispatched to the bazaar outside the prison walls,
where food, supplies, or drugs could be purchased and brought
brought back in.
What the fuck?
What in the third world is happening here?
Charles was in the Mazang.
There we go.
The Mazang for just a few days
before he decided how he would escape.
He determined that a tunnel could be dug
from the floor of the mud hut underneath the wall
and then surface once again at the edge of that bazaar.
He bent a teaspoon, crouched down,
made a modest scratch on the rock-hard earth.
Over the next few months, supposedly,
he and some other inmates did start to dig a tunnel,
but they got caught and they got beat half to death.
Then months later,
Charles chloroformed a guard, though,
and allegedly walked out of the prison
and started heading for Tehran.
He later claimed the following happened after that.
I left Kabul.
I left my wife there to look after the charges against me.
I'm sure she was thrilled.
I went first to Pakistan, bought a forged passport.
So many fucking passports being bought.
Then I went to Karachi and Tehran,
where I stole the passport of an American businessman.
I flew to Rome in mid-1972 using this American's passport.
In Rome, I remained only a few hours
and then flew to Paris to visit my mother-in-law
and pick up my daughter, Usha,
who was very glad to see her father.
We telephoned Chantal in Kabul,
sang a song to her on the phone,
the telephone. We then flew to Rome, then to Copenhagen, stayed for two days. Then I hired a
big Fiat, paid $150 advance deposit, drove with Usha to Yugoslavia, and was then headed for Bulgaria.
I purchased about 20 passports from some hippies in Rome near the Spanish steppes. These were
professional hippies, so I was fully satisfied that the passports were clean. When I got to the
border crossing between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, everything was fine until my daughter spilled
water on the car seat where my passport was resting. It got wet, and the customs authorities
became suspicious. They told me to pull my car to the side, and when they opened the luggage trunk,
they found the 20 passports I had purchased in Rome. There was no important official at the
border at this hour of the night, about 11 p.m., so they took me to a village about 11 kilometers
from the border. The car was detained by customs authorities. They told me to report the next day
at 9 a.m. to see the chief. My daughter and I had had a late supper, and then we decided to leave.
We took a taxi all the way across Yugoslavia to Italy.
Well,
that was some taxi driver. And then he wrote, oh, I forgot to say that along the way I managed to buy
so many fucking passports. I managed to buy two new passports, one for me and one for my baby girl.
We put our pictures on them and changed the names. It was as easy to cross the border back into Italy.
We flew to Rome. There I was able to buy 10 new passports, all good ones, and I flew next to Beirut,
not a good city for my line of work. Then we went to Pakistan and finally back to Tehran,
where my wife Chantal was supposed to join us. We stayed at the
Hilton. I met an Italian girl at the Hilton whom I had known earlier in my career. She managed to
get one passport. Why the fuck does he have to get this many fucking passports? She managed to get
one passport from me from a businessman. And when this man reported the theft, the Italian girl was
arrested. She informed the police about me. I was picked up. My daughter was put in the care of the
French embassy, Jesus Christ. Usha was sent home to Paris to live with her grandparents, and I was
convicted on passport fraud and given six months imprisonment. My wife Chantal flew from Tehran,
from Kabul, came to see me in Paris, and I was sent home to Paris to live with her grandparents.
Then on my advice, left for France. That was a lot. That was a lot of ping-ponging.
The report that Iranian police would compile on Charles' activities in 1972 alone would reveal
that he called himself Dr. Jalian Clare, Charles Sounder, Adolf Nomer, Dr. Marshall Golian,
and Salim Haradi. He represented himself to be everything from a professor of classical
literature at the Sorbonne to an Arabian oil sheik. His principal endeavor during this period
seemed to be trafficking stolen gems and stolen passports. The arrest in the Tehran Hilton was
Chantal's breaking point, her final straw. She went to the French embassy for help. They were
giving Chantal a ticket back to France where she could file for divorce, and she would. She would
change her name. She was at her parents' house by Christmas Eve, 1972. Meanwhile, this whole time,
Charles had been writing Felix letters. Charles loved to write a letter. Felix no longer indulging
Charles at the time, but had taken André. Charles had taken André, and he had taken André. André had
his younger half-brother under his wing. What the fuck? Get away from this family!
Felix helped André find a small flat, loaned him some furniture, and got him a job as an
apprentice clerk in an insurance office. Why was he doubling down on this family?
Then one summer night in 1973, the telephone rang in André's apartment. As André would later recall,
the voice that was instantly recognizable. It is Charles. It is time for you to become a man.
I'm in Istanbul.
I'm sending you a plane ticket. There are two kinds of people in this world,
those who take risks and those who don't.
Well, like a fucking idiot, André leaves his life in France, his comfortable life,
and heads to Istanbul. Oh man, risks do not have to involve constant crime. In Turkey,
Charles told his brother to call him Alain Gouthier. That's who he's going by now.
And to go, sorry, and he starts training him, making him study karate, philosophy,
current events, so he can sound smart and grift people. Makes him learn multiple things,
languages for their world travels. Charles also tells his brother to never use anything that can
be used as evidence against you later, if possible, like weapons, right? No guns, no knives and no
drugs. You don't deal them. You don't use them. Uh, Charles and André plan on taking advantage of
the young people on the hippie trail now, right? Like he's bought these passports from a bunch of
hippies over the years. He's like, uh, starting to target them in the sixties and early and mid
seventies. It had become quite popular for young counterculture youth to drive Volkswagen buses and
the like along this so-called hippie trail. And he's like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to
this alternative silk road, modern silk road that wound through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, Nepal. This trail would take people through places like a go India where hippie
beach community slash commune had developed. And, uh, the road, but really just travel route would
spread further into Thailand, Indonesia, even Australia. And along every major stop of the
hippie trail, you know, there were hostels, hotels, restaurants, cafes, catering to Westerners
who would network with each other as they traveled east.
And West, a lot of people hitchhiking, a lot of weed and opium being smoked, a lot of yoga being
practiced, probably a lot of nudity, a lot of free love, fucking guitars are being played.
Drums are being beat. Cultures are crossing, but then the route will become too dangerous to be
commonly traveled by the 1980s. Uh, thanks to a bunch of war and revolution. It sounds like quite
the fucking adventure for somebody young and curious. And these two assholes want to try and
ruin it. Years later, Andre will recall how easily Charles recruited their prey saying he had
power over women. Give Charles a few hours around a girl. And even if she were convent educated and
the daughter of a police inspector, she would usually do what Charles asked her to do. He
represented mystery, intrigue, and romance. He was a woman's fantasy of one moment of adventure
and danger. All right. Uh, Charles and Andre, I mean, I will say he was a good looking dude,
old picture of him. I'll give him credit. He dressed very cool, you know, very charismatic.
Uh, Charles and Andre built up a team of loyal, beautiful hippie women to help them steal from
other hippies. Now,
hippie on hippie crime, those Judas's, uh, over several months in late 1973, Charles and Andre
and their cohort successfully robbed a bunch of tourists around Istanbul. Charles also stole and
smuggled a lot of passports. Uh, Interpol, the world's largest international police organization
will later state that, uh, Charles robbing tourists helped them or helped him evade local
police notice as his victims were usually only around for a few days, right? The transient people.
Uh, but then he and Andre got arrested on a trip to Athens.
Heading down to Greece from Turkey. After their arrest, Charles proposed an escape plan.
What if we switched identities? What if you pretend to be me and I pretend to be you? Think
about it, Andre. Uh, they only really want me. I have the record. So let me be you. And since you
have no record, they will then let me walk. Then once I have exited, you tell them that you are you
and then they let you walk. It's so clean. Uh, Andre reluctantly agreed to this bullshit,
and it would fuck him. Let's find out. Let's find out how in today's time suck timeline,
uh, where we have more concrete dates for things going forward
and where Charles will enter a new era of his crimes.
Trap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline.
On April 26th, 1975, after receiving a very light sentence,
because people thought he was Andre, they actually fucking do this.
Charles succeeded in escaping while being taken to a prison on some Greek Island,
uh, by lighting a fire in a prison van and then slipping away amid the smoke.
When Andre heard that Charles was free, like they had planned, he tried to correct, uh, the, uh,
officials there, let the prison warden know that I'm not Charles. I'm Andre. Uh, the authorities
didn't give a fuck. They were like, fuck you. And they give him an 18 year prison sentence. Damn.
Uh, or rather his 18 year prison sentence that he already been given was not changed.
Uh, and his half brother, Charles just left him to rot. Never came back to try and help him
just over a week later, uh, May 4th, 1975, Charles is aboard a 747 on the way to new Delhi from
Tehran traveling by the alias of Elaine Gutierre again, uh, Gutierre or Gutierre had made friends
with two travelers on the flight. The two travelers coworkers from France who, uh,
worked as reservation clerks and were headed out on a 10 day vacation in India.
Uh, Gutierre told them he was a professional photographer, uh, uh, we had traveled in India
and he would be delighted to help them not be taken advantage of by the locals.
Uh, he offers to help them rent a beautiful houseboat, go on an adventure. And they agree.
Uh, when they go to rent the houseboat, they realized they get a much better deal
if they split with a third group. And so they make friends with a couple from Quebec, Canada,
uh, Marie Andre Leclerc and her friend Jules. And Charles, uh, thinks that, uh, Marie Andre is fucking hot.
She is almost identical to my ex-wife Chantal. Uh, the five of them rent a houseboat named the
Sultan's Embrace and set off on adventure. Sultan's Embrace, typical houseboat built by
British tourists in the 19th century who were unable to purchase land in Kashmir,
uh, who were able to lease water rights though, uh, 90 feet long, 15 feet wide built of teak and
mahogany, you know, very intricate carvings. Uh, the boat is permanently anchored on an inlet of a
dull lake, beautiful lakes surrounded by gold and pink Lotus blossoms. Each couple,
takes a private bedroom. It's very romantic. Elaine, uh, or, uh, you know, Elaine, which
Charles, uh, moves into the third. The moment they stepped foot onto the Sultan's Embrace,
Elaine took over, uh, became the de facto captain of the ship, a master of everyone's life.
Uh, first night at dinner, Elaine bragged about his many accomplishments, telling the others,
he is a French national champion in karate, decorated military hero, uh, and the professor
of a law degree from the Sorbonne. Oh, and he's also, uh, photographed leopards and
Kenya. Oh, and also served in the front lines, uh, during the Vietnam war as, uh, some kind of
Rambo motherfucker.
nothing is over nothing you just don't turn it off elaine uh flaunts his muscles takes his shirt
off a lot you know does karate stances for these women and it works i mean i will say around his
age he's like 31 now he did have this kind of like bruce lee vibe be going for him uh marie andre
she eats it up she falls hard over the next few days elaine rents a car takes a group to the
village of gulmurg where one of the world's highest golf courses spreads out at 8 700 feet
above sea level it's breathtaking on the last night and the sultan's embrace then charles
seduces marie andre oh we will uh the next morning the french duo leave to return home
while elaine stays with marie andre and the third wheel jules elaine now takes control of
marie andre and jules's vacation and on may 14 1975 he insists oh we must go uh further into
katmandu uh then there after just a few days in nepal he insists they need to go to bangkok
second day in bangkok uh jules is hit with terrible diarrhea and insists that marie andre
continue on without her touring with elaine very likely based on what happens coming uh next uh
coming along in the timeline that charles drugged her and gave her these stomach issues elaine now
tells uh marie andre that all of his closest friends call him charles yeah of course they do
uh marie andre and jules then they fly back home to quebec may 25th uh marie andre will tell her
smith a very important businessman who is rich and looks like bruce lee he wants to fuck a pussy
in bangkok he wants to fuck my pussy in bangkok so uh some version of that is what he told her
all right i don't fucking know what she told him uh then just days later the love bombing began in
earnest right he likes to love bomb and the letters start to pour in the first letter to arrive was
kind of a poem i guess eternal woman eternal love eternal petite andre i love you i adore you come
back to me charles all right i think he pronounced her name like andre andre i love you i adore you
come back to me uh next was a quick note uh petite femme adoree i love you i want you to become my
wife i need your your presence your love i want you to believe in our love sherry true we must
not make decisions quickly but these opportunities they do not repeat themselves every day it is
necessary to know in life sherry when to seize the opportunity
when you want it my love you can become my wife i kiss you tenderly my love i adore your body my
darling oh a smile was all you gave to me
and we will be as happy as can be
he fucking he is pepula pew uh 14 postcards arrived from pepula snake uh in one day at one
point each embarrassingly nauseatingly encrusted with love from charles uh then he started love
bombing her with telephone calls uh each day of june marie andre would rush home to check her
mailbox and to sit by the phone and wait for her lover uh june 28th in singapore charles goes to
the hyatt to visit a cartier jeweler rep he had met previously in hong kong over breakfast borrows
the keys to the guy's room guy trusts him and he fucking robs him blind uh takes a bunch of silk
shirts just delivered from the tailor two new suits a silk robe two calculators a camera a
crocodile skin attache case uh before he left he went to the front desk with the room key asked for
the key to the safe deposit box for this guy which he got and then he cleaned that out finally after
buying five diamond rings with this poor bastard's credit cards he flies on to bangkok just wrecking
and ruining lives wherever he goes and we still haven't even got to the murders on june 29th
charles sent uh two letters that would drive maurie angers to give up her life in canada
and fly halfway around the world to join him
so he can fuck a pussy in bangkok a quote from the first uh my darling i love you more and more
and desire strongly that you have my child i would love for you to be my wife and the mother
of my children and then the second during the past couple of days in colombo i met the three
swiss couples from geneva they had come to adopt a baby this meeting made me desire more strongly
for us to have our own child we'll be able to have our baby by the end of 1976 what do you think my
darling because by then we will be stable i have so many places and so many things to show
i desire your body and your creases my sherry adoree i want to fuck your pussy in bangkok
i am your guide to love no together we shall explore the heights of delight
mm-hmm the conquest of everest will pale into insignificance
we shall ascend the matter home of
mm-hmm
uh maria marie andre he is like a cartoon character uh leaves for bangkok she does she
she does to be fair i've been saying silly things but she does go to bangkok technically to get a
pussy fuck on august 1st 1975 uh on the plane ride she decides to start a journal her first entry
read i'm arriving in bangkok i feel like i just like a just married girl coming for the first
time to the bed of her husband nervous but happy by the thought of a journey to be taken and
possessed by the man she loves see okay uh all while sending marie andre the love letters and
begging her to come to bangkok uh while he's doing this all the while uh charles is also
like father like son fucking other women juggling multiple girlfriends uh one of which is a thai
sales girl for a jewelry shop named anne chaipong uh he was a frequent customer at her shop
frequently bought her gifts love bombed her as well on the way to pick up uh marie andre from
the airport he visits anne he tells her
hey i gotta i'm meeting a friend from canada who's arriving to join my business
he then uh leaves to fetch marie andre brings her back to anne's shop oh heartless she had just
flown more than 20 28 hours to get there when they step inside the shop charles introduced
the two and introduces her as a friend says uh this is anne my girlfriend and this is marie
andre who has come from canada to be my secretary that is a fucked up bait and switch charles also
tells marie andre to go to bangkok and she says i'm meeting a friend from canada who's arriving to
go to bangkok and marie andre is too embarrassed apparently to turn around and go home uh she will
write in her journal i find my love rather distant giving me the impression of not wanting us to be
intimate i am disappointed yeah she does not get her pussy fucked she is quite disappointed uh
after the second day the only word is disappointed disappointed by his behavior towards me i have
the feeling of not being able to please him i have the feeling that his love for me is not that deep
and the worst of it is that i shall have to play the role of a secretary toward a woman he wants to be with
to conquest he will he will fuck her pussy but he will not feel my pussy will give cobwebs it will
roll dusty and shrivel up after all that love bombing pepe uh you're a dirty motherfucker uh
marie andre had just a two-week visa but she had brought a two thousand dollars in cash all her
savings to get herself home if things didn't work out and when charles finds out he said that she
has that money oh he is suddenly so sweet again that's weird he tells her i'm only dating anne
for pretend because i need something from her to set up my gem business and now marie andre is dumb
enough to loan him a thousand dollars she will of course never get back uh marie andre's visa
expires august 15th charles gets her an extension but also for doing her that favor wants another
five hundred dollars which she gives him so now she does not have the money to get home
she will write in her journal life is going on i've had two weeks of physical relations with
charles okay so that part worked out that finally gave me a sense of communication both physical and
spiritual
i got my pussy fucks in bangkok that's the good part uh some tenderness that is essential to me
i did after all give up my family and my country to be with my beloved
oh marie andre you poor honey fool uh september 6th an australian couple lays on the sand at its
high resort their stomachs raw and grumbling in the aftermath of a bout of painful diarrhea and
vomiting uh they have been spending the last couple of days with another couple jean and
monique belmont when the couple made it back to the railway hotel they found their passports
certificate driver's licenses and all other identifications stolen as well as they were
missing nine hundred dollars a camera and all of vera's jewelry jean and monique are of course
charles and marie andre uh charles uses this money to lease a flat called canada house that he will
use as a headquarters right so now he's getting used to drugging people and stealing from them
and he will take this further charles will take a wealthy tourist andre uh bruno uh shang mai
and on the back uh on the drive back to bangkok he will meet a young frenchman dominique
and bring him to conant house as the man uh is now sick with a stomach bug he's got him sick too
the next day andre uh aged 56 is found dead in a hotel room in uh chiang mai his death not
suspected of foul play at the time but some have thought many have thought charles killed him
drugging him in order to steal from him week later september 28th uh dominique ready to move
on from canada house he tells charles i need my passport and my money back
and then suddenly he gets very sick uh charles has spent the money and now drugs dominique to
keep him sick uh he is also trying still to set up that gem selling business a new face appears
for dinner one night at this time and uh marie andre at first mistakes him to be a customer
this indian man from new delhi named ajay uh chowdhury uh she will describe him as polite
quiet sexy and devilish handsome
you are so desperate to get your pussy fucked again uh charles introduces him as an old friend
but not specific as to uh when and where they had met perhaps it'd been an hour ago perhaps five
years one never knows over the next few days
Ajay quickly moves in, becomes second command, sort of a permanent shadow of Charles.
While Marie-Andrée gleans a few more bits of info about him, Ajay said he was the son of a New Delhi foreign car importer whose life veered towards the upper class, well-educated.
He's an apparent ne'er-do-well who has dabbled in a dozen New Delhi criminal schemes, has also worked as a model, worked in movies as an extra, worked in fashion, and does a little gigolo sex work from time to time to pay the bills when something else doesn't come along.
Now he's entering into some sort of partnership with Charles, or Alain Gaultier, as he knows him, and the two men are inseparable.
From this point on, Cannon House becomes crowded with a passing parade of visitors, all potential customers, and the coffee table is usually littered with white paper packages of gems, ashtrays, and coffee cups.
On October 15th, 1975, Charles and Ajay bring home an American girl now, Teresa Knowlton.
As soon as she walked in the door with her big smile and sat down on their cane sofa, it was as though she had brought a party.
She'd already made some friends in the area, a young couple from Amsterdam who had been on the hippie road for seven months, Cornelia Hemker, known as Kaki, which I love, I love this woman's name is Kaki, a tall, quiet girl with beautiful blue eyes, flowing, fair hair, she was with her boyfriend of five years, Hank Bumtans, Hank has an Indonesian mother, a Dutch father, and this group likes to go out drinking and to sex clubs, fucking swingers, hail Lusafina.
Three days later, an old man came across.
The dead body of a young woman in a yellow floral bikini in a Thai pool.
Unfortunately, it is Teresa Knowlton.
This is Charles's first known victim.
Much later, Charles will confess to knowing Teresa will check into the Malaysia hotel, and he had sent Ajay, his henchman, Ajay, excuse me, Chowdhury, to pick her up with all his talk of cheap gems.
After the visit to his flat, Teresa had been delighted to accept his invitation to join him for a weekend at Pattaya, another city in Thailand.
At Pattaya, excuse me, he said they went swimming, and she drowned.
He did not admit to her murder, but investigators are convinced that, yeah, he poisoned her.
October 27th, Charles brings home another guest.
His name is Vitaly, but people just refer to him as the Turk.
Two more young people become residents of Kennet House the next month in mid-November of 1975.
They are Canadian tourists.
We don't know their names, but they started having real bad stomach problems.
Charles was supposedly helping them with when he was likely poisoning them.
November 29th, a group of laborers walking along a road near the Siam Country Club golf course a few miles outside of the beach resort of Pattaya
came across the grisly sight of a smoldering human body, most of it ashes, a scrappish shirt, is the only bit of clothing left unburned, and it was Turk.
A Canadian is probably already dead, and now Turk is dead.
The night before, Charles and Ajay had gone out with him.
They drugged him and laid him down in the back of the car where Ajay handcuffed him to the bottom of the seat.
With Ajay's help, Charles un-gagged Turk, dragged him into a field where he broke his neck.
Laid rags all over him, doused him in everything with gas, and set him on fire.
And now, a downstairs neighbor of Kennet House, Nadine, starts to get suspicious about Elaine and Monique and all the guests, where they're going.
Charles is getting greedy and reckless.
He's encountering potential victims on a near nightly basis in bars and clubs and other places where tourists congregate,
cultivating multiple romantic relationships simultaneously, drugging and robbing people just with increasing frequency.
Lots of people are disappearing.
On December 8th, Cornelia "Cocky" Hemker and Hank Bumtans, who had left Bangkok for a few weeks, return, move into Kennet House,
start having some stomach problems, the same problems many of those around Charles seem to now have.
A week later, December 15th, Stephanie Perry, a friend of the now-dead Turk, arrived at Kennet House after previously receiving letters from Charles.
Nadine greets her as she comes into the building, and then notes that she disappeared the very next day.
Stephanie never seen alive again.
The Dutch couple from Amsterdam, Cornelia and Hank Bumtans,
leave Kennet House the next day, and maybe not voluntarily.
On December 16th, they are witnessed being half-carried, half-dragged down the service stairs and shoved into Charles' car.
He and Ajay drive away with their maybe-conscious bodies after midnight, do not return until it's almost dawn.
When they come back, they are alone, their pants are wet and muddy.
The first thing Charles does when he enters his apartment is to strip off his pants, tell Dominique to have them cleaned immediately.
Dominique smelled the odor of gasoline on them, but asked no questions and did not respond.
He then went to the police station and was arrested.
Two days later, the December 18th edition of the Bangkok Post carried a front-page article with a particularly grisly photograph.
The account reported that a young Australian couple, they should have been Dutch, not Australian, they got that part wrong initially,
had been found murdered, strangled and burned in a ditch alongside Highway 58, south of Bangkok.
After being strangled, Cornelia was also smashed in the head with a board before being drenched with gasoline and set on fire in the most fucked-up part about their deaths,
the strangulations had not killed them.
In the flames, investigators determined they writhed around and reached out for one another.
Dear God.
Four days later, on December 22nd, Nadine stopped by Cannath House and found that Monique, Elaine and Ajay had all headed out to Kathmandu a few days prior, right after those murders.
Charles and Marie-Andrée used the Dutch couple's passports to enter Nepal, so that's shady.
They were passed themselves off as gem dealers, had made friends with a group of two girls, and then left the house.
Charles and Marie-Andrée used the Dutch couple's passports to enter the house.
in his mid-twenties, interested in Eastern religion,
nursing vague intentions of writing a book that will contrast these with judaism another curious
spiritual seeker looking for a guy for someone to help him avoid being taken advantage of and
that will not work out of course on january 6th a maid entered the hotel room where avani jacobs
was staying sprawled naked across his cot the israeli's neck bore ugly purple marks he had
been drugged and strangled his credentials and valuables missing little was left save a few pages
of his notebooks one of which contained a uh an eerie final entry i would like to stay in veronica
until i understand more every exit is an entrance if one believes strongly enough life can be lived
without fear of death here one can almost touch what is hidden what is beyond yeah that's his
final entry uh meanwhile nadine feeling uh tremendous guilt for not already having gone
to the police she was worried about approaching the thai police as a french woman so now her
husband puts her in touch with the thai police and she's like oh my god i'm going to die
with a british diplomat who agreed to hear her concerns he listened but with obvious skepticism
and disbelief made what she deemed to be a few cursory notes and that was it but he would send
a report to the thai police but nothing would come of it despite one key line that should have caught
somebody's attention that said allegedly gautier in the course of his jewel business would frequent
the lesser-known hotels in bangkok picking up young persons whom he would discover had travelers
checks befriend them on the pretext of helping them buy gemstones take them back to his flat
where he would wine and dine them and then he would go to the thai police and he would
invite them to stay and ultimately extract their money and valuables disposing of them
in the manner of the dutch couple as in drugging them and killing them uh january 7th charles and
his current companions arrived in goa the former portuguese colony on the lower western coast of
india within hours charles zeroed in on three young frenchmen who were touring the countryside
in a van dude just does not waste time once you got a taste for killing people he stole from just
there's no cooling off period charles slipped away bought a quart of scotch whiskey
an expensive indulgence in india that cost 40 bucks or more at that time which was a lot
he got all three men drunk right on me fellas 36 hours later they woke up in a hospital somewhere
in the south of india frightened and confused with their heads aching and their memories foggy
their van they would soon learn had been totally destroyed all their personal belongings luggage
cameras radios passports money all that's gone uh so is a nice french couple and the indian man
whom they had met three days earlier in the brick market they were lucky to be alive it's believed
that three unconscious youths were killed in a van and they were killed in a van and they were killed in a van
were tossed into the back of the van then somebody started up the vehicle reached the speed of 60
miles an hour placed a rock on the gas pedal and then leaped out holy shit like a fucking movie
it appears that the van was supposed to just you know drive off of this cliff that would send it
tumbling down the rocks into the sea below uh certainly kill everybody inside but the driverless
vehicle swerved and smashed into a palm tree instead of violent collision that the drug
frenchman didn't even uh hear or feel nearby villagers heard it though they ran over to the
scene and pulled the unconscious victims from the wreckage and saved their lives
man charles already trying to get creative with his murders now uh per usual charles and crew stole
these guys's uh you know passports and used them for themselves to enter singapore i don't understand
how he was doing this either no one fucking checked passport photos back then or i guess
like he did mention once before they would just like cut out photos and put him onto these new
passports that must be that what they were doing uh charles left marie andre alone there for a
week now a diary entry of hers from this time reads day after day a small piece of myself is
out of me day after day i am hurt i am destroyed little by little but i'm still on my way even
though i fell in a ditch i still have hope and this hope is the only thing i have and i must
hold it onto it tightly if charles succeeds in taking me out of this ditch and puts me again on
the road i shall live if charles walks on my side and helps me to stay on the road then i shall go
very far and i shall regain my happiness he is the only man who can help me for i love him so much
that i can make only one being with him i can only exist because of him
i can only breathe because of him and my love is increasing okay so they're quite a pair they're
kind of made for each other uh he he she's the fucking female pebbly pew uh apparently
you who rub it so they will so they will wherever you
uh
flip
uh february 20th 1976 dutch diplomat
hermann nippenberg uh sitting in an office at the thai police headquarters talking to senior
officers he's taken the death of the two dutch tourists very seriously doesn't feel local police
are doing the same he's not happy when hermann left the office that morning morning though he
was reassured that two top-ranking police officials uh were personally involved now
that the crime suppression unit investigating was an elite unit of the thai police with many
of its officers having been trained by scotland yard when he returned to his office shortly
afternoon he found a thick envelope on his desk marked personal and confidential he told his
secretary to keep out any visitors closed the door began reading a report titled double murder on
the road to ayutthaya state of investigation this remarkable document contained a detailed
description of elaine gauthier of 504 kenneth house and a crazy amount of detailed evidence
the notes from nadine's report finally made it to somebody who really cared and had some
juice hermann reached out to nadine she agreed to help him now any way she could
speaking of nadine a few weeks later uh march 11th maurie andre called her up and invited her to come
shopping to the thai police office and she said i'm going to go to the thai police office and i'm going to
saying that elaine had told her she could go back to canada in a day or two and she wanted nadine's
help and shopping for some gifts to bring back after she got off the phone nadine rushed to the
dutch embassy to tell hermann he was stunned were these people going to just fucking come back home
and just walk right into their trap uh he called the crime suppression bureau got through to general
sui and told him what was happening and a raid was planned the next day on march 12th seven thai
officers ride the elevator to the fifth floor of kenneth house ready to burst through the door if
needed a few blocks away in his office the dutch embassy hermann waits staring into the
uh turns out no busting to the door would be needed doors wide open when the officers rushed
in with guns drawn at approximately 4 p.m they encountered a scene of domestic tranquility
in a chair maurie andre was reading philosophy nearby charles is sitting at the kitchen counter
working on his jewelry uh jay is standing nearby looking totally relaxed and sexy
uh for the next three hours the raiding party party turned charles's apartment upside down
scattering papers stripping bed linens uh pulling pots from the
kitchen shelves etc maurie andre sobbing and charles is protesting the barbaric and illegal
raid demanding to see a search warrant at 7 p.m the police take the suspects in a portable
safe uh to their headquarters the safe was uh they weren't able to get it open on site
no one remembered to call hermann until 10 p.m for six hours he was just in his office stewing
staring at the phone finally gets a call where a thai officer explains oh there was a mix-up
the man hermann said was elaine gutier turned out to be this american guy hermann asked that
they found uh you know what they found out about him he said he was a thai officer he was a thai officer
in the raid and they said not much hermann questioned how they knew he was american and
the officer insisted well they checked his passport and hermann is pissed off he's like
all this guy does is fucking steal passports all he does is deal in stolen identities
the officer lends uh hermann know that they're releasing the three the next day or until the
next day excuse me uh they had agreed to return for interviews hermann's losing his mind he's
convinced no they're just gonna leave officer tells him no that's not gonna happen they promise
they'd come back and we have their passports man some people are just not very smart next day
to uh the diplomat's surprise though on march 13th charles does reappear uh as ordered the next
morning uh police headquarters and marie andre and ajay are by his side in front of them a police
locksmith breaks open their small safe and it is empty charles is nodding rising to his feet i
imagine saying some of the effective i told you uh then he asked could he go now i have an important
lunch meeting to get to and he impatiently tapped on his gold watch uh they were just about to let
that motherfucker go but then an american sam anson from the dea the director of the police
enforcement agency strolled into the crime suppression bureau's office looked at charles's
passport told the other officers nope this is not real this is fake it was altered they got him but
then these fucking idiots lose him just literally a few minutes later charles marie andre and ajay
are told to sit down on a bench in the police station and await next steps they're not handcuffed
no one is assigned to closely watch them and so they're just like oh yeah okay no problem
and then a few minutes later when no one's looking they just get up and walk out
and immediately flee the country unreal herman beyond furious and at insult injury he also gets
in trouble at work for overstepping his duties trying to help get charles arrested uh no one
besides herman and nadine seem to really care about charles and his possible crimes at this
point the next month on april 6th nadine gets a postcard from switzerland it reads i didn't forget
you and hope to see you again soon i hope my dear nadine i will be able to show my gratitude
love elaine is he trying to fuck her too
or is this a threat is that a message of i know what you did you ratted on me and i'm coming back
i won't forget also in april charles's crimes are starting to be linked as a connection has
now been made between the deaths in nepal and the deaths in bangkok thailand uh charles and marie
andre were all over the headlines of various asian newspapers uh but they don't know that
because now they're now in paris it had taken them three weeks to get from bangkok to paris
after their escape from police questioning charles even picked up another one of his cronies a thai
gem dealer from uh uh chantapur
chentaburi tommy along the way chentaburi by the way small town with a big history in gems
less than 30 000 people live there but the town in the area around it has been called the colored
gemstone capital of the world for centuries ton of quality rubies and sapphires in particular have
been mined in this area and an industry of corresponding jewelers uh jewelry makers
gemstone cutters etc you know grew up around the mines another and he's you know he's all about
the gems now another stop on their route to paris was in malaysia there aj was able to acquire a
of gems that Charles was planning to resell in Europe,
and this stop last known sighting of ajay chowdhury it is believed that after he got the
gems charles wanted him to get knowing that ajay had no connections in france it would not be of
any uh use to him there financially charles just killed him another stop this is a guy who's like
his fucking buddy uh his protege another stop uh was in uh karachi pakistan where charles and marie
andre met mary ellen ether young nurse from australia who charles thought was hot this uh
27 year old charles is like the fucking dissekis guy the most interesting man in the world if that
guy was also evil right just i don't always drink beer but when i do i guess it'd be french right
i don't always drink beer but when i do i drink dosekis then i kill someone and set them on fire
and take their passport uh he tells marie ellen that he will call on her after his work in europe
is wrapped up just doing that shit right in front of uh marie andre after that they make it to paris
where charles has the balls to visit felix the guy he stole the car from
stole another ship from burned him after that guy had done so much for him so many times and
helped his brother felix doesn't tell him to fuck off uh he shares with him that andre the half
brother charles had also fucked over in greece or turkey rather with that whole let's trade
identities bullshit had been freed from the turkish prison in what was called a miracle
after only serving a few months that 18 year sentence for the istanbul hilton crimes uh andre
was pardoned one of many people pardoned uh one of the first acts of a new government was to order
a general amnesty holy shit i'm guessing he was still a little salty towards charles but he will
visit charles later in prison so you know what maybe they uh they patch things up which is
ridiculous charles also called upon his former in-laws when he returned to paris i doubt they
were happy to hear from him found out that his ex-wife and baby mama chantal had remarried moved
to america for a while uh but was back in paris because her mom was dying charles uh scares
chantal but will ultimately leave her alone luckily their daughter the girl charles had
abandoned was in the u.s. with her now abandoned and she's now living in paris for the rest of her
adoptive father so that's good that he's lost custody uh soon after making it back to france
international law enforcement finally starting to circle around charles interpol came with the
following message to bangkok on may 19th 1976 the discrete verification of address villa la roche
shows that wong fung chun ex-concubine of hot chand sobrajas is living there uh chun had two
children by sobraj one of them a son is recorded in our documents under diverse identities including
charles sobraj this hostile
individual is known for escaping and is under indictment in france it appears that charles
sobraj took the identity of gautier elaine this is considered an urgent and grave affair in france
the following day bangkok interpol uh issues an international warrant of arrest for elaine gautier
maurie andre leclerc and ajay chowdhury of course ajay very likely dead uh for conspiring to murder
theresa hank kaki and vitaly aka the turk
two weeks later in june charles and marie andre decide to leave france and head back to the east
they were uh being uh driven in a silver citroen a french car by another associate of charles
a jean dweem uh no one has ever had more fucking associates around the world this evil most
interesting man this evil austin powers international man of mystery motherfucker
uh they stopped in karachi to pick up uh marie ellen uh ether it's so tricky to bounce from so
many different nationalities all the name pronunciations uh the 27 year old australian
student he wanted to shag before heading back to thailand and also while sources are not clear
regarding uh if this woman knew uh mary ellen before they both left with charles uh charles
also managed to convince a 22 year old woman from the uk doing some spiritual seeking as well barbara
smith uh described as a tall thin exceptionally attractive brunette to also leave with him
pretty sure he would end up sleeping with both of these women good god two more women who just
took up and went with him around the world uh back again in karachi uh marie andre finds a
newspaper detailing the search for her and charles and freaks out the article contained dates deaths
and the stomach churning news that thai police were preparing murder warrants for the arrest of
elaine gutier and his girlfriend monique believed to be a canadian nurse charles apparently doesn't
give a fuck not bothered in the slightest uh he just kept on driving to bombay there charles met
another jean jean hoi guns a 45 year old belgian who lived in goa who had taken a bus into bombay
to find work as the film extra because of all the bollywood shit being filmed there
another associate he just can't be alone always has to surround himself with people enamored with
him right the boy his family didn't want craves an entourage of sycophants to try and heal the old
wound i guess uh charles quickly brought jean into the new fold or into the fold and new jean
and the whole group headed to new delhi uh by june 11th new jean realized he had fucked up
he'd fallen in with the wrong crew he's terrified uh the belgian was sitting on the steps of the
international telephone exchange while marie andre is inside trying to call the police and he's
her parents in canada in the short week he had been with the group he quickly realized he's in
way over his head the group had been of course working uh a con marie ellen or mary ellen excuse
me uh had been sent in wearing seductive clothes to sit in the lobby of a ymca hotel one of the
better middle class hotels in the area jean is her backup inside mary ellen barbara smith encountered
three young french tourists uh they buy him drinks once you know it very quickly they get sick
then when mary ellen gives them some more uh medicine they feel worse because it's more poison
and they pass out
and when they were you know more drugs and when they wake back up anything they had had on them
of value was gone charles had convinced yet another person to help him drug and rob strangers
his new recruits just keep repeating this process meanwhile while this is going on the thai
authorities search for the group is heating up uh all of the international press about the murders
has been terrible for tourism so now the bangkok police now the tourism's taking a hit
now they're serious about this and now back to marie andre and her phone call home to canada
while jean is waiting for her he's around all these women uh he noticed uh marie
andre's purse which had been left on the counter with a request that uh hoygan's watch over it
now jean decides he can't continue drugging and robbing people he can't be part of a jewel heist
like they're planning he needs to get the fuck out but he doesn't have money so he snatches marie
andre's purse which contained 150 bucks in cash four passports always passports a gold chain a
watch and he ran he returned to their room in the lodi hotel where he scoops up everything he can
grab and put into a suitcase a couple more hundred dollars camera radio assorted valuables fleas new
delhi heading home to goa when charles finds out he's of course furious anyone double crossing this
habitual double crosser stings badly to him right he's extra emotional because it hurts him right
where it hurt when his family abandoned him uh he flies with another associate named jean there's no
shortage of jean's right this is jean dweem immediately to goa spends two frustrating days
searching for traitor jean but doesn't find him however when he comes back charles gets
another he gets a fucking third he gets jean jean trey
third jean uh there's a lot of jeans floating around this part of the world this guy is jean
luke jean luke solomon a french traveler uh visiting new delhi by offering him barbara smith
just pimps barbara out for the night he's part pimp part cult leader part serial killer part
jewel thief part international man of mystery uh charles takes jean luke barbara and mary ellen to
dinner where he recommends chicken curry when it comes back he sneaks a vial of clear liquid
into solomon's portion jean luke gets groggy starts stumbling then the foursome head back to
the hotel where jean luke expects to sleep with barbara instead slips into a coma uh jean luke
solomon discovered two mornings later naked and sprawled out on the balcony of his room clinging
to life by a thread he is taken to the hospital but it's too late he will die another murder
victim within days on july 2nd charles and his group are in the historic indian city of agra now
this dude was everywhere uh things are tense in the group marie andre has been an emotional wreck
since she learned there was a warrant out for her arrest for fucking murder charles is edgy he's
normally confident facade is cracking uh the group is in town because mary ellen and barbara
have been out looking for new uh tourists to rob and possibly kill when they learned that a large
group of french tourists were in town heading to see the taj mahal charles of course wants to charm
himself and gratiate himself into the group he's relentless non-stop crime charles finds him
introduces himself now as daniel chome uh his mission he said was to make their stay in india
a memorable one not lying about that uh he'll deliver he will spend three days taking the group
all around and playing host meanwhile former jean associate jean hoygens is feeling guilty about his
exploits in the group he mails a letter detailing charles's actions to the canadian embassy
uh he was belgian so why uh contact canadians i don't fucking know a lot of the story doesn't
make sense in moments but that's what happens in the sources july 5th 1976 is the french tour
group's last day in india at 2 a.m the tour is uh the the tourists are supposed to catch a red eye
flight to bangkok uh
uh chame begins telling them you know hours before this how dangerous it is in thailand how easy to
catch various diseases of the far east uh you know how these tender french stomachs can easily fall
victim to exotic bacterias did their tour director know about the recent severe outbreak of dysentery
in thailand uh while they're all at this farewell cocktail party and traditional indian dinner in
the restaurant of the hotel they're staying at charles announces you know what i'll help you
guys out i got some medicine for you to take with you for the rest of your journeys he offers it to
his friends you know he's a great guy tells him it is guaranteed to save them from intestinal agonies
uh approximately 20 the french tourists take him up on his generous offer uh you know they accept
the pills he takes out of his little black bag pop them into their mouths right there on the spot
uh the plan was for the drugs to hit them charles's plan by the time they returned to the rooms after
dinner where they would then pass out and charles and new jean and the rest of his crew would rob
them but he miscalculated the dosage gave him too much suddenly in the middle of dinner shake it's
fucking wild quote a woman screamed beside her a student had pitched forward into his wine glass
another suddenly slumped in his chair sliding out and onto the floor like
blob of gelatin people began to vomit for a stunning few seconds no one grasped what was
happening bodies fell a man grabbed the tablecloth as he lost consciousness plates crashed around him
they're all dying someone screamed get the manager yelled someone else the wife of the tour director
fell to her knees began to tend to the fallen then she screamed poison assassins it's fucking
bedlam uh when the manager ran into the room he threw his hands to his face in horror someone
quickly put it together that only the people who had taken daniel shulmez uh his pills were passing
out and now several men grabbed shulmez but mr fucking karate broke loose started to run madly
about the room uh stopping to threaten his pursuers with karate chops trying to find the exit
it's fantastic it's like a uh like a b movie uh three of the french students dramatically tackle
him flying through the air uh while they grab his arms and legs others jump in and sit on him
in the pandemonium associate new jean jean dweem uh he fled i think he's new jean i've lost there's
he leaps into charles's car screeches away at high speed he might be og jean uh when the police
arrived they discovered charles sobrage pinned to a chair by several strong male students struggling
cursing threatening everyone around him he throws a fucking fit he's screaming to be released there's
been a huge misunderstanding he claims he's a french citizen he's a well-connected businessman
oh he's gonna sue the hotel he's gonna sue the police he's gonna sue the students who've just
assaulted him oh i will own you all you're all going to prison that kind of shit fortunately
this time no one cares
nobody believes him then deputy superintendent police officer naranda uh not tuli walked into
the room tuli apparently thought he was the sherlock homes of india he'd been solving crimes
in new delhi for 30 years had a very impressive record wanted to nail charles a shabraj nice
feather in his cap this is the kind of case that could send his career out on a very high note
you know earn him some more money he loosened the suspect's belt lifted his shirt told the
other officers in the room five years ago this man had escaped from a hospital in new delhi after an
appendix operation he had been clutching the wound when they caught him tuli examined the scar it fit
he told him you are charles subraj and you are under arrest for murder and that's pretty fucking
sick i love it uh what about the rest though well after charles was arrested mary ellen that australian
nurse she took charge of the other she moved the group to a third class dump near cannot circle
this big commercial district uh insists that everybody stay put take a break from the poisoning
people all right okay okay uh marie andre
didn't like that plan she wanted to flee to canada uh but before she could less than 48 hours after
charles been arrested marie andre mary ellen and barbara also arrested by tuli's men marie andre
almost immediately tells the officers she's glad it's over she signs a 32 page detailed statement
very soon after this that began with her life in canada continued through her fateful meeting with
her lover charles with pepe the romantic lake of kashmir on kashmir or in kashmir uh charles
meanwhile uh he's been under non-stop
questioning but he won't break by july 16th he's now been under interrogation for 10 days
still won't break 32 year old dude a very experienced bullshit artist extremely confident
con man tuli gets worried he's going to be released because he still hasn't legally proved
he is charles sobrash tuli brought in the doctor who had operated on him in 1971 that guy was like
i don't know maybe he is maybe not to try bringing in uh the three three women he's with to point
fingers at charles they won't they're too afraid of him
tuli then reread the file that had been put together by herman nippenberg decided to try
a different tactic flattery played his ego tuli starts to compliment him on his strength his
endurance he pays respect right uh butters him up and it works the detective wonders is flattery
going to accomplish what everything else uh you know has not tuli positions himself as a father
figure to charles preys on his daddy issues that works he puts his arm around charles tells him a
shit like a man he has never questioned anybody as smart as this guy talks about how easy it must
be for a man as handsome as himself as smart and accomplished as is you know worldly to bend others
to his will and eventually walking daddy issues charles sobrash confesses then uh charles marie
andre le claire barbara smith mary ellen they're all sent to tahar this maximum security prison
complex located in new delhi charles and associates uh they were arrested in the time of misa
the maintenance of internal security act in india this applied to all prisoners even non-political
ones and it meant that those accused of murder could be held up to two years without bail
without trial under harrowing conditions marie andre le claire charles they're classified as
c prisoners under misa the severest lowest category entitled to nothing but a food ration
just big enough to barely sustain life marie andre struggles very depressed charles though
he's an old pro with prison no stranger to incarceration he adjusts quickly and smoothly
some sources claim he smuggled a bunch of gemstones into the prison in his ass or possibly
by swallowing them and shitting them out like a fucking mule and now he has currency within days
he's arranged a network of flunkies more associates inside the prison and out people are bringing him
food running his errands contacting lawyers uh smuggling and shit normally not allowed to the
lowest class of inmate barbara and mary ellen they're both awarded b classifications because
they were uh state's witnesses agreeing to testify against charles and marie andre uh despite
a little better treatment though they don't fare well both women attempt suicide by overdosing but
both will live in may of 1982 an indian court will convict both charles and marie uh andre
charles found guilty of the murder and robbery of israeli tourist avani jacobs sentenced to life
imprisonment uh le claire found guilty of drugging those french students then decides to appeal her
judgment after being uh or before sentencing and is granted a release from prison on the
later in july of 1983 she will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer and will be permitted to return to
canada for medical treatment which will not work and she will die on april 20th 1984 at the age of
38 also in 83 charles's murder conviction is overturned on appeal due to a lack of evidence
but he is then found guilty of drugging that big group of french tourists as well and sentenced to
a dozen years in prison the other two barbara and mary they're released from tihar prison
pardon for any offenses connected to the case uh because
of their witnessing you know testimony fucking crazy so they go on with their lives in the spring
of 1986 charles uh finds out he's going to be eligible for release in 1989 because he accumulated
a bunch of good behavior credits uh dude made a lot of friends inside lived it up supposedly he
got himself one of the nicest cells uh had a tv in it living on gourmet food hosting journalists for
prison interviews talking about selling his life rights for movies getting conjugal visits literally
throwing parties
in his cell you know whether he's fucking drinking wine and shit this guy i don't know how he does it
uh did not want to be released though in 1989 because thailand was still maintaining active
arrest warrants for him in connection with murders he had committed in bangkok and patia in 1975
those uh crimes carried the possibility of the death penalty but also there was a two-decade
statute of limitations meaning if he could just stay in prison until at least late 1995
he could not be tried for those crimes the authority of the government would not be able to
repeatedly requested his extradition from india uh india had uh refused those requests during his
active imprisonment on the principled grounds that countries should not extradite individuals
to face capital punishment while they are serving sentences uh but once uh his sentence was up yeah
they were they were happy to send him over there so he's fucking sweating it so march 11th 1986 he
does something to get a sentence extended or at least you know either get a sentence extended
or get away with everything in true charles style throws a big party under the guise of his 42nd
birthday coming up and in advance of this party he built up a huge stockpile of sedatives
uh chloral hydrate and midazepam to arrange a mass incapitation or incapacitation uh massing he's
gonna fucking get him uh you know passed out he's gonna cut all their fucking heads off uh that would
be more dramatic no incapacitation uh he had the drugs carefully hidden in suites he passed around
i can't believe this is real by the time anybody recognized they've been drugged the sedatives had
progressed far enough that any effective resistance or communication with any authorities outside the
area was futile once everybody started getting real sleepy sabraj and four accomplices who helped
him with this they just walked out wearing civilian clothes they had smuggled in the escape
not discovered for several hours this is documented this is crazy this happened after a few weeks
charles was recaptured though some sources say that that's what he wanted others say he was trying
to sneak onto a boat heading to the u.s where he was then going to track down his ex-wife and
daughter when he got arrested he was in a fancy restaurant and go chowing down at a bunch of
expensive seafood
fucking this guy he was charged and convicted of drugging guards escaped from custody sentenced to
an additional 10 years in 1987 which was perfect in february of 97 charles sabraj now free at the
age of 52 unable to be prosecuted in thailand insane after all that he's free he returns to
france where he lives as a sort of quasi celebrity charging big sums of money for interviews and
photographs making business deals according to one source he sold the rights of a film based on
millions of dollars he's in great shape uh looks young for his age got a lot of girlfriends he's uh
you know he's fucking rich it's all legal he's living on easy street but he fucks it up in two
in 2003 by visiting nepal if he if he just would have stayed away from that part of the world he'd
be fine but he shows up in kathmandu to set up some kind of mineral business uh water business
there uh traveling on his french passport under his own name makes no effort to conceal his
identity thinks all the shit's behind him it's not different country he had done dirty shit in
with the different statute of limitations he's arrested september 19th 2003 in connection with
the 1970
murders of young american woman connie joe bronzich and young french canadian man lauron
uh carrière uh we just kind of briefly mentioned them charges that carried potential life sentences
in nepal and on august of 2004 the court found charles sobrage guilty of the murder of one of
those people of connie joe bronzich and he's sentenced to life this motherfucker
had it fucking made and he and he ruined it uh but he will get out of jail again
uh due to failing health and expensive health care needs charles given humanitarian release
from nepal in 2022 the supreme court there announced december 21st that he was going to
be released and deported to france he is officially released two days later flies back to paris on his
own on a commercial flight at the age of 78 he doesn't look like he was that sick uh living as
a free french citizen now when interviewed upon his arrival in france he referred to himself as
a serpent right that name given to him years earlier for being snaky and hard to catch
and he said quote i have a lot to do i have to sue a lot of people
well i'll add a little bit more before we're done here today that will take us out of this timeline
good job soldier you've made it back barely
this this guy the serpent charles sobrage man of many names given and taken uh what a
slippery son of a bitch so hard to capture so hard to keep in prison could charm the pants
off for just about anybody apparently always on the go always running a scam ever since he was a
kid and while i do hold him to blame ultimately for all of his adult actions would he have been
this way if his bio dad would have accepted him from the very beginning and remained in his life
i doubt it and we'll never know but i doubt it it seems like so much of his motivation as an adult
was to charm people into loving him into thinking he was so cool so handsome and smart right for a
he was actually so insecure so needy just constantly seeking validation looking for a
new lady to love him a new associate to be his lackey to prove himself again with another heist
or whatever and then he so quickly rejected you know the people that you know adored him and burned
those who tried to help him uh probably subconsciously to play a armchair therapist
here so they couldn't reject him first like his dad did like mom did moments like everybody did
eventually because he used everybody and treated him like shit right what a shame he clearly had
a lot of talent if he had applied it in a productive way man what could this dude have
accomplished i imagine he could have been a wildly successful in a number of different fields
but he never looked inward hard enough and long enough to get to the bottom of his shit and really
change just wouldn't risk being vulnerable i guess and he built a wall around his sensitive soul
became the serpent guy who swindled an untold number of people damaged countless lives abandoned
his own child even more than he had been abandoned a guy who has been convicted of tumors confessed
to 10 estimated to have killed as many as 31
and a guy still living free in france right now let's go over a bit of what we learned now and
learn something new in today's takeaways time suck top five takeaways number one citizenship
charles sobrage was born at the tail end of the existence of french indo-china and due to the
timing of france leaving the country his dad not being willing to initially claim him as his son
his stepdad not being willing to give him his surname and moving around a ton in his early years
he did not have legal citizenship in any country and would not get it until he was around 25 years
old like just before he turned 25 number two charles sobrage literally been a lifelong
criminal he was committing crimes with other kids before he was 10 years old just got out of his
latest stint in prison when he was 78 and 2022 probably running some kind of scam right now
number three his half-brother andre charles convinced his younger half-brother to switch
identities with him in a turkish prison then left him to serve in 18-year prison sentence
without ever looking back true sociopath shit number four charles lied about or lies excuse me
almost as frequently as he breathes 1972 alone he presented himself as dr jaylene claire charles
sounder adolph nomer dr marshall golean and salim harity he represented himself to be everything
from a professor of classical literature at the sorbonne to an arabian oil sheik and number five
new info back in 2008 when charles was 64 that charming fuck got engaged to a 20 year old french
interpreter for his lawyer charles sobrage and he was the first to be a professor of classical
literature at the sorbonne sobrage and he was the first to be a professor of classical literature
uh nejita bizwas when it looked like he might get out of prison on an appeal in nepal early
she said their large age gap did not matter i'm mature enough to decide for myself age does not
make a difference well when he stayed in prison she left it doesn't appear that they're still
together but who is he love bombing now i'm guessing that horny old goat has not stopped
being pepe lepew at the age of 82 time suck top five takeaways
you
the serpent serial killer charles sobrage has been sucked who has a wild ride uh thanks to the
bad magic team for helping to make them time suck uh thanks to queen of bad magic lindsey cummins
giving me the space to create these episodes thanks to logan keith helping to publish these
episodes and designing designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com uh thank you to
heather reilander for her thorough research this week also thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating
the cult of the curious private facebook page the mod squad making sure discord keeps running smooth
and everybody over in the time sucks subreddit and subscribe to badmagicproductions.com and i'll see you next time
and bad magic subreddit and now let's head on over to this week's time sucker updates
updates get your time sucker updates
our first update this week uh that was sent in to bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com
came in from a smart fucking sack david c quiros uh who wrote him the subject line of
response to stricter gun laws in episode 518 hi dan and the time suck team i hope all is
well with you meet sax this week i just listened to episode 518 san ysidro mcdonald's massacre and
i wanted to give you a response to the most pointed argument you made regarding gun control
first i want to get out in front of what's about to follow and just tell you that i fully agree
with the argument you made i am however going to attempt to play devil's advocate and game out the
argument a bit after all i think more conversation discussion is what's needed as a quick side note
have you seen the movie the drama if not i highly suggest watching it it's brutally uncomfortable
to sit through but i think that's the point of it it directly addresses school shooters the
complexity of america's online extremism in america's gun culture we often dodge engaging
with hard ugly problems like this because it's painful and not something quickly remedied the
issue of mass shootings needs direct engagement if we're ever going to start to address the madness
sorry for the short detour back on track now in summary around two hours and 14 minutes into the
show you suggested that stricter gun control is needed and that a sensible solution could be
mental competency exams for gun owners every couple years they would have to meet with
licensed therapists if they were deemed unwell enough they would have their gun
is taken away from them further testing would be required to get them back uh anybody who buys a
firearm while on this suspension should go to prison for a long time hopefully that summarizes
your point succinctly and accurately i think it does uh when i listened to this i found myself
immediately saying yeah duh this is clearly a solution we should have been doing for a very
long time but then i tried to think through how this could be abused by an authoritarian
government to disarm otherwise mentally well regulated and responsible gun owners
who happen to just disagree with them let us assume we pass federal legislation that
implements your proposed solution two scenarios come to mind for me the first is a movement to
classify people going through gender dysphoria as mentally ill the second involves individuals
being properly treated for mental illnesses like depression or anxiety with medications such as
ssris or other self other safe excuse me well-studied drugs did you know that as it stands
now the legal system and the clinical system define mental illness separately for different
purposes and neither is fully bound by the other legally the government does not have to defer to
psychiatrists and when a statute of order is passed the government does not have to defer to
a court needs to decide who counts as mentally ill it uses its own definition written for its
own purpose and those legal definitions are frequently not the same as any clinical diagnosis
federal firearms law is a clean example of the legal system writing its own definition of mental
illness rather than borrowing the clinical one the gun ban in 18 usc or usc 922 g4 applies to
anyone who is quote a danger to himself or to others or who lacks the mental capacity to
contract or manage his own affairs as determined by a court
board commission or other lawful authority nowhere does it ask for a dsm diagnosis
now imagine a federal agency regulating all gun owners with highly pointed politicized
questionnaires to fill out and background checks to decide for themselves if someone is mentally ill
even if they use a licensed psychiatrist to evaluate gun owners precedent shows they do
not need to base the decision there the law would need to explicitly require that certain
diagnoses by licensed psychiatrists be found or as found in the dsm are automatic bans and the
law would require that the regulatory body not only has to honor them but they cannot decide for themselves despite my best efforts i did not sink your ship but hopefully it shows how good ideas can be weaponized there is much more i can write about this topic but i'll just leave you with this as you rightly stated there are an estimated 400 million firearms in the u.s it's actually 400 to 500 million firearms yeah i truly wonder if we could successfully regulate and enforce gun laws across the country and against what would be certain friction in red states maybe even shootouts as guns get confiscated just as the war on drugs largely failed
turning the clock back on the explosion of gun ownership in america
might prove impossible especially with the advent of 3d printed ghost guns
yet i remain resolved that we must do something we don't have to sit idly by as our children are
murdered in the classrooms meant to prepare them for the future we don't have to be desensitized to
the gore that runs across our phones or tv seemingly every week and we certainly shouldn't
have to keep in the back of our heads the fear that the next concert we go to or our kids recital
for fuck's sake or just sending them off to school might be our last moments on earth before meeting a
terrifying violent end thoughts and
prayers are not enough. We have to try something.
David C. Quiroz
P.S. What are your thoughts on the counterintuitive
argument of more guns as a solution to this?
The good guy with the gun theory
That's the main argument I continually hear
from the right and they loudly praise
the times when a citizen intervenes
Just recently this happened in Twin Falls, Idaho
at a local In-N-Out
where an armed citizen shot at and forced the gunman
to move away from the crowd
Well David, that was very well written
Thanks for sending that in
Yeah, and thanks to a lot of
gun owners who also pointed out
and respectively in every single instance
how my argument does not work
for one reason or another
Admittedly I don't have an answer
and I wish I did
And David, I'll start at the end
I don't think that greatly increasing the amount of guns
in the populace will reduce gun-related deaths
overall. I think that
for every case of somebody shooting a mass shooter
like what happened in Twin Falls
of scaring them off, there will be, I fear
more cases of more mass shooters
if there's just more guns
That being said, like
you pointed out, can we reverse the clock?
No. You know, gun culture
in the U.S., it isn't actually
equivalent to the gun culture of any other country
Could we actually
get most of the most dangerous guns
out of the most dangerous hands?
I don't know
I really don't. Will we ever get all
the fentanyl and equally dangerous drugs off the street?
Right? Maybe not, probably not. It is
fucking complicated. Like you
like everybody who wrote in, we do all want to
fix it. I love seeing that. Everybody, you know, wants
to fix it. Nobody wants more
psychopaths out there, you know, doing more
shootings, more children dying
I would argue that nobody fucking hates
mass shootings more than responsible gun
owners, you know, which is the overwhelming
majority of gun owners. I haven't seen
the drama. Thanks for that recommendation
I do also
fantasize about hope
that maybe some, hopefully soon to
emerge, futuristic tech
some black mirror shit
could make guns obsolete in public places
like schools at least, you know, some
kind of like, I don't know, tech that
would send out a powerful signal that would drop
everybody to the area, you know, like
some audio signal that just kind of
short circuits you, drops you to the ground
keeps you on the ground until
law enforcement arrives wearing inserts
that maybe counteract that specific frequency. I don't know
fucking something. We're going to have to get
creative. We're going to have to have a lot of smart people work
very hard on this. You know, if
there was some magical, easy solution where it's like, alright
we just return all these guns and then all
of them go away and then it never happens again
that doesn't
seem feasible to me. I think, you know,
there's so many out there that
so many will be hidden
so many, you can't like, you know
prove that somebody's thing wasn't
stolen, people have workarounds, and then the big thing
is the 3D printing. That is new
terrifying technology.
That stuff is just going to advance with AI. It's
fucking tricky, but we've got to keep talking about it.
And I love all the emails I got from people
that were like, civil.
This fucking shit about knee-jerk reactions, just
in general in society, that doesn't fucking
help anything. So
I hope we have like more discussions about
this.
And somebody a lot smarter than me
can figure this shit out.
Next up, another smart sack. OG sucker, Morgan
McCall, sent in a message with the subject line of
you done fucked up.
He was right. Dan, listen to your short suck
62 about the food system. You done fucked
up applying what is true about, say, corn or soy
to strawberries. Strawberries are not
developed to work with certain pesticides. They are not
grown from seed. And the big four are not really
involved in strawberry breeding. The biggest strawberry
breeders are University of California, University
of Florida, Driscoll's, and a handful of small companies.
Strawberries are grown from
clone runners of established varieties
that are licensed from the universities or companies that
developed them. Driscoll is the biggest producer.
They have their whole top-to-bottom system
of production and distribution. If you're
actually getting local strawberries rather than mass-produced
berries from California, Florida, or Mexico,
your local grower probably bought some
off-patent plants from a nursery.
Morgan. Fine, Morgan!
How dare you know so much about fucking strawberries?
I guess we can all just live on strawberries.
Huh? Like rabbits, or
bears, or squirrels.
I don't. I didn't take the time to find out what kind of
animal eats strawberries before I answer this question.
I'm not looking it up. Not today.
Thank you for pointing out
that some of the shit at the farmer's market is local.
So that's nice. That's refreshing. It's not all
big corporations. Uh, finally,
a third super smart sack.
Leah, uh, Adzolina.
Uh, Leah
Adzolina. Sorry if I'm, uh, mispronouncing
your name. I've had a lot of names pronounced today.
Uh, my brain is fried. Send in a message with a subline
of brains. NDEs.
The third man syndrome. I love
this. Uh, how cool is our human brain?
Dan, I was listening to Buffalo River Cold
Suck, and it spurred me on a rant about how cool
is our ridiculous human brain.
Oh, agreed so hard.
I'm a biologist, and I study human evolution for fun.
I know. Nerd alert. I love it.
Uh, the human brain is so complex, it
goes to great lengths to keep us, the organism,
calm and alive. I'm gonna pivot,
and for argument's sake, let's say God is not real.
That means the majority of human brains
have evolved to see a peaceful, loving light
and be surrounded by dead loved ones as the
move for maximum comfort when
approaching death. Interesting, right?
You might want to try 5-MeO-DMT
sometime. You'll have some
really interesting shit happen in your brain regarding death.
Uh, I have my own experience to add to that.
The dumping of adrenaline and
dopamine made my almost-death
pain-free. Uh, I did not know about
my injuries until later, and I was surprisingly
okay with buying the Pharma 27. Okay, yeah, you've
already experienced those chemicals. Uh, but
on a larger scale, those hormones, or hormones,
did exactly what they were supposed to do.
Also interesting that as humans
evolved, we created language and almost immediately
created a god, or god-like figure,
to make sense of our reality. How come?
Have humans like the Jim Jones
of history used the idea of god to manipulate,
subjugate, murder, and commit the worst atrocity
against others for control? Yes.
It is a powerful idea.
And we know how humans behave where power
is concerned. It corrupts absolutely.
I would posit that there is a reason
it is such a powerful idea based on neurobiology
and physiology. It supersedes
consciousness. Human brains are wired
for community, cooperation, and fare
much better in groups than solo.
The practice of meeting with your neighbors for whatever
reason has always been pleasing to us.
Is the human brain the real god?
I love this email.
Uh, I've often wondered about how even
if you say our brains created god
and kept him around for thousands of years, the
idea of peace after death, community, prayer
has all shown itself to be extremely beneficial to
the human species. Neurological pathways
that light up during prayer are the same that
are activated during meditation. Mm-hmm.
Uh, there is healing happening when those pathways
are activated. Studies with placebos
are, as controls, report that
some individuals who are not given actual
medicine still improve seemingly because they
believed they would get better.
Brains have convinced their bodies into believing they are
pregnant, so much so, they begin to show
symptoms of pregnancy. That's fucking
crazy. Leading me to Haley
Zega's brain, possibly using the image
of a child to help her through that experience
and keep her alive, which is still crazy
to think about. But truly, our brains are so
ridiculous, it wouldn't surprise me. I'm not a doctor
or neurologist, but I work as a biologist in the
field, and I'm never not in complete awe
of how our brains have evolved. The human
species is pretty goddamn weird and singular,
as a whole. Uh, deep breathing
and introspection relating our position in the
universe, the fact we can even think
about, uh, position in the
universe, about our position in the universe,
and type it into cyberspace and send
it to another meat sack is absolutely nuts to me.
What a wild and crazy fun species we are.
All to say that our brains have been working
hard to rationalize our surroundings from the very
beginning, and we still have many of the
same questions. Pivot again to the
third-man syndrome. There is a
phenomenon known as the third-person effect
where a person in a dangerous situation,
like being lost in the woods or stranded outside
of civilization, has experienced
a mysterious third person who ultimately
keeps the individual alive
until they can get help. I've attached some
resources to help explain it. Is
it supernatural? God?
Angels? Or is it all
natural? Just our brains doing what
they can. Either way, I'm in awe.
Keep it curious, you wonderful bastard.
Keep doing what you do. Leah.
Aw, man, thank you, Leah.
Woo! That is
so much to think about. Our brains are
so fucking wild.
And someday, before too
long, when I have more time,
and I'm not doing so much content each
week, I want to explore these kind of
questions just for my own, you know,
personal reasons. And
dig in further. There is so much interesting literature
and studies about consciousness and
this kind of stuff. And
mystical feelings versus
possible mystical realities.
Oh, man, I think
questions like, you know,
do our brains produce
these kind of, you know, mystical
symptoms, if you will, or experiences,
which means
that there is no real kind
of, you know, creator and stuff out there? Or did
a creator imbue our brains with
the ability to have these experiences?
Is there some, you know,
you know, truly mystical
foundation for this? Something magical?
It is magical. I think we are
magical creatures one way or another.
I mean, I could get so weird with all this. Even
like working on fictional stories, it's hard to explain.
But there is this sense that if you just
open yourself up and allow the story to come to
you and come through you and not dictate
it, it will be better than if you try and force
it. That's always been true for me with, like, creative
stuff. And it's a weird fucking feeling.
And it makes me, it does feel like you're tapping
into something else as opposed to
forcing something out of your own
brain. I don't know. It's all so strange.
But to think about ghosts and
spirits possibly being just manifestations
of our own mind and what is
possible. I mean, yeah.
And we've been thinking about these things for thousands
of years. Religions,
spiritual, you know, systems
all developed out of the same questions we continue
to ask one another. And
maybe one day
we'll have answers. And if not,
we'll create a lot of cool stories in the meantime trying to figure
that shit out. Thanks for the message, everybody.
So much to think about, as usual.
Thanks, TimeSuckers.
I needed that.
We all did.
Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic
Productions podcast. Be sure and rate and review
TimeSuck if you haven't already.
Uh, please don't take your mommy or daddy issues out on the rest of the world.
right? This week. Or ever.
Get help. Meet with a therapist. You don't have to keep
living in a terrible cycle from your past. There's more
to life than that. Pause. Take a deep breath.
Reflect. Use your fucking mystical
magical mind to calm down
and keep on sucking.
I always think it's interesting to hear
from these dirtbags when possible, so
now just a bit more about Charles.
After he was freed in 2022, he's gotten
out so many fucking times, he was interviewed
from several places.
One of them, a British television
special called Real Serpent
that aired on Channel 4 in the UK.
Let's hear a few minutes of forensic psychologist
Paul Britton interviewing and assessing him
here. And note,
while in the past he has admitted to various
murders, mostly to authors,
currently he's denying all his
past admissions and saying he didn't kill anybody.
That's the confusion there, and here he is.
Paul Britton is a leading
forensic psychologist.
He has decades of experience interviewing
serial killers and assisting the police
in high-profile murder investigations,
such as that of Fred and Rose
West. The plan is
for him to join the investigation
to produce a psychological profile
of Sobhraj and determine if he's
a dangerous psychopath. Psychologist
Paul Britton is keen to further
explore the importance of drugs in the
execution of Sobhraj's crimes.
Paul Britton: How would you select, how would
you decide who you would sleep in that way?
Sobhraj: Mostly I would have taken what I call
those victims, but which I call, let's say,
clients, to make it simple, all right?
In this case.
Paul Britton: May I stop you for a moment,
and thank you, because it's not an easy
thing to do. You have used the term quite
correctly of victims, and yes, you've mentioned
clients. But the measurement of dosage
is quite a difficult discipline, and it's
so easy to get it wrong. And that is
something that must have happened with
you from time to time.
Sobhraj: Well. Paul Britton: How do you deal with that?
Sobhraj: Nobody has died from drugs, from my drugs.
Paul Britton: But it's quite a difficult
enterprise to put yourself. Sobhraj: Well, there was
what I did. I read some pharmaceutical books,
and then also I tried those drugs, not on me.
Paul Britton: On whom?
Sobhraj: On some of the hippies that I asked,
okay? Because they are taking drugs. I will then
ask them, for example, "Okay, when you take
such and such dosage, okay, take it." And you
tell me, then I will look at my watch.
Paul Britton: So you use them as guinea pigs?
Sobhraj: Yeah, exactly.
Paul Britton: Okay. We'll leave that there then for the
moment. Thank you very much indeed.
Paul Britton: Please.
Paul Britton: Even though he's nearly 80, do you think
there are signs there that suggest he's still a dangerous man?
Sobhraj: This is a man who still believes that
unless the world, those around him, can provide what he believes is his right, he will find
a way to take it. That's what I would expect.
Paul Britton: So dangerous.
Sobhraj: I would not want to say he's not dangerous.
Paul Britton: Is this dude going to kill somebody
again? You're never too old to poison.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The podcast introduces Charles Sobhraj, a French serial killer and con man active in Asia and Europe during the 1960s-70s, nicknamed "The Serpent."
Sobhraj was born in 1944 in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father who rejected him, leading to a childhood marked by abandonment, neglect, and frequent moves.
His early life included running away, theft, and a lack of legal identity, which shaped his later obsession with forging documents and assuming multiple identities.
After moving to France, Sobhraj fell into crime, served prison time, and met benefactor Félix d'Escagnes, who helped him gain French citizenship but was repeatedly betrayed by him.
Sobhraj married Chantal Compagnon in 1969, but continued criminal activities, including theft, check fraud, and car scams, while fleeing across Europe and Asia.
The episode sets up his eventual turn to murder, which will be covered in future installments.
Summary:
The podcast episode recounts the early life of Charles Sobhraj, a notorious con man and later serial killer, framing it as a darker counterpart to the fictionalized story of Frank Abagnale Jr. Sobhraj was born in Saigon in 1944 during French colonial rule, to Chun, a Vietnamese woman, and Sobhraj Hachard Banani, an Indian tailor who refused to acknowledge paternity. His mother later married a French officer, but Sobhraj was repeatedly abandoned by both parents, leaving him without a stable identity or legal papers.
As a child, he ran away frequently, stole, and struggled with discipline, leading to confinement and boarding schools. In his teens, he moved to France, where he immersed himself in crime, serving multiple prison sentences. During one stint, he met Félix d'Escagnes, a wealthy philanthropist who helped him obtain French citizenship and supported him, but Sobhraj repaid him with theft and betrayal.
He married Chantal Compagnon, with whom he had a daughter, but continued a life of fraud, including car scams and bad checks. The episode ends with Sobhraj fleeing France for Asia, setting the stage for his later murders, which will be detailed in subsequent episodes.
FAQs
Charles Sobhraj was a French fraudster, thief, and serial killer who terrorized parts of Asia and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. He earned the nickname 'The Serpent' for his snake-like ability to evade capture.
He was born in Saigon in 1944 to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father who initially rejected him. He faced repeated abandonment, neglect, and harsh punishments, spending much of his early life moving between countries and lacking a clear legal identity.
During his time in Paris in the 1960s, he immersed himself in the criminal underworld and met a mentor who introduced him to high-end document forgery. He later used these skills to create multiple identities and commit numerous crimes.
Felix Descagnes was a wealthy philanthropist who visited Sobhraj in prison and became a mentor and supporter. He helped Sobhraj obtain French citizenship, provided financial aid, and even served as his best man, despite Sobhraj repeatedly betraying his trust.
He funded his lifestyle through theft, burglary, writing bad checks, and various cons. For example, he ran a car scheme in Bombay where he would order stolen cars, stage minor wrecks, and resell them at inflated prices to wealthy clients.
His father, Sobhraj the tailor, initially rejected him and refused paternity. Despite attempts to reconcile, the father often criticized him and eventually cut ties, telling his daughter-in-law that Charles was a 'number one crook.'
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