Serial killer ‘Serpent’ who murdered American tourist baffles detective with his behavior

Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer accused of murdering at least a dozen Western tourists traveling through Asia in the 1970s, is now a free man and tells his story in a new television interview.

“If you follow Mr. Sobhraj … that’s his modus operandi, he likes to draw attention to himself,” Jackie Malton, a retired chief inspector with the U.K. Metropolitan Police, told Fox News Digital. “He has a narcissistic personality where he really believes in himself and his own innocence.”

The 80-year-old Frenchman is believed to have killed at least twenty people in Afghanistan, India, Thailand, Turkey, Nepal, Iran and Hong Kong in the 1970s.

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“At the time I would describe him as extremely ruthless, callous and someone who lacked empathy,” Malton said.

Sobhraj was sentenced to life in prison in 2004, which is only 20 years in Nepal, for the 1975 murder of 29-year-old American tourist Connie Jo Bronzich. Ten years later, he was also found guilty of the murder of Bronzich’s Canadian companion, 26-year-old Laurent Carrière.

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Sobhraj was released from prison in Nepal in December 2022 and was sent back to France after being released 19 years into his life sentence.

The Supreme Court had ordered that Sobhraj be released from prison due to his ill health, as he has a heart condition, but also because of his good behaviour and the fact that he has served more than 75% of his sentence.

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His new interview will be featured on Peacock’s “World’s Most Notorious Killers,” which streams September 17.

Sobhraj, who targeted young backpackers on the ‘hippie trail’ through Asia, often befriended them before drugging, robbing and killing them. The disguises he used over the years to evade police earned him the nickname ‘Serpent’. In Thailand, he was known as the ‘bikini killer’.

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Malton, who appears in the Peacock series, spent much of 2023 working with a large team of criminal profilers, investigators and psychologists to investigate Sobhraj, who rose to prominence after Netflix featured him in “The Serpent” in 2021. This year, she sat down with the convicted murderer for an interview, after having known him for some time.

“He wanted to tell the world that he was an innocent man,” she said. “We investigated the five murders in Thailand and we presented him with quite substantial evidence that, in my opinion, showed that he was not as innocent as he thought.”

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The retired detective had a surprising impression of the 80-year-old Sobhraj, who she said was “not the 30-year-old man who targeted backpackers.”

“Mr. Sobhraj is a very, very polite man, he’s very respectful,” she said. “He’s not what anyone would ever consider a serial killer in the sense that we’ve understood serial killer cases. He doesn’t fit that mold.”

After his release from prison, Sobhraj told the French newspaper Le Monde: “I have used quite a few stolen passports, but I have never killed anyone and I will prove it.”

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