MYSTERY: Charles Sobhraj: The Bikini Killer

About this episode

In the mid-1970s, young Western travelers on the overland hippie trail through Southeast Asia began turning up drugged, robbed and murdered, several left on beaches in Thailand. The man investigators would eventually connect to the killings was Charles Sobhraj, a French citizen born in Saigon who moved between Bangkok, Kathmandu and Delhi posing as a gem dealer, befriending backpackers and collecting their passports. Thai press called him the Bikini Killer. He spent two decades in Indian prisons, escaped once, and was finally convicted in Nepal of murdering two travelers in 1975, Connie Jo Bronzich and Laurent Carrière. In December 2022, Nepal's Supreme Court ordered him released on health grounds and deported to France, where he lives today. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy examines the charm that made Sobhraj so effective on the road, the travelers who trusted him and never made it home, and the open question of how many people a man convicted of two murders and suspected of more than twenty really killed. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to fo