![]() However, he was able to escape by feigning illness, a trick he would use multiple times throughout his life, but was recaptured shortly after.Īfter borrowing money from his father for bail, he then fled to Kabul and was arrested once again for robbing tourists. Sobhraj and pregnant Chantal fled from France in 1970, robbing tourists and using fake documents while travelling through Eastern Europe.Ĭhantal gave birth to their daughter, Usha, in Mumbai while her husband ran a car theft and smuggling operation.Īs was shown in The Serpent, Sobhraj was imprisoned after an armed robbery for jewels at Hotel Ashoka in 1973. He was arrested on the day he proposed to Chantal for attempting to evade police while driving a stolen vehicle and spent eight months in prison, immediately marrying her when he was released. ![]() Sobhraj switched between high society and the criminal underworld, during which time he met his future wife Chantal Compagnon. ![]() He was sent to prison for the first time in 1963 in Paris and manipulated prison guards into granting him special favours such as having books in his cell. We’ll have to wait to find out if she was also one of the lucky ones.Įnter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.Did you watch the BBC crime drama? Let us know in the comments.Ĭharles Sobhraj, who was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father, started committing crimes as a teenager in France and didn't look back. Nadine, who had gone to see if a letter had arrived from Dominique at her mail locker at the airport, was picked up by a suspicious Sobhraj. Nadine acted almost as a narrator to Dominique’s escape story, and this was a clever piece of plotting that supplied plenty of suspense, tension and tempo, right up until the end when we saw Dominique arrive safely back in France. The Dutch diplomat had found Nadine and her boyfriend Remi, who told him Dominique’s story – of how they became friends by the poolside at the Kanit House complex, and how he had come to her during Christmas when he was at his lowest, confessing everything. The driving force of this episode was whether Dominique could or would escape Sobhraj’s clutches.Īs ever, this flashback story was intertwined with Herman Knippenberg’s burgeoning present-day investigation. Dominique had also seen his smuggling operation at close quarters, and he had seen how Marie-Andrée was complicit in everything. He had seen Ajay and Sobhraj kidnap another young French woman and her Turkish boyfriend seemingly on a whim, poison them both and then dispose of them of different times. ![]() Sobhraj had already reconstituted his passport so Dominique was stranded and trapped, and seemingly doomed.Īnd Sobhraj was right – Dominique had seen pretty much everything. But Sobhraj was determined to stop him, arguing that he had seen too much. The penny really dropped when Sobhraj’s pet monkey died after imbibing some of this supposed ‘health drink’.īy the stage, Dominique was desperate to escape back to France and back to his parents. His innards were torn to pieces, he was sick all the time and he was starting to notice that he was the only one in the apartment to be so. Giving him a place to stay and recuperate while still feeding him his ‘medicine’ was difficult to watch, especially as Dominique began to realise that something was seriously wrong. The way he did this was terrifying – he kept feeding him the same poison he had administered to others, and while he was ill Sobhraj was there ‘to look after him’. This week it was a tense cat-and-mouse story between Dominique and Sobhraj. Last week, we saw the impact of Sobhraj’s manipulation and deviousness on his partner, Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Colman), and now attention turns to Dominique Renelleau, a young traveller who Sobhraj has gently coerced into his inner circle.Įvery episode of the series – which gets better and better – seems to be almost a separate entity in itself, telling a different story, each slightly different in tone and pacing. It’s an interesting a clever approach, one the gives context to his crimes and their surroundings, the characters around him, and the indeed the victims. Since that opening episode, instalments two and now three have focused on either one of Charles Sobhraj’s victims or his inner circle. It seems the BBC’s eight-part, glossy, 1970s crime drama, The Serpent, has settled into an engrossing and terrifying groove.
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