The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (85 page)

should be held for trial. That long-winded hearing was Sobhraj hated Europe and the Catholic boarding stalled in April 2001, permitting defense lawyers to school in Paris where he soon became the butt of racial review 6,000 hours of police wiretap recordings. Defen-jokes and insults. (The school’s main contribution to his dant Vlassakis provided another interruption on June future was a new name—“Charles”—appended in trib-21, when he tearfully pleaded guilty to the murders of ute to Sobhraj’s clever impersonations of comedian four victims (Brooks, Johnson, O’Dwyer, and Youde).

Charlie Chaplin.) At first, he expressed his displeasure Justice Kevin Duggan immediately sentenced Vlassakis through tantrums and persistent bed-wetting, twice to four life terms in prison, but his 42-year minimum running away to Saigon in his teens. Sobhraj’s father without parole was later cut in half when Vlassakis sent him back each time, but finally agreed to pay his turned state’s evidence against his three confederates.

passage for a trial visit home. The ticket never came, On July 3, 2001, Magistrate David Gurry confirmed and Sobhraj turned to robbery, landing briefly in jail on that Bunting, Haydon, and Wagner should stand trial his second attempt. He finally reached Vietnam on his on 10 murder charges. Legal maneuvers severed Hay-own, but the family reunion was tense, and Sobhraj was don’s case from the others for separate trial, and the soon packed off to live with relatives in India after Bunting-Wagner trial was postponed until October wrecking his father’s car. When he turned up in Saigon 2002. A jury was empanelled on October 16, and testi-again, uninvited, Charles’s father gave up and sent him mony consumed the next 11 months. Both defendants back to France.

were convicted in September 2003, Bunting on 11 mur-In Paris, Sobhraj was locked up twice for auto theft, der counts, Wagner on 10. (Jurors deadlocked on the emerging from custody the second time with a short-case of victim Suzanne Allen.) Judge Brian Martin sen-lived desire to “go straight.” He married and found a tenced both defendants to multiple life terms on Octo-job, but the workaday life quickly palled. Jailed again ber 29, 2003. While refusing to set a minimum sentence for writing bad checks on his sister’s account, Sobhraj for either prisoner, Martin declared, “I make it plain was freed when she dropped the charges. He continued
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SOBHRAJ, Charles Gurmukh

bouncing checks, however, collecting some 30,000

called either Connie Jo Bronzich or Annabella Tremont.

francs before he fled with his wife to Bombay, there set-Sobhraj—traveling as Bintanja Henricus, with the dead ting up shop as an international con man and smuggler, man’s passport—was registered at the same hotel as his specializing in theft of passports from American and two latest victims, but he slipped out of Nepal after pre-European tourists. Held for a jewel robbery in Delhi, liminary questioning.

Sobhraj was granted bail in spite of an escape attempt.

Sobhraj continued his aimless trek across Asia, mur-He promptly fled to Kabul, Afghanistan, where police dering Israeli Allen Jacobs for his passport at Varanasi, soon detained him for car theft and sundry lesser in northern India. (Accomplice Marie-Andrée Leclerc charges. Another jailbreak brought him back to France, received a life sentence for the Jacobs murder. Diag-where he kidnapped his infant daughter from his nosed with cancer in 1983, she was released to her mother-in-law, leaving the woman drugged and locked native Quebec and died there in 1984.) A few days later, in a closet.

on January 9, 1976, Sobhraj and two accomplices Sobhraj’s first known murder victim was a Pakistani drugged a trio of Frenchmen at Goa, dumping their chauffeur named Habib, hired by Sobhraj and a female bodies at roadside, but all three survived the attack. In companion in September 1972 for a trip between Hong Kong, victim Allen Gore was also lucky; he lost Rawalpindi and Peshawar. Along the way, for reasons $8,000 but kept his life, despite a jolt of Sobhraj’s still unclear, Sobhraj injected Habib with a drug that chemical cocktail. Arrested with false passports in took his life, then dumped the victim’s body in a river.

Bangkok, Sobhraj was released after bribing the local Murder warrants were issued for suspect “Damon Sea-police. In Penang, he was detained for trying to cash man,” but another year elapsed before Sobhraj was stolen traveler’s checks, but he managed to talk his way finally identified.

out of jail.

Arresting him was something else. November 1973

Back in Bombay, Sobhraj slipped a fatal mickey to found Sobhraj in Istanbul, teaming with his brother French tourist Jean-Luc Solomon, moving on from Guy to drug and rob wealthy tourists. Both were there to more ambitious projects. He next drugged an arrested in Greece, but Charles managed another entire class of 60 French engineering students, planning escape, leaving Guy to face charges while he fled back to rob them all, but miscalculation of the dosage sent to India. In Delhi, he entered the heroin trade, gaining a 20 to a local hospital. This time police were ready, foothold in the cutthroat business with inside informa-arresting Sobhraj on July 5, 1976. Although persuasive tion procured (via drugs and torture) from a local evidence linked him to at least 10 murders spanning pusher, whom Sobhraj later killed.

half a dozen nations, he faced trial only for crimes in Murder seemed to come easier each time, as Sobhraj India. Convicted of “culpable homicide” in the established a lethal system. Often working with female Solomon case, Sobhraj was sentenced to seven years at accomplices, he ingratiated himself with tourists along hard labor, with two more years tacked on for drugging Asia’s “hippie trail,” leaving corpses wherever he trav-the French students. In 1982, he received a life sentence eled. In time, police dubbed Sobhraj “The Serpent,” for for murdering Allen Jacobs. Four years later, Sobhraj his skill at eluding capture and confinement. American staged another jailbreak but was soon recaptured.

reporters called him the “CHARLES MANSON of the Authors who interviewed The Serpent in prison con-East.” He was a lethal customer by any name, claiming tend that his escape was a deliberate ploy, planned to an estimated 20 lives between Turkey and Hong Kong.

extend his Indian prison term beyond the statute of lim-The list of victims remains incomplete, but some itations for murder charges then pending in Thailand.

have been identified. In October 1975, Sobhraj killed an If true, the ploy worked. Sobhraj was paroled in American tourist, Teresa Knowlton, in his Delhi flat 1997 and deported to France, where he settled into a and had a cohort dump her corpse. A Turkish competi-comfortable existence as a celebrity rogue. Repudiating tor in the drug trade, Vitali Hakim, was beaten, his his various jailhouse confessions, Sobhraj granted inter-neck snapped, his body doused with gasoline and set views to journalists, filmmakers, and prospective biog-afire. In Bangkok, Sobhraj strangled Hakim’s French raphers at $5,000 a session, providing rose-tinted contact, one Stephanie Parry. A month later, still in glimpses of his life as an international man of mystery.

Bangkok, he strangled Dutch tourists Bintanja Henricus In 2000, Sobhraj reportedly moved to London, but his and Cornelia Hemker on December 16. Christmas

Asian haunts exerted an irresistible allure. September found him in Nepal, where two more tourists were 2003 found him back in Kathmandu, where Indian stabbed to death near Kathmandu, their bodies burned.

reporters tracked him down and published photos of Various published accounts identify the male victim, a him circulating on the streets. Police arrested him on Canadian, as either Laurent Carriere or Laddie du Parr, September 19, citing open warrants in the 1975 murder while his female traveling companion from California is case of victims Carriere-du Parr and Bronzich-Tremont.

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SOTO, Erno

Detectives claimed Sobhraj had once again entered a case where there is no proper process? It was an Nepal as Bintjana Henricus, still milking the stolen unfair trial.”

identity of another former victim.

A judge denied bail to Sobhraj on October 20, 2003, and he sat in jail awaiting trial on immigration charges
SOTO, Erno

(including use of a false “Henricus” passport) while Officially unsolved, the case of New York City’s “Char-homicide investigators dusted off their 28-year-old mur-lie Chopoff” murders occupied police for more than der case. Awaiting trial, Sobhraj airily dismissed the two years, from March 1972 through May 1974. The prosecution’s “dubious writings” and other evidence files are technically open today, despite the arrest of a from 1975, while staunchly maintaining his innocence.

promising suspect and his eventual commitment to a

“If I am guilty,” he asked a stringer from the
San Fran-mental institution for the criminally insane. While he cisco Chronicle in November 2003, “why didn’t I run remains incarcerated, deemed incompetent for trial, the when the Himalayan Times said I was in Nepal? I have crimes may not be cleared, but lead investigators on the nothing to reproach myself for.” A would-be prosecutor case are quick to note that “Charlie’s” random depre-told the press, “There may not be much physical evidations ended when their man was taken off the street.

dence against him, but eyewitness testimony is stronger Erno Soto’s marriage seemed to be the root of all his than the documentary evidence. There are witnesses problems. Separated from his wife for several years, he from the time who saw him, policemen and others.”

made a stab at reconciliation but was startled to dis-Perhaps, but Sobhraj was still awaiting trial in June cover that she had conceived a black child in his 2004, when court officials announced that his case absence. (Soto and his wife are Puerto Ricans.) He pre-would be postponed during Nepal’s holiday festival sea-tended not to care, but as the boy’s eighth birthday son. Four days later, on June 29, spokesmen for Bakhta-rolled around, Soto’s behavior grew increasingly erratic, pur’s district court informed the Kathmandu District resulting in his commitment to Manhattan State Hospi-Court that no trace could be found of Sobhraj’s murder tal in 1969 and 1970. He would return for further file from 1975. That news brought a solemn announce-treatment at sporadic intervals thereafter, but the evi-ment from Balabhadra Bastola, administrative chief in dence suggests that Soto found his primary relief by Kathmandu, that trial could not proceed without the stalking small, dark-skinned boys on New York’s ancient evidence. Despite predictions from Sobhraj that streets.

he would soon be free once more, a Nepalese court con-The first to die was Douglas Owens, black and eight victed him of double murder on August 12, 2004. He years old, found murdered two blocks from his Harlem was immediately sentenced to life imprisonment, tenement on March 9, 1972. Discarded on a rooftop, whereupon Sobhraj told reporters, “I am shocked. I Owens had been stabbed 38 times in the neck, chest, was found guilty without witnesses and evidence. I did and back, his penis nearly severed from his body. An not get a chance to defend myself. How can I defend on anonymous phone tip, received by police on March 23, fingered Erno Soto as a suspect in the case, but it was not pursued.

Another black boy, 10 years old, attacked on the city’s Upper West Side on April 20. Stabbed in the neck and back, he was also sexually mutilated, his penis severed and carried away by the man who left him for dead. The boy survived his injuries and offered homicide detective a description of the suspect, but the trauma he had suffered limited his value as a witness.

On October 23, another black boy—nine-year-old Wendell Hubbard—was killed in East Harlem, six blocks from the site of the Owens murder. Hubbard was stabbed 17 times in the neck, chest, and abdomen, his penis removed by the killer and carried away from the scene. Five months later, on March 7, nine-year-old Luis Ortiz, a dark-skinned Puerto Rican, vanished on an errand to the corner store. His body—stabbed 38

times in the neck, chest, and back, penis severed and Charles Sobhraj is guarded by police officers as he is missing—was found in the basement of an apartment taken into court in Kathmandu, Nepal. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi) house along his route of travel.

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“SOUTHSIDE Slayer”

The death of Steven Cropper on August 17, 1973, January 1. Patricia Dennis was the next to fall, her appeared to break the killer’s pattern. Cropper fit the mutilated body recovered on February 11. The first vic-victim profile perfectly—a black boy, eight years old—

tim for March was Sheily Wilson, murdered in Ingle-and while he had been murdered on a rooftop, he had wood on the 20th. Three days later, the stalker claimed not been stabbed. Instead, the fatal wounds were razor Lillian Stoval in Los Angeles. Number eight was Patsy slashes, and his genitals were still intact. Police initially Webb, murdered on April 15, with Cathy Gustavson suspected that a second killer was responsible, but they joining the list on July 28.

later decided it was too coincidental for a pair of slash-Thus far, the killer had missed only once, leaving one ers to be stalking young black boys simultaneously victim comatose after a savage beating. On August 6, around New York.