The Serpent chronicles the crime spree of Charles Sobhraj, aka "Alain Gautier" in the 1970s, but how much of the story is true? The eight-episode BBC One series, currently streaming on Netflix, is a fictionalized account of true events surrounding Sobhraj, also known as "The Bikini Killer" (two of his female victims were found clad in bathing suits), and who the press nicknamed "The Serpent" because of his cunning nature. Sobhraj amassed a body count that authorities believe could be anywhere from 12 to 24 victims. His crimes have been the focus of multiple biographies, documentaries, and a Bollywood film.
The Serpent stars Tahar Rahim as Sobhraj, who, while posing as a gemstone salesman, lures unsuspecting tourists to the apartment he shares with his French-Canadian girlfriend, Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) in Bangkok, Thailand. Sobhraj, Marie, and Sobhraj's cohort Ajay Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera) steal passports and valuables and, in some instances, commit murder to cover their tracks. While looking into the disappearance of a young Dutch couple whose burned bodies are eventually discovered by the local authorities, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) becomes obsessed with finding their killer. Rahim plays Sobhraj as equal parts charming and terrifying: a master manipulator and con man who preys on the members of a subculture he disdains and shows no remorse for his actions, using racism and imperialism as justifications for his crimes.
Sobhraj was born in Saigon, where his Vietnamese mother and Indian father raised him until they divorced, and his mother remarried a French army lieutenant. Sobhraj attended boarding school in France, where he began committing petty crimes at a young age. By the time Sobhraj was 24, he had already served eight months in a French prison for burglary. After his release, he married Chantal Compagnon. According to a GQ article, they embarked on a crime spree across Europe, Asia, India, and Afghanistan, including robbery, fraud, and smuggling cars. The Netflix TV show largely glosses over these events, focusing most of the attention on Sobhraj's killings in Bangkok, particularly those of Theresa Knowlton (Alice Englert), and Dutch students Willem Bloem (Armand Rosback), and Helena Dekker (Ellie de Lange) -- whose real names were Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker -- and the murders of Laurent Carrière (Benjamin Braz) and Connie Bronzich (Dasha Nekrasova) in Nepal. Sobhraj's modus operandi was to stab or strangle his victims and then burn the bodies, sometimes while the victims were still alive. The series recreates the atrocities of Sobhraj's most brutal crimes, even if it omits some key events (including a kidnapping and two previous prison escapes) in favor of exploring how the chase consumes Knippenberg.
Sobhraj became the subject of an Interpol search in 1976, and he was convicted of attempted robbery in Dehli, India after he drugged 60 French engineering students. Sobhraj escaped the Tihar jail by drugging the guards, part of his plan to avoid extradition to Thailand, where he would have faced the death penalty. According to Medium, during his 20-year incarceration in India, Sobhraj bribed guards, and in return, he received perks such as gourmet meals and a television. He bragged about his female admirers and sexual exploits with several women, including his lawyer.
Sobhraj relished his notoriety, and after his release, he returned to Paris, where he granted interviews and tried to capitalize off his charming con man persona, discussing the murders but not implicating himself. Sobhraj returned to Nepal in 2003 to gamble: an addiction the show briefly addresses, and that ultimately led to his arrest for the murders of Carrière and Bronzich. Sobhraj told GQ he returned to Nepal as part of an undercover operation involving the CIA and the Taliban: an implausible and unsubstantiated claim. Only Sobhraj knows the real reason why he revisited the scene of two of his most horrific murders: an unanswered question at the end of The Serpent. Knippenberg told Vanity Fair Sobhraj believed police to be "incompetent" or "corruptible" and therefore not a threat. For a man who escaped prison three times and was a gambler by nature, the possible rewards of being back in the spotlight outweighed the risks.