Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - Scammed to Death: Con Artist & Impostor Charles Sobhraj Pt. 2

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Charles Sobhraj wasn’t just a serial killer, he was an international conman who used charm, fake passports, and tranquilizers to trap his victims. In Part 2, we follow the escalating brutality of the "Bikini Killer's" crimes, the captives who fought back, and the shocking way he dodged the death penalty...not once, but twice. Scams, Money, & Murder is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Scams, Money, & Murder! Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime House has the perfect new show for spooky season, Twisted Tales, hosted by Heidi Wong. Each episode of Twisted Tales is perfect for late-night scares and daytime frights, revealing the disturbing real-life events that inspired the world's most terrifying blockbusters, and the ones too twisted to make it to screen. Twisted Tales is a crimehouse original, powered by Pave Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. new episodes out every Monday. We've all dreamed of a life without limits.

No boss to answer to, no rules to follow, nothing to hold us back from our wildest dreams. People rarely achieve that kind of liberation. But Charles Sobrage did. He was a man who couldn't be claimed by a government, held by a prison, or even bound to a single identity. For him, laws were suggestions. Borders were meaningless.

People were objects. For years, this freedom allowed him to live entirely on his own terms, wreaking havoc everywhere he went. It was intoxicating. But just like any addiction, it was hard to quit. There was always one more boundary to cross, one more rule to break,

one more person to manipulate. And as the frequency of Charles' crimes escalated, so did their brutality. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It's not just a saying. It's a means of survival. Because in the world, we're entering trust is a trap, and betrayal is often fatal.

I'm Carter Roy, and this is scams, money, and murder. And I'm Vanessa Richardson. Every Thursday, we'll explore the story of a money-motivated crime gone wrong, whether it's a notorious con, fraud, burglary, or even murder. From the archives of Crime House, the show, murder-true crime stories and killer minds. These are some of our favorite cases that have kept us lying awake at night wondering if money didn't make the world go round, could all this have been avoided?

And as always, at Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following scams, money, and murder wherever you get your podcasts. This is an episode from our show, Killer Minds, where I'm joined by Dr. Tristan Engels, who helps dive into these killer's psyches to try and understand how someone could do such horrible things. Before we get into the story, you should know it contains descriptions of mutilation and murder. Listener discretion is advised. Today, we conclude our deep dive on Charles Sobrage, born in war-torn Vietnam, called French Indochina at the time, and rejected by his biological father, Charles became a master thief and escape artist,

taking on dozens of fake identities. But after years of stealing from Western tourists, he escalated to killing them, using conniving tricks and methods so brutal, he earned himself the nickname the Bikini Killer. As Vanessa takes you through the story, I'll be talking about things like the unique psychology of criminal accomplices, the complex relationship between long-term captives and their kidnappers, and why some criminals rewrite their own history. And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer? By late October 1975, Charles Sobrage's Bangkok apartment, 504 Canada House, was constantly brimming with people.

For months, the 31-year-old career criminal. had been luring tourists from Europe and North America there with the homes anything goes atmosphere. While their guard was down, Charles would steal the tourists' wallets, passports, or other valuables. It was a nefarious scheme, to be sure, but ultimately, the people who were only robbed at Canard House

were the lucky ones. Earlier that month, one of Charles's guests had turned up dead. Her name was Teresa Knowlton, a 21-year-old American, on her way to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. According to Charles, he'd killed her in connection to some kind of drug smuggling scheme. It's not clear how much of that was actually true,

but either way, the result was tragically the same. Teresa was murdered, and only Charles and his accomplice, a J. Chowdry, knew what had happened. By that point in October, her body had not been officially identified. No one even knew she was missing. But that didn't mean Charles wasn't under any scrutiny. There was at least one person who found the influx of tourists at Charles' place, Strange, a 21-year-old French woman named Nadine G. Res. Nadine also lived in Canitt House, just two floors below Charles.

She'd become friends with his girlfriend, 30-year-old Marie-Andre Leclair. She came by 504 a few times a week to chat and noticed the constant stream of travelers flowing through their apartment. Something about all those young, naive tourists bothered her, but she couldn't quite pinpoint why. Whenever anyone is close to someone that they suspect is doing something bad or is dangerous in some way, the brain doesn't immediately go to certainty about it. It goes into conflict. Suspicion without proof creates cognitive dissonance, and I cover this often because it's such a common and real experience. But essentially, it's the tension when you hold conflicting beliefs. In this case,

what you sense and what you hope to be true are in conflict, and people deal with dissonance in different ways. Some rationalize by finding ways to excuse the suspicious behaviors, some distance themselves emotionally or physically, some even double down on denial because acknowledging the truth would be deeply uncomfortable, and in this case, it would mean possibly implicating themselves by proximity. There's also a real power imbalance. Charles was charming, confident, and controlling. Someone like Nadine speaking out could feel risky, but not just socially, physically, too. And in situations involving predatory behavior, people often default to safety-seeking behaviors, which can look like passiveness, but are really about survival.

Nadine is in a foreign country, and she may be feeling even more at risk. So when we see someone hesitate to take action, it's not necessarily weakness or ignorance. It's often a reflection of uncertainty, fear, and isolation. Even if Nadine didn't know exactly what was going on, she instinctively started keeping a close eye on the travelers who came in and out of Charles' apartment. And in late October 1975, she met a new one, a young, well-dressed, Turkish man.

This was Vitaly Hakim, a rumored professional drug smuggler who was supposedly working for a Danish heroin operation. No one's quite sure how Vitale ended up in the apartment. And Charles' reasons for targeting him are equally murky, although he was supposedly part of the same drug ring as Teresa Knowlton. Whatever brought Vitale there, Nadine saw him enter Charles' apartment, and then never saw the young man again. That's because while Vitale was inside that apartment, Charles dosed

him with tranquilizers. Then he and Ajay got Vitale into their car and drove him to a deserted stretch of road near Pataya, the same beach where they'd left Teresa's body. There, they tortured and killed him, possibly to find out where Vatali was keeping his drugs. Whatever their reasons were, Vatali's body was found several hours later. His body burned beyond recognition. Meanwhile, Charles and Ajay headed back to Canet House, but they weren't as sneaky as they thought. Shortly after their encounter with Vitali, the phone started ringing. It was Vatali's girlfriend, a French woman named Stephanie Perry.

She didn't know that Vitale was dead, but she knew he'd been at Candid House and wanted to know if anyone had seen him. And with that phone call, Stephanie became a loose end that Charles had not accounted for. He agreed to meet her at a nearby hotel to discuss Vitale's whereabouts. While they talked, Charles slipped a sleeping pill into Stephanie's drink. When the drug kicked in, he lured Stephanie into his car, where a J was waiting in the front seat. They drove for about two hours until the car stopped on an isolated stretch of road.

By this point, Stephanie was delirious and unable to move. Charles pulled her out of the car and told Ajay to strangle her to death. How does someone like a J get recruited by Charles and then be willing to murder for him? The reality is it depends on how charismatic their recruiter is. And Charles is clearly charismatic. But also, this kind of loyalty wasn't just immediate. It's gradually building with smaller loyalty tests like theft, deception, and other forms of manipulation. And when those are successful, the stakes gradually rise. Charles likely positioned himself as the dominant force in their relationship

using control. He may have framed violence as necessary or justified, because that's how he viewed it. That's how killers keep accomplices loyal, too. They normalize the abnormal. And as for a J, psychologically, he may have been experiencing moral disengagement, convincing himself he was just following orders, or that Charles knew best. He may have felt fear, shame, loyalty, or maybe nothing at all. The deeper someone gets pulled into a cycle of violence, the more their internal moral compass gets overridden by survival instincts and group allegiance. And rather than reject this or flee, Ajay seems to have doubled down and justified it along with Charles. At this point, Ajay was completely loyal to his boss, and with Stephanie gone, Charles thought that he didn't need to worry about anyone else looking for Vitale.

But he didn't realize there was yet another person he hadn't accounted for, his third-floor, Nadine, and she was also wondering where this mysterious traveler had gone. During one of her visits with Marie, Nadine reportedly noticed a necklace and some luggage that she knew belonged to Vitale. She found that odd because weeks had passed since she'd met him outside the apartment. When Nadine asked where he was, Maria assured her he'd be back soon. But Nadine couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened. And then someone else disappeared after going to Charles's apartment. In mid-December, Charles invited a Dutch couple over to his place, Hank Bintanya and Kaki Hemker. They were 29 and 24 years old, respectively, and both studied engineering in the Netherlands.

They'd been traveling together for the last eight months and met Charles during a pit stop in Hong Kong. They'd gotten along well and gladly accepted when Charles invited them to stay with him for a few days in Bangkok. They had no idea they were walking into a trap. Shortly after their arrival, Marie and Ajay may have dosed Hank and Cocky with a cocktail of laxatives and tranquilizers, then convinced the couple they'd gotten food poisoning. But the cures they offered Hank and Kaki were also spiked, and they quickly became weak and disoriented. They weren't the only people with a mysterious illness at the apartment either. A young French backpacker named Dominique Rinello was also there. He'd also come down with a strange illness right after he met Charles

a few months earlier and had been dutifully taking the fake medicine Marie gave him ever since. When Dominique saw Cocky and Hank develop the same symptoms, he finally realized what was happening. Dominique didn't understand why Charles and his accomplices were doing this, but he was scared for both himself and the new arrivals. So there's been individuals who have been in Charles orbit for months who have been observing potential signs of danger and have stayed connected to him in some way, like Marie or even Dominique. So let's explore a possible. reason for this. When someone is trapped in a high stress environment for a prolonged period, they can develop a trauma bond. And that's when a victim forms a psychological attachment to their

captor usually as a way to stay safe. It's about strategy and the hope that if they stay close or stay agreeable, that they might survive. It's also psychologically useful because it's easier to want to accept that Charles and Marie, like for example, for Dominique, have their best interest in mind, especially when they're feeling particularly vulnerable. And Charles was a master at creating a kind of psychological trap that we see with abusive relationships and trauma bonds. He didn't just use force. He used manipulation, isolation, fear, and alternating kindness with cruelty. Even though his cruelty right now seems to be a little bit more covertly done.

But that push-pull dynamic is what keeps people off balance. It creates just enough hope to stay put and just enough fear to stop from running. So when someone stays, despite clear danger, it's a sign of just how effective psychological captivity can be and how deeply trauma can rewire our instinct for self-protection. How did Dominique's physical weakness from being drugged repeatedly play into this helplessness? Is there a survival instinct that actually keeps victims compliant in these kinds of situations? Yeah, Dominique was vulnerable in every way imaginable. In addition to physical weakness, repeated.

drugging can cause cognitive impairment. It can create confusion, even disorientation. And when your body is that compromised, your ability to make clear decisions or assess risk or even attempt to escape is really compromised. It's not just that Dominique didn't know what was happening. He likely couldn't trust or fully even comprehend what he was perceiving. Adding in that psychological vulnerability too, he was in survival submission mode, a state where the brain prioritizes survival above all else. It's a form of adaptive freeze, and it's not passiveness or even weakness. It's biology. The survival brain doesn't care about pride or autonomy. It cares about staying alive. So Dominique's perceived compliance here wasn't consent. It was a psychological and physiological

response to prolong stress, illness, and in some ways captivity. Charles systematically dismantled his ability to think clearly, resist, or even escape. Dominique was so sick, he could only watch while Hank and Kaki slowly lost touch with reality as dehydration and dizziness set in. They spent multiple days in the apartment getting weaker and weaker every day. Then Charles and Ajay offered to take them to a hospital, but they never made it there. Instead, the two men brought Hank and Kaki to a deserted country road outside of Bangkok where they killed the couple and lit their bodies on fire.

Once again, nobody immediately noticed the Dutch couple's sudden disappearance, but Charles's crimes were about to catch up to him. The morning after he killed Hank and Cocky, Charles leafed through that day's copy of the Bangkok Post. One of the headlines read, European Girl Murdered. Apparently, someone had found Stephanie Perry's body near Pataya. The police hadn't identified her yet,

but the article noted her condition was strangely similar to another white woman who drowned in the area, Teresa Knowlton, who was also yet to be IDed. After seeing this, Charles decided that he, Marie, and a J needed to get out of Bangkok for a while. As he was packing, Dominique popped his head into the bedroom. He wanted his passport back, which Charles had supposedly been holding for safekeeping. Too frazzled to say no, Charles flipped through his stack of stolen documents and handed it over. He told Dominique he was leaving and asked him for a favor. Charles tossed over a pair of mud-covered pants he had worn the night before and asked Dominique to clean them for him. Then he flew out the door, leaving Dominique alone in an empty

apartment for the first time in weeks. He stood in the kitchen, holding the muddy pants. He wondered how Charles got them so dirty, and when he eventually looked closer at the now-empty guest room, he noticed that Cocky and Hank's luggage was still there. A chill ran down Dominique's spine as he began to connect the dots, because at that moment he realized his captor wasn't just a bad man who drugged him. He might be a murderer. In December 1975, a few days after Charles Sobrose, Marie-Andre Leclair and a J. Chaudry left Thailand.

The Bangkok Post printed a photo of two burned bodies found on the side of a mud-covered road. The newspaper mistakenly identified them as Australian travelers, but nothing had been confirmed, and the article noted that one of their t-shirts was made in the Netherlands. When Dominique Renalo saw the photo, a chill ran down his spine. One of the bodies had a long floral skirt on.

He'd seen cocky hemker wearing one just like it before she disappeared. This was the fourth sign that something terrible had happened to her and her boyfriend, Hank Bintanya. First, there were the muddy pants that Charles had asked Dominique to clean. Second, their luggage was still in their room. Third, Charles had skipped town, and now this newspaper report, burned bodies in Dutch clothing. The conclusion was obvious. Charles was responsible for the murder of the Dutch couple, though Dominique had no idea why.

But he knew he needed to tell someone about this before Charles, Marie, and Ajay returned, and then he needed to get as far away from Bangkok as possible. Over the next few days, Dominique mulled over what to do. At some point during this time, Nadine stopped by to see Marie. Dominique took the opportunity to tell her everything. Nadine, who was already suspicious of Charles, didn't need convincing that he was dangerous. Together, they searched the apartment, including Charles and Marie's room,

and were shocked to find handcuffs, syringes, and piles of modified passports. There was also Vitaly's necklace, Stephanie's passport, and a pack of Dutch birth control pills, clearly owned by cocky hemker. It seemed like more than enough evidence to bring to the authorities, but they had no idea which authorities to contact. The Bangkok police were notoriously corrupt, and Charles was friendly with him. He was well connected at the French embassy, too.

They could contact the embassies of all the victims' home countries, but that might take too long. The best options seemed to be Interpol, the International Police Agency, which was headquartered in France. They decided Dominique would go there with the evidence, since it clearly wasn't safe for him to remain in the apartment. Nadine lent him the cash to buy a one-way ticket to Paris,

and in late December 1975, he flew there to file a report with Interpol. Meanwhile, Charles was on his way to the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, high in the Himalayan Mountains, a mostly unregulated crossroads for black market goods and drug deals, as well as a major stop for tourists on the Hippie Trail, And even though Charles was supposed to be lying low, he couldn't help himself. Once he got to Kathmandu, he fell into his usual routine, checking into a hotel and prowling the town for vulnerable-looking travelers. What's striking about Charles is that unlike many of the serial killers we cover, he doesn't appear to be driven by a compulsion to kill in the traditional sense.

He doesn't appear to be motivated by sexual gratification, rage, or even fantasy. there's no ritualistic pattern or trophy collecting. Instead, he uses instrumental violence and is calculated. His victims are selected for practical reasons. Some were even done simply to cover up existing crimes. So what is driving him? Every time Charles deceives someone exploits their trust or gets away with a crime, he's rewarded, not just materially, but psychologically. It reinforces a core belief he likely developed early in life, that he is superior, can outsmart everyone, and is above consequence. It's also about identity maintenance. Charles' entire self-concept is built on being clever, dominant, and in control. Seeking out vulnerable travelers, even while fleeing the law, wasn't just reckless. It was essential to keeping his ego intact. Remember, Charles is very image-driven.

He wasn't killing because he couldn't stop. He was killing because it worked and being successful in deceiving others into believing he was sophisticated and trustworthy. it reinforced the image he needed to maintain to overcompensate for a lack of self-worth. So how desensitized to murder would Charles be at this point? Is it even possible to become numb to something like that? So I think it's very likely he was desensitized, but not in the sense that he forgot it was wrong, but in the sense that it no longer registered to him emotionally in a way that would for most people. For someone with his personality structure, which is high in callousness, low in empathy,

and very much about control, repeated exposure to violence can dull whatever internal resistance might have existed early on. Like I outlined for Charles, murder didn't seem to be about rage or emotional release. It was more about utility.

And when violence is used instrumentally like that with little or no emotional consequence, that's when desensitization becomes especially concerning because it's not about losing control, it's about gaining it. And the fact that Marie and Ajay are complicit and actively participating with no obvious moral conflict, at least from what we know, that is reinforcing Charles's belief that

what he's doing is not just acceptable, but it's effective. Unfortunately, it didn't take Charles long to find his next victims. 29-year-old Connie Joe Bronsich is said to have been a recovering heroin addict from California who was traveling through Asia after multiple attempts to get sober. She was enjoying her trip and had even met a boyfriend on the road, a straight-laced Canadian mine worker, also in his 20s, named Loran Carrier. We don't know exactly where they crossed paths with Charles. It was probably in a hostel or overlander restaurant, the kind of place where Charles

could easily present himself as a sympathetic fellow wanderer. However it started, it ended in tragedy. On the morning of December 22, 1975, both Connie and Lorenz bodies were found stabbed and burned in Catmandu. At least Connie was quickly identified, and when the police searched her hostile, they found her killer's name, written in a notebook. It was Alon Gautier, an alias that Charles Sobrage had used on multiple occasions. The Nepalese authorities interviewed the locals who lived near the crime scene, and some of them reported seeing a white Dotson making a U-turn late that night, and noticed how odd it looked on the mountain roads. As a result, a result,

As a result of this tip, police set up roadblocks outside Kathmandu looking for cars matching that description. Later that morning, Charles and his crew were caught driving that White Dotson and brought in for questioning. When Charles was asked to identify himself, he used Hank Bintanya's altered passport, saying he was a professor from the University of Amsterdam. His deception worked in the short term, and he was released. but police still considered him a suspect, and on December 28th, authorities raided his hotel room, but all they found were empty packages of laxatives and a few scattered jewels. Charles was nowhere to be found.

He, Marie, and a Jay had already high-tailed it across the Indian border. Over the next few weeks, they bounced between Goa, Madras, Singapore, and Hong Kong. By the time they went back to Bangkok, It was January, 1976, and Dominique was long gone. When Charles arrived at Cannot House, it was empty. And that was a bigger deal than he realized. By that point, Dominique was in France, and along with Interpol, he'd alerted the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs about Charles' activities.

Meanwhile, Nadine Geras was in contact with the British Embassy and warned them about Charles, They were ultimately unhelpful, so Nadine turned to others in Bangkok's diplomatic community. It was a small, tight-knit group, especially among staffers at the European embassies, and her story about a wealthy Frenchman targeting Western tourists made for excellent barroom banter. As a result of Nadine and Dominique's reports, rumors quickly spread around Bangkok. Eventually, it seemed like most of the investigators in the city had heard about the dangers at Canet House. But none of them had done anything about it. That changed in early February, 1976,

when a Dutch diplomat named Hermann Knieppenberg started searching for Hank Bentanya and Kaki Hemker. Their parents hadn't heard from them in months and had contacted Dutch authorities with their concerns. Initially, Herrmann assumed they'd gone off the grid. Twenty-somethings disappeared all the time in Asia, usually by their own design. But when he got in contact with their families and read through the letters the couple had sent home, Herrmann became nervous, especially when he read about a gem dealer who had invited the couple to his apartment in Bangkok. The description matched up with the rumor that had been swirling through the European embassies, something about a mixed-race Frenchman living near the tourist district

who'd been drugging European travelers for passports, money, or worse. Suddenly, Hank and Kocky's disappearance didn't seem so innocent. Herrmann knew there'd been a burned, unidentified pair of bodies found in Pataya and tested their dental records against the Dutch couple. By the end of the month, he'd confirmed it. The bodies were, Kocky, and Hank. In the weeks it took to learn this news, Herrmann had managed to dig into more reports about this mysterious gem dealer

and learned that most of the information people had was thanks to a certain person in Bangkok, Nadine Jerez. Working with the Belgian embassy, Harriman got in touch with Nadine, who was still living two floors down from Charles and Marie. She told him and the Belgian diplomats about the two other victims she suspected Charles had killed, Vitaly Hakim and Stephanie Perry. On March 10, 1976, the group presented their findings to the Thai police who agreed to raid the apartment. But Charles was ready for them. When the police broke down the door of number 504 on the night of March 11th, he used one of his many passports to pose as an American named

David Allen Gore. And although Charles was taken in for questioning, the police eventually released him, not realizing who they had in custody. It's really unsettling how easily Charles was able to con his way out of trouble like that. It wasn't. just luck, it was his skill. He knew how to read people, how to perform, and how to manipulate perception even when he was detained. So, is Charles just a con artist, or is he a serial killer? And the truth is, it's both. Charles operated like a con artist in his methods with multiple identities, forged documents, charm, and deception. These are also traits commonly seen in psychopathy. Charles is a great chameleon. He is criminally versatile and he's very cunning. And while not all

con artists are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are con artists, many successful con artists exhibit high levels of subclinical psychopathic traits. So you know who he reminds me of? He kind of reminds me of the Tinder Swindler. I don't know if you ever saw that documentary, but he was globe trotting. He was, I think the Tinder Swindler was also in the gem business or the diamond business, but he portrayed himself very similarly. So most con artists like that used strategic manipulation and social extortion without overt violence. But Charles is different because he escalated into calculated instrumental and lethal violence. And that's what puts him more closer to the profile of a psychopathic predator. He also has emotional detachment. He could fake

warmth, cooperation, even vulnerability, and then disappear behind another identity that he stole the moment it served him. He wasn't lying to get ahead. He was lying to maintain power, erase accountability, and continue harming people without any detection or consequence. Does it seem like Charles is almost having fun with the authorities, you're possibly in some way addicted to the thrill of it? It's hard to imagine that he did not get some kind of psychological gratification from this, knowing what we know about him this far. He's performative and grandiose, and everything has been about image. He curated a life he felt entitled to, and it seems even now he was prepared for the authorities

and he's orchestrating his escape. Could we say he's addicted to the thrill? Possibly. The brain doesn't always distinguish between a literal addiction and a behavioral reinforcement loop, especially in people with high sensation seeking traits. Every time Charles successfully tricks someone,

he was reinforcing the behavior because he has a lot of traits of narcissism and at its core that involves a fragile sense of self that's regulated through external validation, control and image management. So it would be reasonable to assume that he enjoys this because every time he succeeds, he's protected from facing a deeply rooted insecurity

about who he really is and where he really comes from. Herman and Nadine were furious when they heard that the raid had failed. They tried to set up another arrest and even contacted the U.S. embassy to check on the passport Charles had used. That's when they learned that American investigators also have, their eyes on Charles. They'd finally realized that Teresa Nolton had gone missing and thought Charles might have something to do with it. But as usual, Charles was a step ahead of them and had fled to Europe, except this time it wouldn't be so easy for him to run. Hermann Kinnippenberg's report

had circulated through every major law enforcement organization, and the press had caught on to Charles too. In April 1976, a Reuters report noted the similarity between the pairs of of burned bodies found in Kathmandu and the ones in rural Thailand. Separately, the U.S. Embassy finally identified Teresa Nolton's body. All of the pieces seemed to be coming together. Just over a month later, Interpol issued a warrant of arrest for all three of the Cannot House conspirators. Their descriptions and aliases were sent to border crossing and police departments around the world.

But Charles had been a masterful escape artist. since he was eight, and had been running from the law for decades. The walls were closing in, but as always, he managed to find a window. When you support Movember, you're not just fundraising. You're showing up for the men you love. Your dad, your brother, your partner, your friends. It isn't just a men's issue. It's a human one. why Movember exists to change the face of men's health. From mental health and suicide prevention to prostate and testicular cancer research

and early detection. Movember is tackling the biggest health issues facing men today. Join the movement and donate now at Movember.com. Your favorite true crime series 48 hours is back for a new season and so is the official after show podcast post-mortem. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 hours

and then join me 48 hours correspondent, Anne-Marie Green on Tuesday for a new episode of post-mortem, where we bring you a closer look at each case. This case was eye-opening on so many different levels. Follow and listen to 48 hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Shortly after the Interpol warrant was issued in May 1976, 32-year-old Charles Sobrage snuck out of Europe with his girlfriend, 30-year-old Marie-Andre Leclair and headed for India.

He'd lost track of his henchman, a J. Chowdry at this point, but didn't seem to care. Charles was in survival mode, knowing full well the international authorities and the global media were all on his trail. He'd even gotten a nickname out of it, the bikini killer, because Teresa Nolton was found in a bathing suit. Charles wasn't giving up, though. His plan was to flee to South America before his action. caught up with him. But first, he needed cash. Luckily for him, tourists in Bombay were just

as gullible and trusting as the ones in Bangkok. Charles quickly fell back into charming, drugging, and robbing the backpackers who filled the city's hostels. During one instance in July 1976, this routine led to the accidental overdose of a French traveler. He used to measure out just enough medication to incapacitate his victims and facilitate a clean robbery, now he was dosing them to the point of death. Marie had noticed this shift in Charles too, and it scared her. She'd never been a completely willing participant in his crimes and was essentially his captive, but after hearing about the arrest warrant and seeing the newspaper headlines, she finally realized she needed to escape. After they arrived in India, she started

putting a side cash in her lipstick case and reached out to her family in Canada again. I know we touched on this in episode one, but it begs repeating. Marie's situation is a powerful and disturbing example of how someone can be both a victim and a participant in the orbit of a manipulative and dangerous individual. From the outside, it's easy to ask, why didn't she leave? Why did she help him? But psychologically, what we're likely seeing is a trauma bond. Charles wasn't just abusive or controlling.

He was also charming, clever, and attentive when he needed to be. And that push-pull dynamic where cruelty alternates with connection is exactly what keeps trauma bonds in place. And there's often shame involved. Once someone has participated in harm, even under pressure, it becomes harder to see themselves as a victim of theirs as well. They rationalize, minimize, or emotionally disconnect in order to survive. Marie was, in many ways, isolated,

disoriented, and experiencing prolonged trauma exposure. When she realized she needed to escape, she knew she had to do it safely, which is necessary. Simply leaving could put her safety at risk. She needed a plan. Her hiding money little by little and reconnecting with her family for the first time was her way of safely planning that escape. But that doesn't erase moral complexity. Her fear may have been real, but her actions still had consequences.

And understanding the psychology helps explain her behavior and her choices, but it doesn't automatically excuse them, especially criminally. What does it take psychologically to live that double life? And is it a common experience in abusive relationships? Living a double life, especially in the context of an abusive or coercive relationship, takes an incredible psychological toll. You're not just lying to others. You're often lying to yourself, too. You're managing fear, guilt, shame, and surveillance. all at once while trying to appear as if everything is fine when it's truly not. Once again, it's often causing cognitive dissonance. And to survive that dissonance, we find ways to cope,

and that varies from person to person. And yes, it is common in abusive relationships, especially those involving coercive control. Victims often feel they have to maintain a facade for the outside world while privately enduring all this manipulation and isolation and violence. And over time that kind of double life can lead to dissociation, depression, and identity confusion. They're living two realities. In those realities, neither one feels safe. Charles might not have noticed Marie's growing sense of unease since he was so focused on his escape. He was becoming frantic in his search for money and seemed to kick off new schemes at random. At one point, he planned a massive gem heist and took on three additional accomplices to do it,

One of these was a middle-aged Belgian named Jean Hoygens. Perhaps he should have thought twice about bringing new faces into the fold so quickly. They weren't career criminals. Jean was actually an out-of-work actor and was deeply uncomfortable with Charles's business. In early July, 1976, he wrote to an embassy about their plan, which was enough to trigger an alert that the bikini killer might be operating in their midst. Meanwhile, Charles was still doing his best to earn as much cash as possible as fast as possible, and he saw an opportunity when he came upon a group of 60 French university students in a hotel lobby.

That many students meant a lot of passports to steal, so Charles ingratiated himself, joining them for drinks and, as usual, dosing them with laxatives and tranquilizers. He wanted to play the long game. If all things went to plan, he could take all their passports in one swoop. When he heard the students were going on a short trip to Jaipur, he gravely reminded them of the dangers of Indian tap water, especially in the countryside, and gave them medication for it. Of course, those pills would not make them feel any better.

It's not uncommon for predatory serial offenders to exploit cultural assumptions and implicit biases as part of their manipulation strategy. They don't just prey on people physically. They pray on how people think. One of the most well-known examples is Ted Bundy. Now, Bundy's victim profile and his methods were quite different from Charles, but the psychological mechanisms were remarkably similar.

Both men knew how to build trust first by performing for their victims. Bundy feigned vulnerability with a broken arm, asking for help. And he used charm, confidence, and conventional attractiveness to disarm his target. He showed people exactly what they needed to see to feel safe, gain their trust, and disarm their defenses. Charles did the same, but with a different toolkit. He understood how to mirror Western travelers' fears and assumptions, especially around illness, danger, and just foreignness in general, and he weaponized those cultural stereotypes to gain their trust. Where Bundy leaned on personal relatability, Charles leaned on global fluency and social adaptability.

Both men used trust not as a tactic for control. Both men had narcissistic and psychopathic traits. Both got gratification from constructing entire realities, charming their way past suspicion, and destroying lives to protect or elevate their image. The manipulation wasn't a side effect. It was central to their identity. And in both cases, it wasn't about connection.

It was about control and fueling their ego. So how could this play into Charles' own identity as an Asian man who depicted himself as European for personal gain. By presenting himself as European, he wasn't just trying to blend in. He was rewriting the story of who he was and creating a persona that he believed would command trust and admiration, even independence, and that's a person that people would want to be around in his mind. For someone with narcissistic traits, this is ego protective.

It allows him to distance himself from feelings of rejection and powerlessness or perceived inferiority. So instead of being the stateless, unwanted outsider, he becomes the charming person who's fluent in multiple languages, culturally experienced, socially agile, and well-traveled. And it wasn't just about strategy because he could strategically con people in different ways with his level of manipulative skills. It was about psychologically disavowing his own history and escaping his roots and the shame he associated with it. Remember, after his father's abandonment, Charles had already begun distancing himself from the life he had with his mother, idealizing old fantasy life with his father who left him. That impulse to reject his reality and replace it with something unattainable wasn't new.

He'd been rewriting his story for a really long time. When the students returned from their trip, they were pale and shaky. They assumed they'd picked up dysentery. Because Charles was the only local they knew, they asked him to bring more. pills when he joined them for dinner. Later that night, Charles entered the dining room of the Vikram Hotel and doled out a bunch of capsules to all the students that were there. They gulped them down without suspicion.

Within minutes, about a dozen of them were unconscious, and the rest were vomiting and running to the bathroom. Charles tried to keep them calm, explaining these reactions were normal, but it appeared he'd been too heavy-handed with his dosing again. the hotel staff called in a doctor, and the police. While the students were ferried away to a hospital, two officers locked Charles in the hotel manager's office. Under questioning, Charles attempted to introduce himself as someone named Daniel,

but the lead detective saw through him. He'd read the Interpol warrant and had been on the lookout for someone with this M.O. He arrested Charles and took him into custody. While Charles sat in jail in Delhi, authorities were, to track down his accomplices. Marie was still in the city, and they quickly found her. She agreed to cooperate and wrote out a statement with everything she knew. A J. Chowdhury proved to be more of a challenge.

Despite his major involvement in the Candid House operation, Marie had completely lost touch with him after she and Charles fled Bangkok. To this day, he's never been found. After 10 potential murders and dozens, maybe hundreds of raw, robberies around the world. The arrest of 32-year-old Charles Sobrage was a victory for the international authorities. But the moment the Indian police locked him up, his case was plagued by complications. Charles' violent crime spree was global, split between Thailand, India, and Nepal.

But because Charles was arrested in India, he could only be prosecuted and tried for the crimes he'd committed in that country. the accidental overdose he'd caused and the poisoning of the French students. He was found guilty on those charges and given a 12-year prison sentence starting in 1976. But his most extreme crimes occurred in the other two countries, and as he began his jail time in India, the authorities in Thailand and Nepal were trying to figure out how to bring him to justice. Thailand attempted to extradite Charles multiple times so they could try him for the murders of Teresa Knowlton, Vitale Hakeem, Stephanie Perry, Hank Bintanya, and Kaki Hemker.

With evidence for Marie and the investigation work from the European diplomats, they had a slam-dunk case. Thailand carried the death penalty, and if Charles stood trial there, he would almost certainly be executed. But there was a catch. The country had a 20-year statute of limitations, So if Charles could stay out of Thailand for 20 years, he'd avoid any punishment. Charles knew this and purposefully extended his sentence in India past the 20-year mark by breaking out of jail in 1986 two years before his intended release. His escape was almost cartoonish. He befriended the guards and gave them sweets laced with sleeping pills.

He was re-arrested in Goa and had 10 years added to his sentence, allowing him to completely avoid a trial in Thailand. So when his sentence in India ended in 1997, 52-year-old Charles Sobrage actually walked free. The statute of limitations had run out on his crimes in Thailand, and if the Nepalese tried to extradite him, it didn't work. Just two decades after his international manhunt, Charles simply returned to France and and settled in suburban Paris. But his taste for risk hadn't faded in prison,

and he eventually grew bored of his quiet lifestyle. After a few years, for reasons that remain unclear, Charles decided to move to Nepal. This was a bad idea, considering the country still had warrants out on Charles for the murder of Connie Jo Bronsic and Laurent Carrier, and there was no statute of limitations there. In 2003, a Nepalese journalist recognized Charles in Kathmandu and tipped off the police.

He was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. But even that sentence didn't stick. In 2014, Charles was 70 years old and his health was fading. The Supreme Court of Nepal eventually ordered his release due to old age, and he was deported back to France in 2022. As of June 2025, he is alive and free in France. At age 81, he speaks to the press frequently. He doesn't outright deny that he killed any of the victims described here.

In fact, he's offered up grisly details about their deaths on multiple occasions. But he claims that the killings were motivated by a larger conspiracy in the drug trade, the details of which are still hazy. So he sounds like he's trying to rewrite his narrative, and that is not uncommon and certainly not surprising when it comes to Charles. So firstly, I've never met him and I've never evaluated him, and this is educational only. I'm not giving any formal diagnosis, but given everything you outlined and that has been made public about him, he has both psychopathic and narcissistic traits. Reframing his actions is done out of ego preservation, but his need for admiration is why he continues to talk about. openly to the press. He's getting attention, and he is tricking himself into believing that

he's recharacterized himself to the eyes of the world. Someone like Charles cannot tolerate irrelevance. He probably can't bear the idea of being forgotten, dismissed, or reduced to a villain with no complexity. So he keeps talking, not necessarily to confess, but to curate and continue to curate. At this stage, it's not about remorse. It's about legacy management, which appears driven by ego and narcissism. He's not changing the story because it's true. He's changing it because it still gives him power. Well, at this point, Charles has muddied the waters of his own story so much that it's hard

to say anything for certain. But what we do know is this. Charles Sobrage spent decades evading justice by becoming invisible. He was a master of fake identities, phony passports, and disappearing acts. That superpower is gone now. His face is known, his name is infamous, and his methods are well documented. After leaning so hard on his ability to shape-shift, blend in, and make a quick exit, fame is the one prison he can't escape.

Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Scams, Money, and Murder. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check out more just like it by searching for killer minds wherever you get your podcasts. Scams, Money, and Murder is a Crimehouse original. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Scams, Money and Murder, and Killer Minds, wherever you get your podcasts.

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