1 Charles in France in 1956.
2 Charles Sobhraj, ‘a perfect specimen of the human male’.
3 The fifteen-year-old Charles at one of his first jobs as a kitchen hand at La Coupole restaurant, Paris.
4 A young Charles with his mother.
5 ‘Roong’, one of Charles’s Thai girlfriends. She is holding Franky, the dog Charles forgot to give an alias.
6 Interpol photograph of Ajay Chowdury, the Indian who became Charles’s accomplice in at least eight murders. He was last heard of in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1977 and is wanted by Interpol.
7 Marie-Andrée Leclerc, a Canadian from Quebec who flew to Bangkok to live with Charles Sobhraj. ‘I swore to myself to try all means to make him love me,’ she wrote later, after changing her name to Monique, Ibut little by little I became his slave.’
8 Sobhraj’s flat in Kanit House in Bangkok. ‘It seemed a nice kind of life, with a lot of young people sitting around with plates on their knees …’
9 Dominique Rennelleau. After two months at Kanit House, the sick traveller realized that his hosts were drugging him.
10 Charles Sobhraj and Marie-Andrée, ‘waiting for the opportunity to befriend tourists.’
11 Teresa Knowlton in Seattle before she left for the Tibetan monastery in Kathmandu. On the way she stopped in Bangkok, where she met Ajay Chowdury at the Hotel Malaysia and was taken to Kanit House, and, later, to a sex club.
12 Stephanie Parry, the French girl who dropped out of a career in advertising to live on Formentera and design dresses. Hired as a courier by Hakim’s contact in Spain, she flew to Bangkok to collect a false-bottomed suitcase and take it to Europe.
13 Cornelia Hemker and Henricus Bintanja – ‘Cocky and Henk’ – the young couple from Amsterdam who had saved for five years for their ‘trip of a lifetime’.
14 Vitali Hakim, the Turk from Ibiza. ‘I wanted his murder to be a message,’ Charles told the authors, ‘a message to others in the business.’
15 Israeli crane driver Alan Aaron Jacobs was found robbed, drugged and strangled in a hotel room in Varanasi he had shared with Ajay Chowdury. ‘He was the only one I felt sorry for,’ Charles said later. ‘He was such a hard worker.’
16 Connie Jo Bronzich from Santa Cruz, California, and Laurent Carriere.
17 Connie Jo Bronzich from Manitoba, Canada, were roommates at a small hotel in Freak Street, Kathmandu. Their burnt bodies were later found in the foothills of the Himalayas.
18 This snapshot of Charles (centre) with two unsuspecting victims was taken by the third member of a group of young Frenchmen who were exploring Southern India in a van. Charles gave his victims cocktails spiked with sleeping pills, injected them with Largactil and robbed them of their valuables.
19 Then he carried them back to their van, which he crashed against a tree, probably intending to kill them.
20 Herman Knippenberg, a Dutch diplomat on his first foreign posting; Angela Knippenberg, whose skill in languages helped unscramble the clues in abandoned documents; Paul Siemons of the Belgian Embassy.
21 Nadine and Remy Gires. It was not until they met Paul Siemons and the Knippenbergs that anyone listened to their story. (From left) Herman Knippenberg, Nadine Gires, Remy Gires.
22 Charles Sobhraj, alias ‘Alain Gautier’ when he was arrested in Delhi in 1976.
23 Charles Sobhraj in Delhi, October 1977, with co-author Richard Neville. ‘I consider myself a businessman, not a criminal,’ he told Neville after recounting his life story, ‘and I know I never killed good people.’
24 Heavily guarded, Sobhraj, with Marie-Andrée Leclerc and Jean Dhuisme, is led from the prison bus to the courtroom.