Serpent 'serial killer' suspect hits back at media 'brainwashing'

Charles Sobhraj, also known as The Serpent, has said that those who believe he is a serial killer have been "brainwashed" by the media, and he now appears in a Channel 4 documentary to argue his innocence.

The convicted murderer has agreed to take part in The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer, a three-part documentary airing from Tuesday, 19 March. In it he speaks out for the first time since his 19-year prison sentence in Nepal, and the docu-series will see him face interrogation from members of the police and a forensic psychologist.

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When questioned in the documentary about people seeing him as a serial killer, Sobhraj said: "Well they have already been brainwashed by the media, they say I'm a serial killer without knowing from where they took the facts."

Sobhraj is a suspected serial killer, it is believed that he killed twenty people in South and Southeast Asia in the 1970s, 14 of which he allegedly killed in Thailand. Sobhraj would drug tourists, steal their passports and commit identity fraud, and in 1976 he confessed to 10 murders before retracting his statement — Sobhraj has since denied killing anyone.

He was convicted for the murder of backpackers Connie Jo Bronzich and Laurent Carrière and sentenced to life imprisonment in Nepal between 2003 and 2022. He was also imprisoned in India between 1976-1997, during which time the statute of limitations for his alleged crimes in Thailand —where he would have faced the death penalty— expired.

Sobhraj was the subject of the BBC crime drama The Serpent in 2021, which starred Tahar Rahim and Jenna Coleman as Sobhraj and his follower Marie-Andrée Leclerc.

Speaking in the documentary, Sobhraj told the filmmakers that they can "ask me any question, I'm open" and when explaining why he chose to appear in the documentary he said: "I have to counter all those false accusations, allegations that people made when I was inside. I can put forward my facts and my truth."

He said of the documentary, "not only I want to do it, I look forward to it" and reiterated that filmmakers and the police and psychologist involved in the series "can ask me the question and I'll reply".

When asked how he'd feel if people still saw him as a serial killer by the end of the series, Sobhraj said: "Let's wait and see first".

The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer premieres on Channel 4 on Tuesday, 19 March at 9pm and it will continue to air over three nights.

Watch: Charles Sobhraj returns to France after 19-year prison stint