12. From Fraud to Murder
After fleeing France, Charles Sobhraj engaged in a variety of criminal schemes, including one with his brother that backfired, and left his sibling doing 18 years in a Turkish prison. Sobhraj then took a dark turn, graduated from scams and thefts to murder, and began piling up corpses all along the Hippie Trail.
It is estimated that Sobhraj murdered at least 20 Western tourists, and the actual count might be significantly higher. He was finally caught in 1976, after he tried drugging some tourists in India, but screwed up the dosage. His intended victims retained enough consciousness to realize what Sobhraj had tried to do, and overpowered him until police arrived. His criminal escapades were not over, however.