11. A Crime Spree That Spanned Continents
Charles Sobhraj (1944 – ) is a Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian origins, who spent much of his childhood moving back and forth between France and Indochina. He became a delinquent at an early age, engaged in petty crimes, and was sentenced to his first prison sting at age eighteen, for burglary. A manipulative psychopath, he met and endeared himself to a rich prison volunteer, who introduced him to high society after his release. Sobhraj used that access to the rich to enrich himself in turn, via scams. He also scouted the homes of his new upper class friends and acquaintances for lucrative burglaries.
Legal troubles eventually forced him to flee France with his girlfriend in 1970 to avoid arrest. The couple travelled through Eastern Europe with fake documents, and eventually ended up in India. There, Sobhraj ran a car theft and smuggling ring until 1973, when he was arrested for an attempted robbery of a jewelry store. He managed to escape, and fled to Afghanistan. There, Sobhraj and his girlfriend began to prey on tourists along the “Hippie Trail” – an overland route between Europe and South Asia, popular with Hippies and Beatniks between the 1950s and 1970s.