27. The Hippie Trail Killer
Charles Sobhraj (1944 – ), who became infamous as “The Hippie Trail Killer”, was a Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian origins. He spent much of his childhood moving back and forth between France and Indochina. At an early age, he became a delinquent and took to petty crimes. Sobhraj did his first prison stint 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. When not scamming his new upper-class friends and acquaintances, he scouted their homes to burglarize them. Legal troubles eventually forced Sobhraj to flee France with his girlfriend in 1970 to avoid arrest. The couple traveled through Eastern Europe with fake documents, robbing tourists along the way, and eventually ended up in India.
