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Lesser Known But Intriguing Historic Criminals

Khalid Elhassan October 17, 2019 32 min

U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History - Crime

13. The Hippie Trail Serial Killer

French fraudster, thief, and serial killer Charles Sobhraj spent much of his childhood moving between Indochina and France. A delinquent from early on, Sobhraj ended up in jail at age 18. A charismatic and manipulative sociopath, he met and befriended a rich prison volunteer, who introduced him to high society after his release. Sobhraj used that intro to run scams and scout the homes of his new upper-class acquaintances so he could burglarize them.

In 1970, Sobhraj fled France, one step ahead of the law. After a crime spree that stretched from Eastern Europe to India, he ended up in Afghanistan. There, the charismatic Sobhraj preyed on tourists along the “Hippie Trail” – a route between Europe and South Asia, that was popular with Beatniks and Hippies from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.