French serial killer Charles Sobhraj - whose murders inspired BBC drama The Serpent - has been freed from prison in Nepal, after serving most of his sentence for the murders of American and Canadian backpackers.
His slayings were remembered in a BBC crime drama watched by more than 31 million Brits - but there were more stories about the twisted killer that didn't make the cut, as they were too shocking to be shown on TV.
Evil Charles Sobhraj was a murderer, thief and seductive master of disguise who claimed many unsuspecting victims on Asia's hippie trail in the 1970s.
The fraudster preyed on tourists travelling through the continent, drugging them so that he could steal from them before taking their lives.
A cold-blooded killer, Sobhraj committed at least a dozen murders but managed to escape capture time and time again by using his cunning and charm.
Here is the real-life story of the Bikini Killer and what happened to those that got caught up in his vile crimes.
Did you watch the BBC crime drama? Let us know in the comments...
Charles Sobhraj
Charles Sobhraj, who was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father, started committing crimes as a teenager in France and didn't look back.
He was sent to prison for the first time in 1963 in Paris and manipulated prison guards into granting him special favours such as having books in his cell.
Sobhraj switched between high society and the criminal underworld, during which time he met his future wife Chantal Compagnon.
He was arrested on the day he proposed to Chantal for attempting to evade police while driving a stolen vehicle and spent eight months in prison, immediately marrying her when he was released.
Sobhraj and pregnant Chantal fled from France in 1970, robbing tourists and using fake documents while travelling through Eastern Europe.
Chantal gave birth to their daughter, Usha, in Mumbai while her husband ran a car theft and smuggling operation.
As was shown in The Serpent, Sobhraj was imprisoned after an armed robbery for jewels at Hotel Ashoka in 1973.
However, he was able to escape by feigning illness, a trick he would use multiple times throughout his life, but was recaptured shortly after.
After borrowing money from his father for bail, he then fled to Kabul and was arrested once again for robbing tourists.
Using the same scam, Sobhraj faked illness then drugged a hospital guard to escape and ran away to Iran without his family, who went back to France.
He spent the following two years on the run across Eastern Europe and the Middle East before linking up with his younger half-brother Andre in Istanbul.
The criminals were arrested in Greece, but Sobhraj switched identities with his brother and escaped, while Andre spent 18 years behind bars in Turkey.
At this point, Sobhraj's most notorious crimes as depicted on The Serpent started to take place on the hippie trail.
He posed as a drug dealer or gem salesman to try and impress Western tourists, then stole their money and would kill them if they threatened to expose him.
One of his first targets, Seattle tourist Teresa Knowlton, was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand wearing a flowery bikini in 1975.
This led to the Bangkok Post dubbing Sobhraj the Bikini Killer as the bodies of several female victims were found in swimwear.
While he was also dubbed The Serpent due to his ability to slide away from the police during a game of cat and mouse that went on for years.
In the TV series, where some of the victims' names were changed out of respect, Sobhraj was seen poisoning, drowning and burning backpackers.
Other victims he was linked to are Dutch students Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker, Turk Vitali Hakim and his French girlfriend Charmayne Carrou who was killed after coming to look for him.
As well as Thailand, Sobhraj travelled across Asia with Chowdery and Leclerc and claimed victims in India and Nepal.
The trio were interrogated by Thai police but were released, but realising they would soon be caught they fled to Malaysia.
Sobhraj and Leclerc then headed to Geneva to sell gems, but went back to India to build a new criminal family.
It was there that Sobhraj was finally caught after his plan backfired and a group of French students started to fall unconscious when the drugs he spiked them with worked quicker than he anticipated.
Sobhraj was charged with the murder of Frenchman Jean-Luc Solomon and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
He had entered prison with precious gems concealed in his body, which he used to bribe prison guards to such an extent he lived a life of luxury with TV and gourmet food.
When his sentence was due to end, Sobhraj escaped prison by throwing a big party for the guards and drugging them with sleeping pills.
It was all part of a calculated plan as he was recaptured and had his sentence extended by 10 years, meaning his Thai arrest warrant would run out and he avoided execution in Thailand.
The killer was released in 1997 and lived a comfortable life in France, revelling in the fame and fortune he commanded doing many interviews.
But it seemingly wasn't enough, as Sobhraj travelled to Nepal in 2003 for reasons only he knows.
After being spotted by a journalist he was arrested at a casino and sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2004 for the murder of Connie Jo Bronzich in December 1975.
Sobhraj lost two appeals against his conviction and in 2010 the Supreme Court of Nepal upheld the verdict of a life sentence for murder.
In 2014 a Nepalese court found Sobhraj guilty of the murder of Laurent Carriere, also in December 1975.
He was sentenced to a further 20 years and did not challenge this conviction.
Although Thai police issued a warrant for his arrest in 1976, Sobhraj never returned to the country and has never been tried for any crimes there.
He was only convicted of two murders, but he left many more victims.
Marie-Andree Leclerc
Marie-Andree Leclerc was the most devoted of Sobhraj's many followers, appearing to be blinded by love and infatuation.
The Canadian, who was born in Quebec, met the murderer while travelling in India and gave up her life to be with him.
In The Serpent, where she is played by Jenna Coleman, she is seen going along with her boyfriend's twisted crimes and even helping him trap victims.
For years she evaded capture by using the forged passports they obtained but they were eventually caught in India in 1976.
They were sentenced to 12 years for their crimes in 1980, but Leclerc appealed the decision and was released on the condition she stayed in India.
She released a book called Je Reviens, translating as 'I will be back', in which she told her side of the story and claimed she never loved Sobhraj.
Leclerc was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1983 and was given permission to return to Canada.
She died of cancer at home in Quebec in 1984 at the age of just 38-years-old.
Speaking about Marie, actress Jenna Coleman told The Sun: "She was a young girl who'd not really left Canada before - she met this man and within a month the drugging of tourists began, and she was completely on that train journey with him.
"I think she was so obsessive about Charles, she must have been living in a delusional state.
"It shows you the power of Charles and the manipulation he could wield on people."
Herman Knippenberg
Herman Knippenberg was the Dutch Diplomat who exposed Charles Sobhraj's atrocious crimes in Thailand.
While investigating the disappearance of two Dutch travellers, Henk Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker, Herman realised they had been murdered and misidentified as Australian backpackers.
Herman managed to build up a staggering amount of evidence against Sobhraj and built the case against him from scratch.
He went way beyond the call of duty by actually going inside to the monster's apartment to find evidence and kept mountains of files which were used to finally bring the killer down.
Herman and Angela left Thailand in 1977 and separated in 1989.
Herman continued his diplomatic career, serving at posts around the world and now lives in New Zealand with his new wife Vanessa.
Although now happily retired, he makes sure his files on the Charles Sobhraj case remain catalogued, updated and open.
Billy Howle, who played Herman in The Serpent, actually got to meet him in real life.
"When I spoke to Herman, it was incredibly enlightening… not only [for] the story, but his perception of the story and the events that took place are so far removed from my own experience in life that it wasn't immediately relatable," explained Billy to Radio Times.
"It's a sort of moral outrage that drives this fastidious investigation that he takes upon himself," he added
"It's so unlikely, really, a person in this position doing the job that he was doing, for this to land on his desk, I think it is the moral outrage at the reality of this, the gravity of it, that drives him forward to want to stop it."
Angela Knippenberg
Angela Knippenberg was Herman's patient wife who helped him crack the case.
The husband and wife sleuths sifted through the serial killer's flat and found the possessions of people who would later turn up dead.
Angela, who spoke six languages, translated all the diaries they found and carefully catalogued all of the items.
They were a crime-fighting team, although Angela says you would not think so from watching The Serpent because it underplayed her role in helping to convict Sobhraj.
Despite being consulted by producers, Angela, played by actress Ellie Bamber, said she is portrayed as a “dutiful wife” rather than half of a team.
"Herman and I were very much partners in all of this," she said.
"A husband and wife detective team is a good story – and that is the real story – but that's not the way they wrote it.
"I did speak to Ellie and I don't want to be unfair to her because she is a young woman who clearly did well in her previous roles.
"I was never the dutiful diplomat's wife. I had my own experiences and I could be difficult and that part of me was not properly captured. Herman liked a sounding board and as the case went on, he relied on me.
"I would have liked certain things to be different and I have told them that but it is what it is. They can take certain liberties and there is nothing I can do about it."
Angela and Herman divorced in 1989 and she said the case took a toll on their marriage.
She worked for the United Nations for many successful years until she retired in 2015 having risen to the rank of Under-Secretary-General.
Nadine and Remi Gires
Nadine and Remi Gires were the neighbours of Sobhraj who helped bring him down.
In 1975 they moved into a flat below Sobhraj's fifth floor apartment in Kanit House, in the Thai capital.
Once they uncovered what Sobhraj was doing, they helped Knippenberg's investigation by collecting crucial evidence.
In nail-biting scenes that are gripped viewers in the series, housewife Nadine is shown secretly taking photos and even sneaking into the flat of Sobhraj to gather evidence.
Nadine feared becoming Sobhraj's next victim while living next door to him and his con-artist girlfriend Marie, even sleeping with a baseball bat under her bed.
Speaking to The Mirror, Nadine said: "Charles is a monster and I am terrified of him – I used to sleep with a baseball bat under my bed. But I have to admit that when we first met, I suspected nothing and was taken in by his charm.
"I was married to a sous chef and had little to do while he was at work, so I spent almost every day at Charles' apartment. I became good friends with Marie-Andrée and she'd cook dinner for me, normally rare steaks and salad.
"We'd drink coke and beer, talk about life – we seemed to have a lot in common. When I found out what he was doing to those people I had to act, or I would not be able to live with myself."
Nadine and Remi Gires returned to live in Thailand but separated in 2005.
She now runs the Bamboo Resort hotel in Khanom, beach resort in the south of the country.
While Remi has retired to the north where he grows tropical fruits to sell at market.
Ajay Chowdery
Sobhraj's close friend and henchman is seen helping to lure unsuspecting travellers to their apartment block in The Serpent.
Ajay is believed to have helped Sobhraj commit some of his appalling crimes, including the murders of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich and Canadian Laurent Carriere in Kathmandu.
After the victims' bodies were discovered, Chowdery was traced to a hotel in Kathmandu but he managed to escape the country.
At the end of the series, Ajay is seen coming into conflict with Dominique, forcing Charles to pick between the two of them.
The fate of Ajay was left very vague in the BBC drama, with viewers suspecting he may have been left on the side of the road by Charles or even murdered.
In real life, Chowdery was presumed dead for many years, but there was a reported sighting in Germany in late 1976.
Aside from that he has never been seen again.
Amesh Edireweera, who plays the shady character in The Serpent, admitted their were few details about Chowdery.
"The whole story is completely mental," said Amesh.
"Ajay is interesting because there are no direct accounts of him – just some evidence from other people speaking about him.
"For me, the greatest shock was hearing his parents talk about him.
"They described him as such a 'good boy' and 'clever'. I felt a real sense of sorrow for the family."
Dominique Renelleau
Dominique, who is played by Fabien Frankel in The Serpent, was one of Sobhraj's victims who managed to escape.
The Frenchman was drugged like the others then brought back to the apartment.
However, Sobhraj decided to keep Dominique as a sort of slave worker and coerced him into doing his evil bidding.
Dominique was essentially held captive because he was continually drugged so he was sick, had no money and could not get his visa renewed.
His passport had also been taken by Sobhraj, but Dominique managed to escape with the help of Nadine and Remi.
As is seen in episode three of The Serpent, the couple helped Dominique fix his passport and got him plane tickets to fly back home.
In some of the most nerve-wracking scenes of the series, Dominique nervously wait to board his flight fearing that he will be stopped by his captors.
Fortunately, Dominque managed to get back home and was reunited with his worried parents.
Dominique still lives in his home town in France and is married with grown up children.
Despite his horrifying ordeal at the hands of Sobhraj, he remains a keen traveller.
Paul Siemons
Paul Siemons was a diplomat working for the Belgian Foreign Service who helped Knippenburg unravel the case.
He was in his 60s at the time where The Serpent begins, but had already had a remarkable life before the Charles Sobhraj murders.
Siemons fought for the Belgian resistance during WWII, living for over two years in a forest, blowing up Nazi supply lines.
He then became involved in what was then known as the Belgian Congo, drifting into the Belgian Diplomatic Corps where he became a Minister Without Portfolio.
Siemons retired in 1979 after a long career representing his nation's interests overseas and sadly passed away in 2004.
Actor Tim McInnery, who played Siemons in The Serpent, admitted he was sorry he never got a chance to meet he great man.
Tim admitted the role was very different to anything he has played before, describing his character on the show as "a combination of bitter, mean, intelligent, kind, cruel sentimental, funny and capricious".
"Paul Siemons is an extraordinary character and was an extraordinary person," explained the actor.
"As a character he is easily angered, but he has a very strong notion of morality and is extremely loyal.
"He makes a great foil for Herman. Consequently, his way of doing things can help or hinder!"
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