Starring Tahar Rahim in the skin of the title character, the fiction about the real story of the criminal from the 70s is in the first positions of the streaming platform.
It took La Serpiente a few days to sneak into the top spots of the most popular on Netflix. The fiction, developed by Richard Warlow and Toby Finlay for the streaming platform, has quickly captivated with the story of Charles Sobhraj, a well-known French serial killer, thief and con man who carried out his criminal activities for years along the route. known as “Sendero Hippy”, which linked Europe with Asian countries and was a cheap and alternative form of tourism for many young people in the 70s.
What really gives us the hair of the Netflix series, a ‘thriller’ thought about the persecution of the criminal and his girlfriend by the Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg, is that the story of Charles Sobhrajes a true story. The French assassin existed and, during the years that he was “on the job” until his incarceration in 1976, he committed at least 12 murders. The fiction of the platform is dedicated to the known victims of him, although it is believed that there could have been many more. In any case, the criminal did not serve a sentence for all of his crimes.
Starring Tahar Rahim as the assassin, the title of the Netflix series, The Serpent, refers to one of the nicknames by which Sobhraj was known, who has often been referred to as well – and in fact may be is best known- as “The Bikini Killer”. While the latter referred to the most common garment of his victims, all young tourists who fulfilled dreams with their idyllic trips, the nickname “The Serpent” was attributed to him for his ability to evade the authorities and get rid of their crimes.
Throughout the 1970s, Charles Sobhraj was clear about his goal: young backpackers traveling from Europe to Asia whom he fooled by posing as a gem dealer and whom he managed to fool with the promise of parties, drugs and the fun without limits or censorship they were looking for. Then, and it seems that without a goal beyond his personal enjoyment of being a psychopath and his visceral hatred of hippies, he poisoned, strangled, stabbed them and even, in some cases, is said to have burned them alive.
Quite skilled at evading the authorities, Charles Sonhraj became Interpol’s most wanted man who finally managed to hunt him down in 1976 after his attempt to drug 22 French tourists at a party in New Delhi. Apparently some of the victims of that party managed to stay sober enough to realize what was happening and called the police.
According to The Independent story, Sobhraj ended up in prison serving a laughable 12-year sentence for the murder of two tourists. However, 10 years later he drugged the guards at the Indian prison where he was serving his sentence and escaped for a month before the authorities could hunt him down and he was put behind bars for another decade.
A free man again in 1997, Charles Sobhraj garnered extensive media attention and was the subject of numerous interviews until, in 2003, he was arrested again in Kathmandu, Nepal, for two more of the crimes he had committed in the past. : the 1975 murders of tourists Connie Jo Boronzich and Laurent Carrière.
Sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes, the murderer is still alive in a prison in Nepal. Now at the age of 77, Sobhraj has serious health problems and has undergone various open heart surgeries.
Meanwhile, viewers learn of his infamous story through the Netflix series La Serpiente, whose first eight-episode installment is in full on the platform.
