CHARLES SOBHRAJ SERIAL KILLER SERIES

(Neville and Clarke’s book was originally released in 1979, which means the interviews took place shortly after the events of the series.) Neville and Clarke’s interviews with Sobhraj, conducted while the killer was in prison in India, were essential to the writing of “The Serpent,” especially since the production team didn’t want to involve Sobhraj directly.

CHARLES SOBHRAJ SERIAL KILLER SERIES

The series is based on interviews with Sobhraj - just not by the producers

Knippenberg provided Leclerc’s diary, and journalist Julie Clarke, who cowrote “On the Trail of the Serpent” with her late husband, Richard Neville, gave the production hours of taped interviews with Sobhraj. He worked closely with Knippenberg, who gave the team access to his extensive files on Sobhraj, as well as with Sobhraj’s former neighbor Nadine Gires his captive employee Dominique Renelleau (whose escape from Sobhraj is documented in the series) and Interpol’s Lt. He calls it a “fact-is-stranger-than-fiction-to-the-power-of-about-100 situation”: “ to do what you always do when you’re researching stories, which is do some conflations, light a fire under certain things and also - and I’ve never experienced this before - pedal back on some of the strangeness.”Ĭoproducer Paul Testar, who joined the development process in 2014, was tasked with accumulating research to support the storytelling.

“Real life is infuriating, because it doesn’t behave in the way stories do,” says writer and producer Richard Warlow, who began working on the series in 2013 alongside director Tom Shankland. His pursuit leads him to Sobhraj ( Tahar Rahim) and his accomplices, including Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) and Ajay Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera), who have been drugging, robbing and killing tourists on the so-called Hippie Trail. Set in 1970s Bangkok, the series, which first aired on the BBC earlier this year, follows Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) as he investigates the disappearance of a pair of Dutch backpackers. Netflix’s true crime drama “The Serpent,” premiering Friday, may seem unbelievable - but the creators actually had to temper the bizarre real-life history of con man and serial killer Charles Sobhraj.

Charles sobhraj serial killer