Marie-Andrée Leclerc was the girlfriend of notorious convicted murderer Charles Sobhraj, also known as “the Bikini Killer” — or “The Serpent,” which is where BBC One’s drama series based on his life, now streaming on Netflix, gets its name.
Leclerc, played by Jenna Coleman, was traveling away from her home in Quebec when she first met Sobhraj in 1975. After exchanging love letters by mail for three months, they decided to meet up again in Bangkok, Thailand, according to Cosmopolitan. Soon, she got caught up in Sobhraj’s world of nefarious acts, during which they assumed the fake names “Monique” and “Alain Gautier” to conceal their identities, as the series explains.
In 1976, Sobhraj and Leclerc were arrested in New Delhi, India after drugging a group of French students, according to the Radio Times. The pair were arrested, and Leclerc was put on trial for the murders of two men named Jean-Luc Solomon and Avoni Jacob. She acquitted of Solomon’s death but was convicted of Jacob’s murder in 1980, according to Esquire.
However, she appealed the conviction and was released from prison on the condition that she could never leave India. But after she was diagnosed with cancer in 1983, she was allowed to return home to Canada, where she died in 1984, Esquire added.
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Sobhraj was also jailed in 1976 and ended up spending 20 years in an Indian prison. He was freed in 1997 and spent some time in Paris giving interviews and enjoying his infamy — until he was captured again in 2003 after returning to Nepal, where there was still an active warrant for his arrest, according to Esquire. In 2004, he was convicted of murdering American backpacker Connie Jo Broznich and sentenced to life in prison, where he remains to this day. In 2010, the United Nations tacked on a second life sentence for the murder of Broznich’s traveling partner, Laurent Carrier, the outlet added.
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