A South Carolina real estate agent who kidnapped a woman and kept her chained in a shipping container on one of his properties pleaded guilty on Friday to killing seven people, including the woman’s boyfriend.
Todd Kohlhepp, 46, pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault, WSPA reported. Investigators said Friday that Kohlhepp told one of his kidnap victims that he killed four people at Superbike Motorsports in Chesnee, South Carolina in 2003. Kohlhepp had previously confessed to the Superbike Killings in exchange for a meeting with his mother and an agreement to send money to an unnamed child’s college fund.
Police found Kala Brown chained by her neck in a 30-by-15 foot container owned by Kohlhepp, her employer, last November. Police discovered Brown, 30, after they heard a banging sound coming from the crate where she was being held. Kohlhepp allegedly lured Brown and her boyfriend, 32-year-old Charlie Carver, to his Spartanburg County apartment to do some cleaning and clearing on his properties, investigators said.
A month before Brown was found on Kohlhepp’s property The Daily Beast reported that someone continued posting updates on Carver’s Facebook page after the couple vanished. In the statuses, now believed to have been posted by Kohlhepp, ‘Carver’ wrote about buying a house and expecting a daughter with Brown. Ominous about digging holes and sword violence were also posted from Carver’s account, horrifying the missing couple’s friends and family.
In early October, someone posing as Carver uploaded and deleted an old picture of the couple, captioned “we are fine.”
“His Facebook posts have been hacked,” Brown’s best friend Lindsey Mayson told The Daily Beast. “It’s not him posting.”
Brown was missing for two months before investigators found her, and claimed Kohlhepp had killed Carver. Police discovered Carver’s body on a nearby property shortly after finding Brown in the shipping container.
Brown told police in November that other bodies were likely buried nearby.
“She said that there are four people buried on this property," Sheriff Chuck Wright told WYFF in November. "I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we will stay here as long as it takes to make sure that what she said is true or not true."
Another of Kohlhepp’s alleged victims, Meagan Coxie, was held for days in a shipping container before being shot in the back of the head, Solicitor Barry Barnette said Friday. Coxie and her boyfriend, Jonny, were reported missing in December 2015 and their bodies were found on Kohlhepp’s 95-acre property nearly a year later. When Kohlhepp showed investigators the locations of the buried bodies last November, he called his alleged victims by name as he pointed to their graves.
Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and will receive seven consecutive life sentences without parole. Kohlhepp was also sentenced to 30 years for criminal sexual conduct and 30 years for kidnapping.