Silke Jasso
Todd Kohlhepp ran a successful real estate business for a number of years, but there was a darker side to his public image.
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Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to killing seven people in the state of South Carolina over the span of thirteen years. He is also charged with crimes related to those killings, including kidnapping and sexual assault.
Both the sheriff and Kohlhepp’s victims cried in court.
One of Kohlhepp’s victims, Kala Brown, was found “chained like a dog” inside of a shipping container on his property in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Kohlhepp raped and kept Brown locked in the shipping container for two months. He also shot and killed her boyfriend, Charles Carver, the last of his seven known victims. Her story appeared on CBS crime show “48 Hours.”
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Kohlepp’s other murders include four employees at a motorcycle store in 2003, where he shot and killed, execution style, 30-year-old store owner Scott Ponder, Ponder’s 52-year-old mother, Beverly Guy, 30-year-old service manager Brian Lucas, and 26-year-old mechanic Chris Sherbert. Kohlhepp said he killed them out of his anger with the manager.
Kohlhepp also killed a couple — 29-year-old Johnny Joe Coxie and 26-year-old Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie — in December 2015. The search for the missing couple led authorities to find Brown. Their bodies were also discovered on his property in Spartanburg.
Over 50 family members of the seven killed were in the courtroom as Kohlhepp was charged.
Brown did not attend but expressed support for the plea deal that Kohlhepp took to avoid the death penalty. She said that another death would not bring her satisfaction.
“As [Brown] said in one of her first meetings with the solicitor – he’s the killer, not me,” reported attorney Alex Stalvey.
He will serve seven consecutive life sentences in prison for the deaths along with 60 years for other charges.
