Suspect accused of holding woman captive called a ‘devil’
WOODRUFF, S.C. — When he was 15 and facing charges he raped a neighbour after forcing her into his home at gunpoint and tying her up, Todd Christopher Kohlhepp’s father told court officials the only emotion the teen was capable of showing was anger, and a neighbour called him a “devil on a chain.”
Fifteen years after he was released from prison for that crime, Spartanburg County deputies were brought to his property by the last known cellphone signals of two missing people. On Thursday, they found a woman chained in a container for two months. She told investigators that Kohlhepp shot and killed her boyfriend in front of her.
It was an abrupt, but perhaps not unexpected turn for a man who spent his 20s in prison but after his release managed to get a private pilot license, build a real estate firm with more than a dozen agents and buy nearly 100 acres of land and put an $80,000 fence around it. On that land, dozens of officers continued to search Saturday for any additional bodies after the woman told investigators Kohlhepp claimed to have killed at least four others. One body has been found so far.
Kohlhepp, handcuffed and wearing an orange jumpsuit, could be seen on the property Saturday with deputies. He was there for less than an hour, The Greenville News reported. The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office would not confirm he was brought to the site.