Third body recovered from Todd Kohlhepp's property
After a third body was unearthed at a property near Woodruff where a kidnapped woman was rescued last week, investigators believe they have found all the bodies buried on the 95-acre property.
This brings the death toll to seven that are linked to Todd Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old real estate agent and convicted sex offender.
He has not confessed to any other deaths, said Lt. Kevin Bobo, spokesman for the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.
On Saturday, two days after asking for an attorney, Kohlhepp reinitiated contact with investigators and confessed to the 2003 quadruple slayings at Superbike Motorsports in Chesnee, Bobo said.
During a walk with investigators on his heavily wooded property on Saturday, Kohlhepp led authorities to the locations of the bodies unearthed Sunday and Monday. Bobo said he couldn’t talk about who the bodies were or if Kohlhepp identified them.
On Friday, the remains of Charles Carver, 32, were recovered. He was the boyfriend of Kala Brown, a 30-year-old Anderson woman who was chained inside a storage shed and rescued alive as investigators searched the property for her.
Kohlhepp has been charged with four counts of murder in the Superbike case and with kidnapping Brown. He has not been charged in Carver’s death.
Other charges against him are likely, Bobo said. Kohlhepp was denied bond and his next court appearance was scheduled for Jan. 19.
Bobo said as far as he knows, Kohlhepp is representing himself.
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Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger said more tests will have to be done to determine the identities, age and sex of the bodies found Sunday and Monday.
He said an anthropologist is helping with the case.
The bodies found Sunday and Monday were close to each other and were removed from the property on Monday.
Clevenger said he will rely on examinations to determine how they died and would not go into their state of decomposition.
“As we stand here tonight, we feel like there aren’t any more bodies on this property,” Bobo said.
The majority of the property has been searched, but investigators will be back on the site Tuesday to make sure nothing was missed, he said.
The search for bodies has extended beyond the Woodruff property to other locations linked to Kohlhepp.
Sheriff Chuck Wright declined to say where investigators were looking. He said the investigation is widespread and no longer limited to South Carolina, he said.
Just how far and for how long the search will continue is unclear, but with a private pilot’s license since 2006 and as a real estate broker in Greenville and Spartanburg who owned his own property management business, the search may prove vast.
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Throughout the day Monday investigators were seen digging with an excavator.
Late in the afternoon, a piece of excavating equipment was removed from the scene, as was some evidence put into a black bag and driven away in a truck.
Two of Kohlhepp’s goats also were loaded into a large crate in the back of a truck and driven away.
A green body board was taken onto the property on Monday afternoon. About an hour earlier, Wright gathered inside the fenced area but away from investigators with a group of people from Duncan First Baptist Church for prayer.
Kohlhepp’s real estate license was suspended on Friday under an emergency order from the state Real Estate Commission, citing “public safety and welfare” concerns.
The Greater Greenville Association of Realtors issued a statement Monday saying that homeowners who had been working with Kohlhepp's company can either withdraw their listings from the market entirely or withdraw them and re-list with their agent when they transfer to another firm.
“No Broker approval will be required,” the statement says. “We will provide a lockbox removal service to these sellers at no cost to them.”
Kohlhepp remembered as great salesman with chilling quirks
Kohlhepp helped Roberta Shaughnessy sell her house five years ago. Now the memories give her chills.
Shaughnessy remembers him as a very outgoing person and a great salesman — but with some quirks that in hindsight give her chills.
He made a lot of jokes, some of them off-color. He talked a lot about his guns, his assault rifles, his BMWs — and he sprinkled sexual innuendos into his conversation from time to time, she said.
“You think he’s saying things jokingly, but now you question, oh, my gosh, was he really joking?” she said.
She didn't suspect him of having a violent nature, although she did see him get “flustered” a few times when he got phone calls, and “was always whining and complaining about having to go collect rent from what he called deadbeats.”
“He would say, ‘I’m just going to go shoot my guns and blow off steam,’” she said. “He would say all these things in such a sarcastic way that you never knew."
Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail staff writers Michael Burns, Ron Barnett, Frances Parrish, Kirk Brown and Mike Ellis contributed to this report.