SOUTH CAROLINA

Prosecutor: Todd Kohlhepp plea hearing was not about giving him punishment he deserved

Nikie Mayo
The Greenville News

When Todd Kohlhepp stood in front of a judge Friday and pleaded guilty to killing seven people in the Upstate and chaining an Anderson woman in a storage container alive, the outcome of the hearing wasn't about giving him the punishment he deserved, the prosecutor said.

Instead of the death penalty, Kohlhepp, 46, received seven consecutive life sentences in prison, plus 60 more years for offenses including the kidnapping and sexual assault of his surviving victim, Anderson resident Kala Brown. The Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail do not typically name victims of sexual assault, but Brown has openly spoken of her ordeal in a national television interview.

Moments after Judge Derham Cole sentenced Kohlhepp in a Spartanburg courtroom, Seventh Judicial Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette said Kohlhepp deserved to be put to death.

"This was a death penalty case," Barnette said. "No doubt about it. But it is not fair for families to wait years and years for justice."

The solicitor agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for Kohlhepp's guilty plea. Brown and the families of the dead agreed with the decision.  Barnette said he hopes the plea deal will give Kohlhepp's victims a measure of closure that South Carolina's death penalty is sometimes slow to deliver.

Todd Kohlhepp pleads guilty to 14 charges and is sentenced to seven consecutive life prison terms at the Spartanburg County Courthouse on Friday, May 26, 2017.

The last person who was executed in South Carolina was Jeffrey Motts, who died by lethal injection in 2011. Motts killed his cellmate, Charles Martin, at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County in 2005. Motts already was serving life in prison for two other killings at the time he strangled Martin. 

The state's supply of lethal injection drugs expired shortly after Motts' death, Barnette said. 

"Todd Kohlhepp deserves the death penalty, but the reality of the situation is that our state doesn't have a functioning death penalty," he said.

More:Kohlhepp driven by anger

More:How police used pings from a cell phone to find Kala Brown

There are 38 people on death row in South Carolina, and the oldest case dates back to 1983.

The family of Charles David Carver, the Anderson man who was Kohlhepp's last known victim, said the certainty that comes with Kohlhepp's life-in-prison sentence puts them one step closer to peace.

"I am a lot calmer now," said Joanne Shiflet, Carver's mother. "There is no apprehension. There is no what if. We know he is going away and going to stay gone."

A disturbing case

Kohlhepp, a real estate agent in the Upstate for more than a decade, was arrested last November after investigators searching his 95-acre property near Woodruff heard Brown banging on the metal storage container she was in and pleading for help. 

Brown and her boyfriend, Carver, disappeared from their Anderson apartment Aug. 31 and had gone to Kohlhepp's land believing they would work to help him clean and clear it.

Brown's cellphone emitted a signal pinged on Kohlhepp's property up to two days after she was last seen, according to Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart, whose agency was investigating the couple's disappearance. 

After Brown was found alive, Kohlhepp led investigators to a shallow grave on the same land where Carver’s body was buried. He also showed investigators where he buried the bodies of husband and wife Johnny and Meagan Coxie, who disappeared from Spartanburg in December 2015. 

Meagan Coxie was kept in a metal shipping container like the one Brown was in until Kohlhepp shot her in the back of the head about six days after he kidnapped her, Barnette said.

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After Brown was found, she told investigators that Kohlhepp told her he killed four people in a motorcycle shop in 2003. Kohlhepp later confessed to the Superbike Motorsports killings in Chesnee. The murders of Superbike workers Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy, Brian Lucas and Chris Sherbert were unsolved until Kohlhepp confessed to them last fall.

Kohlhepp, 46, wore an orange jail jumpsuit and a chain around his waist as he stood in front of the judge in a crowded courtroom for the two hour hearing.

Kohlhepp, who used to take to social media to boast about himself, his knowledge of weapons and to post about sex, was demure in court. He said only "yes sir" as Cole read his charges and asked if he understood the penalties and what he was giving up by forgoing a trial. 

In all, Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder, four weapons charges, two counts of kidnapping and one count of criminal sexual conduct.

The judge told Kohlhepp: "The term life means ... until your death in the South Carolina Department of Corrections."

Brown, the lone survivor of Kohlhepp's recent crimes, did not attend Friday’s hearing. Her lawyers said she is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. Dozens of family members of Kohlhepp’s victims filled one side of the courtroom.

Kohlhepp stared straight ahead as, one by one, family members of his victims talked about what they had lost.

Joanne and Jaye Shiflet, mother and stepfather of Charles David Carver react as Todd Kohlhepp pleads guilty to 14 charges at the Spartanburg County Courthouse on Friday, May 26, 2017.

Melissa Ponder Brackman, widow of Scott Ponder, said her husband heard the heartbeat of their unborn son just two days before he was killed in 2003.

Through tears, she said: "There truly isn't justice when a victim is murdered. ... There is no closure."

Scott Ponder Jr., who just finished seventh grade, said, "I'm always going to wonder what it would have been like if my dad was here."

Cindy Coxie, Johnny's Coxie’s mother, called what Kohlhepp did "incomprehensible evil."

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright gathered with his team for a moment of prayer before the hearing. He also embraced the families before the hearing. 

He thanked God for Friday's hearing, saying that it "answered a lot of prayers that went up for a lot of years."

His words were consistent for a man who publicly expressed his faith and thanked God after Kohlhepp confessed to the long-unsolved Superbike murders.

More:As a teen in kidnapping case, Kohlhepp called 'devil on a chain'

Before Kohlhepp was charged with murder last year, he bought and sold real estate in the Upstate for a decade, and many people never knew he already had a criminal history.

As a teen in Arizona, Kohlhepp was living with his biological father, William Sampsell, when Kohlhepp lured his 14-year-old neighbor away from home and raped her at gunpoint, according to police records.

He was tried as an adult and sentenced to 15 years in prison for felony kidnapping.

After his release, Kohlhepp moved to South Carolina and received his real estate license, working as a broker for a Spartanburg real estate company before starting his own real estate business, TKA Real Estate.