Serial Killer Todd Kohlhepp Claims To Have More Victims
Photo Credit: Herald-Journal/GoUpstate.com
Original Article | Author: Daniel J. Gross
Convicted serial killer Todd Kohlhepp, in a letter to the Herald-Journal, said he has more victims who have not been discovered.
The FBI has a pending investigation, but a spokesman would not comment further on the matter.
“We can’t comment specifically on what we’re doing, other than what I’ve said before — that we have a pending investigation,” said Don Wood, chief division council with the bureau’s field office in Columbia.
Earlier this year, Kohlhepp, 46, was convicted of killing seven people and was handed seven life sentences plus 60 years in prison. He was arrested in November 2016 after a missing Anderson woman, Kala Brown, was found chained in a locked storage container on a rural property near Woodruff.
“Yes there is more than seven,” Kohlhepp wrote in an eight-page letter to the Herald-Journal dated Nov. 28. “I tried to tell investigators and I did tell FBI, but it was blown off. It’s not an addition problem, it’s an multiplication problem. Leaves the state and leaves the country. Thank you private pilot’s license.”
Kohlhepp case file photo
He later added: “At this point, I really don’t see reason to give numbers or locations.”
Apart from running his own brokerage, TKA Real Estate, Kohlhepp was an amateur pilot and gun enthusiast. Authorities said they confiscated an “arsenal” of weapons from his home in Moore and the Woodruff property where Brown was found.
In a televised interview with Brown on the Dr. Phil show, her first and only public appearance since the ordeal, Brown said Kohlhepp told her he had more victims. She said Kohlhepp would brag to her that he was “nearing the triple digits” in body count in the February broadcast.
When Kohlhepp was sentenced in May, Public Defender Shane Goranson told the judge there were no other victims.
“Mr. Kohlhepp has come clean,” he said.
In an interview last week, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said he was unaware of any specific unsolved homicides or missing persons cases related to Kohlhepp.
“We don’t have anything active right this second, but we’ve always left it open-ended in case he wants to say there’s some stuff we need to check,” Wright said. “If he’s got something to say, we’re more than willing to listen.”
Two of the people Kohlhepp killed were Johnny and Meagan Coxie, in December 2015. In his letter, Kohlhepp said that it had been three years since he “acted out” before then.
The last known victims before the Coxies were the four people Kohlhepp killed at Superbike Motorsports near Chesnee in November 2003.
Since May, family members of victims and expert profilers have speculated that more bodies were waiting to be discovered.
Kohlhepp was first convicted of kidnapping a 14-year-old when he was a teenager living in Arizona. He spent 15 years in an Arizona state prison before moving back to Spartanburg.
Police in Tempe, Ariz., said after Kohlhepp’s arrest last year, investigators started reviewing cold cases.
Anderson Police Department Capt. Mike Walters said he doesn’t believe Kohlhepp is connected to any open cases in Anderson County, but he said he suspects more of Kohlhepp’s victims might be in other states where Kohlhepp has said he has spent time.
“I’m sure there are more. I’m just thinking they’re more likely in Florida or elsewhere,” Walters said.
“People like him, they want the cops to get the notoriety. They’re always going to throw bait out there often to keep their name out there.”
