News

Actions

Police: SC kidnapping suspect confesses to murders, leads investigators to bodies

Posted at 8:36 PM, Nov 05, 2016
and last updated 2016-11-05 22:46:09-04

By Steve Almasy

UPDATE: A South Carolina man who is accused ofkidnapping a woman and chaining her up for two months has confessed to killing four people in 2003, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright told reporters Saturday night.

Also Saturday, Todd Kohlhepp led investigators to a second and third body on his property, Wright said.

On Friday, the body of Charles Carver was discovered on the same farm in a shallow grave.

Previous story continues below:

(CNN) — Officials identified the body of the man discovered on a South Carolina farm as Charles Carver, the boyfriend of a woman who was found this week chained up on the property.

Carver was shot more than once in the upper extremities, Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger told reporters Saturday night. An anthropologist is helping to determine how long the body was buried, the coroner said.

“We talked with the family and they’re obviously heartbroken,” Sheriff Chuck Wright said.

Friday, as suspect Todd Kohlhepp appeared at a bail hearing on a kidnapping charge, a solicitor told the judge that the rescued woman, Kala Brown, said Kohlhepp shot her boyfriend.

Brown and Carver were last seen August 31. Authorities said Brown and Kohlhepp knew each other and that a social media post indicated she was to meet him at the farm on the day she and Carver disappeared.

Authorities on Thursday found Brown chained by the ankle and neck inside a shipping container on a 95-acre farm in Woodruff, near Spartanburg.

Brown also told investigators that she believed as many as four people had been killed on the property.

Kohlhepp has yet to enter a plea and doesn’t have an attorney. He faces one charge of kidnapping. The judge sent the bail matter to a circuit court, where other charges might be added.

Kohlhepp is a registered sex offender who’s been working as a real estate agent in the area. He bought the farm in May 2014 for $305,000.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.