Todd Kohlhepp, who has been charged with kidnapping a 30-year-old woman and keeping her chained up in a storage container for two months has confessed to a quadruple homicide that took place 13 years ago, authorities said. Kohlhepp is suspected in at least three other killings, including that of the 32-year-old boyfriend of the woman who was found chained up on Thursday.
The 45-year-old Kohlhepp is a registered sex offender and was released from prison in 2001 after serving a 15-year sentence for the rape and abduction of a 14-year-old when he was 15.
Authorities began focusing in on Kohlhepp after they discovered the 30-year-old woman “chained like a dog” at the neck and ankles in a metal storage shed that was on his 95-acre property in rural Woodruff, South Carolina. That’s when Kohlhepp allegedly confessed to the 2003 murder of the owner, service manager, mechanic, and bookkeeper of a motorcycle shop in Chesnee, South Carolina.
“He told us some stuff that nobody else ought to know,” Sheriff Chuck Wright said when asked how authorities could be certain that Kohlhepp was responsible for the unsolved murders. The wife of one of the victims said that authorities told her it looked like Kohlhepp was an angry customer who had been in the shop several times.
