SPARTANBURG, S.C. — A prosecutor says a body was found on a South Carolina property where a woman was chained and held captive for weeks.
The missing woman was found Thursday “chained up like a dog” inside the container measuring about 30 feet by 15 feet. Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright says she told him the bodies of other women could be buried on the land, owned by 45-year-old Todd Christopher Kohlhepp.
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Prosecutor Barry Barnette spoke Friday at a court hearing for Kohlhepp on a kidnapping charge.
Barnette indicated more charges were coming.
The woman and her boyfriend were missing for weeks before she was rescued alive Thursday. The woman’s boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver, is still missing after the couple disappeared in late August.
Barnette said that the body found on the property hasn’t been identified.
Barnette said the victim saw the suspect shoot and kill her boyfriend.
The prosecutor said: “She told us this individual did kill him in her presence.”
Early Friday, investigators with cadaver dogs searched the rural property belonging to Kohlepp in the town of Woodruff, 80 miles northwest of the state capital of Columbia.
Wright told reporters deputies acting on a tip found the woman after hearing her banging inside the container.
Wright said she had a chain around her neck. He says the woman, who worked for Kohlhepp, told deputies she had been kept in the container for two months and had been fed regularly.
Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said his department’s investigation into the disappearance of the woman her boyfriend led authorities to the property near Woodruff.
“We got computer and cellphone records that ultimately led us to the area in Woodruff,” Stewart said. “We knew that was the last place that a cellphone tied to this case pinged.”
Records indicate Kohlhepp is a licensed real estate agent as well as a licensed pilot. In 1986, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for kidnapping and dangerous crimes against children.
On Friday, referring to the possibility of other victims, the sheriff said: “We’re trying to make sure that we don’t have a serial killer on our hands.”
