Todd Kohlhepp is a South Carolina real estate agent and convicted serial killer who pleaded guilty in May 2017 to seven murders, two kidnappings, and first-degree criminal sexual conduct. His crimes stretched over 13 years and included a 2003 quadruple homicide at a motorcycle shop, the 2015 killings of a married couple lured to his rural property, and the 2016 murder of a man whose girlfriend Kohlhepp then held captive in a shipping container for two months. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms without parole plus 60 additional years.
The Superbike Motorsports Murders
On November 6, 2003, four people were shot to death inside Superbike Motorsports, a motorcycle dealership in Chesnee, South Carolina. The victims were owner Scott Ponder, his mother and bookkeeper Beverly Guy, service manager Brian Lucas, and mechanic Chris Sherbert. All four were killed with the same pistol. Ponder and Lucas were found near the front of the shop, Sherbert was bent over as if working on a motorcycle, and Guy was shot as she came out of a bathroom.
Investigators established that a man had been in the shop minutes before the killings, posing as a customer looking at a motorcycle with Ponder. A vehicle identification number had been recorded, but the customer’s name was not. A sketch went out, no one came forward, and the case went cold. It was profiled on “America’s Most Wanted” in 2012 and “Unsolved Mysteries” in 2014, with a $25,000 reward posted. The killings stayed unsolved for 13 years, until Kohlhepp confessed after his 2016 arrest and gave investigators details they said only the shooter would know.
The Murders of Meagan and Johnny Coxie
Meagan Leigh McCraw Coxie, 25, and Johnny Joe Coxie, 29, were a married couple from Spartanburg. Both had recently been released from jail in December 2015 and had a history of panhandling near Interstate 26. Meagan told her mother she had found a job and asked to be bonded out; her mother reported the couple missing to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office later that month.
The Coxies had been lured to Kohlhepp’s roughly 95-acre property near Woodruff under the pretense of paid work clearing land. Their remains were the second and third recovered from the property in November 2016, after Kohlhepp mentioned them by name to investigators. Both deaths were ruled homicides by gunshot: Meagan from a shot to the head, Johnny from a shot to the torso. The couple’s child was accounted for.
Kala Brown and Charlie Carver
Kala Brown, then 30, and her boyfriend, Charles David Carver, 32, disappeared at the end of August 2016. Carver was last seen on surveillance footage leaving his workplace on August 30, and Brown’s last message to a friend was sent early on August 31. Kohlhepp had contacted the couple through Facebook, offering paid work on his property. They drove from Anderson to Woodruff to discuss clearing land. “It ended up being a trap,” Carver’s mother later said.
Brown told investigators that when she knocked on the door of a two-story garage on the property, the door opened and Carver was immediately shot three times in the chest. Kohlhepp wrapped Carver’s body in a blue tarp and moved it in the bucket of a tractor. Carver’s remains were recovered from a shallow grave on November 4, 2016.
Brown was held for roughly two months inside a green, 30-by-15-foot metal shipping container, chained by the neck to a wall with her ankles bound, sleeping on dog beds. Kohlhepp returned daily to feed her and sexually assault her. He gave her crackers, books, adult coloring books, and an MP3 player. She was sometimes moved to a separate building on the property and kept bound there. Brown said Kohlhepp told her he had not decided whether to “kill or sell” her, and bragged about being a “serial killer and a mass murderer.”
On November 3, 2016, authorities tracked cellphone pings and Facebook messages to Kohlhepp’s property. While searching, they heard Brown screaming inside the locked shipping container and cut through five padlocks to reach her. She was found with her hands cuffed behind her head and a heavy chain around her neck. She told rescuers immediately that Kohlhepp had killed Carver and that other bodies were buried on the property.
The 1986 Arizona Kidnapping
Kohlhepp had a prior conviction long before any of the South Carolina killings. At age 15, in 1986, he kidnapped a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint, held her in his home, tied her up, and raped her. He was originally accused of rape but pleaded guilty to kidnapping and was tried as an adult. He served 15 years in an Arizona prison and was released in August 2001.
How He Became a Licensed Real Estate Agent
After his release, Kohlhepp moved to South Carolina and obtained a real estate license in June 2006. According to the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, background checks were not required for applicants at that time. Applicants had to disclose criminal convictions, but state law prohibited the licensing commission from automatically denying a license based on a criminal record; disclosures were reviewed case by case.
On his application, Kohlhepp checked “yes” to the conviction question and submitted a written explanation that described his crime as a “verbal argument” and a “felony kidnapping” involving a firearm during a dispute with a 15-year-old girlfriend. Investigators later clarified that the victim had been 14, that Kohlhepp had raped her, and that the kidnapping charge was a lesser plea. He went on to build a real estate business and buy the Woodruff tract that would become both a burial site and a prison.
In direct response to the case, the South Carolina General Assembly unanimously passed legislation in May 2017 requiring background checks at initial application and at renewal, mandating fingerprints from all licensees, and placing those who did not comply on inactive status. A 2015 law had established background checks for new applicants only, and had stripped out a fingerprinting requirement before passage. State Senator Scott Talley called the new bill a matter of “public protection.” Jo Chism of the Spartanburg Association of Realtors said Kohlhepp’s crimes “pushed it through sooner than if they hadn’t happened.”
Guilty Plea and Sentence
On May 26, 2017, Kohlhepp, then 46, appeared in Spartanburg County court and pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder, four counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He received seven consecutive life prison terms plus 60 years for the kidnapping and sexual assault of Kala Brown.
Under the plea agreement, negotiated by Seventh Judicial Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette, Kohlhepp waived his right to appeal and agreed to never seek or accept parole. The agreement also stipulated that if he escaped or violated its terms, the state reserved the right to seek the death penalty. Barnette explained his decision not to pursue execution by noting that South Carolina had run out of lethal injection drugs and had not carried out an execution since 2011. “This was a death penalty case. No doubt about it,” Barnette said. “But it is not fair for families to wait years and years for justice.”
Claims of More Victims
In December 2017, Kohlhepp sent an eight-page letter to the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg claiming he had killed more than the seven people he was convicted of murdering. “Yes there is more than seven,” he wrote. “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.” He added: “At this point, I really don’t see reason to give numbers or locations.”
Don Wood, chief division counsel with the FBI’s Columbia office, confirmed the agency had a “pending investigation” into the claims but declined to comment on specific actions. Whether Kohlhepp actually held a pilot’s license or had access to aircraft has not been publicly confirmed.
Civil Judgments and the Property Sale
In July 2018, Kala Brown filed a civil lawsuit against Kohlhepp. A Spartanburg County judge found she had suffered more than $1.5 million in actual damages and awarded an additional $4.7 million in punitive damages, for a total judgment of $6.3 million against his estate. Five other civil lawsuits were filed by victims’ families.
Kohlhepp’s personal items and property were auctioned in the summer of 2018, with proceeds intended for the victims’ families. The Woodruff tract of roughly 95 acres sold on September 18, 2018, to an entity called Strange Properties #1 LLC for $500,000. A court-appointed receiver managed his assets. Attorneys noted the damages awarded would not necessarily match what families ultimately received.
At a December 2018 hearing, family members of the Superbike victims spoke. Lorraine Lucas, Brian Lucas’s mother, told the court: “Because of the man sitting at that table, Brian Lucas is gone from our lives forever. The pure heartache never goes away.” Melissa Brackman, Scott Ponder’s former wife, called the proceedings “one last piece of the puzzle” and said the family’s goal had been to make sure “there was nothing left for him to claim.”
Where He Is Now
In June 2025, a FOX Carolina investigation reported that Kohlhepp had used a prison-issued tablet to coordinate a scheme to profit from his crimes. Electronic messages showed him urging an associate to “get busy making the TK SK T-shirt line as I have buyers interested,” with “TK SK” standing for “Todd Kohlhepp serial killer.” A contact had also pitched a documentary based on a book by Kohlhepp, suggesting it would boost merchandise sales. A viewer separately gave the news station hundreds of pages of court documents, autopsy reports, and signed artwork that Kohlhepp had mailed out with instructions to sell.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections said it had been unaware of the activity until the news station notified it. Kohlhepp was moved to Kirkland, a maximum-security prison, and had his tablet privileges revoked. He was sanctioned for abuse of privileges with a 30-day loss of canteen and visitation. The department’s director personally apologized to Chuck Carver, Charlie Carver’s father. Both the department and the state Attorney General’s office opened investigations. As of late October 2025, it was not clear whether criminal charges would follow.
By October 2025, Kohlhepp had been placed in supermax confinement indefinitely, with no visitors, no phone access, and no tablet. He is monitored by cameras around the clock and is allowed one hour outside his cell per day. South Carolina Department of Corrections records list him as housed at the Broad River Secure Facility.