South Carolina serial killer's prison letter calls victims 'criminals'
ANDERSON, S.C. — A letter that a South Carolina serial killer apparently wrote and sent to the New York Post has drawn the ire of his victims' families, who believe he is trying to gain more notoriety by crafting his version of his crimes.
According to an article Saturday in the Post, Todd Kohlhepp sent a letter to the newspaper last week making a variety of statements, including one that he was trying to save Kala Brown, the Anderson, S.C., woman he held captive in a metal shipping container for more than two months. He also wrote that Brown "wasn't raped," according to the Post.
Kohlhepp wrote that "no one really wants to look at" the backgrounds of the seven people he has confessed to killing.
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“All of my victims were criminals," Kohlhepp wrote, according to the Post.
The mother of Charles David Carver, one of Kohlhepp's victims, was quick with her reaction.
"Just more sick lies," said Joanne Shiflet on Sunday. "I know my son. He was no criminal."
Shiflet said that while she did not personally know Kohlhepp's other victims, she knows they did not deserve to die the way they did. She said she wishes Kohlhepp was denied the right to communicate in letters with anyone outside prison walls.
"Is this what we have to face for the rest of his life, his sickness in letters?" she asked.
Kohlhepp, a real estate agent in northern South Carolina for more than a decade, was arrested in November after investigators searching his 95-acre property near Woodruff, S.C., heard Brown banging on a metal storage container on the land.
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Brown and her boyfriend, Carver, disappeared from their Anderson apartment Aug. 31, 2016. They had gone to Kohlhepp's property in Spartanburg County, S.C., believing they would work to help him clean and clear it, according to police records.
After Brown was found alive, Kohlhepp led investigators to a shallow grave on the same land where Carver’s body was buried. He also showed investigators where he buried the bodies of husband and wife Johnny and Meagan Coxie, who disappeared from Spartanburg in December 2015.
After Brown was found, Kohlhepp confessed to the 2003 killings of three Superbike Motorsports employees. The deaths of Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy, Brian Lucas and Chris Sherbert were unsolved until Kohlhepp's statements.
Kohlhepp was sentenced in May to seven consecutive life sentences plus 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to seven counts of murder and to the kidnapping and sexual assault of Brown.
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The Independent Mail, which like Paste BN is part of the Paste BN Network, does not typically name victims of sexual assault, but Brown has spoken openly of her ordeal in a nationally televised interview.
A spokeswoman for Brown said Sunday that Brown is still working on her recovery and is not ready for interviews.
Lorraine Lucas, the mother of Brian Lucas, said Sunday she hopes Kohlhepp's claim in the letter of being in some sort of protective custody is also a lie.
"We want him in general population," she said. "We want him with the big boys."
She said one of the reasons her family agreed to Kohlhepp's plea deal was because she hoped "never to have to deal with him again."
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Murray Glenn, a spokesman for the 7th Judicial Circuit Solicitor's Office, said Sunday that Kohlhepp "is an attention-seeking, convicted killer who doesn't deserve the attention he is seeking."
Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said he had not seen Kohlhepp's letter.
Lucas said she believes Kohlhepp wrote the letter to try to excuse his actions.
"We think Todd is a monster," she said. "The man is crazy. He is a coward. He wants to be notorious. He wants to be out in the limelight."
Follow Nikie Mayo on Twitter: @NikieMayo
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