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With six words penned to his local newspaper, serial killer Todd Kohlhepp gave voice to the fears of investigators and anyone else worried that a missing loved one had become a victim of South Carolina’s infamous murderer:
“Yes there is more than seven.”
The sentence was a chilling part of a prison letter Kohlhepp sent to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal last week — more than a year after a woman who had been summoned to Kohlhepp’s property to clean was found chained by the neck inside a large storage container.
The investigation led authorities to identify seven other victims. Three had also been lured to the property under cleaning gig pretenses. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves. Another four were victims of a quadruple murder that hadn’t been solved for 13 years.
In May, Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to seven lifetimes in prison, plus 60 years.
But he apparently wants people to know — or at least wonder — about other possible victims.
“I tried to tell investigators and I did tell FBI, but it was blown off,” he continued in his letter to the Herald-Journal. “It’s not an addition problem, it’s [a] multiplication problem. Leaves the state and leaves the country. Thank you private pilot’s license.”
[A ‘violent psychopath’ escaped in Hawaii and flew to California — then got caught after hailing a cab]
It’s plausible that there could be more murder victims. Some of Kohlhepp’s previous murders had been unsolved for more than a decade. He was a gun enthusiast and, as he points out in his letter, an amateur pilot. Authorities told the media they confiscated an “arsenal” of weapons from the Woodruff property where the woman was found and Kohlhepp’s home some 10 miles away.
Kohlhepp was a well-groomed and tech-savvy real estate agent who gave no outward signs of the murderous secrets he was keeping. But to those privy to his true self, he was rather chatty.
Kala Brown — the woman found in the storage container — told the “Dr. Phil” show that Kohlhepp would tell her he was “nearing the triple digits” in killings.
As The Washington Post’s Amy B Wang reported, Kohlhepp recounted in detail — and even seemed to brag — about killing four people at a South Carolina motorcycle shop, which had come to be known as the “Superbike” murders.
“All of a sudden, I had three people in front of me. … Mom was the closest. … And I shot her two, three times in the chest. Not my best work. … She fell. The son and the manager, he … ran for the door, took off. … At that range, they should have ran to me, not away.
“ . . . That was one big building. I cleared that building in under 30 seconds,” Kohlhepp told investigators. “I’m sorry, but you guys would have been proud.”
More than a decade later, Kohlhepp hired Brown and her boyfriend, Charles “David” Carver, to do some cleaning work at the property he owned in Woodruff. She told “Dr. Phil” that they had previously cleaned houses for Kohlhepp and never thought they were in danger as they drove to Woodruff.
But Kohlhepp killed Carver and kidnapped Brown. Investigators tracked them down by tracing their cellphones.
Dramatic video released by investigators showed them sawing through a lock on the shed where Brown was hidden. Suddenly free, she spewed out details about her captor and the other crimes he’d revealed to her.
[The ‘unbelievable odyssey’ of Florida’s ‘prison Houdini’]
Carver’s body and two others were found on the property.
Kohlhepp also confessed to the motorcycle shop murders in Chesnee.
Todd Kohlhepp is escorted into a Spartanburg County courtroom in November. (Tim Kimzey/The Spartanburg Herald-Journal/AP)
As for the most recent claims, Anderson Police Department Capt. Mike Walters told the Herald-Journal he doesn’t believe Kohlhepp is connected to any open local cases but that there could be more victims in other states where Kohlhepp has spent time.
The FBI told the newspaper the investigation remains open.
But the only person who knows for sure is being cryptic.
“At this point,” Kohlhepp wrote in the letter, “I really don’t see reason to give numbers or locations.”
Read more:
‘We don’t open the door’: How fear of a serial killer paralyzed this Florida community
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A father reported his 3-year-old missing. Then he told police he’d watched her die.
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Authorities: Gold miners at a bar bragged about slaughtering members of a reclusive Brazilian tribe
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Republican lawmakers are concerned about how their tax bill is being viewed by the public and say they need to do a better job of selling it to middle-class and low-income voters.
A CBS News poll conducted last week found that 53 percent of people nationwide disapprove of the GOP tax bill and only 35 percent approve.
While support for the bill was strong among self-identified Republicans, according to the poll, 52 percent of independents and a whopping 84 percent of Democrats disapprove of the legislation.
Sen. Marco RubioMarco Antonio RubioRyan pledges ‘entitlement reform’ in 2018 Richard Gere welcomes lawmakers’ words of support for Tibet Dem lawmaker gives McConnell’s tax reform op-ed a failing grade MORE (R-Fla.) on Friday warned that the Republican Party cannot become identified with the “country club-big business image,” citing a famous speech President Reagan gave in 1977 using those same words.
While Speaker Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanMcConnell names Senate GOP tax conferees House Republican: ‘I worry about both sides’ of the aisle on DACA Overnight Health Care: 3.6M signed up for ObamaCare in first month | Ryan pledges ‘entitlement reform’ next year | Dems push for more money to fight opioids MORE (R-Wis.) is touting the projection that a median family of four in his home state would receive an average tax cut of $2,000 from the bill, some lawmakers worry about people who won’t see any relief or even end up paying more.
Rubio and Sen. Mike LeeMichael (Mike) Shumway LeeSupreme Court takes on same-sex wedding cake case House approves motion to go to tax conference — with drama Trump really will shrink government, starting with national monuments MORE (R-Utah) tried to amend the Senate tax bill on the floor to provide more help to people on lower income rungs. Their proposal would have made the child tax credit refundable against payroll taxes
Twenty Republicans voted for the change, but it failed.
Rubio on Friday warned there are “going to be problems” if Senate and House negotiators working on the final legislation reduce the bill’s child tax credit or increase the corporate rate without making the child tax credit refundable to help lower-income families.
“It makes a lot of sense in a tax reform bill to provide some relief to those on the lower end of the income scale as well as the upper end,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who does work for Rubio.
Ayres said Rubio is right that “it will help the overall perception of this bill if it’s perceived of helping everyone who’s working, not just those at the upper end of the income scale.”
Another Republican senator who commented on the condition of anonymity said that “lowering the corporate rate is never popular.”
“Forty-four percent of the country won’t see anything and then they see headlines about a big corporate rate cut,” said the lawmaker, explaining the weak public support for the bill.
Sen. Bob CorkerRobert (Bob) Phillips CorkerFormer Dem Tenn. gov to launch Senate bid: report McConnell ‘almost certain’ GOP will pass tax reform Former New Mexico gov: Trump’s foreign policy is getting ‘criticized by everybody’ MORE (R-Tenn.), who was the only Republican to vote against the Senate tax bill, says he’s concerned for different reasons.
He’s worried the legislation will erode the GOP’s credibility on fiscal responsibility — something that cost them dearly in the 2006 midterm election, when Democrats captured control of the Senate and House.
Corker, the only Republican newly elected to the Senate in 2006, said fiscal issues were a top issue for Republican and independent voters that year.
“The Medicare Part D had been passed unpaid for and Republicans were viewed as spendthrifts,” he said, referring to the prescription drug benefit legislation that was the signature domestic accomplishment of President George W. Bush’s first term.
“My concern is that our nation continues to rack up huge debts and this is another step in that direction,” Corker added.
While Republican lawmakers recognize the bill may not be popular, they argue that the corporate tax rate must be lowered to put the U.S. business environment on par with European and Asian competitors.
Some Republicans say the problem is they’re not doing a good enough job explaining to voters how cutting the corporate tax rate can stimulate the entire economy.
“I think we have got to a better job of communicating to America what’s in this. This is hugely stimulative with regard to what’s going to happen to the American worker,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who is staunchly opposed to setting a corporate tax rate higher than 20 percent.
The bleak CBS poll numbers for the tax bill were in line with polls published earlier in the week by Quinnipiac and Gallup that showed 53 percent and 56 percent of the public, respectively, disapprove of the legislation.
The weak polling numbers prompted Republicans to play defense on Friday.
A senior administration official argued in a press call that the Quinnipiac and Gallup polls oversampled Democrats, which skewed the results to appear more unfavorable than actual public sentiment.
Jim McLaughlin, a Republican pollster, waved off the Quinnipiac poll as overly titled toward Democrats.
“The Quinnipiac survey that came out earlier this week was 21 percent Republican. Are you kidding me? That’s why [the polls] were so off in the election,” he said.
He pointed to a survey of 1,000 likely voters nationwide conducted by his firm last month showing that 50 percent of respondents favored lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, while only 37 percent opposed the move.
McLaughlin noted that there was strong public opposition to former President Reagan’s 1981 tax-cut package and that he went on to win reelection by a landslide in 1984, thanks in large part to a strong U.S. economy.
But he indicated there could be political problems in the near term if the legislation fails to deliver the promised economic results quickly.
“The Republicans got their heads handed to them in the off-year election, in 1982, we lost 26 House seats because they didn’t make the tax cuts retroactive and people didn’t think the economy was getting better quick enough.”
The pending bill would not make tax cuts retroactive, but voters will see more money in their paychecks as soon as January when employers adjust withholding rates for federal taxes.
Faced with the signs that the tax bill could be a political liability for GOP candidates in next year’s midterm elections, Republicans are making some of the same arguments Democrats did in 2009 when they were trying to pass a massive health care reform bill that did not poll well with voters.
Democrats argued at the time that while ObamaCare polled badly, voters supported its reforms when asked about them specifically. They said the legislation would become more popular over time.
Republicans are taking a similar tack now.
A senior administration told reporters Friday that specific elements of the tax bill, such as the doubling of the standard deduction and the increasing of the child credit, have strong support.
Sen. Rob PortmanRobert (Rob) Jones PortmanMcConnell names Senate GOP tax conferees Overnight Finance: House approves motion to go to tax conference — with drama | GOP leaders to consider Dec. 30 spending bill | Justices skeptical of ban on sports betting | Mulvaney won’t fire official who sued him How four GOP senators guided a tax-bill victory behind the scenes MORE (R-Ohio), who is crafting the final changes to the bill in a Senate-House conference committee, said the polling data about the bill can be misleading.
“The component parts are popular,” he said. “It depends how you ask the corporate [rate] question. If you ask, ‘Do you think we should make American companies competitive by getting the rate below the [global] average?’ the answer is ‘yes.’ ”
Portman also disputed colleagues who say the bill doesn’t do anything for people who don’t pay income taxes.
“We’ve made the child tax credit a little more refundable and all the refundability stays in place,” he said.
“Three million people, all told, are going to fall off the tax roles altogether,” he said of people who now have an income tax liability but won’t after the bill is signed into law.
More than 60 percent of households would see a tax cut of at least $100 in 2019 under the Senate GOP tax bill, but that percentage would drop in subsequent years, according to an analysis by the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
Still, Portman acknowledged the party has failed to clearly explain all the bill’s benefits to the general public.
“We’ve got to figure out how to communicate better,” he said.
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