Real Estate Agent Turned Serial Killer： Todd Kohlhepp - Serial Killer Documentary

Real Estate Agent Turned Serial Killer： Todd Kohlhepp - Serial Killer Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the third of November twenty sixteen, police searching for
a missing couple as a property in Woodruff, South Carolina
made an incredible discovery.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
How are you money this a doghutters?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Thirty year old Kayla Brown had been chained up in
a metal storage container for sixty five days. Her boyfriend,
Charlie Carver had been shot dead.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
And the corner came up and said that they had
positive udy that it was Charlie.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
Now, that was a hard time. You just don't want
to hear those words.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
How can a man just walk out, not knowing who
this person was, anything about this person, and just end
his life right there.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
The killer was a popular real estate agent named Todd Colhep.
Police would soon discover two more bodies on the grounds
of his property, but the forty five year old had
even more skeletons in his closet. The murder of four
employees at a motorcycle dealership thirteen years earlier.

Speaker 5 (01:09):
Ty describes that before he leaves the scene, he goes
back to each victim and shoots him in the head
before he leaves.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
In total, coal Heap had taken the lives of seven people.
The twisted serial killer had been hiding in plain sight
for over a decade.

Speaker 6 (01:26):
Getting away with those murders signals to him that there
are no consequences for this.

Speaker 7 (01:32):
I can kill and I can get away with it.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Todd Coleheap had been unmusked as one of the world's
most evil killers. When forty five year old real estate

(02:09):
agent Todd Colehep was arrested for the murder of three
people and the kidnap of another on his property in Woodruff,
South Carolina, in November twenty and sixteen, investigators had no
idea he was also responsible for an unsolved shooting spree
which killed four others thirteen years earlier. Journalist Daniel Gross

(02:35):
knows Colhep's story better than most.

Speaker 5 (02:39):
When I hear the name Tyde Colab, I picture him
sitting in that interrogation realm when he was initially arrested,
and in his mind he had those investigators wrapped around
his finger. He was confessing to a murder that they
were not able to solve.

Speaker 8 (02:56):
For thirteen years.

Speaker 5 (02:58):
And so just when I see his or see his face,
I always just think about his ego and personality behind
the man that has murdered all these people.

Speaker 9 (03:09):
So you pulled out the Breda and what happened? Oh
shot Pichanic twice.

Speaker 10 (03:16):
They have the gunshots in the back and we're coming
this way to figure out what had happened.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
I had three people in front of me. Hy dropped.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
In the era, Daniel continues to discover more about the
deranged serial killer. Cole Hep regularly pens letters to him
from his cell.

Speaker 5 (03:35):
I mean, as a journalist, this is one of those
cases that you only really dream up.

Speaker 8 (03:40):
You know.

Speaker 5 (03:40):
It's sort of larger than life, almost like a you're
just reading a horror book or something. Even today, you know,
he's in prison for the rest of his life. He's
convicted of murdering seven people. I almost feel like we're
still just scratching the surface.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
This killer story begins in the Sunshine state of Florida.
Todd Samsul was born in Fort Lauderdale on the seventh
of March nineteen seventy one, but his parents split up
when he was just two. Todd adopted his stepfather's surname,
Coleheb when his mother remarried, but his formative years were

(04:19):
far from happy.

Speaker 6 (04:22):
When we look back at Colehep's childhood, we are almost
ticking off all of the warning sign behaviors for cereal homicide.
We've got somebody who has real difficulty forming relationships with
his peers.

Speaker 7 (04:34):
So he doesn't see.

Speaker 6 (04:36):
Children his own age as potential allies potential friends. He
sees them as competitors. He can only communicate and interact
with them aggressively. He basically wants to crush everybody else
and to come out victorious. We also have a history
of animal cruelty. We know that he bleached goldfish. We
know that he shot a dog with an air gun.

(04:58):
Here is somebody who enjoys call harm to other people
and other living creatures. It's something that makes him feel powerful,
and that sadism is a thread that will run throughout
the rest of his life.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
The family relocated to South Carolina, but Cole Heap's mother
divorced again in nineteen eighty two. The couple would go
on to remarry each other several times throughout Todd's life.
Twelve year old Todd was causing so much disruption at
home that a decision was made to move him two

(05:31):
thousand miles across the country.

Speaker 5 (05:34):
Eventually, he was fed up with living here and convinced
his mother to let him go live with his birth father,
who he really hadn't seen at all in Arizona.

Speaker 8 (05:44):
And I think that might have been a way for.

Speaker 5 (05:45):
Him to try to see life in a new light
and maybe get a fresh start.

Speaker 8 (05:50):
Change of scene, change of venue.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
But there was to be no improvement in Todd's behavior.
In fact, in November nineteen eighty six teenager would soon
term to violent crime.

Speaker 5 (06:05):
He was fifteen years old, and the reports say that
he had gone outside and found a neighbor who was
a fourteen year old girl, and he ended up kidnapping
her and taking him back to his father's house. And
that's where he duct taped her mouth, he held a
pistol to her head, and sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
It was a horrific and unprovoked attack.

Speaker 8 (06:30):
He threatens to kill her.

Speaker 5 (06:31):
He says, if you tell anyone about this, I'll kill
your family. I'll kill your siblings.

Speaker 8 (06:35):
I'll kill you. I mean scared her to death.

Speaker 11 (06:38):
It's chilling, genuinely chilling that he's so convinced of his
own importance, so convinced of his own superiority, that he
can get away with anything. He really does. Think that
the girl won't tell anyone.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
But the girl's family were already concerned for the missing teenager.
Her young brother had recently been taught what to do
if you need help in an emergency, and he had
raised the alarm.

Speaker 6 (07:06):
The rape victim had a five year old brother, and
he was concerned that he couldn't find her, so he
called the police, and as he was on the phone
to the police, his sister comes in through the door
and then talks to the offices and tells them what
had happened. But for me, the interesting thing is is
cole Heep's reaction when he was arrested, because his overriding

(07:27):
concern was how much trouble am I in? How much
prison time am I likely to serve? Absolutely no concern
for his victim whatsoever. It's all me, myself and I.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
In October nineteen eighty seven, age just sixteen, Todd Coleheap
was sent to prison for fifteen years.

Speaker 5 (07:48):
You know a lot of people say that's your time
for rehabilitation. I think for Tid it was the opposite.
I think he's sat there and continue to harbor all
of this inner struggle.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
After serving his sentence, Coleheb was released on November the
twenty fourth, two thousand and one. He'd spent almost half
his life in prison.

Speaker 5 (08:09):
So now he's thirty years old and newly out of prison,
so of course he's going to move back to South
Carolina to be with his mom.

Speaker 6 (08:18):
When Coalhap is released, he starts an image management campaign. Essentially,
during his time in prison, he's performed this role as
a model inmate. Now he's been released, he needs to
basically do some damage limitation in terms of establishing a
new life for himself.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Five years after his release, in two thousand and six,
cole Hep applied for a real estate license in South
Carolina despite being on the sex offenders register. The thirty
five year old managed to talk his way around it.

Speaker 5 (08:51):
They raised that issue with him and said, well, we
know you're applying for this license, but there's this on
your record. And he submitted a letter essentially just downplaying
the entire conviction.

Speaker 6 (09:03):
And he basically explained this offense as a misunderstanding between
him and a girlfriend. So he's basically saying, well, this
was her fault, this wasn't really me.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
In June two thousand and six, Coleheb was granted his
real estate agent's license. He opened his own business and
on the outside was living the life of a well
respected model citizen, albeit with an unhealthy fascination for guns.

Speaker 6 (09:33):
Coheb was an avid collector of firearms, and I think
this is something that he inherited in a way from
his father, who also had quite a considerable collection. But
I think for me, it's about what firearms represents. They
represent power, they represent authority, and I think if you
look at them in the context of Colheb's other hobbies
and interests.

Speaker 7 (09:54):
They are quite grandiose. They are quite alpha male.

Speaker 6 (09:57):
So he had a pilot's license, He was into motorbikes,
he liked fast cars. So all of this paints a
picture of the kind of American dream, you know, the
macho American character.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
But this charming man about town was hiding a huge secret.
In November two thousand and three, less than three years
before becoming a successful real estate agent, Todd Colhep had
gone down four people in cold blood. On the sixth
of November, Colehep walked into a local motorcycle dealership called

(10:33):
Superbike Motorsports.

Speaker 5 (10:36):
Scott Ponder opened it, and he had a passion for motorcycles,
loved to ride you know. So they built this whole
business around this motorcycle shop, and people knew about them.

Speaker 11 (10:46):
You know.

Speaker 8 (10:46):
It was it was a thriving business, and as a
family business.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Thirty year old Scott employed a small number of people,
including his fifty two year old mother, Beverly Guy. Scott's
wife had moved to South Carolina from Arizona to be
with her husband. They were married in January two thousand
and two.

Speaker 12 (11:08):
From a young age teen years, he was really into motorcycles,
and so I think early on in his years he
always planned on having his own motorcycle dealership, like he
knew that that would happen. He was just a gentle person.
He had the ability to make you feel really comfortable.

(11:30):
I think, which is why he was so successful in
his business, is because people that came in were immediately
put at ease with just his demeanor.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
In November two thousand and three, Melissa recently found out
that she was pregnant with the couple's first child.

Speaker 12 (11:48):
So Scott was not going to actually go to that
first appointment with me. He was busy, and at the
last minute he just decided, you know what, I'm going
to go.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Hear the heartbeat I've never heard this before.

Speaker 12 (11:59):
This is new and exciting, and so he surprised me
by showing up at the hospital. I'm going to forever
remember that day because he wasn't supposed to be there,
and he was, and we walked in and we were
able to experience that together, and it was pretty exciting,
you know, for them to find this beating heart and

(12:21):
us to you know, get excited over the fact that hey,
we're you know, we're gonna have a family.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
And that was a good day for us.

Speaker 12 (12:28):
I never would have imagined that two days later it
would all change.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
On the day of the attack at Superbike Motorsports, nothing
seemed out of the ordinary.

Speaker 12 (12:43):
So November sixth of two thousand and three, he went
on to work and I got ready for work, and
my last memory in my mind and the picture I
have in my mind as I passed the motorcycle dealership
that morning and honked, and he was standing at the
side of the dealership and he waved and blew a kiss,

(13:04):
And that's honestly the last time I ever saw him alive.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
At around three pm, Melissa received a call from a
concerned colleague who'd heard news of a shooting at the
bike shop. She immediately raced across town.

Speaker 12 (13:19):
I got to the location that all of the law
enforcement was at, and there was a good ten or
twelve law enforcement vehicles with their lights on, had the
road blocked off, and I just ran past all of
them and said, that's my husband's business down there, and
I just started running.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Before she could get near. Melissa was escorted home by
police officers. Together, they sat and waited for news from
the crime scene.

Speaker 12 (13:48):
I was standing at my front glass door, just looking
out front, and I see Spartanburg County Corner drive up
my driveway. So two people walked in told me to
have a seat. The woman immediately started talking to She
identified herself as one of the Corners, and she just said,
we had an unfortunate event happened at your husband's business today.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Scott was shot and killed.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
The bottom fell out of Melissa's world, and.

Speaker 12 (14:22):
I immediately started crying and said, I don't know what
I'm going to do. I'm pregnant, I can't run this
business by myself. I'm, you know, just sorrow. I started
to think, you know, his mom, I've got to call
his mom.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Where's his mom? I need to talk to her. Where
is she? Where's Beverly?

Speaker 12 (14:41):
And that is when they told me that his mom
had been shot and killed as well, and that Brian
Lucas had been shot and killed, and they hadn't identified
the fourth victim yet because he didn't have any identification
on him.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
The full victim was twenty six year old mechanic Chris,
but Chris, Brian Lucas, Beverly Guy, and her son Scott
Ponder had all been murdered in cold blood. The identity
of the gunman was a mystery. Seven months later, in

(15:16):
June two thousand and four, Melissa gave birth to a
ten pound baby boy and named him Scott Junior.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
He changed everything for me.

Speaker 12 (15:29):
I am the first moment I laid eyes on him,
I thought, this is why I'm still here, because honestly,
I wanted to have been down there at the dealership
that day and just taken with him. It was so hard,
but yeah, as soon as they put that little boy
in my arms, I knew that that was my sole
purpose why I was still here.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Scott never knew his father, and over fifteen years later,
his mum has never let the memories fade.

Speaker 9 (15:58):
She told me a lot of him and how he
liked to mess with my grandma a lot back when
he was younger, and he thought it was funny, and
she liked to tell a lot of stories about him,
and it helped me like just picture what I mean,
who he really was during his birthdays. Usually I'm in school,

(16:20):
so she takes me out of school and we go
to lunch. We just kind of celebrate his life, I guess,
and not feel down about it. Just have a day
where we celebrate him and just him.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
The investigation into the quadruple murder at Superbike Motorsports unearthed
no obvious suspects, nothing had been stolen, and there were
no witnesses to the crime. But suddenly, in late two
thousand and four, the police had an unlikely suspect on
their radar.

Speaker 12 (16:54):
It wasn't until my son was about six months old
that I got called into the Sheriff's department and they said,
we have something we need to talk to you about.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
It's really serious.

Speaker 12 (17:06):
And my first inclination was they know who did this
and they want to talk to me about it. So
they sat me down in a room, an interrogation room,
and said we took DNA from a diaper you left
here a couple of weeks ago, and we sent it
off and compared it to the blood from the crime scene,
and we have a DNA that does not match up

(17:28):
with your husband's and so we need you to tell
us what's going on. Who's who's your baby's father? You know,
how do you play a role in? I mean, I
was taken so far back. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Melissa had turned from a victim to a suspect. She
was so stunned by the accusations that she offered to
have Scott's body exhumed so a new DNA sample could
be taken to prove her.

Speaker 12 (18:01):
I want to say it took about a month when
I received a call back from them. In essence, what
they told me is Scott and Brian's blood vials were mislabeled.
Somebody put the wrong name on the DNA, and so
they were doing a DNA test of my son with

(18:23):
Brian Lucas, not knowing it was Brian Lucas's blood. They
just thought I had had an affair.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
It had been a year of hell for Melissa.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
It broke my heart, it broke my spirit.

Speaker 12 (18:36):
I decided to move back to Arizona when my child
was one, and I just figured it was time for
me to start back over in my home area and
kind of get us out of the public eye because
everybody knew who we were here, and I didn't want
to raise my son that way.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
The police had Zero's suspects and the murders would go
soul for over a decade, But the perpetrator was hiding
in plain sight, a disgruntled customer who'd taken his frustration
out in the most extreme and callous way. The killer
was Todd.

Speaker 5 (19:15):
Coheb There's records of him being in the store and
the shop owner and manager and some others are apparently
making fun of him in a way, sort of a
lighthearted banter.

Speaker 8 (19:28):
You know.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
They were known to joke around, and Todd being Todd,
that just fueled a fire in him, you know, whereas
anybody else it's like, okay, if somebody's joking towards me
or making fun of me, even you know, it is
what it is.

Speaker 8 (19:43):
You know, they move on, right, But Todd's not.

Speaker 5 (19:47):
Going to take that from anybody and then making fun
of them.

Speaker 8 (19:51):
He felt that they had to pay.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Cole had returned to the bike shop on the sixth
of November two thousand and three and waited until no
other customers were in the store. He then drew a
gun and exacted his revenge.

Speaker 5 (20:08):
And just one by one, Todd executes them. He shoots
them cold blood. Brian and Scott actually were the last
to be shot, and after they saw what was happening,
they started to run for the front door, and Todd
was able to shoot both of them right outside the door.

Speaker 6 (20:26):
I think getting away with those murders at the bike
shop would have been really meaningful for coal Hat because
it signals to him that there are no consequences for this.

Speaker 7 (20:37):
I can kill and I can get away with it.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Feeling invincible. Coal Heap would spend the next decade honing
a successful career as one of the top real estate
agents in Spartanburg, But in twenty fifteen, coal HEP's lust
for blood returned. The forty four year old had recently
acquired a large plot of land in Woodruff, South Carolina.

(21:04):
The ninety five acre grounds would soon become coal Heeb's
killing fields. On the twenty second of December twenty fifteen,
twenty nine year old Johnny Coxy and his twenty five
year old wife Meghan were reported missing.

Speaker 6 (21:21):
Meghan and Johnny were a young married couple in their
twenties and they were quite vulnerable. They'd experienced quite a
few issues in the past drug addiction, They'd had their
child removed by by social services. And they came to
know coal Hep because he offered them work working on

(21:41):
his property, doing manual labor. So I think he very
much saw that vulnerability in them and unexploited that. Because
coal Heep is a predator and he is very good
at spotting vulnerabilities in.

Speaker 11 (21:58):
Other people, coal Haap sees them as almost a perfect
pair of victims. So he makes a pretense on the
nineteenth December twenty fifteen. He says, I would like you
to come out to the Woodruff property. I need some
clearing to be done now. Not many people are going
to miss them. I mean they've been living rough, they

(22:19):
haven't got lots and lots of relatives around. He takes
them to the property, they get out of the car.

Speaker 8 (22:28):
And he shoots Johnny. He drops dead.

Speaker 5 (22:32):
He then takes Meghan Caxi and puts her into a
container and holds her a captive for about a week.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
In a bid to escape the clutches of coal. Heb
Megan started a fire in her makeshift prison, just like
her husband. She was executed in cold blood by the
twisted killer.

Speaker 11 (22:57):
He said she was acting like a caged animal, and
so he said, quite matter of factly, I put a
bullet in the back of her head. So now he's
got two bodies. He digs graves from both and buries
them on the property, goes back to work as a
real estate agent, as if nothing whatever had happened.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
The police had no leads in the disappearance of Johnny
and Meghan Coxy. Once again, Colhep had got away with murder,
and eight months later he was ready to kill again.
On the fourth of September twenty sixteen, a family made
a call to the police to report that their thirty
two year old son, Charles David Carver, known as Charlie,

(23:43):
was missing.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
He was just a caring person. He always wanted to
help people.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
He give you the last two dollars out of his
wallet and the shirt off his back if you needed it.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
You know, he was just that kind of a guy.

Speaker 5 (23:56):
Seemed like a happy life. Charlie would text his father
every day or every other day. They talk about sports,
so he lived a pretty normal life.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
The last text I got from him before he went
missing was about football and it was just a funny
cartoon and I still have it.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Alongside Charlie, his new girlfriend, Kayla Brown, had also disappeared.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
I ran into Charlie and Kayla at Walmart on a Saturday.
We were shopping and they were coming out and he
introduced Kayla to us, and that was the first time
I'd met her, and.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Five days later they went missing.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
In late August, Charlie and his girlfriend had been contacted
by a friend of thirty year old Kayla, Todd Colehab.

Speaker 5 (24:54):
Kayla had already known Todd Colehab. They had met previously
and they had chatted online on Facebook pretty often, and
you know, at some point Colap had offered for Kayla
to work for him as well. You know, he was
looking for work and he knew Kayla as sort of

(25:15):
a friend.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
At this point, days turned into weeks, and Charlie and
Kayla failed to return home. They had seemingly vanished off
the face of the earth.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
About thirty days into it. My wife and I talked
and I said, something's wrong. I don't know what has happened,
but just had that parent feeling that you know, it
wasn't going to be good, and so we set our
kids down and three youngests and said this may not,

(25:50):
you know end well, you know your brother may be gone.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
The search continued into October two thousand and six, but
it would be in vain. Charlie Carver had been dead
since the thirty first of August. Just like Johnny and
Meghan Coxy, Charlie and Kayla's visit to cole Heep's Woodruff
home would end in tragedy.

Speaker 5 (26:17):
So they came together on the property and without hesitation,
Todd coleheb ends up shooting Charlie three times in the
chest and he drops to the floor.

Speaker 8 (26:28):
At this point, Kyler Brown is just stunned.

Speaker 5 (26:30):
You know this, She just watched her boyfriend get murdered
in front of her, not sure what to do, basically silent,
just standing there in fear. And colab then goes to her,
shoves her in the shipping container and chains her up
inside there.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Just like Megan Coxy, Kayla Brown became Todd Coleheb's prisoner.

Speaker 5 (26:52):
The next two months. Kayler Brown is in captivity. She's
on that property no one's heard from her, no one
knows where she is. Meanwhile, Coleb is still living his
normal life. He's gone to work, he's working late hours,
he's talking to people like normal.

Speaker 11 (27:06):
I think he's convinced himself that it's all worked, that
my fantasy has come true.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
I have my captive.

Speaker 11 (27:11):
I go there every day, do what I want with her,
and I resume my quote's ordinary life outside. He is
so obsessed with his own satisfaction, with his own personality,
with that god complex of his, that he doesn't believe
for one second that she will ever leave his clutches.

(27:32):
The perfect fly in the spider's web, she is his
and will remain his.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
But this time, by utilizing cell phone triangulation, the police
were hot on the heels of Todd Colheb.

Speaker 5 (27:47):
Then they realize that Kayla's phone is pinging in Spartanborog County,
So they reach out to Spartanburg and from there they
learn property records and they can see that, okay, this
proper piece of property is owned by a man named
Toad Colab.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
On the third of November two thoy and sixteen, two
months after the disappearance of Charlie, Carver and Kayla Brown.
The police were ready to swoop.

Speaker 8 (28:12):
We've got investigators in Spartanburg.

Speaker 5 (28:14):
They go to Colhab's house, which is about twenty minutes
or so from the Woodroff property, and meanwhile there's another
team of investigators that go to the Woodrof property with
a search warrant and they get into the property and
they start looking. They find Kayla chained up in the container.
They hear her inside. They take a long time to
kind of cut through all the chains and locks that

(28:36):
had been on the container, open it up, find her,
rescue her.

Speaker 11 (28:42):
Wonderful video of them actually opening the container taken by
the police at the time. It's extraordinary. And they walk
in and right at the back of the container, right
at the far end, there she is. There was no
sign of Charlie.

Speaker 8 (29:00):
Do you know where your buddy is?

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Investigators radio this dramatic update through to the colleague except
Cole HEP's home.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
We have Kyla.

Speaker 10 (29:13):
Excuse me, we have Kayla in your property.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
She was locked in a container.

Speaker 8 (29:20):
Okay.

Speaker 10 (29:21):
She just told us that you shot and killed Charlie.

Speaker 5 (29:26):
And at this point Colhab just shuts down. He kind
of gives us blank stare and he goes, I don't
know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Why did you shoot it?

Speaker 4 (29:34):
How did shoot an?

Speaker 12 (29:36):
Okay?

Speaker 10 (29:37):
Why did you lock her in a container in your property?

Speaker 9 (29:39):
I stop.

Speaker 10 (29:41):
She's on your property right now, locked in a.

Speaker 8 (29:43):
Container, and they're pressing him on it, saying we've got Kyla.

Speaker 6 (29:47):
Now.

Speaker 5 (29:47):
You can either cooperate and tell us more, tell us
where Charlie is, or we could go the hard way.

Speaker 10 (29:53):
She said, you very's body on that property. That's you're saying.
You didn't lock her up. You didn't put her in
the college box or anything. Probably good thing. Go ahead
and put him in the back of your car.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Finally, Todd Colehep was safely behind bars. Kayla Brown had
been saved after a terrifying ordeal.

Speaker 6 (30:19):
He held her in a storage container for sixty five
days and subjected her to the most horrendous sexual violence.

Speaker 7 (30:28):
He raped her twice a day.

Speaker 6 (30:31):
On some occasions, she was simply there as his plaything
to be used as he wished.

Speaker 7 (30:37):
She reported that Colehep told.

Speaker 6 (30:39):
Her that he owned her, that she was his possession,
and that is very indicative of somebody who is controlling,
somebody who sees women as objects, somebody who is inherently
a misogynist.

Speaker 7 (30:53):
So I think her.

Speaker 6 (30:54):
Account is a really valuable one, and I'm just very
thankful that she survived to.

Speaker 7 (30:58):
Tell the tale.

Speaker 5 (31:00):
Unlike Meghan, who we know sort of put up a
fight and was very in very disagreement with Colab, I
think Kayla did what she had to do to get by. Ultimately,
you know, she was rescued, and I don't know if
she ever thought she would be rescued, but ultimately that happened.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
But there was no good news for the Kava family.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
I guess it was that Saturday night, about seven o'clock.

Speaker 4 (31:26):
It was dark, and the corner came up.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
And said that they had positive id that it was Charlie.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
That was a hard time. You just don't want to
hear those words.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Days later, Chuck was able to visit the Woodruff property
where his son's life had been so cruelly taken away.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Standing there on that gravel driveway, close to the same
area where he would have probably been laying. I was
just like, how can he do this? How can a
man just walk out, not knowing who this person was,
anything about this person, and just end his life right.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
There, lying close to Charlie Carver. On the grounds of
Todd Coleheb's Woodruff property were the bodies of Johnny and
Megan Coxy. All three had been shot and left in
shallow graves.

Speaker 5 (32:35):
Meanwhile, Todd is already in jail, arrested, and so the
murder charges are already sort of stacking up against him.
While he's sitting there in those first initial days and
being caught, Tdd is already explaining to investigators, Hey, if
you listen to me, and if you know, maybe if
we work out a deal, I've got a lot more
to tell you, guys.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Charge with three murders and the imprisonment of Kayleb. Brown,
Todd was about to confess to a crime that had
gone unsold for thirteen years. The revelation would leave investigators
completely dumbfounded. He revealed to investigators that he had even
more to tell them.

Speaker 5 (33:17):
He is just going in depth and great detail about
the various things that he did, including in most importantly
the murders of the Superbank motor sports families.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
That was more ding little high clear under thirty sex.
If you won't under thirty sect you got a little
bit proud, I'm sorry she does with them.

Speaker 6 (33:41):
Proud and when he's describing to the police what happened,
he's bragging about it. He's saying, you would have been
proud of me. He's looking for validation. He's he's wanting
other people to be impressed by him. And we see
this often in cases of serial killers. Once they are
linked to a particular crime or a series of crime,

(34:03):
they want to take the credit for it. They want
full recognition for what they've done.

Speaker 4 (34:08):
I had away for them.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
One of the guys wasn't there.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
I had a waiver to come in.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Tonali.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
All four showed up.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
The investigators were completely taken back Cole hep new details
of the four superbike killings that had never been made public.
They decided to call the families of the victims, including
the widow of Scott Ponder, Melissa Brackman.

Speaker 12 (34:35):
I was walking out of the movie theater with my
family and it was Detective Lachica, and he wanted to
know if I would be available in an hour, that
I needed to be able to talk to him and
be home, and I said sure, And so he caused

(34:57):
me and he said, we have a confession to the superbike.
And I break down and I just I can't believe it,
Like are you are you serious? And he says, like,
this is not something I would kid with you about.
And he started to explain, have you been following the
news there was a girl that we just recovered And
I said, I have been following that story, and like,

(35:19):
how does that relate?

Speaker 11 (35:20):
You know?

Speaker 2 (35:20):
And he says it is the same guy.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
After thirteen years of unanswered questions, Melissa couldn't quite believe
that the mystery of who killed her husband had been solved.

Speaker 12 (35:33):
I was everything. I was happy, I was angry, I
was sad. I was in question of everything, like what
was his motive? You know, would why would he have gone?
And why did he kill my mother in law? Why
did you know if he was mad at the dealership?
Why would he take out my mother in law? What's

(35:54):
that about.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
The community of Spartanburg where colhep was law as a
well respected real estate agent. Was stunned a serial killer
had been operating in their midst.

Speaker 5 (36:10):
At this point, Colapp has confessed to these four murders.
He's confessed to killing Charlie Carver and the Coxies, so
he's got seven murder charges stacked against him, and the
kidnapping of Kayla, and shortly after, since he's confessed, they
don't need to go to trial. He ends up taking

(36:31):
a plea agreement. If you plead guilty to these seven murders,
we'll give you a life sentence and you'll avoid the
death penalty.

Speaker 8 (36:39):
And so he said, sign me up.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
On the twenty sixth of May two and seventeen, Todd
Colhep was given seven consecutive life sentences, one for each
of his victims, plus another sixty years for the kidnap
of Kayla Brown. Two years later, at a civil hearing
in July twenty nineteen, the victims loved ones seeking compensation

(37:06):
from Cole Heep's estate, were given an opportunity to confront
the killer.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
The whole time I was talking, we were engaged. You know,
he wasn't looking at the ceiling or the walls or
the floor. It was me and him, and I was
telling my story of Charlie, how he's lost has impacted
me and my family. As I finished up, our attorney
asked me what was the amount of damages we were seeking.

(37:37):
I said that wasn't seeking a certain amount, because you
can't put an amount on a person's life, and no
amount of money was going to bring him back because
I wanted Tie to hear that I want him Tied

(37:58):
to understand what he.

Speaker 4 (38:03):
From me.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Also at the lawsuit hearing with a family of Scott Ponder,
including his widow Melissa, and it.

Speaker 5 (38:19):
Was such a powerful moment because she had actually taken
the stand to explain, you know, what this has meant
to her and what this has done to her. And
she used the opportunity to forgive Colab, which is so
rare to see, you know, somebody who destroyed her life.

Speaker 8 (38:34):
In a sense and killed her husband.

Speaker 5 (38:38):
She took the high road and she sat there and
she looked him square in the eye and said, mister Colab,
I forgive you.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Did I really owe him?

Speaker 12 (38:47):
Not really, but I just needed him to understand that,
you know what his reasoning and what he's using was
playful banter from a couple of guys.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
That joke around a lot, and that was the environment.
And you know, that was hard.

Speaker 12 (39:03):
A normal person does not go in and wipe four
people out because they piss you off.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
As well as Melissa, her son, Scott was given the
opportunity to look into the eyes of the man who'd
taken the life of his father just months before he
was born. Scott showed maturity beyond his years and is
certain that his actions will be met with approval from
his father.

Speaker 9 (39:33):
I knew that he'd be proud of me, and my
mom and the rest of my family that was there
were proud of me. I just in general knew I
was doing good for my dad, and I knew that, even.

Speaker 8 (39:44):
Though I was nervous, I had to pushed through it.

Speaker 9 (39:45):
And I just knew that I had to do it
because this is the last chance I had to speak
to him and just get the message across.

Speaker 8 (39:53):
And that's basically all I wanted.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
I missed Scott. He was so good to me.

Speaker 12 (40:02):
I'm thrilled that I have a child that bears his
resemblance and that has picked up some of his characteristics.
And it actually it's it's good for me. It makes
me happy. It makes me feel like sadly as it is,
it's all played out in a positive way.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Since his incarceration, Todd Colehep has hinted there may have
been other victims in the twelve year gap between the
superbike killings and the Woodruff murders.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Well, I definitely feel like this story is just beginning.
I feel like it's a story that the nation is
going to be interested in moving forward.

Speaker 8 (40:43):
If we learn about other killings.

Speaker 5 (40:45):
You know, these are other families out there that are
looking for answers, and they could have answers if cole
Hepp is willing to come forward and provide more detail,
that can lead to a discovery of a body or
who knows what else.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Daniel Gross has been writing to the kill to try
and uncover coal HEP's secrets.

Speaker 5 (41:04):
It's a bizarre feeling every time every time I see
his signature on those letters, or just his little banter
of you know, hope you're doing well, or you know,
whatever he might say. It's a weird feeling because it's
this gray area of you know, you're a serial killer
and we're not friends by any means. You know, Let's
try to find some more detail here and bring some

(41:25):
other families some closure.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Coal Heep's ability to blend into his surroundings made him
an exceptionally dangerous killer.

Speaker 5 (41:35):
Even the sheriff Chuck Wright mentioned after his arrest that
he believes he might have even met coal Heap at
some point without even knowing that. You know, he's shaking
a serial killer's hand. And so that just shows that
you know, Toddy Coleup was out there, he was, he
was in the public, he had built this successful brand.

Speaker 6 (41:52):
I think for me, what makes this case so exceptional
are the different victim types that he targets. He kills
anybody who is a threat to his sense of self,
and I think it is that complete disregard for other
people and anybody who gets in his way is going
to suffer.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Cole Heep was a selfish killer who murdered seven people
for no reason, four of them in a petulant rage
that left an unborn child fatherless. It is not only
the lives he took, but the lives he left behind,
a grieving wife, a distraught father, an emotionally scarred young

(42:33):
woman that make Todd Colehep one of the world's most
evil killers.