Todd Kohlhepp was a real estate broker in upstate South Carolina, with his own firm, a pilot's license, two BMWs and a reputation among clients and colleagues as a hard worker. He was also a registered sex offender who had served about 14 years in an Arizona prison for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl when he was 15. In November 2016, deputies looking for a missing couple found a woman alive, chained inside a metal storage container on his land near Woodruff. Within days he confessed to killing her companion, Charlie Carver, to killing a married couple, Johnny and Meagan Coxie, the year before, and to the shooting deaths of four people at a motorcycle shop in Chesnee in 2003, a case that had gone unsolved for 13 years.
On May 26, 2017, Kohlhepp pleaded guilty in Spartanburg County to seven murders, two kidnappings, first-degree criminal sexual conduct and four weapons counts. He received seven consecutive life terms plus 60 years, waived his right to appeal and agreed never to seek parole, and the state agreed not to seek a death sentence. He remains in the custody of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, which lists him as not eligible for parole or release.
The woman held captive on the property survived kidnapping and sexual assault, and she has since spoken publicly.
Kohlhepp's parents divorced when he was very young; CBS News reported that he was 2, and the Associated Press said he was an infant. He spent his early years in South Carolina and Georgia, the AP reported. According to court documents reviewed for CBS's 48 Hours by the forensic psychologist Kris Mohandie, he showed behavior problems from early childhood, including aggression toward other children and toward animals. He did not get along with his stepfather. His mother put him in therapy, and at about 12 he destroyed new bedroom furniture, CBS reported. Around that age he moved to Tempe, Arizona, to live with his biological father.
A psychiatric evaluation done when he was 16, described by The Washington Post from records obtained by the Arizona Republic, portrayed a suicidal teenager who saw himself "as a loner, hostile toward other children." It listed earlier violent acts, including wrecking his bedroom with a hammer and shooting a dog with a BB gun, and noted that he had been dismissed from the Boy Scouts. The psychiatrist found "convincing evidence" of borderline personality disorder and wrote that he was "potentially explosive" if pushed to his limits.
In 1986, when Kohlhepp was 15 and attending high school in Tempe, he was accused of holding a 14-year-old girl, a neighbor, at gunpoint, taking her to his home and sexually assaulting her, according to court records described by CNN and The Washington Post. The AP reported that he threatened to kill her younger siblings if she went to the police.
He was charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and committing a dangerous crime against children. A Maricopa County judge, C. Kimball Rose, ordered the case moved out of the juvenile system, finding that the offenses had been committed "in an aggressive, violent, obviously premeditated and willful manner," according to records obtained by CNN affiliates KPHO and KTVK. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping, the other charges were dropped, and in 1987 he was sentenced in adult court to 15 years in prison. An Arizona judge wrote in 1987 that he was bright but "emotionally dangerous" and preoccupied with sex, the AP reported.
Arizona prison records cited by CBS News and the AP show that he served about 14 years and recorded prison violations in 1988 and 1991. The Washington Post, citing the Arizona Republic, gave his release date as November 24, 2001. South Carolina's sex offender registry later listed him as a juvenile offender convicted in 1987, CBS News reported, and the conviction required him to register as a sex offender there.
Years later he gave his own version. In a 2006 letter applying to take South Carolina's real estate exam, he wrote that he had been "charged with the felony of kidnapping due to the fact that I did have a firearm on me" and that he had served every day of a 15-year sentence, "no parole required," CNN reported. The Washington Post said his description of the 1986 events in that letter contradicted the court documents. Acquaintances told the AP that he described the charges as trumped up after a joyride with a teenager whose father had been upset.
After his release Kohlhepp moved to South Carolina, the AP reported. He was in his early 30s when he began taking classes at Greenville Technical College. He later transferred to the University of South Carolina Upstate, where a college spokeswoman, Tammy Whaley, said he ranked near the top of his class, and he finished a business degree in 2007. A fellow agent, Cherry Laurens, told the AP that the two had met as study partners there.
In 2006 he applied for a South Carolina real estate license. He was granted it about three weeks after applying, The Washington Post reported. A 2008 news article cited by the AP said he was the top-selling rookie agent for Weichert Realtors in a region covering parts of both Carolinas. In 2009 he registered his own company, Todd Kohlhepp and Associates. By 2016 it had offices in Moore and Greenville and supervised nearly a dozen agents. Its brochure presented him as tech-savvy and dedicated to his clients, and it said he was a licensed pilot. A web page joked that the firm had motivated its marketing team by threatening "not to feed them if it didn't work."
People who did business with him described him to the AP as a hard worker and a good boss. "Todd did his job well and we never had any issues or saw any flags in the years we worked with him," said Danielle Cuddie, owner of a design firm that worked with him. Others recalled warning signs: a mortgage banker, Lawrence Shorts, said Kohlhepp watched pornography on his laptop in the office and made remarks suggesting he knew where people lived. A neighbor near his rural land, Scott Waldrop, said Kohlhepp bragged about chasing people off the property with guns and night-vision equipment.
The state's real estate licensing agency received complaints about him. Redacted records obtained by the AP showed two complaints in 2009, one saying he identified himself on Facebook as a real estate agent while posting about sex, revenge and guns, and warning that "something MUST be done to stop this crazy man before something dreadful happens." Another said he had threatened to destroy someone. The agency did not investigate those complaints because they did not allege violations of real estate law. A third complaint, in 2014, was investigated and dismissed. The Anderson Independent-Mail first reported the complaints.
In May 2014, according to tax records cited by CNN, he bought a property of about 95 acres near Woodruff, in Spartanburg County, for about $305,000. He continued to live in a separate home in Moore.
Superbike Motorsports was a family business in Chesnee, a town of about 900 people north of Spartanburg. Scott Ponder, 30, owned it. His mother, Beverly Guy, 52, kept the books. Brian Lucas, 29, was the service manager and a close friend of Ponder's; Chris Sherbert, 26, was a mechanic.
A little is on record about each of them. Melissa Ponder, Scott's wife, was pregnant with their son when he died; she described her husband to CBS News as genuine and spontaneous. Terry Guy was Beverly's husband and Scott's stepfather, and lost both of them that day. Tom and Lorraine Lucas described their son Brian as a solid, helpful father of two and a skilled mechanic. Chris Sherbert's brother told WSPA in 2016 that he went to Chris's grave the night the arrest was announced to tell him there was closure.
On November 6, 2003, all four were shot inside and around the shop. Investigators believed the gunman came in from the back, perhaps through an open garage door, and shot Sherbert while he worked. Beverly Guy was found just outside the bathroom in the showroom, Brian Lucas in the shop's doorway and Scott Ponder just outside the door in the parking lot. All four had been killed with the same 9mm pistol, investigators said. Nothing was stolen. The Washington Post described the killings as the county's first quadruple homicide.
A witness reported seeing a man in the shop shortly before the shootings, and a sketch was released, CBS News reported. For years sketches were circulated and leads followed, WSPA said, but the case stayed cold. The families met periodically over the years to grieve and compare leads with investigators who had no solid suspect, the AP reported. A $25,000 reward was offered. Tom Lucas had playing cards printed with details of the case and distributed to inmates in South Carolina prisons, according to WLOS photo captions.
The investigation also hurt people close to the victims. Police questioned and polygraphed Melissa Ponder. An anonymous tip led them to suspect her of an affair, and a DNA test appeared to support the rumor; police later admitted that a blood sample had been mislabeled and belonged to Brian Lucas. She was cleared, but by then, she told CBS, the rumors had done lasting damage, and she moved to Arizona. A close friend of the victims who had called 911 was also investigated, fingerprinted and polygraphed before being cleared.
Kohlhepp's name was in the case file all along. Deputies compiled a list of customers from the shop's receipts, and his name was on it, WSPA reported in 2017 from the released case files. Over 13 years, deputies tried twice to reach him about Superbike: once by visiting his home when he was not there, and once through a letter about the shooting mailed to thousands of customers. In that time he repeatedly visited the sheriff's office to register as a sex offender. "We saw a lot of people on the customer list," Sheriff Chuck Wright said. "I'm telling you had we talked to him in the beginning we would have never seen him again." Wright told CBS that nothing in Kohlhepp's background had pointed to him. Wright was first elected about a year after the killings.
Johnny Joe Coxie, 29, and his wife, Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie, of Spartanburg, had a young son. Meagan's age is given as 25 by the coroner and the solicitor's office, and as 26 in a later AP account. The couple had been released from jail in December 2015, and Meagan told her mother she had a job and asked her to post bond, according to Lieutenant Kevin Bobo of the sheriff's office. Her mother never heard from her again and reported the couple missing to the sheriff's office later that month. Deputies said the couple panhandled near Interstate 26, and leads in their disappearance were "few and far between," Bobo said. Her parents, Mary and Robert McCraw, told CBS News they wanted to know why it happened and wanted their daughter remembered.
A former cook at the Waffle House in Roebuck told WSPA in 2016 that Meagan had been a waitress there when Kohlhepp became a regular in 2015, that he tipped heavily and tried to take waitresses home, and that the waitresses were so uneasy that another employee took his orders.
By Kohlhepp's own account, given in his confession and described by WSPA from the released files, he picked the couple up where they were panhandling at Blackstock Road and Reidville Road and offered them cash to work on his land. He said he shot Johnny Coxie after they reached the property, claiming Coxie had pulled a knife; no report corroborates that claim. Solicitor Barry Barnette said Johnny Coxie was killed immediately. Kohlhepp said he kept Meagan in the storage container for five or six days and had thought about paying her $10,000 and leaving her in Tennessee, but feared being stopped with her in his car. On Christmas Day, he said, he shot her and buried her next to her husband. Barnette's account, as reported by the AP, was that she was kept alive for six days and shot on Christmas. The coroner found that Johnny Coxie had been shot in the torso and Meagan in the head.
Charles David Carver, known as Charlie, was 32 and lived in Anderson. He ran a printer at a local business, and his father described him to CBS News as gentle and generous. His mother, Joanne Shiflet, later said in court that Kohlhepp had taken away her best friend. His father, Chuck Carver, and stepmother, Julie, left flowers at the place where he was buried. His funeral was set for what would have been his 33rd birthday.
Carver went with the woman he was living with to Kohlhepp's land at the end of August 2016. She had cleaned houses for Kohlhepp's real estate business. By her account, reported by CNN, Kohlhepp invited them on August 31 and asked them to clear brush, then went into a garage, came back and shot Carver. She said he then bound her and kept her chained in the container.
The released files, summarized by WSPA in June 2017, show how the Anderson Police Department pieced the case together. Carver's mother reported him missing on September 3, 2016; a friend reported the woman missing two days later. His 2002 Pontiac was gone from his apartment. On September 9 and 22, investigators obtained phone records showing that both phones had pinged in the same place on August 31, their last day of activity.
Days after the couple was reported missing, posts appeared on the couple's Facebook pages suggesting they had married, bought a house and were fine. In October, strange and violent posts appeared on Carver's account. His family suspected someone else was writing them, and the account was later taken down.
On October 13, investigators received a tip that the woman was buried on a 100-acre property in Spartanburg County, and they found Facebook messages showing the couple had planned to meet Kohlhepp on August 31 at his home in Moore and work on a property. On October 18, Anderson detectives met the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office. Kohlhepp's phone had pinged in the same place as the couple's phones. A drone and helicopter search of his land found nothing unusual. Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said computer and cellphone records led investigators to the area in Woodruff: "We knew that was the last place that a cellphone tied to this case pinged."
On the morning of November 3, investigators from both agencies went to Kohlhepp's home and to the Woodruff property with search warrants. On the land, deputies heard banging from inside a padlocked metal container, about 30 feet by 15 feet, and found the woman inside, alive, with a chain around her neck. Sheriff Wright said she was "distraught, panicked." She told deputies she had been held for two months and fed, and that there might be other bodies on the property. Carver's car was also found on the land.
Kohlhepp was arrested at his home in Moore and charged with kidnapping. At a bond hearing on Friday, November 4, Solicitor Barnette said the woman had told investigators she saw Kohlhepp shoot Carver. "We're trying to make sure we don't have a serial killer on our hands," Wright said. The same day, searchers with cadaver dogs, an excavator and a helicopter found a body in a shallow grave. The coroner, Rusty Clevenger, identified it as Charlie Carver, who had died of multiple gunshot wounds. Officials said Kohlhepp had numerous guns on the property; discarded targets lay near a two-car garage.
Kohlhepp asked for a lawyer on November 3, which stopped the flow of information to investigators, WSPA reported from the files. On November 5 he contacted deputies himself. He told them that Meagan and Johnny Coxie were buried on his land and led investigators to the graves; the coroner later said the couple had been buried there for about 11 months. Before leading them there, he referred to both victims by name, CBS and the AP reported.
He then gave a confession of about four hours at the sheriff's office. A sheriff's report said he confessed to shooting and killing the four people at Superbike Motorsports and gave details "that only the killer would know." Among them, WSPA reported, were the weight and grain of the bullets used. CBS reported he described a detail about the shots that had never been released. Melissa Ponder said the old sketch and his photograph looked alike.
He also asked for three things, CBS reported: that a photograph be sent to his mother, that a donation be made toward a young woman's college education, and that he be allowed to speak with his mother first. His mother told CBS that he had told her he killed seven people.
His account of Superbike, as WSPA summarized it, began with a motorcycle he bought from the shop in April 2003. He said it was stolen from his apartment 14 days later and that he reported the theft to Spartanburg police. Days before the theft, he said, he had tried to return the bike because he could not ride it, and the workers laughed at him. He went back several times over the following months to test other bikes. On the day of the killings, he said, he drove to Chesnee after classes at Greenville Tech and posed as a customer interested in a motorcycle. A customer who was in the shop with his young son left. Kohlhepp then shot all four. He told investigators that Beverly Guy had not been an intended target. He later dismantled the gun and threw the pieces away in different places. "It was almost like a video game," he said in the recorded interviews, adding that it was "not a game." Barnette said Kohlhepp believed the shop's staff had been mocking him; WLOS reported he told authorities he had become enraged by something Ponder said. His mother told CBS he had wanted a motorcycle, could not ride it and was mocked, and that he was hurt and lashed out.
These are his own statements. They explain why he said he did it; no court tested them, because he pleaded guilty.
Hours before the 13th anniversary of the Superbike killings, Wright announced that the case had been solved. "We got 'em today. We got 'em today," he said. On Sunday, November 6, 2016, the anniversary, Kohlhepp appeared in an orange jumpsuit before Magistrate Judge Jimmy Henson on four counts of murder. He had no lawyer and declined to make a statement. Henson denied bond and told the families, seeing the accused for the first time, "I know there's a lot of hurt ... beyond what a lot of people understand."
"It isn't closure, but it is an answer," Melissa Ponder said. Terry Guy said he was "just so relieved." Tom Lucas said he wanted to look Kohlhepp in the eye and use that toward healing. Danny Lee, a Chesnee resident who knew the victims and had a bike in the shop at the time, said, "What I still want to know is why."
Kohlhepp was charged with the Coxie murders on November 28, 2016, and with Carver's murder. The FBI and Homeland Security joined the inquiry, which reached other properties he had owned, some outside South Carolina, the AP reported. Indictments released in February 2017 meant he did not need to appear for a preliminary hearing set for March 6.
Investigators found dozens of guns and pallets of ammunition on his properties. Wright called the amount "staggering," and WSPA reported that investigators estimated the guns and ammunition were worth about $250,000. Kohlhepp, as a convicted felon, could not legally own any of them.
In a recorded interview after his arrest, Kohlhepp told investigators to "talk to" a man named Dustan Lawson, and said the suppressors had been bought legally "for about three minutes." In October 2017 a federal grand jury indicted Lawson on 36 counts, accusing him of buying 12 guns and five silencers between 2012 and 2016 and signing paperwork saying they were for himself, then giving them to a man identified only as "T.K." Lawson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison, the AP reported in 2023. He told federal investigators that Kohlhepp had mentioned killing four people at a motorcycle shop and kidnapping a woman and her boyfriend, and that he had not believed it.
The case never went to trial. On May 26, 2017, in the Spartanburg County courthouse, Kohlhepp, 46, pleaded guilty to 14 charges: 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. The murders were those of Scott Ponder, Brian Lucas, Chris Sherbert, Beverly Guy, Johnny Coxie, Meagan Coxie and Charlie Carver. The sexual conduct count involved the woman held captive on the property.
He was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms, plus 30 years for kidnapping and 30 years for criminal sexual conduct. Under a nine-page written agreement, he waived his right to appeal the pleas, the convictions and any post-conviction matters, and agreed never to seek or accept parole. If he escapes or breaks the agreement, the state may re-sentence him on every charge and seek the death penalty. The agreement was signed by Kohlhepp and his lawyers, Barnette, the surviving victim, representatives of the seven people killed, Sheriff Wright and a lawyer for the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.
Barnette said Kohlhepp deserved to die but that South Carolina "doesn't have a functioning death penalty." The state's last execution had been in 2011, its supply of lethal injection drugs had expired, and about 38 people were on death row, half of them for at least 15 years. "We don't even have the drugs at this point to carry out the death sentence," he said. "But it's not fair to these families to wait years and years and years for justice." He said the families and the survivor wanted closure rather than the uncertainty of a death sentence, and that he hoped they could "rest easier knowing he will leave prison in a casket."
Family members spoke in court. Mary McCraw, Meagan's mother, described her grandson crying at night: "you could see his little shoulders shake." Scott Ponder's widow said the only thing that had carried her through was her son. "I am so grateful that God allowed me to keep this kid," she said. Kohlhepp's lawyer, Shane Gorenson, told the Anderson Independent-Mail, "There are no other victims," and said Kohlhepp "has come clean."
On June 9, 2017, the sheriff's office released part of the case file, including video of the woman's rescue and recordings of Kohlhepp's interviews, which drew national attention.
Families sued Kohlhepp even before the plea. In December 2016, Johnny Coxie's mother, Cindy Coxie, filed wrongful death and personal injury suits, and Carver's estate filed a wrongful death suit; Kohlhepp's mother, who held his power of attorney, was named in the Carver suit and later asked to be removed. The woman held captive sued for personal injury. Kohlhepp did not answer the Carver and survivor complaints in time, and their lawyers sought default judgments before Judge Durham Cole (as WSPA spelled the name), WSPA reported. A lawyer from the firm Nelson Mullins held his assets. In March 2017, relatives of Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy and Brian Lucas filed a wrongful death suit, and in April 2017 Chris Sherbert's mother filed her own suit, AP reported, bringing the total to more than half a dozen.
South Carolina corrections records show him taken from prison to Spartanburg County for court on July 11 and December 21, 2018, and on July 19 and 26, 2019. At the July 11, 2018 hearing, Kohlhepp testified in the Coxie case, acknowledged killing Johnny Coxie, and said the amount sought, more than $20 million, was too high. On August 23, 2018, the court entered judgment for the survivor of more than $1.5 million in actual damages and more than $4.7 million in punitive damages, South Carolina Lawyers Weekly reported.
To help pay, his belongings were sold at an online auction that closed on August 29, 2018: a gun safe, power tools, furniture, an ATV, office supplies and old real estate signs bearing his name. Hundreds of people bought items. Some buyers began reselling items at higher prices, which Julie Carver criticized: "What sane person would buy something like that knowing where it came from?" In October 2018, property records showed that the Woodruff land had been sold for $500,000 to a company called Strange Properties Number One LLC.
At a hearing on December 21, 2018, relatives of the Superbike victims spoke in front of him. Lorraine Lucas said there was "absolutely no answer" for what he had done; Kohlhepp replied, "With all due respect, ma'am, I'm sorry but your information is incorrect." Katherine Lucas-Guy said he did not "deserve one more moment in the public's eye." Outside the courtroom, he said, "It's just money. Just money." He called no witnesses.
At the last damages hearing, on July 26, 2019, Melissa Brackman, Scott Ponder's widow, and their son, then 15, told Kohlhepp they forgave him. "It no longer makes me angry, it makes me sad," she said; she said he apologized as she left the witness stand. Carver's mother said she was not ready to forgive him but did not hate him and prayed he could find peace. Carver's father said the family had been in counseling. The reports do not give the judge's final rulings in the Superbike, Carver or Coxie suits.
In December 2023, Academy Sports and Outdoors agreed to pay $2.5 million to the families of three of the people Kohlhepp killed, settling a suit over guns its stores sold to Lawson, the AP reported. The families said Kohlhepp sometimes stood near Lawson while he chose guns, and that at least seven of the weapons were bought at Academy. A judge refused the company's request to keep the amount confidential, finding the public had a right to know.
From the first days, officials asked whether there were more. Wright said the county would reopen its missing person cases. Police in Tempe said Kohlhepp had mentioned that he may have killed someone in Arizona. Sergeant Josie Montenegro said in December 2016 that investigators were reviewing unsolved homicides from 1986, just before his arrest there, and from a brief period in 2001 after his release, and called it "just a case review, not an active investigation." No Arizona case has been publicly reported as linked to him.
In August 2018, Kohlhepp told a television documentary crew that two more victims were buried near Interstate 26 in Spartanburg County. On August 21, Wright said, "We haven't been able to confirm anything he's claimed yet," but said deputies were obliged to look. The next day about 20 deputies and a cadaver dog searched woods near the interstate. Wright called the lead a "second-or-third-hand tip." By afternoon, Lieutenant Kevin Bobo said the search had found no evidence supporting the claims, that Kohlhepp had given conflicting accounts of the locations to the authorities and the crew, and that he had declined to show officers the sites. The search was not resumed.
Kohlhepp entered the South Carolina Department of Corrections on May 26, 2017, at Kirkland. According to the department's public record, he was moved to Broad River in August 2017, to Lieber in September 2022, and back to Broad River in 2024. In August 2018 the AP reported he was held at Broad River Correctional Facility in Columbia.
The SCDC record lists disciplinary actions against him. On January 24, 2024, it records three charges: assault and battery of an inmate with intent to kill or injure, threatening to inflict harm on an employee, and an act defined as a felony under state law, each with 120 days' loss of canteen, telephone and visitation privileges. Later that month it records charges for creating or assisting with a social networking site, refusing orders and abuse of privileges, and in February 2024 possession of contraband. The details of the January 2024 incidents have not been reported.
In June 2025, FOX Carolina reported on several weeks of messages to and from his prison-issued tablet, obtained under an open records request. In them Kohlhepp and another person discussed selling merchandise tied to his crimes. He asked someone to start a "TK SK" T-shirt line, which he said stood for "Todd Kohlhepp serial killer," and wrote, "make that cha-ching." A message to him said a proposed documentary would raise his book sales and merchandise sales. South Carolina law bars inmates from profiting from their crimes and requires them to notify the Crime Victim Services Division, overseen by the Attorney General; the Attorney General's office said it had not been notified. The department said it had not known about the messages until the station asked, and could not explain how they were missed. It moved him to Kirkland, removed his tablet privileges indefinitely and opened internal and criminal inquiries. "I don't understand how messages can go out like this back and forth and nobody is catching it," Chuck Carver said, adding that the department's director called to apologize. The SCDC record shows a June 6, 2025 transfer to Kirkland and disciplinary findings that day for abuse of privileges and rule violations, with 30 days' loss of canteen and visitation privileges.
In July 2025 a viewer gave the station hundreds of pages Kohlhepp had mailed out, signed with his autograph and thumbprint, which the viewer said he had wanted sold: hand-drawn art, photographs, court papers, warrants and copies of his victims' autopsy reports. They included a signed written confession to the Superbike killings and the shop's business card. Families of Carver and Brian Lucas asked the department to act. They avoid his name and call him by his inmate number. "It's a big cancer that's got to be corrected somehow," Tom Lucas said. Chuck Carver said he regretted being the last family member to agree to the plea deal.
On October 28, 2025, FOX Carolina reported that Kohlhepp had been moved to supermax confinement indefinitely. He is barred from visitors, has no phone or tablet, is watched by cameras around the clock and may leave his cell for one hour a day. That day the families met the Attorney General's office, which declined to comment; it was unclear whether the criminal inquiry remained open or what charges he might face. Lorraine Lucas said the families wanted the peace and quiet they had expected when he went to prison. No new criminal charge appears on his SCDC record as of October 21, 2026.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections record dated October 21, 2026, lists Todd Kohlhepp, No. 00372454, age 55, as incarcerated at Kirkland, serving seven active life sentences for murder and active 30-year terms for kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual conduct. His projected release date, parole eligibility and supervised reentry eligibility are all listed as "not eligible." His most recent recorded move is an administrative transfer back to Kirkland on June 12, 2026, after a medical absence the same day.
Proven by final judgment, on his guilty pleas: the murders of Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy, Brian Lucas, Chris Sherbert, Johnny Coxie, Meagan Coxie and Charlie Carver; two kidnappings; first-degree criminal sexual conduct; and four weapons counts. In Arizona, a 1987 conviction for kidnapping only; the sexual assault and dangerous crime against children charges were dropped.
Claimed but unconfirmed: a killing in Arizona (Tempe police reviewed cases from 1986 and 2001; no link reported) and two more bodies near Interstate 26 (searched August 22, 2018; nothing found). His lawyer said in 2017 that there were no other victims.
His own accounts: his motive for the Superbike killings, his claim that Johnny Coxie drew a knife, and his description of the 1986 Arizona case in his 2006 license application all come from him and were never tested at trial.
Details that differ between sources: Meagan Coxie's age (25 or 26); Brian Lucas's age (29 in most reports, 30 in one AP account); how old Kohlhepp was when his parents divorced (2, or an infant); and the date of the Superbike shootings in one WSPA summary of his confession, which gives November 3, 2003, against November 6 in every other source and the sheriff's records.
1986: In Tempe, Arizona, at 15, he is accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old neighbor; the case is moved out of juvenile court.
1987: Pleads guilty to kidnapping; sentenced in adult court to 15 years. Other charges dropped.
2001: Released from Arizona prison after about 14 years (November 24, 2001, per the Arizona Republic); moves to South Carolina and registers as a sex offender.
April 2003: Buys a motorcycle from Superbike Motorsports; reports it stolen 14 days later (his account).
November 6, 2003: Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy, Brian Lucas and Chris Sherbert are shot dead at Superbike Motorsports, Chesnee.
2006: Obtains a South Carolina real estate license.
2007: Finishes a business degree at USC Upstate.
2009: Registers Todd Kohlhepp and Associates; two complaints to the licensing agency are not investigated.
2014: A third complaint is dismissed; in May he buys about 95 acres near Woodruff.
December 2015: Johnny Coxie and Meagan McCraw-Coxie disappear; Meagan is killed on Christmas Day, by his account.
August 31, 2016: Charlie Carver and the woman with him go to Kohlhepp's land; Carver is shot.
September 3, 2016: Carver reported missing in Anderson.
October 18, 2016: Anderson detectives and the sheriff's office link Kohlhepp's phone to the couple's last location.
November 3, 2016: Woman found alive in a container on his land; Kohlhepp arrested in Moore and charged with kidnapping.
November 4, 2016: Carver's body found.
November 5, 2016: Kohlhepp leads investigators to the Coxies' graves and confesses to the Superbike killings.
November 6, 2016: Denied bond on four murder counts, on the 13th anniversary of the shootings.
November 28, 2016: Charged with the Coxie murders.
May 26, 2017: Pleads guilty to 14 charges; seven consecutive life terms plus 60 years.
June 9, 2017: Sheriff's office releases part of the case file.
October 2017: Dustan Lawson indicted on federal gun charges; later pleads guilty.
August 22, 2018: Search near Interstate 26 for two bodies he claimed finds nothing.
August 23, 2018: Civil judgment of more than $6 million for the survivor; his belongings auctioned that month.
October 2018: Woodruff property sold for $500,000.
July 26, 2019: Damages hearing in the wrongful death suit brought by Ponder's widow and Carver's parents.
December 2023: Academy Sports agrees to pay $2.5 million to three victims' families.
January 2024: SCDC records disciplinary charges including assault of an inmate.
June 2025: FOX Carolina reports his tablet messages; tablet privileges removed, moved to Kirkland.
October 2025: Moved to indefinite supermax confinement.
October 21, 2026: SCDC lists him at Kirkland, not eligible for parole or release.