SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Investigators began searching for human remains Friday on a tract of South Carolina land near where a missing woman was found "chained up like a dog" in a large storage container.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright told reporters that authorities planned to excavate the area after cadaver dogs signaled the possible presence of remains.

The missing woman was found Thursday inside a container measuring about 30 feet by 15 feet. The sheriff said she told him the bodies of other women could be buried on the land owned by Todd Christopher Kohlhepp.

Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old registered sex offender with a previous kidnapping conviction, has been arrested and charged with kidnapping. He was scheduled for a bond hearing Friday in Spartanburg.

The woman's boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver, is still missing after the couple disappeared in late August.

Acting on a tip, deputies found the woman after hearing her banging inside the container in Woodruff, 80 miles northwest of the state capital of Columbia, the sheriff said.

The woman, who had worked for Kohlhepp, had a chain around her neck, Wright said. She told deputies she had been kept in the container for two months and had been fed regularly.

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said his department's investigation into the couple's disappearance led authorities to the property near Woodruff.

"We got computer and cellphone records that ultimately led us to the area in Woodruff," Stewart said. "We knew that was the last place that a cellphone tied to this case pinged."

Records indicate Kohlhepp is a licensed real estate agent and licensed pilot. As a teenager, he was convicted and sentenced to prison in Arizona for kidnapping and dangerous crimes against children.

Referring to the possibility of other victims, the sheriff said: "We're trying to make sure that we don't have a serial killer on our hands." </s> SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Investigators found a body Friday during a search of land in South Carolina where a missing woman was discovered "chained up like a dog" in a large storage container, and there may be more remains in the area, a prosecutor said.

The body has not been identified, but prosecutor Barry Barnette said the woman saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend.

Referring to the possibility of other victims, the sheriff said authorities were "trying to make sure that we don't have a serial killer on our hands."

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old registered sex offender with a previous kidnapping conviction, appeared at a bail hearing Friday in Spartanburg on a kidnapping charge.

More charges would be filed, Barnette said in court.

The judge did not set bond and instead referred the matter to circuit court. The suspect did not appear to have an attorney, and the judge urged him to get one.

The missing woman was found Thursday inside a container measuring about 30 feet by 15 feet. Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said she told him the bodies of other women could be buried on the land owned by Kohlhepp.

The woman's boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver, has also been missing since the couple disappeared in late August.

Investigators began excavating the area after cadaver dogs signaled the possible presence of remains.

Acting on a tip, deputies found the woman after hearing her banging inside the container in Woodruff, 80 miles northwest of the state capital, Columbia, the sheriff said.

The woman, who had worked for Kohlhepp, had a chain around her neck, Wright said. She told deputies she had been kept in the container for two months and had been fed regularly.

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said his department's investigation into the couple's disappearance led authorities to the property near Woodruff.

"We got computer and cellphone records that ultimately led us to the area in Woodruff," Stewart said. "We knew that was the last place that a cellphone tied to this case pinged."

Records indicate Kohlhepp is a licensed real estate agent and licensed pilot. As a teenager, he was convicted and sentenced to prison in Arizona for kidnapping and dangerous crimes against children.

Guns and a large amount of ammunition were seized from Kohlhepp, Barnette said.

"It's unbelievable how much he had," he said.

South Carolina's sex offender registry lists a 1986 kidnapping as the reason Kohlhepp is in the database of sex offenders. It indicates he was a juvenile offender.

Matching online prison records from Arizona show that Kohlhepp served about 14 years for the felony and was released in 2001.

The Arizona records show the kidnapping happened in November 1986 in the Phoenix area. He was convicted the next year.

In court Friday, Barnette said the Arizona case occurred when Kohlhepp kidnapped a 14-year-old girl, took her to his house and raped her after binding her with duct tape.

Arizona prison records also list violations while Kohlhepp was in prison. The records say he destroyed property and fought with others while incarcerated in 1988 and 1991.

Information for this article was contributed by Jack Jones, Jonathan Drew and Paul Davenport of The Associated Press. </s> Body found where woman was held hostage in US South

MIAMI -- Police in South Carolina found a body Friday buried on a property where a woman "chained like a dog" has been rescued.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said at a news conference "we did find a body on a shallow grave on this piece of property at around 10 this morning."

Wright said it was not immediately known how the person died or whether the remains were of a man or a woman.

Asked whether the body could be the work of a serial killer, the sheriff said it was possible.

The owner of the property in the town of Woodruff, northeast of the state capital Columbia, is Todd Kohlhepp, 45, a real-estate agent and registered sex offender.

He was arrested Thursday and charged with kidnapping after the female hostage was rescued from his property.

He has not been accused of killing the person whose body was found.

Kala Brown, 30, was discovered Thursday inside a padlocked shipping container after police heard a banging sound when they arrived at Kohlhepp's property with a search warrant.

Wright had described Brown as being "chained like a dog."

Brown told officers she had been in the container for two months.

Brown and her boyfriend, Charles Carver, had been missing since August. Carver's whereabouts are unknown.

Wright said that cadaver-sniffing dogs found the body Friday on the 95-acre (38-hectare) property. Authorities are investigating whether Kohlhepp owns other properties, he said.

According to WSPA, a local affiliate of the CBS television network, Brown's friends said that she worked for her alleged kidnapper cleaning houses.

"We went by his house to get a key before we went by his house to clean. Didn't seem like a person who would do anything to anybody," Brown's friend Lindsey Mayson told WSPA.

Kohlhepp has been registered as a sex offender in South Carolina for a 1987 conviction in Arizona for kidnapping, according to WSPA. He was 15 when he was accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. </s> SPARTANBURG, S.C. — The Latest on the investigation after a missing woman was found chained inside a storage container (all times local):

A coroner is working to identify the body found on property in rural South Carolina where a woman was found chained in a storage container.

Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger says the body was exhumed Friday night and taken to the morgue. It remained unclear Saturday when the body would be identified.

Police vehicles could be seen going back and forth across the property. An Anderson police officer put two bouquets of flowers in the fence Saturday.

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp is charged with kidnapping after authorities found a woman Thursday chained at her neck and ankle in a storage container. Prosecutor Barry Barnette says the woman saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend, who went with her for a cleaning job on the suspect's property.

The man accused of chaining a woman in a storage container for weeks had a violent past and was "preoccupied with sexual content" from a young age.

That's according to details emerging as investigators search his rural property for bodies.

Teams digging on the property found one body Friday and feared there could be more.

Prosecutor Barry Barnette says the woman saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend, who went with her for a cleaning job on the suspect's property. The body discovered Friday was not immediately identified.

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp is charged with kidnapping. The 45-year-old registered sex offender has a previous kidnapping conviction in Arizona. More charges are expected.

Barnette said that in the Arizona case, Kohlhepp kidnapped a 14-year-old girl, bound her and raped her in 1986. Online prison records show he served about 14 years for the felony. He was released in 2001. </s> Image copyright AP Image caption Todd Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender, has confessed to seven killings

Todd Kohlhepp, the man arrested after a woman was found "chained like a dog" on his property in South Carolina, has confessed to seven killings, a sheriff says.

Kohlhepp told police on Saturday that he was responsible for the deaths of four people in 2003.

He also showed law enforcement officers where he said he had buried two other victims on his property.

This comes after the discovery of a body at the 95-acre site on Friday.

Registered sex offender Kohlhepp, 45, has been charged with four counts of murder and one of kidnapping.

He was arrested on Thursday when police found a woman on his property chained in a container.

She had been missing, along with her boyfriend, since late August.

Image copyright AP Image caption A woman was discovered on Kohlhepp's property inside a metal shipping container

The woman was discovered after police heard banging noises and screams from inside a metal shipping container in Woodruff, 80 miles (130km) northwest of the state capital of Columbia.

It was described by Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright as "a hellish place to be locked in hot weather. No lights, no windows, no air flow".

Officers had been led to the property thanks to a tip-off by a sex-crime investigator.

The woman told officers that Kohlhepp had shot and killed her boyfriend in front of her.

Mr Wright confirmed on Saturday that the body found on the site a day earlier was that of her boyfriend Charles Carver, 32.

"They're obviously heartbroken," he said after talking to the Carver family. "It's terrible."

Mr Carver died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Kohlhepp told investigators that he was also the gunman behind the fatal shooting in 2003 of four people at a motorcycle shop in Chesnee near Spartanburg, South Carolina. </s> The 30-year-old woman officers found chained in a storage container near Woodruff this week told investigators she saw her captor, Todd Kohlhepp, shoot her boyfriend, officials said.

He and the victim, of Anderson, both went missing about two months ago.

Anderson police were informed that the victim’s phone had been traced to Kohlhepp's 96-acre property off Wofford Road near Woodruff, 7th Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette said during Kohlhepp's bond hearing Friday.

Barnette said in court that investigators believe other bodies are on Kohlhepp's property. Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger told the Herald-Journal on Friday that he had been called to that property on the report that at least one body had been found.

When she was first rescued, the victim told investigators Kohlhepp had indicated as many as four bodies may be on the property.

Currently, Kohlhepp has been charged with kidnapping, but investigators say additional charges are likely.

"This is a very, very dangerous individual," Barnette said in court.

Kohlhepp will be arraigned in court on Jan. 19, Spartanburg County Magistrate Judge Danny Burns ruled Friday.

Kohlhepp, of Moore, is a registered sex offender for crimes committed in Arizona. He is the owner and broker in charge of TKA Real Estate in Spartanburg. </s> Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger has confirmed that at least one body has been found on the 96-acre property off Wofford Road where a woman was found chained, alive, in a storage container this week.

"I just got here," Clevenger said. "We've still got to evaluate everything we've got."

Authorities have a helicopter in the air, and an excavator is working farther back on the property.

After she was found, the victim told investigators she had heard as many as four bodies may be buried on the property.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright told reporters that cadaver dogs have signaled possible remains near where the woman was found. He says deputies will excavate the area.

The missing woman was found Thursday "chained up like a dog" inside the container measuring about 30 feet by 15 feet. Wright says she told him the bodies of other women could be buried on the land, owned by 45-year-old Todd Christopher Kohlhepp.

Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender, has been arrested and charged with kidnapping. He was scheduled for a bond hearing Friday afternoon in Spartanburg.

The woman's boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver, is still missing after the couple disappeared in late August.

The sheriff said deputies acting on a tip found the woman after hearing her banging inside the container in the town of Woodruff.

Wright said she had a chain around her neck. He says the woman, who worked for Kohlhepp, told deputies she had been kept in the container for two months and had been fed regularly.

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said his department's investigation into the disappearance of the woman and her boyfriend led authorities to the property near Woodruff.

"We got computer and cellphone records that ultimately led us to the area in Woodruff," Stewart said. "We knew that was the last place that a cellphone tied to this case pinged."

Records indicate Kohlhepp is a licensed real estate agent as well as a licensed pilot. In 1986, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for kidnapping and dangerous crimes against children.

On Friday, referring to the possibility of other victims, the sheriff said: "We're trying to make sure that we don't have a serial killer on our hands." </s> Spartanburg Sheriff Chuck Wright on Saturday night said a body found in a shallow grave on a 96-acre property on Wofford Road was that of Charles Carver, who had been missing from Anderson County.

Carver was the boyfriend of the woman who was found Thursday chained in a metal cargo container on the property, which is owned by Spartanburg real estate agent Todd Kohlhepp.

Kohlhepp was arrested Thursday and charged with kidnapping after the missing 30-year-old Anderson woman was found.

Wright would not confirm a report that Kohlepp was brought to the scene Saturday afternoon.

During the formal bond hearing, Seventh Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette gave a short timeline of how the kidnapped woman ended up on Kohlhepp’s property.

The woman and Carver were reported missing in Anderson County in early September. Her friend, Dan Herren, told the Associated Press on Friday that when he visited her in the hospital, she told him the couple had gone out to Kohlhepp’s property to do some work and Kohlhepp had suddenly “pulled out a gun and held them hostage.”

When she talked with law enforcement, she told them she witnessed Kohlhepp shoot Carver, Barnette said.

He said investigators believe other bodies might be buried on Kohlhepp’s property. Wright said Thursday the rescued woman had told investigators Kohlhepp told her four additional bodies were buried on the property.

Barnette said the city of Anderson Police Department contacted the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office after receiving information that the rescued woman’s phone had been pinging around the area of Kohlhepp’s property in Woodruff.

A social media and phone search showed Kohlhepp was the last person she spoke to before she went missing, Barnette said. With that information, investigators obtained a search warrant for Kohlhepp’s Wofford Road property and executed that warrant Thursday, Barnette said.

Investigators discovered a metal cargo container on the property that is next to a two-car garage with a living area above it, Barnette said. As investigators were looking around in the garage area, Barnette said they heard noises coming from the cargo container and found the woman inside with a chain around her neck and ankle.

“They had to go through several different locks to get to her,” Barnette said.

Barnette described Kohlhepp’s property as a compound. In the garage and living area, Barnette said investigators found “numerous guns everywhere” and a lot of ammunition. It appeared that Kohlhepp had been shooting targets for practice, Barnette said, and there were several shell casings on the ground.

When deputies executed another search warrant on Kohlhepp’s home in Moore, Barnette said they found more guns and ammunition.

Barnette asked the judge to deny Kohlhepp’s bond based on this information and his past criminal record. Kohlhepp was convicted in 1986 of kidnapping a girl in Arizona and served 16 years in prison. Kohlhepp was also charged with sexually assaulting the 14-year-old girl in the case, but through a plea agreement, that charge was dropped.

However, Kohlhepp was required to register a sex offender, Barnette said.

“This individual is a very, very dangerous individual,” Barnette said.

Once an autopsy is completed on the body that was found, Kohlhepp could be facing additional charges, Barnette said.

Kohlhepp will be arraigned in court on Jan. 19, Spartanburg County Magistrate Judge Danny Burns ruled Friday.

Lt. Kevin Bobo, spokesperson with the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, said investigators would probably return to the scene around daybreak to continue their investigation. </s> Fifteen years after he was released from prison for raping a 14-year-old neighbor, Spartanburg County deputies were brought to the property of Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, where they found a woman who had been chained in a container for two months and the body of her boyfriend.

WOODRUFF, S.C. — When he was 15 and facing charges he raped a neighbor after forcing her into his home at gunpoint and tying her up, Todd Christopher Kohlhepp’s father told court officials the only emotion the teen was capable of showing was anger, and a neighbor called him a “devil on a chain.”

Fifteen years after he was released from prison for that crime, Spartanburg County deputies were brought to his property by the last known cellphone signals of two missing people. On Thursday, they found a woman who had been chained in a container for two months. She told investigators that Kohlhepp shot and killed her boyfriend in front of her.

Late Saturday, Sheriff Chuck Wright identified the body found on the site a day earlier as her boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver.

“They’re obviously heartbroken,” he said after talking to Carver’s family. “It’s terrible. I do think this helps with a little bit of closure. … We prayed for God to show us, and he did.”

Carver died of multiple gunshot wounds. An anthropologist is helping determine how long Carver was buried, said Coroner Rusty Clevenger. He declined to say how many times Carver had been shot.

Kohlhepp is charged with kidnapping the woman. Authorities say more charges are coming.

It was an abrupt but perhaps not unexpected turn for a man who spent his 20s in prison but after his release managed to get a private pilot license, build a real-estate firm with more than a dozen agents, and buy nearly 100 acres of land near Woodruff and put an $80,000 fence around it. On that property, dozens of officers continued to search Saturday for any additional bodies after the woman told investigators Kohlhepp claimed to have killed at least four others.

Kohlhepp, handcuffed and wearing an orange jumpsuit, could be seen on the land Saturday with deputies. He was there for less than an hour, The Greenville News reported. Wright would not confirm Kohlhepp was brought to the site.

As a teen, Kohlhepp was cold and callous. He went to his 14-year-old rape victim’s house after talking to her parents and making sure they wouldn’t be home. He was smart, angry and felt the world owed him something, his chief probation officer wrote in court papers in Arizona in 1987.

“It is this type of individual, one with little or no conscience, who presents the greatest risk to the community,” the officer wrote in the papers, obtained by WHNS-TV.

Kohlhepp remains behind bars. The 45-year-old had to register as a sex offender after his release from prison in Arizona.

But that didn’t stop him from becoming an apparently successful real-estate agent. Kohlhepp followed the rules and admitted he had a felony conviction when he applied for his real-estate license in 2006. But his letter explaining the charge was full of lies. He said that he argued with his girlfriend, police were called, he had a gun and was caught up in a crackdown on gun violence.

Police said Kohlhepp had a crush on the 14-year-old girl, who was friendly but not romantic toward him. After raping her, he said if she called the police he would kill her 6-year-old and 3-year-old siblings whom she was baby-sitting. His first question to officers when he was arrested was how long he was going to have to spend in prison, according to court papers.

In the South Carolina case, the couple disappeared about Aug. 31 when the woman went to do some cleaning on the suspect’s property near Woodruff. Her boyfriend accompanied her, said Daniel Herren, a friend who sat with the woman in her hospital room after she was rescued Thursday.

The Associated Press is not naming the woman because the suspect is a sex offender, though authorities have not said whether she was sexually assaulted.

Kohlhepp has a house about 9 miles away in Moore, where neighbor Ron Owen said Kohlhepp was very private, but when they did talk across the fence, he was a “big bragger.”

Kohlhepp liked to talk about the money he made day-trading online, for example, and about his two BMWs. He recently told Owen, 76, that he’d paid $80,000 to put the chain-link fence around his property where the woman was found.

“We didn’t see any signs whatsoever that this was going on,” Owen said. “My first reaction’s a baseball bat, but I know I’m not to take that in my own hands. God will deal with him.”

But even as his father felt he couldn’t be helped, and as the neighbor recounted how Kohlhepp laughed when her son cried as he rolled him down the street locked in a dog carrier, court records show Kohlhepp still had one supporter in 1987 — his mother.

She wrote a letter asking the judge to send Kohlhepp to his grandparents instead of prison.

“He even walked the girl home,” she wrote. “Does that sound like a dangerous criminal?”
A body, later identified as the boyfriend of a missing woman rescued on the previous day, was discovered on Kohlhepp's property.