Superbike widow: Reward money should go to kidnapped woman

Melissa Ponder – the widow of Scott Ponder, one of the Superbike Motorsports victims killed at the Chesnee-area store 13 years ago – said she’s pushing to give the $25,000 reward offered for the quadruple homicide to the Anderson woman kidnapped by Todd Kohlhepp.

The woman was found alive and chained in a storage container Thursday on the accused killer’s Woodruff property after she and her boyfriend were reported missing out of Anderson on Aug. 31.

“(She) is the real hero here,” Melissa Ponder said during a phone interview Monday. “She’s the one that endured the two months of hell and stayed vigilant and alive, and it’s because of that we even get to talk about any of this.”

Kohlhepp, 45, was arrested by Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office deputies on Thursday. On Saturday, they said he admitted he shot four people to death at Superbike Motorsports on Nov. 6, 2003.

Scott Ponder, 30, his 52-year-old mother and part-time employee Beverly Guy, and employees Brian Lucas, 29, and Chris Sherbert, 26, were killed at the store.

Before Kohlhepp’s confession, a $25,000 reward was offered for tips leading to closure in the Superbike case.

Melissa Ponder, who now lives in Arizona, said she’s reached out to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office and is pushing to have the money given to the Anderson woman.

“She’s the reason an arrest was made; she’s the reason that we have our answers,” Melissa Ponder said. “She’s my hero, and I have her in my prayers very consistently.”

Despite having some answers and feeling relief that Kohlhepp is in jail, Melissa Ponder said closure hasn’t quite come yet.

“Right now there’s not (closure) because it’s a reopened wound, but that’s necessary to tell the story,” she said. “Once this story dies down a bit and once we go back to resuming the lives we’ve all created for ourselves, there will be closure.”

This story was originally published November 7, 2016 at 5:39 PM with the headline "Superbike widow: Reward money should go to kidnapped woman."