Notorious SC serial killer moved after victims' families complain about his prison setup
By Noah Feit
COLUMBIA, SC
One of the most notorious serial killers in South Carolina history just had his accommodations changed — again.
Todd Kohlhepp, who is serving seven life sentences for seven murders, is no longer in protective custody, foxcarolina.com reported.
South Carolina Department of Corrections spokesman Jeffrey Taillon said Monday that Todd Kohlhepp, 47, has been moved to general population, according to greenvilleonline.com.
Since pleading guilty to 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, Kohlhepp has been moved from Kirkland Correctional in Columbia to Broad River Correctional, a high-security men's prison also located in Columbia, wyff4.com reported.
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Kohlhepp was placed in a restrictive housing unit and his mail was stopped in December 2017 after a website listed an outline of his hands was for sale, according to foxcarolina.com.
According to the state’s criminal code, an inmate is prohibited from profiting from their crime, but the tracing of Kohlhepp's hands was available for $89.
Tallion said Kohlhepp had been in protective custody since his sentencing on May 30, 2017, until April 13, 2018, greenvilleonline.com reported.
After Kohlhepp's sentencing, victims' families and prosecutors objected to Kohlhepp being kept in protective custody rather than in the general prison population, according to wyff4.com.
Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to killing three people found buried on his Spartanburg County property in 2016 and four victims slain inside Superbike Motorsports in 2003, foxcarolina.com reported.
He was arrested Nov. 3, 2016, after missing Anderson woman Kala Brown was found alive and chained up for two months in a shipping container on his 100-acre Woodruff property, according to greenvilleonline.com, adding Kohlhepp killed Charlie Carver, Brown's boyfriend, and Spartanburg couple Johnny and Meagan Coxie.
Coxie was kept alive in a container for days before he killed her, according to his confession to investigators.
Kohlhepp also confessed to killing four people at the Chesnee motorcycle store in November 2003 — Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy, Brian Lucas and Chris Sherbert, wspa.com reported.
He’s repeatedly bragged to acquaintances, fellow inmates and victims about the number of people he’s killed. He told Brown that the number was in the “high double-digits,” and he told his mother that she didn’t “have enough fingers” to count how many he’s killed, records show.
