Serial Killing Salesman

  SERIAL KILLING SALESMAN: THE TRUE STORY OF TODD KOHLHEPP

  FRANK STONE

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TODD KOHLHEPP

  GARY HEIDNIK

  “just admit it..you look at the news, you see the political crap and the school shootings and just general wth is going on...zombie apocalypse is starting to look better and better every day..” - Todd Kohlhepp's Facebook post

  Todd Kohlhepp was a successful realtor with a dark history.

  A past which involved kidnapping and sexual assault.

  He would rape a classmate at the age of fifteen and be tried as an adult. Remaining in prison for over fifteen years, he would be released at the age of thirty. Claiming to be rehabilitated, he took advantage of every educational opportunity in jail, learning graphic design and earning a college degree. While in prison, he learned how to “play the game”, putting on a false front and saying the right things in order to get what he wanted. He reentered society, got a job and eventually started his own business where he was successful enough to have over eight employees and purchase a huge farm.

  But despite his outward appearance of professional respectability, Kohlhepp was still the same sinister young man who raped a young woman fifteen years earlier. But now, he had become a more experienced criminal. One who could avoid detection while committing his acts of violence.

  He would kill and rape again until finally meeting his match in a survivor named Kala Brown.

  EARLY LIFE

  Todd was born on March 7th, 1971 in Florida but would go on to be raised in South Carolina and Georgia. His parents would divorce when he was two years old and he would remain the custody of his mother, Regina Tague. She would remarry the following year.

  Regina tried to maintain a sense of normalcy for Todd. She thought of him as a “smart boy” who read the encyclopedia and would often sit on her lap as she read the newspaper comic strips to him.

  But Todd would not get along with his stepfather and over the years had expressed his desire to live with his biological father. This desire would not come true until Todd was twelve years old.

  Todd was a troubled boy after the divorce. He would attack other children in nursery school and tear up their belongings. By the age of nine, he was already in therapy. He had both a hair-trigger temper and an abnormal preoccupation with sex.

  He would often do things to get back at his mom. Anytime she did something he didn't like, he would find a way to gain revenge. On one occasion, he would stuff bath towels down the toilet and flood the house. His mother soon grew tired of his behavior as she “knew something was wrong inside” the young boy.

  Todd had an inability to process anger in the same way a normal person learns to do. His mother was at a loss as both therapy and her well-meaning attitude had no effect on the young boy.

  (TODD WITH HIS MOTHER REGINA)

  A BUDDING PSYCHOPATH

  Like most serial killers, Todd's aggression didn't stop with his fellow schoolchildren. He would take his anger out on animals as he would go out and shoot birds, cats, and dogs with his BB gun. On one occasion, he was given a gift of a goldfish in a fishbowl. He pretended as if he liked the fish then promptly poured Clorox bleach into the bowl, taking a sadistic pleasure in watching the goldfish die before him.

  Why?

  Because he didn't want goldfish. He wanted a gerbil.

  Todd was growing into an “emotion-free” free adult, incapable of expressing anything other than anger. The therapy sessions were not working and Todd was sent to a Georgia mental institution for three months because he simply could not get along with his other classmates. He hit other children and destroyed his own bedroom with a hammer after his mother had bought him a new bedroom set that he did not like. He often threatened to kill himself.

  When Todd was twelve years old, his mother and stepfather divorced. Todd would be sent to Arizona to live with his biological father that he had not seen since he was two years old. He would change his last name to his father's and would eventually begin working odd jobs around the town. But his father didn't seem to be a calming influence, instead, he may have served to exacerbate some of Todd's violent tendencies. His father would collect guns and knives, teaching Todd how to “blow things up and make bombs.”

  But neither the gun hobby nor a decade-long desire to connect with his real father was enough to make the reunion a happy father and son experience. Todd wanted to spend time with his father but his old man had numerous girlfriends. His lifelong delusion of a father who wanted him now crushed, he went back to live with his mother.

  But she didn't want him either. She would make numerous excuses to back out of taking her son back. His father suggested that he be put up for adoption.

  The rejection of both parents served to incite more anger in the young man.

  A RAPIST IS BORN

  At the age of fifteen, Todd would kidnap a fourteen-year-old girl in Tempe, Arizona on November 25th, 1986. He had a crush on the girl but she rejected his advances, wanting only to be friends. Instead, she had a crush on one of his friends and the rejection set him into a jealous rage. He was acquainted with her family, he went to her house first and inquired with the girl's parents to see if they were gong to be home. They stated they were about to leave and seeing an opportunity to be alone with his target, he waited until the girl's parents left.

  “Todd was not a child you left alone,” his mother said, recalling how Todd's biological father had an emergency with his own father and left Todd alone for three days.

  “We left him home and then he was jealous of this girl's boyfriend, so he went and took her away to the house.”

  Todd went back to the girl's home and lured her outside. Taking his unsuspecting classmate around to an alley, he put his father's .22-caliber revolver to her head and walked her back to his home where his father had left him. He pulled the trigger on the gun to scare the girl into submission but it misfired.

  Terrified, the girl complied with Todd as he forced her back to his house. Todd would tie her up on his bed, duct tape her mouth shut and place a knife next to her with the warning that if she screamed he would kill her.

  Then he raped her.

  After he finished, he walked her home with an ominous warning...He would kill the girl's six-year-old and three-year-old siblings if she told anyone what happened.

  But the girl's six-year-old brother had called the police anyway, telling them that his sister was missing. A policewoman arrived, waiting at the home until the girl came through the back door, disheveled and distraught.

  The girl talked, knowing Todd as only “Todd Sampsell”, his father's last name.

  Todd was immediately arrested at his home.

  He remained emotionless as he was taken into custody, asking the officer 'What's gonna happen to me?' and 'How much am I gonna get?'

  He would be charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and committing a dangerous crime against children. Todd stated that he raped the girl because he was angry at his father. He would plead guilty to the kidnapping charge but the sexual assault charge would be dropped.

  The case was moved from juvenile to adult court. Todd was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and forced to register as a sex offender.

  The judge in the case, C.Kimball Rose, saw Todd as a lost cause.

  “At less than the age of nine,” Rose said. “This juvenile was impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content. He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursing school. He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions, and pets apparently on whim and caprice. Approximately six years of intervention in fifteen years of life have resulted in abysmal failure. Twenty-five m
onths of the most intensive and expensive professional intervention, short of God's, will provide no protect for the public and no rehabilitation of this juvenile by any services or facilities presently available to the juvenile court.”

  Todd's attorney, Allen Bickart, stated that he didn't believe that Kohlhepp would go on to the murderous spree he would eventually undertake. He didn't see him as a Ted Bundy-esque serial killer but rather a very angry young man.

  “He was very, very mixed up and screwed up in his childhood,” Bickart said. “He apparently had difficulty with his father and his father had put him up for adoption. He acted out of anger. There is no way to be clairvoyant and know that he would become a serial killer.”

  Not surprisingly, his mother remained his biggest advocate. She wrote a letter to the judge pleading with him to send Todd to his grandparents instead of jail.

  “He even walked the girl home,” Regina wrote. “Does that sound like a dangerous criminal?”

  After undergoing further psychological counseling, Todd was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder as well as being tested with an IQ of 118.

  The judge realized that Todd was a smart kid but because of his erratic emotional nature he was very dangerous. The likelihood of rehabilitation looked very remote. Even his chief probation officer described Todd as an entitled sort, someone who “felt the world owed him something.”

  Neighbors corroborated the back story on Todd, describing him as a “devil on a chain.” He had locked one of her sons in a dog kennel cage and rolled it over and over. Her son cried and begged for Todd to stop the torture but the young man only laughed. On another occasion, Todd slammed her son's head against some clay pipes.

  In a psychological evaluation, Todd described his attitude toward himself as “negative.”

  According to the psychiatrist, Todd seemed at a loss for his own bad behavior. He kept asking “why do I do things like this?” and admittedly saw himself as a “bad person.” He expressed a tinge of remorse, stating that he “feels bad because he feels that he can hurt people.”

  Todd would incur some minor infractions in jail early on but would remain clean until his release in August of 2001.

  RELEASE FROM PRISON

  Todd put on a false front of rehabilitation after his release from prison. He was still the same diabolical predator underneath a new facade. He had learned how to con others, how to play a role of a good citizen. This gave him gratification as he was able to fool victims as well as get over on society. He moved to South Carolina where his mother now lived. Armed now with a bachelor's degree in computer science courtesy of Central Arizona College, he found work as a graphic designer for the Seven Sons & Company in Spartanburg.

  He would remain in that line of work for almost two years until he began attending Greenville Technical College in 2003.

  MURDER

  Todd's anger only got worse in prison. He walked around the streets in his small South Carolina town as a ticking time bomb.

  That bomb would go off at Superbike Motorsports in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Todd would enter the store and kill four people; Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy, Brian Lucas and Chris Sherbert.

  The murder would remain unsolved for over ten years. The gruesome scene stunned the small South Carolina community, where rumors flew that the victims were shot courtesy of a violent biker gang.

  The case also stalled as deputies believed that Scott's wife, Melissa Ponder, had an affair with another man. They believed that the DNA of her husband did not match the DNA of her son. Melissa Ponder was then “repeatedly and aggressively” questioned after her husband was found dead. This false narrative led deputies away from the real perpetrator, Todd Hohlhepp, who got away with the crime for several years.

  Superbike Motorsports was a motorcycle shop owned by Scott Ponder. Lucas was the service manager while Sherbert was the mechanic. Beverly Guy was the bookkeeper and also Scott's mother.

  Todd had shot them all multiple times.

  He had frequented the shop many times, always complaining about something.

  “I was told he was a disgruntled customer,” Melissa Brackman, the widow of Scott Ponder recalled. “He bought a motorcycle from Scott previously. His motorcycle was stolen, he went to get another one. My husband and the service manager were poking fun at him saying, 'Hey (is) the second motorcycle going to get stolen, too? Didn't you have enough already?' They were kidding and he said that made him angry. That is the kind of thing that a normal everyday person wouldn't go crazy over.”

  They refused to give him his money back and ridiculed him for not knowing how to ride a motorcycle.

  Todd explained to his mother that they had made him “feel bad” when he wanted to be taught how to ride a motorcycle. He rationalized the murder to his mother as he attempted to return the bike but everyone in the store laughed at him.

  “They sent him down a big field with plants this high and he fell off and they laughed and laughed at him,” Regina said. She stated that Todd wanted to give the motorcycle back and get a refund but the owner said they would take the bike back but no refund would be forthcoming.

  Enraged, Todd left the store but returned with his gun.

  He entered the shop from the back door, killing mechanic Sherbert first. He then shot Beverly Guy outside the bathroom and Lucas at the main doorway. He would save Scott Ponder for last, shooting him dead in the store parking lot.

  “He wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle and they laughed at him when he fell over on the bike,” Todd's mother Regina Tague said. “You know, this is all why people tell kids not to bully. This is what can happen. Todd was bullied and embarrassed and I think he just held it in long enough.”

  His mother remained his apologist when he killed four people just as she did when he attacked children in his nursery school. She rationalized the behavior away and Todd followed suit.

  A PILOT AND A STUDENT

  “What is up with people driving on back roads literally sucking up the yellow line? Right in the middle of both lanes, so when they see you they have to go oh shit...then get back in theirs before you hit them...stay in your own damn lane people..I am not the one you wanna play chicken with..I will hit you.” - Todd Kohlhelpp's Facebook post

  Todd would not be immediately questioned about the Superbike Motor Murders. He went on with his life, business as usual as if nothing happened. He developed in interest in flying and would receive his private pilot license from the Federal Aviation Administration on March 25th, 2006.

  He then transferred to the University of South Carolina where he would earn another bachelor degree, this time in business administration. Two years earlier, he had acquired a real estate license and started his own company. He lied about the felony charge of sexual assault on his application otherwise he would not be able to obtain the license.

  Todd explained his felony conviction in a different light. He stated that the charge was “full of lies” and that because of his gun possession they had convicted him because they were “cracking down on gun violence.”

  His extroverted nature would allow him to become one of the top-performing salesmen for his region. He would charm customers with his jolly good old boy persona. But his clients would often complain about how he would go off on tangents about guns and slip in sexual innuendo into their conversations. Starting his own company called TKA Real Estate, Todd would work out of his home and would employ more than a dozen agents in his eight years in business. But his workplace wasn't exactly home sweet home. Todd would treat his fellow agents with disdain and condescension while retreating to his back office to watch pornography.

  “He was not a nice guy,” said Yuvonne Goodwin who ran display ads for properties Kohlhepp listed for sale. “He pretty much yelled and cussed my teammate out over the phone when he would speak to her. He was just very condescending.”

  His clients knew nothing of his past sexual offender status. They gave him complete access to their home, showing it
off to prospective buyers.

  One client recalled Kohlhepp becoming “flustered” after talking on the phone with some prospective buyers and that he was “always whining and complaining about having to go collect rent from what he called deadbeats.”

  “He would say, 'I'm just going to shoot my guns and blow off steam,” recalled Roberta Shaughnessy, a client of Kohlhepp. “He would say all these things in such a sarcastic way that you never knew.”

  Still, the money came rolling in and in May of 2014, he purchased his first home for $305,000. This would be a farm that occupied nearly 100 acres replete with a huge two story barn and shed. Todd placed a fence around the property which tallied over $80,000 in construction costs.

  SEX ADDICT

  While Todd's sinister nature would only occasionally seep through in the form of off-color remarks, his obsession with the opposite sex remained uncontrollable. He would frequent different restaurants around town, leering at the waitresses. He would leave large tips for meals and then invite the waitress that served him to his home. In the words of many of the waitresses who dealt with him, Todd was almost universally categorized as “creepy”.

  His favorite dining destination was a Waffle House restaurant in the town of Roebuck. He creeped out one of the waitresses so much that whenever he arrived she would ask the male cook to take his order instead.

  Todd, who was gaining a considerable amount of weight at this time, would always order a breakfast of six eggs “double cheesy.”

  It was here at the Waffle House that Todd would become obsessed with Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie, one of the waitresses on staff.

  Meagan was twenty-six years old and married to Johnny Coxie, who was twenty-nine. They both lived in Spartanburg and had a child together.