Body Found on Land Where Woman Was Kept Chained

Friends say she was lured there for a cleaning job
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 4, 2016 6:55 PM CDT
Body Found on Land Where Woman Was Kept Chained
In this Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016 photo, a Spartanburg County sheriff's deputy carries a computer out of the home of Todd Kohlhepp in Moore, S.C. Kohlhepp was arrested and charged with kidnapping after a woman was found Thursday "chained up like a dog" inside a large storage container on property owned...   (Lauren Petracca)

A woman who was "chained up like a dog" for weeks in a dark storage container was lured to her captor's South Carolina property for a cleaning job, a family friend said Friday as search teams digging up the area found one body and looked for more. Authorities were "trying to make sure that we don't have a serial killer on our hands," the sheriff said. Investigators were told the property could hold as many as three other corpses, the AP reports. Prosecutor Barry Barnette said the woman saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend, who went with her to the job. The body discovered Friday was not immediately identified. The couple disappeared around Aug. 31 when they went to do the work on the suspect's nearly 100-acre property in a rural area near the community of Woodruff, said Daniel Herren, a friend who sat with her in her hospital room after she was rescued Thursday.

"They were going to do some work, help cleaning up the property. And he pulled out a gun and took them hostage," Herren said, adding that the abduction happened quickly. Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old registered sex offender with previous kidnapping conviction, appeared at a bond hearing Friday in Spartanburg on a kidnapping charge. More charges will be filed later, the prosecutor told the court. The AP is not naming the woman because the suspect is a sex offender, though authorities have not said whether she was sexually assaulted. Her boyfriend was identified as 32-year-old Charles Carver. The woman told Herren the details of her captivity, telling him she was in the container nearly the entire time except for when she was taken out for occasional walks, still chained. (More kidnapping stories.)

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