SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — 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, 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 said 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.

“This is a very, very dangerous individual,” the prosecutor said.

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old registered sex offender with a previous kidnapping conviction in Arizona, appeared Friday at a bond hearing in Spartanburg on a kidnapping charge. More charges are expected.

The judge did not set bond and instead referred the matter to circuit court. The suspect didn’t appear to have an attorney.

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.

Records from the Arizona case obtained by WHNS-TV in South Carolina show that a judge decided in 1987 to transfer the case to adult court partly because of Kohlhepp’s aggressive nature.

“At less than the age of 9 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 nursery school,” the judge wrote.

In the South Carolina case, the couple disappeared about Aug. 31 when they went to do the work on the suspect’s nearly 100-acre property near Woodruff, said Daniel Herren, a friend who sat with the woman 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.

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. Her boyfriend was identified as 32-year-old Charles Carver.

Herren said he did not ask the woman if she was sexually assaulted.

But she did describe to him 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.

“He never took the chain off of her, but he was taking her around, let her get, not so much exercise, but let her walk around some,” Herren said. “It didn’t sound like it was every day. It was kind of sporadic.”

She left the hospital late Thursday and is staying with family, Herren said.

The property includes grassy areas, some covered in waist-high weeds, as well as stands of trees. Most or all of it is surrounded by a chain-link fence 6 to 7 feet tall.

In the middle was the cargo container, which measured about 30 feet by 15 feet. It was next to a two-car garage that had a living space on top, Barnette said.

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

“It’s unbelievable how much he had,” he said, adding that Kohlhepp frequently took target practice in an area near the storage container.

Records show Kohlhepp received his South Carolina real-estate license in 2006 before a state law went into effect requiring background checks.

A real estate agent who worked at the firm run by Kohlhepp said she had known him for 10 years after they met at a university in the Spartanburg area and were study partners. She said she was in disbelief.

“He’s not the kind of person to do something like this,” Cherry Laurens said by phone. “Working with him he was an excellent boss. He stood up for us whenever we needed him.”

She said it was widely known that he was registered as a sex offender, but he told people that it was based on trumped-up charges after he “had gone joyriding with a girl” and upset her father.

Kohlhepp made frequent online posts about moving around rocks and trimming trees at the rural property, according to the Facebook page that Laurens confirmed was his.

About two weeks after the couple disappeared, he wrote a post about news reports on missing people: “reading the news.. this person missing, that person missing, another person missing.. oh wait.. that person just went to beach with friend, other person found with her parole violation boyfriend… in the event I become missing, please note no one would take me. I eat too much and I am crabby…”

Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Alex Sanz in Spartanburg contributed to this report.</s>Social media posts from a man accused of chaining a woman to a storage container show he made light of instances where people have been reported missing and had been putting gravel and boulders on his property.

On a Facebook account for someone named Todd Kohlhepp RE, he made a post Sept. 15 saying after reading news about missing people, his reaction is “that person just went to the beach with friend, other person found with her parole violation boyfriend...”

Three days later, he posted photos of his property and said he was clearing land and putting 200 tons of gravel and boulders there.

Property records from Spartanburg County state he purchased 95 acres of land on Wofford Road in Woodruff in 2014.

The Greenville News reported the victim and her boyfriend had been missing since the end of August.

Officials said they are using cadaver dogs to look for bodies of other potential victims and will excavate the area.

The Facebook account has been active since at least August of 2015. On the page, he indicates he’s an agent with TKA Real Estate and has a link to the company’s website.</s>SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- 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.

Prosecutor Barry Barnette said Kala Brown saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend, who went with her to the job. Brown’s boyfriend was identified as 32-year-old Charles Carver.

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.

Todd Kohlhepp Spartanburg County Sheriff

“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.

Kala’s friends say she worked with her alleged kidnapper cleaning houses, according to CBS affiliate WSPA.

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 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.

Herren, who visited her in the hospital and had dinner with her Thursday, said he did not ask Brown if she was sexually assaulted.

But she did describe to him 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.

“He never took the chain off of her, but he was taking her around, let her get, not so much exercise, but let her walk around some,” Herren said. “It didn’t sound like it was every day. It was kind of sporadic.”

She was fed once a day around 6 p.m. She “didn’t tell us exactly what she was eating. But from what I gathered, it could have been fast food. ... It wasn’t like he was keeping her alive on bread and water. He was in a weird, sick kind of way being, I guess, kind of humane, as far as feeding her,” Herren said.

Deputies heard her banging on the container as they were serving a search warrant, CBS affiliate WSPA reports.

Woman in S.C. found chained inside metal storage container

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said they were pinging Brown’s phone 2 days after she was reported missing.

He says it pinged on the property where Brown was found. The Phone went dead after two days.

Two weeks before they were able to get a search warrant for the property the sheriff’s office flew over the property and saw it was extensive and need to get on the ground.

Anderson Police say from early on they had no indication there was foul play, even with the cell phone pings.

Brown left the hospital late Thursday and is staying with family, Herren said.

The property includes grassy areas, some covered in waist-high weeds, as well as stands of trees. Most or all of it is surrounded by a chain-link fence 6 to 7 feet tall.

In the middle was the cargo container, which measured about 30 feet by 15 feet. It was next to a two-car garage that had a living space on top, Barnette said.

During Friday’s search efforts, officers using all-terrain vehicles and a backhoe came and went while a law enforcement helicopter circled overhead.

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

Acting on a tip, deputies found Brown after hearing her banging inside the container, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said.

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said computer and cellphone records led authorities to the property near Woodruff, 80 miles northwest of the state capital of Columbia, because it was the last place that a cellphone 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, the prosecutor 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. Matching online prison records from Arizona show that Kohlhepp served about 14 years for the felony and was released in 2001.

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.

A real estate agent who worked at a firm run by Kohlhepp said she had known him for 10 years after they met at a university in the Spartanburg area and were study partners in a statistics class. She said she was in disbelief.

“He’s not the kind of person to do something like this,” Cherry Laurens said by phone. “Working with him he was an excellent boss. He stood up for us whenever we needed him.”

She said it was widely known that he was registered as a sex offender, but he told people that it was based on trumped-up charges after he “had gone joyriding with a girl” and upset her father, who was a prominent local official.

Kohlhepp also had a house in Moore, on the outskirts of Spartanburg, about 15 minutes from the rural property where Brown was chained.

His neighbor there, 76-year-old Ron Owen, said Kohlhepp was private but pleasant.

“Todd was --in my opinion -- a likable guy,” Owen said.</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, S.C. (AP) — Prosecutor says body has been found on South Carolina property where chained woman was rescued from storage container.</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, 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>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, S.C. (AP) — Prosecutor: Woman chained, held captive in storage container in South Carolina saw suspect shoot and kill her boyfriend .</s>Story highlights Kala Brown was found chained and wearing clothes inside a shipping container

Registered sex offender who owned the property was arrested, is not cooperating with police

(CNN) The deputy thought she heard banging.

She and her colleagues were out on a rural piece of South Carolina land Thursday morning, preparing to serve a search warrant.

She asked the other deputies whether they heard the banging, too. But it was hard to tell. It could have been just some noise coming from the woods, someone said.

The deputies listened more closely, and hearing it again they moved closer to a 30-foot-long shipping container and knocked on the side.

Inside Kala Brown, missing since late August, started screaming. "Help me! Get me out of here!" Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright told Ashleigh Banfield of HLN's "Primetime Justice."

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A man identified as Todd Kohlhepp is arrested after authorities discover a missing woman chained up in a storage container on his property. The woman had gone missing along with her boyfriend around the end of August.