Todd Kohlhepp

A new serial killer has been discovered and arrested in South Carolina. From ABC News:

A South Carolina man killed at least seven people in a hidden crime spree that lasted more than a decade and only was uncovered when police rescued a woman chained at the neck in a storage container, authorities said Saturday.

Todd Kohlhepp accepted responsibility for an unsolved 13-year-old massacre one day before the 13th anniversary of the deaths that stumped authorities, said Sheriff Chuck Wright, first elected a year after the murders.

Kohlhepp, 45, confessed to the deaths of the owner, service manager, mechanic and bookkeeper of Superbike Motorsports, a motorcycle shop in Chesnee, in Spartanburg County....

Wright says Kohlhepp also showed law enforcement officers Saturday where he says he buried two of his other victims on his 95-acre property near Woodruff....

Kohlhepp was released from prison in Arizona in 2001. At 15 years old, he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint and threatening to kill her siblings if she called police. Kohlhepp had to register as a sex offender.

But that didn't stop him from getting a South Carolina real estate license in 2006 and building a firm.

Wright said "it's strange" that Kohlhepp managed the pretext of a normal life for so long.

Here's Kohlhepp's mug shot when he was arrested for rape at age 15:

(He doesn't exactly look wracked with guilt at having held that 14-year-old girl at gunpoint and raping her.)

Here is a picture of the advertisement for Kohlhepp's South Carolina real estate firm:

And here is picture of Kohlepp after his recent arrest --

-- proving, once again, that leanness is everything when it comes to looks. He now looks a little like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie:

In any case, we know that Kohlhepp is a sociopath, no mystery there. To me, the two most interesting things once you hear about a new serial killer are, first, what was his childhood like, and secondly, in what other ways did he express his sociopathy?

This local Fox News report gave a sense of what he'd been like as a child:

[Kohlhepp] pleaded guilty to kidnapping in the Arizona case and has been registered as a sex offender since then. His prison sentence started a year later in November of 1987 and continued until his release in 2001... 

Kohlhepp’s case was moved from juvenile to adult court. Dozens of pages of documents address his behavior as a young child through his teenage years. The judge who moved the case to adult court had a scathing summary of Kohlhepp and his behavior, calling Kohlhepp “behaviorally and emotionally dangerous.” He went on to write, “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. He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions and pets apparently on whim.”

That report includes a psychiatrist’s report that said he had “emotional difficulties and poor impulse control.” It said Kohlhepp underwent counseling for many years in South Carolina and Georgia, from the time he was 8 or 9 years old.

The report also included statements about Kohlhepp's relationship with his mother, who resided in Spartanburg at the time. Kohlhepp had lived with her until the he went to live with his father in the mid-1980s, when the kidnapping occurred: “Mrs. Kohlhepp states that Todd has experienced emotional, behavioral problems for as long as she can remember.” She said these problems went back to 15 months of age. She also mentioned that Kohlhepp had made several threats to harm her and to kill himself prior to the 1986 crime.

The report went on to say, “There is also mention made of Todd destroying his bedroom with a hammer; destroying other children’s projects; hitting other children; cloroxing a goldfish; shooting a dog with a BB gun; being dismissed from the Boy Scouts because he was too disruptive; shredding his own clothes.”

Family trouble was another common theme in the court document. It stated Kohlhepp did not have much of a relationship with his biological father until he went to live with him in the 1980s. His mother had re-married and there were also issues with his stepfather.

A quote from his father was also included in the report, stating "The only emotion Todd seems capable of showing is anger."

Kohlhepp also had problems in the classroom. The court documents mention an evaluation performed by Spartanburg County School District 3 in 1982 when Kohlhepp was a student there. The evaluation stated Kohlhepp talked out in class, destroyed material, had temper outbursts and was defiant. The evaluation said his intelligence appeared to be in the gifted range but that he had pronounced emotional difficulties.

The troubled youngster had even undergone psychological treatment. The documents state Kohlhepp was admitted to the Georgia Mental Health Institute in 1980 because of his hostile and aggressive behavior.

The judge’s report summed up his feelings about Kohlhepp and his behavior saying he was “extremely touchy and defensive" and that Kohlhepp "gets others extremely angry at him."

"He is extremely self-centered with high levels of anti-social personality functioning, and likely continuing aggressive behaviors toward others in the future,” said the judge. “Twenty-five months of the most intensive and expensive professional intervention, short of God’s, will provide no protection for the public and no rehabilitation of this juvenile by any services or facilities presently available to the Juvenile Court.”

All this shows the antecedents for his later murderous actions. But it doesn't explain why Kohlhepp was the way he was. If his problems started at fifteen months, as his mother stated, then they could well be be organic rather than environmentally-caused. The bit about killing animals is chilling; that is part of the triumvirate of childhood behaviors that psychologists say characterize later serial killers. (The other two behaviors are late stage bedwetting and pyromania.)

As far as the other ways he manifested his sociopathy, the ABC News article had a few clues: 

"I was the only one he let over there, I think because I laughed at his jokes and listened to him," [his neighbor Scott Waldrop] said....

Kohlhepp has a house about 9 miles away in Moore, where neighbor Ron Owen said Kohlhepp was very private, but when they did talk across the fence, he was a "big bragger."

Kohlhepp liked to talk about the money he made day trading online, for example, and about his two BMWs. He recently told Owen, 76, that he'd spent $80,000 on the chain link fence.

Sociopaths like to surround themselves with people who will laugh at their jokes, and act impressed by their exploits and money. They like yes men.

And they have no inhibitions. Not about boasting. Not about spending their money on flashy possessions. Not about destroying others' property. Not about torturing their pets. Not about eating so much food they turn into 300 pounders. And not about killing and kidnapping, either, should that be their inclination.