Woman Chained in Container Describes What Captor Did

Kala Brown says Todd Kohlhepp never let her go unchained
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Feb 15, 2017 10:16 AM CST
Woman Chained in Container Describes Her Captivity
In this Feb. 2, 2017 photo provided by CBS, host Phillip McGraw, right, talks with Kala Brown, the 30-year-old woman from South Carolina who was kidnapped with her boyfriend in August 2016, for an interview on his television show, "Dr. Phil," in Los Angeles.   (Uncredited)

A South Carolina woman who spent two months chained inside a large metal container says her captor raped her daily and bragged that he was good at killing, claiming that his victims tallied nearly 100. "He told me as long as I served my purpose, I was safe," Kala Brown told Phillip McGraw, the host of the television show Dr. Phil in episodes that aired this week. It was the first time she has talked publicly since her Nov. 3 rescue. Police say Todd Kohlhepp, a real estate agent with his own firm until his arrest, killed Brown's boyfriend, a couple who had been missing nearly a year, and four people at a motorcycle shop in 2003. Brown said she and her boyfriend had gone to Kohlhepp's rural property Aug. 31 to help him clear some underbrush. She'd cleaned houses for him previously to prepare them for sale, reports the AP.

After the pair followed him to a two-story garage on the 95-acre property in Spartanburg County, Kohlhepp handed them hedge clippers and bottled water. He said he needed to get something inside and came out shooting, Brown said, and shot Charles Carver three times in the chest. He gagged Brown, handcuffed her ankles and wrists, and took her to a "pitch black," 30-foot-long storage container nearby. He chained her by the neck in a back corner and raped her "twice a day, every day." He took her to the garage twice a day, where she ate, used the bathroom, and was allowed to bathe every other day using a washcloth and a small bowl of water. She was never unchained. Brown said Kohlhepp told her he killed Carver because "it was easier to control someone if you took someone they loved." Kohlhepp, 45, faces murder, kidnapping, and weapons charges. He is not charged with sexual assault. (More Todd Kohlhepp stories.)

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