Kala Brown lived the last two months chained inside of a storage container and may have been forced to watch as a serial killer shot her boyfriend to death, police in South Carolina claim.
Brown and her boyfriend, Charlie Carver, were reported missing on August 31, disappearing near their home in South Carolina. Police appeared to have few leads in the case of the missing couple — even as it became a national news story — until this week, when a tip led them to the property of Todd Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender.
It was there that deputies heard knocking coming from a storage container, and inside they found Kala Brown alive but chained up.
“It was pretty emotional, to say the least, when she was found — especially when she was chained like a dog,” Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright told WYFF . “She had a chain around her neck. It’s only by God’s grace we found that little girl alive.”
Kohlhepp was arrested and charged with kidnapping, NBC News reported, but there could soon be more charges. On Friday morning, cadaver dogs indicated that there were more human remains on the property where Kala Brown was found.
One of those bodies could likely be Kala’s boyfriend, Charlie Carver. Reports have indicated that Kala said she watched Todd Kohlhepp shoot Carver to death.
“The solicitor Barry Barnette says the kidnapping victim told them she saw the suspect, Todd Kohlhepp, shoot her boyfriend, Charles Carver,” WRIC reported.
Wright said the evidence suggests that Todd Kohlhepp was a serial killer.
“She said that there are four people buried on this property. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we will stay here as long as it takes to make sure that what she said is true or not true,” Wright said. “We’re trying to make sure we don’t have a serial killer on our hands. (It) very possibly could be what we have.”
#kalabrown told investigators there could be up to four more people on property where she was chained in storage container for 2 months pic.twitter.com/YyPaqkvmAY
— Cody Alcorn (@CodyAlcorn) November 3, 2016
The search for Kala Brown and Charlie Carver took a bizarre twist this summer when someone began posting strange messages to the couple’s Facebook pages after their disappearance, The Daily Beast noted.
On Carver’s page, there was a post from July claiming that he and Brown were expecting a daughter, and one month later he said they were buying a house. In September, he said they had gotten married. But all of these milestones were added retroactively on October 1, more than a month after the couple disappeared.
What we know about the man accused of kidnapping Kala Brown and the ongoing investigation: https://t.co/nGIyEFuZdq pic.twitter.com/HXTf25gUwk
— ABC News (@ABC) November 4, 2016
Someone also continued to send messages to the couple’s Facebook friends and making posts, including an old photo with the caption “we are fine.” But as The Daily Beast noted, friends and family could tell that the Facebook posts were not really coming from Kala Brown and Charlie Carver, and evidence pointed to them being abducted.
“It’s not like the couple to disappear like this, people close to them said. Carver and Brown seldom go a day without speaking to family or friends. So after a few days of silence from her son, Carver’s mother asked the building manager at couple’s apartment complex to check on them. The manager found their door unlocked and the apartment uninhabited, Brown’s mother told a local Fox affiliate .
“If Carver and Brown had gone on an unannounced vacation, they’d left their essentials behind. Kala’s glasses and contact lenses were still in the apartment, as were the couple’s medications. Kala’s dog, Romeo, had been left inside alone, his crate mysteriously missing.”
While Kala Brown has been found safe, police are still searching for Charlie Carver and have not yet said if his was the body found on the property. They have also yet to announce new charges against suspect Todd Kohlhepp.
[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
