Tales of Conduct Disorder 2
The authorities who failed to execute this man at age 16 are fully responsible for the 7 subsequent murders committed by this man. Conduct disorder is a disability of morality and of empathy. Its sole remedy is the death penalty.
Here is the sad tale.
'...The
gruesome revelations are a stark contrast to Kohlhepp’s professional
image. On the surface, Kohlhepp was a polished Realtor who ran
a successful South Carolina real estate firm upstate. In a company
brochure, Kohlhepp portrayed himself as a tech-savvy professional
committed to helping people buy and sell homes in Greenville and
Spartanburg counties.
“At Todd Kohlhepp & Associates
we feel that it’s important for our clients to know a little more about
who’s working for them besides a name and number,” read the first part
of his bio.
Beneath it was a picture of Kohlhepp dressed
in a pinstripe suit, smiling broadly, next to a list of his business
qualifications. He boasted that he was a licensed pilot and that his
company had “One Focus … Results!”
But there was no mention of Kohlhepp’s criminal history and why he was a registered sex offender.
Details
from his childhood — particularly his conviction for the 1986 rape of a
teenage girl in Tempe, Ariz. — hint at a deeply troubled individual who
harbored violent tendencies from an early age,
according to court records obtained by the Arizona Republic.
Records
showed that when Kohlhepp was 15 he went to a neighbor’s house, held a
.22-caliber handgun to the 14-year-old girl’s head and demanded that she
follow him, the Republic reported. Once back at his home, Kohlhepp
duct-taped the girl’s mouth, restrained her hands and raped her — then
told her he would kill her and her younger siblings if she called
police, according to the paper.
The girl reported the
rape to police, and Kohlhepp was arrested on kidnapping and sexual
assault charges, court records showed. He took a plea bargain, pleading
guilty to just the kidnapping charge, and was sentenced to 15 years in
prison.
An
extensive psychiatric evaluation of Kohlhepp, then 16, revealed a
sometimes suicidal teenager who saw himself “as a loner, hostile toward
other children and not wanting to be around people,”
according to a report first obtained by Greenville Online.
Kohlhepp’s
parents had divorced when he was a baby, the report said, and he was
raised mostly by his mother and stepfather. After they separated in
1982, Kohlhepp began acting out, destroying his room and breaking
mirrors so that his mother would send him to live with his biological
father.
The report also detailed other alleged violent
acts from Kohlhepp’s childhood. He destroyed his bedroom with a hammer,
hit other classmates, was caught “Cloroxing” a goldfish, shot a dog with
a BB gun and was dismissed from the Boy Scouts because he was too
disruptive, the report said.
A teenage Kohlhepp
described his father as “a lier [sic] and preoccupied with guns” who
allegedly taught the boy how to “blow things up and make bombs,”
according to the report. He had occasionally considered killing his
father, whom he accused of physical abuse, but also “had this rage
turned back at himself,” the report said.
In the 1987
report, Kohlhepp told the psychiatrist that when police were outside his
home to arrest him after the rape of the 14-year-old girl, he put the
gun to his head and pulled the trigger, but it jammed. “At this point,
he laughed somewhat inappropriately,” the report said. “He stated
‘Someone doesn’t want me to die yet.’ ”
Kohlhepp seemed
conflicted about the rape, alternately describing it as something he was
ashamed of but also something that he had done to “get back” at his
father. The report went on to say that Kohlhepp did not appear to suffer
from hallucinations, delusions or other cognitive deficits; in fact, he
seemed to be in the “normal intellectual range” and “tended to minimize
his problem and expressed hope that he would go back to school and get a
GED.”
The psychiatrist said there was “convincing
evidence” that Kohlhepp had borderline personality disorder. “Throughout
the interview, one got the feeling that if he were pushed to any
limits, he was potentially explosive,” the psychiatrist wrote. The
psychiatrist also warned that Kohlhepp’s “severe underlying emotional
issues … could result in emotional deterioration in the future or
continued aggressive behavior toward others in the future.”
Kohlhepp was released from prison Nov. 24, 2001,
according to the Arizona Department of Corrections. Records also showed that he received postsecondary education and vocational training while in prison.
In
his company brochure, Todd Kohlhepp portrayed himself as a dedicated
real estate professional. (Courtesy Todd Kohlhepp & Associates)
At
some point, Kohlhepp moved to South Carolina and built a real estate
business (his real estate license is listed as valid through June 2017,
according to the state’s Labor, Licensing and Regulation Department).
When
Kohlhepp applied for his South Carolina real estate license in 2006, he
explained his sex offender status in a two-page letter filled with
details that contradicted court documents regarding the 1986 charges,
according to the Independent Mail:
Kohlhepp
wrote, in his 2006 letter about the 1986 incident, that he had been in a
heated argument with his girlfriend, they were both 15 at the time,
they ended their relationship and afterward chased his dog and returned
to his house.
Police showed up at the home, after having
been called by the girl’s parents, who were concerned they could not
reach her by phone, Kohlhepp wrote.
He explained in the
letter that the kidnapping charge stemmed from a firearm he was carrying
and because “I had told her not to move while we talked this out.”
Kohlhepp
said he had been carrying a gun because he was concerned about crime in
the Phoenix area and chalked it up to a youthful mistake.
Kohlhepp
was granted a real estate license about three weeks after he applied,
the Independent Mail reported. “Our community has been deeply disturbed
by this,” Nick Kremydas, chief executive of South Carolina Realtors,
told the paper. “The alleged acts of this person are not representative
of us.”
State
records showed that Todd Kohlhepp & Associates had two offices, one
in Moore and another in Greenville, and that Kohlhepp supervised nearly
a dozen agents. It is unclear whether any were aware of his private
life. On Saturday, a call to the phone number listed for the company
went to an answering machine, where Kohlhepp’s voice promised, with a
slight Southern drawl, to return calls as soon as possible.
Listings
for all of the properties and agent bios on his company’s Web page
redirected to server error messages. By Saturday afternoon, an agent
profile page for Kohlhepp on the real estate site Zillow appeared to
have been removed, and a slew of negative reviews had been posted to his
company’s Facebook page.
Todd
Kohlhepp is escorted into a Spartanburg County magistrate courtroom.
(Tim Kimzey/Spartanburg Herald-Journal via Associated Press)
Brown
reportedly worked for Kohlhepp cleaning houses and had arrived at his
Woodruff property with her boyfriend to help clean it up when Kohlhepp
pulled a gun on them,
according to CBS News.
Brown
and Carver were reported missing after the Anderson, S.C., couple
didn’t show up to dinner with a friend on Aug. 31. No one heard from
them after that. In mid-October, The Washington Post
reported that the couple’s family members were disturbed by messages that began appearing on Carver’s Facebook account.
The family suspected that his account had been taken over by someone sinister. As The Post
reported:
Suddenly,
the page exploded with content, as if it had been hacked. It would
appear to be flooded with spam, but a closer inspection revealed many of
the posts to be related to the couple.
News stories about the
missing couple appeared in rapid-fire succession, along with other
stories about missing people. Strange, violent images and memes began
being posted on the Facebook page.
“If I weren’t crazy, I’d be
insane,” read one. Another read, “Sometimes late at night I dig a hole
in the back yard to keep the nosy neighbor’s guessing.”
. . . On
Oct. 1, one user commented on the marriage announcement, “Where the hell
is Kala Brown???” to which Charlie’s Facebook account responded, “kala
is with her husband charlie.”
On another post, a user asked where
Kala was, to which Charlie’s account responded “who the f––– are you to
question me about my girlfriend?”
Carver’s Facebook account has since been deleted.
Kohlhepp’s next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 19, according to court records.
Travis M. Andrews and Sarah Larimer contributed to this report.
Amy B Wang is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post.