A registered sex offender was arrested on Thursday in South Carolina after a woman reported missing, along with her live-in boyfriend, in late August was found “chained like a dog” in a storage container, local media reported.
Kala Brown, 30, was discovered after police searching a large property in Spartanburg County, northeast of Greenville, heard banging noises from inside the container, local WYFF-TV reported.
Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright told the station that Brown was “chained like a dog” inside and had been held captive there for two months.
Brown’s boyfriend, 32-year-old Charlie Carver, was not found at the scene and remains missing.
Wright said Brown told investigators that four bodies could be buried on the property, according to WYFF.
“We’re trying to make sure we don’t have a serial killer on our hands,” Wright told the station. “(It) very possibly could be what we have.”
Todd Kohlhepp, 45, was arrested in connection with the investigation, WYFF reported. He was registered as a sex offender in Arizona.
The website for the Spartanburg County Detention Center showed that Kohlhepp, who lives in nearby Moore, was booked there shortly before 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). He had not been formally charged as of Thursday afternoon.
“He’s currently incarcerated,” Wright told WYFF. “We’re trying to get all this sorted out and figure out what we’re going to charge him with. One of the charges will be kidnapping, it could be murder. It could be a number of things.”
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Alan Crosby and Dan Grebler)