A South Carolina woman who spent two months chained inside a large metal container says her captor raped her daily and warned that if she ran or tried to hurt him, she would die.
“He told me as long as I served my purpose, I was safe,” Kala Brown told Phillip McGraw, the host of US television show Dr Phil.
It was the first time she has talked publicly since her rescue on Nov. 3 last year, which authorities say helped them solve seven slayings in the area dating back 13 years.
Police said 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, Charles Carver, had gone to Kohlhepp’s rural property on Aug. 31 last year to help him clear some underbrush from trails. After the couple followed him to a two-story garage on the property, Kohlhepp handed them hedge clippers and bottles of water.
He said he needed to get something inside and came out a few minutes later shooting, Brown said.
He shot Carver three times in the chest, she said.
He gagged Brown and handcuffed her ankles and wrists.
Kohlhepp then took her to a “pitch black,” 9m-long storage container nearby, chained her by the neck in a back corner and raped her, she said.
He “let me know that if I tried to run, he’d kill me. If I tried to hurt him, he’d kill me. If I fought back, he would kill me. And then he raped me,” Brown said in episodes that aired this week. “He would rape me twice a day, every day.”
Kohlhepp, 45, faces murder, kidnapping and weapon charges. He is not charged with sexual assault.
Spokesmen for the sheriff and prosecutor declined to address the rape allegations or whether more charges are forthcoming.
Police said Kohlhepp acknowledged the grisly cold cases after authorities granted him several requests, including letting him speak to his mother.
The day after her rescue, investigators found Carver’s body in a shallow grave on Kohlhepp’s property. Brought to the site in handcuffs, Kohlhepp showed authorities the graves of the couple missing since December 2015.
Brown, who had previously cleaned several of Kohlhepp’s properties, said he made sure only Carver accompanied her to his land, telling her “he didn’t want anyone else knowing where he lived.”
Nothing seemed awry over the several months she periodically worked for Kohlhepp, she said: “He was nice, polite, just a regular businessman... No red flags.”
Brown said Kohlhepp told her he killed Carver because “it was easier to control someone if you took someone they loved.”
She thought Kohlhepp was infatuated with her and did not want to kill her, even saying he would let her go and give her money “if he ever got old and sick,” she said.
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