The Life and Death of Chandra Levy (Part I)

Chandra Ann Levy (April 14, 1977 – c. May 1, 2001) was an American intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C., who disappeared in May 2001. She was presumed murdered after her skeletal remains were found in Rock Creek Park in May 2002. The case attracted attention from the American news media for several years.

Due to a miscommunication, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) failed to follow its own search parameters in Rock Creek Park, leaving Levy's body to decompose for a year. Further, the MPD had been informed, but soon dismissed the information that Ingmar Guandique, already arrested for attacking women in Rock Creek Park, had confessed to attacking Levy. The MPD instead put much of its focus on the revelation that Levy had been having an affair with Congressman Gary Condit, a married Democrat then serving his fifth term representing California's 18th congressional district, and a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Condit had an overwhelming alibi (he was in meetings with the Vice President), was never named as a suspect by police, and was eventually cleared of any involvement in the disappearance. However, due to the cloud of suspicion raised by the intense media focus on the missing intern and the later revelation of the affair, Condit lost his bid for re-election in 2002.

Following a series of investigative reports by The Washington Post in 2008, the MPD followed up and finally obtained a warrant, on March 3, 2009, to arrest Ingmar Guandique, the illegal immigrant from El Salvador identified and dismissed by the MPDC eight years earlier. He had been convicted of assaulting two other women in Rock Creek Park around the time of Levy's disappearance and was still in prison on those convictions when the arrest warrant on Levy's death was issued. Prosecutors alleged that Guandique had attacked and tied up Levy in a remote area of the park and left her to die of dehydration or exposure. In November 2010, Guandique was convicted of murdering Levy; he was sentenced in February 2011 to 60 years in prison. In June 2015, however, Guandique was granted a new trial. On July 28, 2016, prosecutors announced that they would not proceed with the case against Guandique and would, instead, seek to have him deported. In episode 3 of "An American Murder Mystery" on the case, it is mentioned that in March 2017 Guandique lost his bid to remain in the United States and was deported to his native El Salvador on May 5, 2017. The murder remains unsolved.

Life and background

Levy was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Robert and Susan Levy; the family moved to Modesto, California, where she attended Grace M. Davis High School. Her parents are members of Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative Jewish synagogue.  She attended San Francisco State University, where she earned a degree in journalism. After interning for the California Bureau of Secondary Education and working in the office of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, she began attending the University of Southern California to earn a master's degree in public administration.

As part of her final semester of study, Levy moved to Washington, D.C., to become a paid intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.  In October 2000 she began her internship at the bureau's headquarters, where she was assigned to the public affairs division.  Her supervisor, bureau spokesperson Dan Dunne, was impressed with Levy's work, especially her handling of media inquiries regarding the upcoming execution of Timothy McVeigh, convicted of bombing the Oklahoma City Federal Building.  Levy's internship was abruptly terminated in April 2001 because her academic eligibility was found to have expired in December 2000. She had already completed her master's degree requirements and was scheduled to return to California in May 2001 for graduation.

Homicide case

Disappearance and search

Levy was last seen on May 1, 2001. The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia was first alerted on May 6, when Levy's parents called from Modesto to report that they had not heard from their daughter in five days. Police called hospitals and visited Levy's apartment in Dupont Circle that day, finding no indication of foul play. On May 7, Levy's father told the police that his daughter had been having an affair with a U.S. congressman, and said the next day that he believed the congressman to be U.S. Representative Gary Condit. Levy's aunt also called the police and told them that Chandra had confided in her about the affair. Police obtained a warrant on May 10 to conduct a formal search of Levy's apartment. Investigators found her credit cards, identification and mobile phone left behind in her purse, along with partially packed suitcases. The answering machine was full, with messages left by her relatives and two from Condit. A police sergeant tried to examine Levy's laptop computer and inadvertently corrupted the internet search data, as he was not a trained technician.

Computer experts took a month to reconstruct the data to determine that the laptop was used on the morning of May 1 to search for websites related to Amtrak, Baskin-Robbins, Condit, Southwest Airlines, and a weather report from The Washington Post. Her final search at 12:59 p.m. was for Alsace-Lorraine, a province in France.  A particular search at 11:33 a.m. was for information about Rock Creek Park in The Washington Post "Entertainment Guide", then at 11:34 she clicked a link to bring up a map of the park. Detectives later theorized that she might have met someone at the Pierce-Klingle Mansion which houses the park headquarters.  On July 25, 2001, three D.C. police sergeants and 28 police cadets searched along Glover Road in the park but failed to find evidence related to Levy. Later, a second attempt found nothing.

Levy's parents and friends held numerous vigils and news conferences in an attempt to "bring Chandra home".

Relationship with Condit

Controversy surrounding Levy's disappearance drew the attention of the American news media.  Condit, a married man who represented the congressional district in which the Levy family resided, at first denied that he had had an affair with her. Although police stated that Condit was not a suspect, Levy's family said they felt Condit was being evasive and possibly hiding information about the matter.

Unidentified police sources alleged that Condit had admitted to an affair with Levy during an interview with law enforcement officers on July 7, 2001.  Condit described her to police as a vegetarian who avoided drinking and smoking. He thought that Levy was going to return to Washington, D.C. after her graduation and was surprised to find out that the lease on her apartment had ended.  Investigators searched Condit's apartment on July 10. They questioned flight attendant Anne Marie Smith, who claimed that Condit told her she did not need to speak to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his personal life.  Federal officials began investigating Condit for possible obstruction of justice, as Smith was also involved in an affair with him. (She was not acquainted with Levy.)  Upset by leaks to the media, Condit refused to submit to a polygraph test by the D.C. police; his attorney asserted that Condit passed a test administered by a privately hired examiner on July 13. He avoided answering direct questions during a televised interview on August 23, with news anchor Connie Chung on the ABC News program Primetime Thursday.  Intensive coverage continued until news of the September 11 attacks superseded the media's coverage of the Levy case.

In a nationwide Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters conducted in July 2001, 44 percent of American respondents thought that Condit was involved in Levy's disappearance and 27 percent felt that he should resign. Fifty-one percent of the respondents believed that he was acting as if he were guilty; 13 percent felt that he should run again for office. A poll sample taken from Condit's congressional district held a more favorable view of Condit.  On March 5, 2002, Condit lost the Democratic primary election for his Congressional seat to his former aide, then-Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, with the Levy controversy being cited as a contributing factor.  He was subpoenaed to appear on April 1, 2002, before a District of Columbia grand jury investigating the disappearance. The date was kept a carefully guarded secret to avoid further leaks.  Condit left Congress at the end of his term on January 3, 2003.

Discovery of remains

On May 22, 2002, around 9:30 am, skeletal remains matching Levy's dental records were discovered by a man walking his dog and looking for turtles in Rock Creek Park, near Broad Branch Creek.  Detectives found bones and personal items scattered, but not buried, in a forested area along a steep incline.  A sports bra, sweat shirt, leggings and tennis shoes were among the evidence that was recovered. Although police had previously searched over half the 1,754-acre main section of the park (2.74 mi2, 7.10 km2), the wooded slope where Levy's remains were eventually found had not been searched. Police commanders ordered the search perimeters to 100 yards of each road and trail but a miscommunication had the officers only searching within 100 yards of every road. The remains were found about four miles (6 km) from Levy's apartment.

After a preliminary autopsy was performed, District of Columbia police announced that there was sufficient evidence to open a homicide investigation. On May 28, D.C. medical examiner Jonathan L. Arden officially declared Levy's death a homicide, but said, "There's less to work with here than I would like. It's possible we will never know specifically how she died."  Arden found damage to her hyoid bone, suggesting possible strangulation, but did not deem it to be conclusive evidence of such a cause of death.  On June 6, after the police completed their search, private investigators hired by the Levys found her shin bone with some twisted wire about 25 yards (23 m) from the other remains. Police chief Ramsey said, "It is unacceptable that these items were not located."

Memorial services

On May 28, 2002, the Levy family organized a memorial service at the Modesto Centre Plaza that drew over 1,200 people, some from as far as Los Angeles.  Speakers at the 90-minute ceremony included Levy's brother, grandmother, great-aunt and friends.  In a eulogy delivered in Hebrew and English by Rabbi Paul Gordon, Levy was described as "a good person taken from us much too soon".  About a year later, on May 27, 2003, Levy's remains were buried in Lakewood Memorial Park Cemetery at Hughson, California, near her home town of Modesto. Attended by about 40 of Levy's friends and family members, the private ceremony concluded with the release of 12 white doves.

Identification of the prime suspect

In September 2001, D.C. police and federal prosecutors were contacted by the lawyer of an informant, held in a D.C. Jail, who claimed to have knowledge of Levy's killer. The informant, whose identity was protected for his safety, said that Ingmar Guandique, a 20-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador also being held in the jail, told him that Condit paid him $25,000 to kill Levy. Investigators ruled out the story about Condit, because Guandique had already admitted to assaulting two other women in the same park where Levy's remains were found.  Guandique failed to show up for work on the day of Levy's disappearance.  His former landlady recalled that his face appeared scratched and bruised at around that time.  The investigators on the Levy case did not interview the other Rock Creek Park victims.  Police Chief Ramsey avoided calling Guandique a suspect and described him as a "person of interest", telling reporters not to make "too big a deal" about him. Assistant chief Terrance W. Gainer said that if Guandique had been considered a suspect, D.C. police would have been after him "like flies on honey".

Guandique was incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary, Victorville for assaults against two other women in Rock Creek Park.

Guandique denied attacking Levy.  On November 28, the FBI had the informant take a polygraph test, which he failed. A polygraph test on Guandique, administered on February 4, 2002, returned inconclusive results that were officially ruled "not deceptive". Because neither the informant nor Guandique was fluent in English, D.C. chief detective Jack Barrett said that he would have preferred polygraph tests to have been administered by bilingual examiners, who were unavailable at the time.  When Judge Noel Anketell Kramer was asked about Guandique's potential connection to the Levy homicide, she responded, "This is such a satellite issue. To me it doesn't have anything to do with this case." Kramer sentenced Guandique to 10 years in prison for his attacks on two other women at Rock Creek Park.  Guandique was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary, Big Sandy near Inez, Kentucky, and was later transferred to the U.S. Penitentiary at Victorville, California.

D.C. police Chief Cathy L. Lanier in 2009

The Levy homicide remained listed as a "cold case" until 2006, when Cathy L. Lanier succeeded Ramsey as D.C. police chief. Lanier replaced the lead detective on the case with three veteran investigators who had more homicide experience.  In 2007, the editors of The Washington Post assigned a new team of reporters to take a year to re-examine the Levy case.  The resulting series of articles, published during the summer of 2008, focused on the past failure of the police to fully investigate Guandique's connection to the attacks in Rock Creek Park. In September 2008, investigators searched Guandique's federal prison cell in California and found a photo of Levy that he had saved from a magazine. Police interviewed acquaintances of Guandique and witnesses of the other Rock Creek Park incidents.

On March 3, 2009, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia issued an arrest warrant for Guandique.  He was returned to the custody of the District of Columbia Department of Corrections on April 20 via the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City.  Two days later, Guandique was charged in D.C. with Levy's murder.  He was indicted by a grand jury on six counts: kidnapping, first-degree murder committed during a kidnapping, attempted first-degree sexual abuse, first-degree murder committed during a sexual offense, attempted robbery, and first-degree murder committed during a robbery.  Guandique pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, where a trial date was initially set for January 27, 2010.  His lawyers argued that Guandique's federal prison cell was outside the jurisdiction of a court-ordered search.  After errors in processing contaminated some of the gathered evidence with DNA from employees of the prosecution, the start date of the trial at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse was moved to October 4, 2010.

The Salem Witch Trials (Part I) on Anchor Podcast

https://anchor.fm/valerie-harvey/episodes/The-Salem-Witch-Trials-Part-I-ea0g6g

The Disappearance of Leah Roberts

On March 18, 2000, joggers along a road near the Mount Baker Highway in Whatcom County, Washington, United States reported seeing a wrecked vehicle at the bottom of an embankment near Canyon Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Nooksack River. Investigating deputy sheriffs found a white 1993 Jeep Cherokee with North Carolina license plates. They traced the car to Leah Roberts (born July 23, 1976), who had abruptly left her home in Durham, North Carolina nine days earlier. A man called police claiming that his wife had seen Roberts in an Everett, Washington gas station in a disoriented state shortly after the car was found. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

In the years preceding Roberts' disappearance, both of her parents had died and she had survived serious injuries from a car accident. Her friends and siblings have said that this had left her pondering spiritual issues and questioning the direction of her life. She had dropped out of North Carolina State University only months before graduation and had begun spending much of her time in a local coffeehouse, often writing poetry in her journal. A note that Roberts had left behind at her home suggested that she had taken inspiration from the works of Jack Kerouac, particularly his novel The Dharma Bums, which has scenes set at Desolation Peak, near where her car was found. She had also left money for her housemate to cover expenses while she was gone, suggesting she expected to return in the space of a month or so.

Investigators have focused on the possibly contradictory evidence found in Roberts' car. Documents inside suggest she had reached Bellingham, Washington by March 13, five days before the car was found. Early suspicions that the vehicle was unoccupied when it crashed, which might suggest that it had been wrecked intentionally, were confirmed when the car's starter motor was examined several years later and found to have been tampered with. Blankets hung across the car's windows might suggest it had been used as a shelter after the crash. Roberts' personal belongings were found scattered near the scene, but robbery did not seem likely, as money and jewelry were among them.

Although the case has been featured on the television shows Unsolved Mysteries and Disappeared, few leads have emerged. In the summer of 2005, volunteers from a North Carolina missing-persons awareness group organized a caravan across the country to raise awareness for Leah's case and others; that has since become an annual event.

Background

Leah Toby Roberts was born in 1976, the youngest of three children in a family living in the suburbs of Durham, North Carolina. When she was seventeen, her father was diagnosed with a chronic lung illness. This put a great deal of strain on the family as Roberts began her studies at North Carolina State University in nearby Raleigh in 1995. When she was twenty years old and a sophomore in college, her mother died suddenly from heart disease.

In the fall of 1998, she returned to school after taking some time off, but was involved in a serious car accident that resulted in a punctured lung and a shattered femur. Surgeons inserted a metal rod next to her femur to help it heal. Roberts told her sister Kara later that, when she saw the truck that she hit pull out in front of her, she was certain she would die and felt "born again" after her recovery. She took some time off from college and decided she wanted to live her life to the fullest.

In the spring of 1999, just three weeks before she was scheduled to leave for Costa Rica for a field program, Roberts' father died. However, she decided to continue with the program. Since she was leaving the country and no longer had living parents, Leah granted Kara power of attorney over her bank accounts, where some money that she had inherited from her parents had been deposited.

By the time Leah was 22 she had lost both of her parents and here she is on the verge of graduating from college and I think she just really felt lost and didn't have a lot of direction and I feel like she took this trip as a soul-searching trip.– Kara Roberts, on Larry King Live

With her degree in Spanish and anthropology almost complete, Roberts dropped out of school. Kara and her brother Heath tried to persuade her to "stick it out" for six more months, but she refused. Instead, she learned to play the guitar, took up photography as a hobby and adopted a pet kitten that she named Bea.  Leah began hanging out in local coffeehouses, writing poetry about the meaning of life throughout her journals and making new friends in the process. With one of them, Jeannine Quiller, and with her roommate, Nicole Bennett, she discussed the idea of emulating Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac and going on a road trip to the West.

Disappearance

On the morning of March 9, 2000, Leah talked on the phone with Kara about possible future plans. They made no commitments, but Kara recalls the conversation ending with the understanding that the two would be seeing each other in some fashion in the near future. Later, in the early afternoon, Leah and Nicole agreed to do some babysitting together the next day. The roommate went out to her job and returned later, at which point she noticed that Leah's 1993 white Jeep Cherokee was not there, nor Leah herself. She thought nothing of it as Leah had been coming and going for unpredictable intervals since she had dropped out of school and, living off her inheritance for the time being, had no need to report to a job.

However, Leah was not at the babysitting appointment the next day, and had not returned home by its end. By the end of the following day, March 11, not only was Leah still absent, but friends and family who had expected to see her had been calling the house trying to find her. On Monday, March 13, Kara reported her missing to Durham police.

Investigation

On March 14, Kara, along with Leah's roommate Nicole, searched Leah's room. A significant amount of Leah's clothes were missing, suggesting a planned lengthy absence. She seemed to have taken Bea with her as well, and she had left a note: "I'm not suicidal. I'm the opposite," she reassured her sister and friends, and mentioned Kerouac. Along with the note, she had bundled some cash, approximately a month's worth of her share of the rent and expenses, and suggested she would be returning eventually. The note was illustrated with a drawing of the Cheshire Cat's grin.

Since Kara still had power of attorney over Leah's bank accounts, she was able to look at her sister's financial records. She discovered that Leah had withdrawn several thousand dollars on the afternoon of March 9, and then used her debit card to pay for a motel room near Memphis, Tennessee. Later transactions were purchases of gas or food, their locations suggesting Leah was traveling west along Interstate 40, and then north on Interstate 5 when she reached I-40's western end in California.

After a gas purchase shortly after midnight on the morning of March 13 in Brooks, Oregon, all activity on Leah's accounts ended. To understand why her sister was heading to the Pacific Northwest, Kara and Susie Smith, Leah's best friend, went to the coffee shops in Durham that Leah had been frequenting. There they found Jeannine Quiller, with whom Leah had discussed Kerouac's work. The two had been particularly struck by Kerouac's 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, a sequel to the better-known On the Road, in which he had for a time worked as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the northern Cascade Mountains of Washington, where he was profoundly affected by the beauty of the landscape.  Leah had expressed interest in seeing that area for herself.

Kara was relieved to have discovered her sister's probable objective. Leah's accounts showed no new activity, but Kara had no reason to believe that something unfortunate had occurred.

Discovery of vehicle

Kara expected that Leah would call her on March 18 to wish her a happy 26th birthday.  Instead, on that day, she received a note from the Durham County sheriff's office telling her to call one of their counterparts in the Whatcom County sheriff's office in Bellingham, Washington. She then learned that, earlier that day, Leah's Jeep had been discovered in a remote forest, but Leah herself was not present.

Early that morning in Washington, a couple jogging along Canyon Creek Road, a side route of the Mount Baker Highway that serves some isolated residences and logging camps in and around Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, a short distance south of the Canada–US border, had noticed articles of clothing at the side of the road next to a slight curve at the top of a slope. Some had been tied to the trees and branches at roadside. In the woods below, at the bottom of a steep embankment, was Leah's Jeep, severely damaged.

From the path that the car had taken through the trees and the extent to which the car and trees had been damaged, investigators from the Washington State Patrol determined that the Jeep had been traveling at nearly 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) when it went off the road and down the slope. The contents of the vehicle were tossed around inside, consistent with a multiple rollover, yet there was no blood or other signs of injury to an occupant, such as shatter marks on the glass or stretching of the seatbelt, that would have probably occurred if there had been a driver and/or passenger. It seemed possible that no one had been inside the Jeep when it crashed, suggesting that the accident might have been staged or planned.

However, blankets and pillows were hung inside the windows, suggesting that it had been used as a shelter after being wrecked. Leah's passport, checkbook, driver's license, clothes, guitar, CDs and other belongings were found scattered in the surrounding woods. Bits of cat food and a small cat carrier were found in the vehicle, confirming that Leah had taken Bea on the trip with her, although the cat has never been found. However, valuables, such as $2,500 in cash in a pants pocket and jewelry, were also left behind, suggesting that robbery had not been the reason for the accident.

Kara and Heath flew to Bellingham to assist investigators.  They visited the crash site, and, with the assistance of the sheriff's office, created a flyer that they posted around town. They went into businesses that Leah may have visited and queried owners and customers. Among Leah's belongings, they found a box of mementos from the trip that provided a clue that established more clearly when Leah had arrived in Whatcom County: a ticket stub from a March 13 afternoon showing of American Beauty at the theaters in Bellingham's Bellis Fair shopping mall. This suggested that Leah might have spent a few hours in the city after having arrived at the beginning of the day following the five-to-six-hour drive from where she had bought gas in Oregon.

Near the theater was the mall's only sit-down restaurant, where Heath and Kara believed that Leah might have gone for a meal. Police were led to two customers, both men, who not only recalled Leah but had sat on each side of her at the restaurant's counter that day, talking about Kerouac and her plans. One of the men claimed that she had left with a third, whom she called Barry, and provided a description for a police sketch of the man. However, neither the other man nor any other customer who had been in the restaurant at the time could corroborate the third man's existence.

At a police garage to which it had been towed, investigators continued to examine the Jeep, joined by the FBI, who had become involved because Leah had crossed state lines. Two aspects of the evidence that they developed suggested to them that Leah had been the victim of a crime. First, the amount of money found in her pants suggested that she had spent very little in Bellingham, less than could be expected if she had been in the city for several days. Second, under a floor mat they found Leah's mother's engagement ring, which Leah wore constantly. Her friends in North Carolina said that she treasured it for the connection it offered to her late mother and that she would never have taken it off voluntarily unless she had completely forgotten who she was.

Heath and Kara returned to North Carolina after four days. Working on the theory that Leah might have been injured in the accident and wandered off, police spent two weeks in April searching, with help from dogs and helicopters, the area that Leah may have possibly covered if she had left the scene of the crash. They found no trace of her. Security camera footage from the gas station at which Leah had stopped at in Oregon showed her alone and apparently in good condition, although several times she peered out into the parking lot (an area not covered by the cameras) while waiting for her transaction to be completed. This could suggest a traveling companion, perhaps the "Barry" with whom her dining companion at Bellis Fair had claimed she had left, but had a man indeed been with her, investigators believe that he did not travel in her car.

Subsequent developments

A few days after the Jeep was discovered, a man called the sheriff's office to report a sighting of Leah. He claimed that his wife had seen Leah, disoriented and confused, wandering around a gas station in Everett, closer to Seattle. After disclosing this information, he seemed to panic and hung up before identifying himself. Police nevertheless consider the tip credible; it might have been the last sighting of Leah.

In 2001, the Lifetime television series Unsolved Mysteries ran a segment on the case that generated some new tips for investigators and reports that Leah had been sighted elsewhere in the U.S., but nothing that proved credible.

Back in North Carolina, Kara contacted Monica Caison, a Wilmington woman who had helped other families find missing loved ones after cases had gone officially cold.  Caison, with the help of a network of volunteers called Community United Effort, has specialized in keeping cases alive in the media for which official efforts have exhausted all leads. In 2005, on the fourth anniversary of Leah's disappearance, Caison organized a caravan across the country, following Leah's route west to Bellingham, to raise awareness about Leah's unsolved case and those of other missing persons; this has since become an annual event.  She and Kara appeared on CNN's Larry King Live in 2005. "I really don't know how I would have made it through the past five years without her," Kara told the host. "We're just trying to, you know; keep Leah's face out there as much as possible."

After the initial investigation concluded, Kara asked the Whatcom County sheriff's office to keep Leah's car in case more clues turned up years later. This decision bore fruit in 2006 when Mark Joseph, the detective who had originally investigated the case, passed his files on to two younger detectives.  Reviewing the case, one of the detectives noticed that the car and its contents had not been fully processed for evidence when it was originally brought in, so the two decided to finish that job.

As no one had looked under the Jeep's hood during the initial investigation, the detectives pried it open and found that a wire to the starter relay had been cut. This would have allowed the car to accelerate without anyone having depressed the gas pedal, confirming early suspicions that no one had been in the car when it left the road, and thus had been purposely wrecked. The detectives found a fingerprint under the hood and some male DNA on an article of Leah's clothing.

This led them back to the man who had claimed Leah left the Bellis Fair restaurant with the third man she called "Barry", whom only that second man had reported seeing. That man had worked as a mechanic and had a military background, further raising the detectives' suspicions. He had also moved to Canada in the interim, complicating and lengthening an effort to get fingerprints and DNA from him. By the time that Investigation Discovery aired an episode on the case in 2011, the fingerprint had turned out to not be a match, but detectives were still waiting on the DNA sample. Investigators continue to hope that the additional evidence that they collected will lead to a resolution of the case, although repeated searches of the area, with dogs trained to sniff for corpses and with metal detectors that could find the metal rod in Leah's leg, have failed to discover anything new.

Serial Killer Todd Kohlhepp

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp (born March 7, 1971) is an American serial killer, convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016.

Early life

Todd Kohlhepp was born on March 7, 1971 in Florida, and was raised in South Carolina and Georgia.  His parents divorced when he was two years old, and his mother, who got custody of him, married another man the following year.  Later psychological reports found that Kohlhepp had an unhealthy relationship with his stepfather and often wanted to live with his biological father, whom he had not seen in eight years.

Kohlhepp was described as a troublesome child. In nursery school, he was known to be aggressive towards other children and would destroy their property.  At the age of nine, when he started undergoing counseling, Kohlhepp was described as being "explosive" and "preoccupied with sexual content."  He also displayed cruelty to animals, shooting a dog with a BB gun and killing a goldfish with Clorox bleach.  In modern psychology, cruelty to animals is thought by many academics to be a common trait of the young psychopathic individual. As in Kohlhepp's case, some may work up to harming human beings as adults.

Kohlhepp's father later said the only emotion his son was capable of was anger.  Kohlhepp spent three and a half months in a Georgia psychiatric hospital as an inpatient because of his inability to get along with other children.

Eventually, in 1983, Kohlhepp was sent to live with his biological father in Arizona after his mother and stepfather separated. He took his father's surname and began working a number of local jobs. He also inherited his father's hobby of collecting weapons and was taught by him to "blow things up and make bombs." Despite this, their relationship deteriorated due to his father's absence with a number of girlfriends, and Kohlhepp expressed desires to return to his mother, though she reportedly made excuses to extend his stay.

1987 kidnapping conviction

On November 25, 1986, 15-year-old Kohlhepp kidnapped a 14-year-old girl in Tempe, Arizona. He threatened her with a .22-caliber revolver, brought her back to his home, tied her up, taped her mouth shut, and raped her. Afterwards, he walked her home and threatened to kill her younger siblings if she told anyone about what had happened. Kohlhepp was charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, and committing a dangerous crime against children.

In 1987, he pled guilty to the kidnapping charge and the other charges were dropped. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and registered as a sex offender.  According to court records, Kohlhepp was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and had an IQ of 118, which was considered "above average."

The judge in the case said Kohlhepp was "very bright and should be advanced academically," but "behaviorally and emotionally dangerous" and likely could not be rehabilitated.  Kohlhepp's probation officer wrote a similar description in court papers and added that he "felt the world owed him something."  Kohlhepp's attorney in that case later went on to say that, while defending him "he did not believe his client would go on to harm others" in the future.  During his imprisonment, Kohlhepp was initially cited for violations that included some violent behavior, but after turning twenty, he had no other records of disobedience.

Release

In August 2001, Kohlhepp was released from prison after serving fourteen years and moved to South Carolina, where his mother was living.  During his imprisonment, he attended and graduated from Central Arizona College with a bachelor's degree in computer science. From January 2002 to November 2003, he worked as a graphic designer for a company in Spartanburg. He began studying at Greenville Technical College in 2003. Kohlhepp transferred to the University of South Carolina Upstate the following year, and graduated in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration-marketing.

Despite being registered as a sex offender, Kohlhepp was able to get a real estate license on June 30, 2006, after lying about the felony charge on his application. From this, he built a firm that had a dozen agents in its employment.  He had been recognized as a top-selling agent in the Carolina region.  The firm was closed down following his arrest.  Kohlhepp also acquired a private pilot license and several properties out of state.  In May 2014, he purchased nearly 100 acres (40 ha) of land, located in an area nine miles (fourteen kilometers) from the community of Moore, for $305,632. He then set a fence around the property, which cost $80,000.

A customer who sold her home to Kohlhepp remembered him as extremely outgoing and professional, but noted that he would often talk about his firearms and sometimes subtly used sexual innuendo during their conversations. Conversely, a woman who assisted one of Kohlhepp's employees described him as angry and condescending towards her partner.  A banker who worked with Kohlhepp said he often watched pornographic videos, even at work.

Kohlhepp frequented a Waffle House restaurant in Roebuck, where his behavior disturbed the waitresses to the point where the male cook began to take Kohlhepp's orders for them. According to this employee, one of the waitresses was Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie, one of Kohlhepp's victims.

Murders

On November 6, 2003, a customer found four people shot to death inside Superbike Motorsports, a motorcycle shop in Chesnee.  The victims were identified as owner Scott Ponder, 30; service manager Brian Lucas, 30; mechanic Chris Sherbert, 26; and bookkeeper Beverly Guy, 52, who was Ponder's mother. All four died from multiple gunshot wounds. Before Kohlhepp confessed to the shootings in 2016, investigators believed that the gunman, armed with a pistol, entered the shop from the back and killed Sherbert as he worked.

He then killed Guy in the middle of the showroom, Lucas at the main doorway, and Ponder in the parking lot. According to Ponder's wife, Kohlhepp was a disgruntled customer who had been in the shop several times.  According to Kohlhepp's mother, he attempted to return a motorcycle there, but the employees laughed at him, would not return the money he had paid for the motorcycle, and embarrassed him for not knowing how to ride one.

On August 31, 2016, Kala Brown, 30, and her boyfriend Charles David Carver, 32, went missing after they went to clean Kohlhepp's residence. Carver was later found dead of multiple gunshots on Kohlhepp's property.  Interest in the disappearance of Brown and Carver increased as a result of messages posted to Carver's Facebook account following their disappearance, the unusual nature of which prompted speculation that another party had taken control of his Facebook account.

On November 3, Brown was found by authorities, chained to the wall inside a metal storage container on the property. Investigators had tracked her down after tracing the couple's last known cellphone signals, after which they heard banging noises coming from inside the container. A search of Kohlhepp's property recovered Carver's vehicle, which was found in a ravine covered in brush.

According to Brown, she witnessed Carver being shot.  Kohlhepp's mother claimed Carver was killed for having a "really smart mouth," which Kohlhepp did not like. He also said he kept Brown captive because she did not do anything wrong and that he did not want to hurt her.  However, Brown stated to police just after her rescue that Kohlhepp had killed Carver because Kohlhepp was "mad at her."  During her captivity, Brown was intimidated into not escaping after having been shown the graves of Kohlhepp's other victims.

Two bodies were discovered on Kohlhepp's property following his arrest, on November 6–7.  They were later identified as husband and wife Johnny Joe Coxie, 29, and Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie, 26, residents of Spartanburg who were reported missing on December 22, 2015. They were allegedly hired by Kohlhepp to work on his property.  McCraw-Coxie had been killed by a gunshot wound to the head on December 25 or 26, while Coxie had been killed a week earlier by a gunshot wound to the torso. According to the county coroner, they were identified through their extensive tattoos.

List of known victims

Name    Sex         Age        Date of murder/disappearance

Scott Ponder      M            30           November 6, 2003

Brian Lucas          M            30           November 6, 2003

Chris Sherbert   M            26           November 6, 2003

Beverly Guy       F              52           November 6, 2003

Johnny Joe Coxie             M            29           December 19, 2015

Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie     F              26           December 25 or 26, 2015

Kala Brown (survived)    F              30           August 31, 2016

Charles David Carver      M            32           August 31, 2016

Arrest and investigation

Kohlhepp was arrested shortly after Brown's rescue. He later confessed to the Chesnee shootings and the murders of the Coxies, in exchange for allowing him to talk to his mother, give her a photograph, and transfer money to the college fund of a friend's child.  While meeting with his mother, he reportedly confessed to the killings and kidnapping.  When he confessed to the Chesnee shootings, Kohlhepp said he shot each of the victims once in the forehead, a detail in the investigation that was never released to the public.

A search of Kohlhepp's property also uncovered numerous weapons, including 9mm pistols outfitted with suppressors, semi-automatic rifles, and an undetermined amount of ammunition. Because there was no record of a background check under Kohlhepp's name for the purchase of a firearm, investigators believe he likely acquired the weapons illegally.

Shortly following Kohlhepp's arrest, authorities in Spartanburg County discovered a number of seemingly joking product reviews for various items such as padlocks, shovels, tasers, and gun accessories on retail website amazon.com written by a user known simply as "me." One review about a padlock stated, "Solid locks.. Have 5 on a shipping container.. Won’t stop them.. But sure will slow them down til they are too old to care." Another, written for a folding shovel, read, "keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies and you left the full size shovel at home.... does not come with a midget, which would have been nice." The reviewer’s "wish list" page was listed as Todd Kohlhepp.

Following his arrest, Kohlhepp claimed to his mother that there were many other victims aside from the aforementioned. When his mother asked how many, his response was, "You do not have enough fingers." During interrogation, he claimed to have shot a victim in Arizona.  On November 18, 2016, it was reported that the Tempe Police Department had begun an investigation into Kohlhepp's claim, searching through unsolved homicides in the past three decades.  They said they would focus on cases dated from 1983 to 1986, when Kohlhepp was living with his father; and also between August 2001, when Kohlhepp completed his sentence for kidnapping, and November 2001, when he moved back to South Carolina.

On November 25, 2016, police in Greer, South Carolina, announced that they have named Kohlhepp as a person of interest in an unsolved 2003 bank robbery and triple homicide at the local Blue Ridge Savings Bank. This crime was separated from the Chesnee shootings by six months.

In December 2017, Kohlhepp wrote to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal claiming that he had more victims who have not been discovered.

Legal proceedings and guilty pleas

Kohlhepp was charged with four counts of murder in relation to the Chesnee shootings, and one count of kidnapping in relation to Brown's abduction.  He was later charged with three additional counts of murder for the murders of Carver and the Coxies, along with one additional count of kidnapping and three counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.  Kohlhepp's next court appearance was scheduled for January 19, 2017, where Kohlhepp's attorney waived their right to appearance.

According to a report by WLTX, relatives of the Chesnee shooting victims filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him.  On December 1, it was announced that Brown also filed a civil lawsuit against him.

On May 26, 2017, Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder, two counts of kidnapping and one count of criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in a plea bargain that spared him from capital punishment.  Although his defense swore at his sentencing that there were no other victims to be found, Kohlhepp has since repeatedly admitted there were at least two other murders. As of August 2018, he has yet to give authorities the details.