Frank Stone - Serial Killing Salesman: The True Story of Todd Kohlhepp

SERIAL KILLING SALESMAN: THE TRUE STORY OF TODD KOHLHEPP

FRANK STONE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

just admit it..you look at the news, you see the political crap and the school shootings and just general wth is going on...zombie apocalypse is starting to look better and better every day.. - Todd Kohlhepp's Facebook post

Todd Kohlhepp was a successful realtor with a dark history.

A past which involved kidnapping and sexual assault.

He would rape a classmate at the age of fifteen and be tried as an adult. Remaining in prison for over fifteen years, he would be released at the age of thirty. Claiming to be rehabilitated, he took advantage of every educational opportunity in jail, learning graphic design and earning a college degree. While in prison, he learned how to play the game, putting on a false front and saying the right things in order to get what he wanted. He reentered society, got a job and eventually started his own business where he was successful enough to have over eight employees and purchase a huge farm.

But despite his outward appearance of professional respectability, Kohlhepp was still the same sinister young man who raped a young woman fifteen years earlier. But now, he had become a more experienced criminal. One who could avoid detection while committing his acts of violence.

He would kill and rape again until finally meeting his match in a survivor named Kala Brown.

EARLY LIFE

Todd was born on March 7th, 1971 in Florida but would go on to be raised in South Carolina and Georgia. His parents would divorce when he was two years old and he would remain the custody of his mother, Regina Tague. She would remarry the following year.

Regina tried to maintain a sense of normalcy for Todd. She thought of him as a smart boy who read the encyclopedia and would often sit on her lap as she read the newspaper comic strips to him.

But Todd would not get along with his stepfather and over the years had expressed his desire to live with his biological father. This desire would not come true until Todd was twelve years old.

Todd was a troubled boy after the divorce. He would attack other children in nursery school and tear up their belongings. By the age of nine, he was already in therapy. He had both a hair-trigger temper and an abnormal preoccupation with sex.

He would often do things to get back at his mom. Anytime she did something he didn't like, he would find a way to gain revenge. On one occasion, he would stuff bath towels down the toilet and flood the house. His mother soon grew tired of his behavior as she knew something was wrong inside the young boy.

Todd had an inability to process anger in the same way a normal person learns to do. His mother was at a loss as both therapy and her well-meaning attitude had no effect on the young boy.

(TODD WITH HIS MOTHER REGINA)

A BUDDING PSYCHOPATH

Like most serial killers, Todd's aggression didn't stop with his fellow schoolchildren. He would take his anger out on animals as he would go out and shoot birds, cats, and dogs with his BB gun. On one occasion, he was given a gift of a goldfish in a fishbowl. He pretended as if he liked the fish then promptly poured Clorox bleach into the bowl, taking a sadistic pleasure in watching the goldfish die before him.

Why?

Because he didn't want goldfish. He wanted a gerbil.

Todd was growing into an emotion-free free adult, incapable of expressing anything other than anger. The therapy sessions were not working and Todd was sent to a Georgia mental institution for three months because he simply could not get along with his other classmates. He hit other children and destroyed his own bedroom with a hammer after his mother had bought him a new bedroom set that he did not like. He often threatened to kill himself.

When Todd was twelve years old, his mother and stepfather divorced. Todd would be sent to Arizona to live with his biological father that he had not seen since he was two years old. He would change his last name to his father's and would eventually begin working odd jobs around the town. But his father didn't seem to be a calming influence, instead, he may have served to exacerbate some of Todd's violent tendencies. His father would collect guns and knives, teaching Todd how to blow things up and make bombs.

But neither the gun hobby nor a decade-long desire to connect with his real father was enough to make the reunion a happy father and son experience. Todd wanted to spend time with his father but his old man had numerous girlfriends. His lifelong delusion of a father who wanted him now crushed, he went back to live with his mother.

But she didn't want him either. She would make numerous excuses to back out of taking her son back. His father suggested that he be put up for adoption.

The rejection of both parents served to incite more anger in the young man.

A RAPIST IS BORN

At the age of fifteen, Todd would kidnap a fourteen-year-old girl in Tempe, Arizona on November 25th, 1986. He had a crush on the girl but she rejected his advances, wanting only to be friends. Instead, she had a crush on one of his friends and the rejection set him into a jealous rage. He was acquainted with her family, he went to her house first and inquired with the girl's parents to see if they were gong to be home. They stated they were about to leave and seeing an opportunity to be alone with his target, he waited until the girl's parents left.

Todd was not a child you left alone, his mother said, recalling how Todd's biological father had an emergency with his own father and left Todd alone for three days.

We left him home and then he was jealous of this girl's boyfriend, so he went and took her away to the house.

Todd went back to the girl's home and lured her outside. Taking his unsuspecting classmate around to an alley, he put his father's .22-caliber revolver to her head and walked her back to his home where his father had left him. He pulled the trigger on the gun to scare the girl into submission but it misfired.

Terrified, the girl complied with Todd as he forced her back to his house. Todd would tie her up on his bed, duct tape her mouth shut and place a knife next to her with the warning that if she screamed he would kill her.

Then he raped her.

After he finished, he walked her home with an ominous warning...He would kill the girl's six-year-old and three-year-old siblings if she told anyone what happened.

But the girl's six-year-old brother had called the police anyway, telling them that his sister was missing. A policewoman arrived, waiting at the home until the girl came through the back door, disheveled and distraught.

The girl talked, knowing Todd as only Todd Sampsell, his father's last name.

Todd was immediately arrested at his home.

He remained emotionless as he was taken into custody, asking the officer 'What's gonna happen to me?' and 'How much am I gonna get?'

He would be charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and committing a dangerous crime against children. Todd stated that he raped the girl because he was angry at his father. He would plead guilty to the kidnapping charge but the sexual assault charge would be dropped.

The case was moved from juvenile to adult court. Todd was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and forced to register as a sex offender.

The judge in the case, C.Kimball Rose, saw Todd as a lost cause.

At less than the age of nine, Rose said. This juvenile was impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content. He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursing school. He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions, and pets apparently on whim and caprice. Approximately six years of intervention in fifteen years of life have resulted in abysmal failure. Twenty-five months of the most intensive and expensive professional intervention, short of God's, will provide no protect for the public and no rehabilitation of this juvenile by any services or facilities presently available to the juvenile court.