• 'Murder victims were almost as innocent as children'
The search continues for the Greer Police Department seeking a clue that would help solve a 2003 triple-murder case.
When alleged serial killer Todd Kohlhepp, 45, a real estate agent from Moore, confessed to the quadruple homicide in the 2003 Superbike Motorsports earlier this month, the GPD made Kohlhepp a person of interest in the Blue Ridge Savings Bank killings. Six months separated the crimes. Greer’s bank homicides occurred in May.
“There just wasn’t anything there,” said Det. Dale Arterburn, hoping to find a connection between Kohlhepp and the Greer murders that occurred on frontage road of I-85 and Highway 14.
When Arterburn learned of Kohlhepp’s confession to the Superbike murders he quickly made it known his interest to investigators in talking with Kohlhepp. Arterburn did not say if he talked with Kohlhepp or had other law enforcement officials question Kohlhepp about the Blue Ridge Savings killings.
Arterburn was the lead investigator for the GPD when Greer’s Sylvia Holtzclaw, 56, the bank teller, and USC upstate physics professor James “Eb” Barnes, 61, and his wife, Margaret, 58, were killed inside the bank.
Kohlhepp has been charged with four counts of murder at Superbike and with the kidnapping this year of Kala Brown, an Anderson woman who spent two months chained inside a shipping container on his 95-acre property near Woodruff.
Brown said she witnessed Kohlhepp shoot Charlie Carver, her boyfriend, law enforcement officials said.
Kohlhepp led investigators to the buried remains of Carver and two others on his property. Kohlhepp is also accused of killing Meagan Lee McCraw Coxie and Johnny Joe Coxie, who had been recruited to work for him, according to reports.
Kohlhepp eventually is expected to be charged with all seven deaths in Spartanburg County, according to Spartanburg County law enforcement officials.
A candlelight vigil for the families of the Superbike murder victims is Dec. 1 at Morningside Baptist Church.
Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender, moved to South Carolina after the 2001 completion of his 15-year prison sentence for raping another teenager at gunpoint in Arizona.
Kohlhepp lived in Arizona with his father, William Sampsell, in 1986 when at age 15 he was accused of rape and holding a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and served 15 years in prison.
Meanwhile, police in Tempe, Ariz., according to reports, are searching through unsolved homicides dating back 30 years to see if there are any connections to Kohlhepp.