In December of 2015, 25-year-old Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie and her husband, Johnny Joe Coxie, vanished after being released from jail in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Meagan had spoken to her mother, asking to be bailed out with the promise of a job lined up. However, after that conversation, all communication ceased, and the couple was reported missing, leaving their families in a state of uncertainty.
For nearly a year, their whereabouts remained a mystery.
The search for the couple came to a grim end in November 2016 on a large property in Woodruff, South Carolina. The land belonged to a real estate agent named Todd Kohlhepp. Authorities were initially led to the property after discovering another missing woman, Kala Brown, alive and chained inside a metal storage container. Brown's testimony about witnessing a murder and the potential for other bodies on the property prompted an extensive search.
During the search of Kohlhepp's land, investigators unearthed human remains. Dental records and distinctive tattoos confirmed the bodies were those of Meagan and Johnny Coxie. An autopsy revealed that Meagan had died from a gunshot wound to the head, while her husband had been shot in the torso. Their deaths were ruled homicides.
The investigation quickly centered on Todd Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender. After his arrest for the kidnapping of Kala Brown, Kohlhepp confessed to the murders of the Coxie couple. He also admitted to a long-unsolved quadruple homicide from 2003 at a motorcycle shop and other killings, bringing his total number of confessed victims to seven. Kohlhepp was subsequently charged with multiple counts of murder and kidnapping.
