At times,
Kohlhepp pleaded guilty in 2017 to killing seven people — three on his property in
Before the shootings, Kohlhepp had been barred from having guns because he was a convicted felon. He moved to
To obtain his guns, Kohlhepp used
Lawson signed paperwork saying the 12 guns and five silencers he bought between 2012 and 2016 were were for himself and then gave them to Kohlhepp, according to a federal indictment against Lawson. The lawsuit said at least seven of the weapons were bought at
“Those suppressors were bought legally for about three minutes,” Kohlhepp said, laughing in a videotaped interview with investigators shortly after his
Lawson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison.
He told federal investigators that Kohlhepp mentioned killing four people at a motorcycle shop and kidnapping a woman and her boyfriend so he could keep her as a sex slave, but said he didn't believe it because Kohlkhepp was always telling wild stories.
In his interviews with deputies, Kohlhepp called Lawson a “32-year-old lazy kid who never had a daddy." A deputy asked if Lawson bought Kohlhepp's guns.
“Yes, sir. And then I modified the hell out of them,” Kohlhepp replied.
Kohlhepp was arrested after a woman's cellphone pinged its last signal from his property. Deputies found her chained inside a storage container. She told them her boyfriend had been killed and that led to finding the bodies of another man and woman. Kohlhepp said he sexually abused that woman for six days before killing her on Christmas 2015.
Kohlhepp then confessed to killing the owner of the Superbike motorcycle shop and three employees in
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