The memory of Scott Ponder is still alive in his son, even though the two have never met.
“My picture was about my dad’s death,” Scott Ponder, Jr. said.
A drawing with hidden symbols that foreshadowed a phone call.
“I didn’t think we would ever get this phone call,” Melissa Ponder Brackman said.
Her questions finally have been answered after detectives found a South Carolina woman who had been missing for two months on Todd Kohlhepp’s property.
“I never thought the two were related,” Brackman said.
She tells us the suspect told his captive that he had killed four people at a motorcycle shop that her husband owned in 2003 — forcing him to confess to police.
“His (Kohlhepp) motorcycle was stolen," Brackman said. "He came back to buy another one and felt like my husband and another employee were making fun of him."
Kohlhepp allegedly came back for revenge; killing Melissa’s husband, his mother and two other employees.
Her husband was shot six times.
“I know Scott’s sense of humor. He likes to joke. It’s hard to imagine that conversation would make anyone so angry. It’s disturbing to me,” Brackman said.
At the time, she was seven weeks pregnant. Now their son is 12 years old and says he feels he is missing part of him.
“I feel like I could know myself more if he was alive because it could explain a lot of me,” Ponder said.
After starring at the composite sketch of the mystery suspect for more than a decade, they are glad there is finally a face.
“I can’t forgive him, but I don’t want him to die,” Ponder said.
She’s glad both of them will get the closure they deserve.
“I see a body with no soul. It opens a wound that needs to be addressed. We can start to heal, but at least this time there will be a resolution," Brackman said.
