THE devoted mum of serial killer suspect who confessed to killing seven people after being arrested for keeping a woman “chained like a dog” has defended her son.

Todd Kohlhepp has been detained after cops found missing Kala Brown in metal container, with the man since admitting to being involved in a massacre of four people in 2003.

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Before his shock confession to cops, Kohlhepp's was allowed his request to talk with his mum, Regina Tague, and he then apologised to her.

Now Mrs Tague has gone on TV to defend her son,  insisting he is not a monster.

She hates that her son is called a serial killer, she told CBS.

“I know that's what they say. He was very misunderstood,” she said.

“Todd is not a monster. He's not even close to it. He wasn't doing it for enjoyment.

“He was doing it because he was mad and he was hurt.”

Kohlhepp, 45, from South Carolina, is charged with four counts of murder in connection with the deaths of Brian Lucas, Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy and Chris Sherbert.

The three killings are still being investigated.

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Kohlhepp was charged with kidnapping last week after investigators found a 30-year-old woman who had been missing for two months chained inside a metal storage container on his property in rural Woodruff.

Authorities later found the bodies of her boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver, and another missing couple.

Sheriff Chuck Wright said Kohlhepp confessed Saturday to gunning down four people at a motorcycle shop elsewhere in Spartanburg County in 2003.

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Asked why her son tied up the woman, she told CBS: “She saw him kill her boyfriend, and he didn’t know what to do with her. Couldn’t turn her loose. She’d go get the police.”

Tague says Kohlhepp told her he killed Carver “because he got nasty and was smart mouthed.”

Taken to the Woodruff property last Saturday, Kohlhepp showed investigators two grave sites.

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Authorities identified the people buried there as 25-year-old Meagan Leigh McCraw-Coxie and her husband, 29-year-old

, of Spartanburg.

They had been missing since December.

Tague says her son told her there are no more bodies on his property.

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“There’s nothing else you have to worry about,” Tague says Kohlhepp told her.

She’s defended her son before.

At age 15, he was sentenced to 15 years in an Arizona prison for binding and raping a 14-year-old neighbour at gunpoint.

His mother asked for leniency, according to court records obtained by WHNS-TV in South Carolina.

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