The wife of Scott Ponder, who authorities say is a victim of suspected South Carolina serial killer
Todd Kohlhepp, tells PEOPLE that she had “made peace” with not knowing who killed her husband in 2003.
All that changed, however, when Melissa Brackman received a phone call on Nov. 5 from a South Carolina detective who had worked on her husband’s murder 13 years earlier.
“[He] just said, ‘We got him,’ and I froze,” Brackman tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. She is still in disbelief: “I [didn’t] know how to feel.”