The National Forest Serial Killer： Gary Hilton - Serial Killer Documentary

The National Forest Serial Killer： Gary Hilton - Serial Killer Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
She said no, let me go, put her hands up.
I kept striking her and she lost consciousness, and kept
striking her to ensure she was dead.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
He cut off their hands, He cut off both their heads.
It was a wicked, wicked person.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It was too much to even comprehend how he could
be that cruel, that evil and commit the horrific acts
that he did.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
It makes me sick to my starch.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
It's a very densely forested area, very difficult area to
search for things like flood or hair or fibers.

Speaker 6 (00:54):
You can't catch me.

Speaker 7 (00:55):
I am here in this vastness of the United States,
and it is up to you to try to find
me or stop me, because I'm going to keep doing
this horrific act.

Speaker 8 (01:04):
Is that difficult to do? To take somebody's head off?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
All you gotta do is keep sewing.

Speaker 8 (01:10):
There was nothing I've ever experienced before.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
What you have, PIPI kill you ever killed him? Who
you get caught?

Speaker 8 (01:17):
I mean, he's just pure evil. You can see it
in his eyes.

Speaker 9 (02:00):
The Appalachian Trail is a collection of national parks covering
two thousand miles across fourteen eastern US states. Its vast,
untamed landscape is a favorite among hikers and hunters. The
southern tip of this wilderness is in North Georgia.

Speaker 10 (02:17):
It's very mountainous area. National forest land is abundant in
North Georgia.

Speaker 5 (02:24):
We have lots of small towns in Georgia, usually twenty
thirty miles apart, but in between those cities are just remote,
rugged mountains.

Speaker 11 (02:37):
You can walk for literally days and not come across
a road. If someone disposes of a body in a
national forest, you'll never find them.

Speaker 9 (02:51):
Fulton County, Georgia is where divorcee Gary Hilton spends his
time away from work.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
My name is John Tabor, a telemarketing operation and I
first met Gary Hilton when he replied to a help
wanted add or telemarketers but he was very fond of
the outdoors and enjoyed taking his dog out into the
national forests where they would camp for maybe a week

(03:19):
at a time. Had proved himself to be a reliable
and valuable employee. He was smart individual. He was great
with numbers. He could do rather complex mathematics in his
head and spit numbers out that most people couldn't do.
It was a fine working arrangement that he did his
job and that was pretty much it. He never got

(03:43):
along that well with other people and just seemed to
prefer the company of his dog rather than other humans.
He worked in that office uneventually for a decade. Construction

(04:03):
companies in general mind included more hit Heart, where there
was a dramatic drop in business. So I shut the
phone room down, and he was very concerned about that.
He suggested that he do his own marketing on my behalf,
and then I could just pay him commissions based on
his production. So Gary and I came to an agreement

(04:28):
where he would actually live in the office so we
could keep an eye on things, since I really didn't
have any need to go to that location, so it
seemed like a win win situation. He wasn't being very
productive based on his long history, I would advance him

(04:50):
money for his living expenses and whatnot, with the understanding
that eventually we would catch up.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
I got frustrated.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
At some point it just became obvious that he had
lost interest in actually working. At some point you had
to put your foot down. And then suddenly, within a
matter of a few weeks, he became extremely distant and belligerent,
and it got to the point where he demanded money.

(05:23):
It was shocking to me that he would actually do
such a thing and take that position. I realized at
that point, this is a real problem. The situation just
spiraled downward rapidly. It didn't make any sense.

Speaker 9 (05:40):
At this point. Despite their long working relationship, John knows
very little about Hilton's past. He had a traumatic start
to life. As a child, his parents moved around a lot,
and at age thirteen, he shot his stepfather.

Speaker 12 (05:56):
When we look at a thirteen year old child who
deliberately picks a rifle and shoots his stepfather out of frustration,
out of rage or whatever, that is a bright red
warning sign that this is somebody who, when they are
angry enough, is willing to do something like that.

Speaker 9 (06:18):
His early childhood featured another traumatic incident. At age nine,
he suffered a brain injury.

Speaker 11 (06:24):
He had been hit in the frontal lobe with a
murphy bed had fallen on him when he was a
young kid.

Speaker 12 (06:32):
It is a very serious injury. He has over two
hundred stitches, and several people in the hospital report that
he becomes very hyperactive while he's in the hospital. They
have difficulty kind of controlling him. And when we look
at serial killers, It's interesting that about a quarter of
them have a history of head trauma at some point
in their life. We've can damage their funnel lobe. It

(06:54):
can lead to problems with judgment, decision making, and all
kinds of things.

Speaker 9 (07:01):
At age eighteen, Gary enlisted in the US Army as
a paratrooper, but after three years he had a schizophrenic
episode and was discharged.

Speaker 12 (07:11):
He drifts around during the seventies. During the nineteen eighties,
he has three failed marriages. He kind of goes from
job to job. He is somebody who is really living
on the fringes of society.

Speaker 7 (07:25):
Here's someone that's saying, my look is going to present that,
my appearance, my whole genre of who I am is
going to say, stay away from me.

Speaker 6 (07:34):
I'm different from you. I don't want to be a
part of this society.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
I had to satisfy my own curiosity as to what
was going on with this man, so I decided to
stop by the office unannounced. So I pulled him too
the parking lot. There were no lights on in the office.
Parking area was dark. It was just dark everywhere. The
back doors wide open, which was also unusual. The whole

(08:09):
situation was just creepy. I just had this feeling of doom.
Nothing seemed right, everything seemed out of order. I remember
reaching to turn the light switches on, but none of
the lights would come on. And then suddenly he pops
out of a doorway. So I immediately noticed that he
was much more disheveled than normal. And at that point

(08:32):
he smiled at me, and I noticed that several of
his teeth were missing, and I was pretty shocked by that.
I just said, what happened to you? And he goes, oh, yeah,
my teeth goes. You know, he said, I pulled them
out with this pair of pliers. Okay, he said, yeah.
He said he did it so it would frighten people

(08:53):
when they looked at him.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
I knew at that point I needed to get the
hell out of there as I could. I just felt
like something bad could happen at any moment.

Speaker 12 (09:07):
Around this period of time, we see this kind of
erratic aggression uppear, and he seems to be getting some
enjoyment out of that. Several people reported being afraid of
him at these national parks. He is enjoying being menacing,
and I think what that is reflecting is this increased

(09:27):
agitation he's experiencing this increased anger and this increased violence
risk he is ramping up. The more he does these
kind of things, the more he changes his appearance, the
more he talks about liking the fact that he's scaring people.
I mean, those are things that really do tell us.
They're like little red flags on this path to violence.

Speaker 9 (09:51):
With the goodwill of John Tabor. Now wearing thin, Gary
Hilton makes a stark demand for three thousand dollars, and.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
I kind of laughed when he made the demand.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
It was only after he followed up with that and said, well,
you know, John, You've got a great life, beautiful wife,
this beautiful young son. It would be such a shame
for you to lose all that. I just knew that
something bad was going to happen. It probably would be
sooner than later.

Speaker 9 (10:26):
Gary Hilton has threatened to harm the family of his
former boss John Tabor unless he hands over three thousand dollars. Terrified,
John has moved his family away.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
But that was my first move.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Get them out of the house someplace where he had
no idea where they were.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
I agreed to write this check for him.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
I told him I would put her by the front
door of my house and he would kind of get it.
Hilton came out of the woods out of nowhere, exactly
the same time as I was walking down the driveway,
so we literally were now facing each other, and all
I could remember thinking at that point was Wow, I
wish I had on a bulletproof vest and a firearm
right now. I felt incredibly vulnerable. I knew at that

(11:12):
moment I needed to get inside that front door of
my house as quickly as possible, because I had a
glock nine millimeter positioned close to the front door. I
dropped my belongings on the floor, got my firearm, chambered
a round, and came right back out the front door
with the gun pointing in the direction he was in.

(11:33):
He was now maybe one hundred feet away, and he
was fleeing back off into the to the woods.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
I believe that one of us was going to end
up dead.

Speaker 9 (11:45):
After this terrifying encounter, Gary Hilton stops living at John's
office and appears to vanish. Months later, police encounter him
on private land on the Appalachian Trail.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
What's you going out here?

Speaker 13 (11:59):
You know?

Speaker 1 (11:59):
I just wanted to place the camp of the moment
with leaving as a matter of fact, I'm getting my
map together.

Speaker 12 (12:04):
His emotions kind of vastly all over the place.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
I camped out here twenty years ago, I'm sure you.

Speaker 12 (12:11):
And in fact, he ends up at one point saying, Hey,
I love you.

Speaker 6 (12:14):
Hey, I love you, little Hilton.

Speaker 12 (12:17):
Take care we say, which again shows how this person
is is kind of losing control. I think not only
of their thought processes, but their emotions.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
If there's deer hunters around that I can be wearing
a purple chuirt that read back back.

Speaker 12 (12:32):
He seems to have no awareness of how he's coming
across to the other person, and that also is a
hallmark of deterioration when somebody loses the ability to self
reflect and realize and change their behavior when they're saying
things that are inappropriate or don't make sense.

Speaker 13 (12:49):
No, they're crazy, man, I'm telling you that's crazy.

Speaker 7 (13:00):
The forest, as they are, are remote locations throughout the
United States, but they bring leisure to most people, but
sadly can be an opportunity for those looking for horrific activities,
criminal activities to take place.

Speaker 10 (13:18):
John and Irene Bryant were in their late seventies early eighties.
They were experienced hikers In fact, John Bryant was what
is called a thru hiker of the Appalachian Trail, that
means ease travel the complete distance of the trail from
Georgia to Maine. The Episco National Forest is extremely remote,
consists of several thousand acres of forestland. They went into

(13:43):
the forest and parked their car, and very soon they
were confronted by Gary Hilton. Gary Hilton immediately killed Irene.
Her cause of death was blood force trauma to the head.

Speaker 11 (14:04):
John Bryant was taken held captive in the back of
Hilton's van. He chained him around the neck and pad
locked the chain and.

Speaker 12 (14:14):
Takes him to another park and then he kills him,
uses his bank card and gets three hundred dollars and
that is what he gets in exchange for just a
beautiful couple's life.

Speaker 10 (14:28):
When the authorities began to search for John and Irene,
they found the body of Irene, but no signs of
John other than the atm activity and it was later
on that John's body was found in the nota Hala
National Forest.

Speaker 11 (14:45):
It was determined that he was murdered with a handgun,
shot in the head and left at a different location
within the National Forest.

Speaker 7 (14:58):
A natural reaction is wow, this was a horrific thing
that I did. But then I think there's a reality
that sets in. But I'm getting away with it. And
if that urged pulls at me to do it again,
you certainly can see the logic to say I can
ease my attention by doing it again, which allows for

(15:19):
what we now see as serial killers taking place.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
My name is Gloria Tucker. I live in Tallahsee, Florida.
My cousin who was in Sheryl Dunlap, which I refer
to her as Sherry all the time. Oh, I loved
dr immensely. I loved Shery to pieces. She was such
a kind person.

Speaker 10 (15:56):
She went for a day hike in the Apalachicola National
Fora in an area called Leon Sinks. It's very much
like any other National Forest. There's hiking trails, creeks, and
you know, just a very nice area to spend time.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
It was a calm place, she thought, a nice place,
a beautiful place, and she just kind of contemplated and
read a little book. And then and then she was kidnapped.
He tied her to a tree at first, and then

(16:35):
he drove to tylahassee to the bank. He had taped
his face up. I think it was two or three
times he got money out of her account. He kept
her there alive for two or three days. He made
her march over to a tree to tie herself up,

(16:57):
and as she was going, he pulled a gun and
shot her in the head.

Speaker 7 (17:04):
I think money can be a factor involved, but control
is another. Taking someone's life is the ultimate control over someone.

Speaker 12 (17:14):
It tells us a lot about Gary Hilton in terms
of how he views his victims essentially as objects. So
he's got to now figure out how to disguise and
get rid of He isn't necessarily seeing this person as
a person at this point, so it doesn't mean he's
getting satisfaction, but it does mean that this is somebody
who we're thinking, where are the limits in terms of

(17:38):
what this person would do.

Speaker 10 (17:42):
Some hunters in the forest saw some buzzards circling in
the area and went over and found the remains of Sheryl.
Her head had been removed as well as her hands,
but they were able to identify her through some.

Speaker 9 (17:59):
De With four hundred miles between murders, police in Florida
and police in North Carolina are unaware they're dealing with
the serial killer. But Hilton's next victim would fight back.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
In our world, she's the hero in this case.

Speaker 14 (18:18):
She kept fighting.

Speaker 8 (18:20):
She almost beat him, She almost got the best of it.

Speaker 10 (18:32):
Meredith Emerson was the all American girl, very bright, very brave,
had recently graduated from University of Georgia. She lived at
the time in the northern suburb of Atlanta. She was
a very experienced hiker. She had hiked those mountains out
in Colorado, so you know, these mountains out here really

(18:53):
can't compare to those.

Speaker 4 (18:54):
A Blood Mountain is actually the.

Speaker 10 (18:56):
Highest peak in Georgia that the Apalachian Trail crosses.

Speaker 5 (19:01):
There is a lot of hikers come to this area.
Although there's not a heavy populated area here, it's certainly
a heavy trafficked area during the daytime. So Gary Hilton
was very bold to choose this spot.

Speaker 7 (19:17):
All she's doing is a New Year's day taking a
hike with her dog.

Speaker 5 (19:22):
Gary sat up in the woods and surveyed the parking
lot and made the decision.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
On who he was gonna abduct.

Speaker 7 (19:28):
What you're looking at is upping the ante, going towards
someone who is more fit more young, but almost meeting
his match.

Speaker 11 (19:37):
Hilton basically saw her on the trail. She had a dog,
He had a dog. He knew that he could strike
up a conversation about the dogs. Eventually, she said okay,
I'll talk to you later and just basically left him.
She pretty much ran up the trail, and she probably
sensed that there's something wasn't good about it and left

(19:58):
him behind. So he concealed himself along the trail. Some
people had actually seen him hiding, crouching behind the rocks.

Speaker 12 (20:09):
That combination of isolation, him being out the woods, seeing
himself as a survivalist, you really start getting a sense
of this kind of dehumanization and complete lack of any
ability to care about anybody else.

Speaker 5 (20:25):
This is the area where Meredith Emerson initially hiked up
this to the trail. Gary laid in wait in this
area right here for Meredith.

Speaker 10 (20:35):
Gary Hilton waited on Meredith as she was coming back
down the trail. He attacked her.

Speaker 12 (20:43):
She turns around and she basically goes after him. She
grabs his bayonet, which just stuns him, and she absolutely
puts up the fight of her life.

Speaker 6 (20:53):
Boy does she put up a battle.

Speaker 15 (20:58):
I had to hand light her, and that's where I
got this hand. I probably had multiple fractures in my
right handown. Okay, I had to hand flide her, and
I still didn't get control over. She would saying or
pretend that I was in control and then.

Speaker 14 (21:14):
Start fighting it.

Speaker 10 (21:15):
Meredith was trained in martial arts. She almost beat him
up and they rolled off the trail down into the
woods away from the trail.

Speaker 11 (21:24):
The ground was so disturbed in that area you could
tell it was a very violent fight that had taken
place right there. He finally got control over by convincing
her he had a gun.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
So I zip tied her too a tree, and I
knew that I had to go and reclean the client. See, okay,
I was aware that I dropped all that stuff and
her stuff.

Speaker 9 (21:51):
When Meredith Emerson doesn't return from walking her dog, her
boyfriend reports her missing.

Speaker 11 (21:58):
We blast out a picture of Maryordith and her dog.
The very first thing I did, I checked her phone
records and her bank records. The bank had reported to
us that her bank account had not been attempted to
be used. I feel confident that in Meredith's mind, she

(22:24):
was doing that in hopes that we would be able
to track her and be able to find her sooner.

Speaker 7 (22:32):
The idea of not giving the full pen number allows
for more opportunities to get away from this situation.

Speaker 8 (22:41):
Let me ask you one quick question.

Speaker 16 (22:43):
Did she ever give you her pen number while you're
asking for it on the mountain?

Speaker 14 (22:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, after I got control over her around the side.

Speaker 15 (22:50):
She gave me a pen number.

Speaker 8 (22:51):
Okay, she was incorrect, O pay.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
She never gave me a correct.

Speaker 9 (22:57):
With police unaware that Meredith's card is being used, Hilton's
abuse escalates.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
And I told her, honey, I told you just going
to let you go. You've run me all over North
Cure difference maybe, but one hundred and fifty miles on
my van. But still you've lied to me. You've run
me around, hit me.

Speaker 12 (23:20):
His explanation for why he raped Meredith is because he
says that she owed him that. Because she gave him
the run around about the.

Speaker 6 (23:32):
Pen number, she showed conniving instinct. She was able.

Speaker 7 (23:37):
To fight off him and be a little smarter than him. Sadly,
the rape part of it was an added penalty for
how much she showed to fight off this horrible act.

Speaker 12 (23:49):
And so I think that's very interesting to think about
that what does that mean the fact that you know,
in his head, this is how he's justifying the rape.
So I don't think that sex was a primary motive
for him, but I definitely think, you know, he definitely
has some issues in those respects.

Speaker 5 (24:17):
We'd set up a command post at the Vogel State Park,
which is right there at the base of the mountain.
When we discovered her water bottles and her backpack and
some of her effects at the trail, we felt like
something bad had happened. There was also a police baton
found in the area that was concerning for us. So
a lot of what we were doing was making phone

(24:38):
calls identify anyone who may have seen anything.

Speaker 11 (24:41):
There were so many people that had contacted the tip
line and said there's a strange guy that was on
the trail that day. They all described him almost identical,
you know, older gentleman, very fit, wearing high end hiking gear,
but he has duct tape on his shoes, He's got
a dog with him, and they saw him around a
white van.

Speaker 9 (25:01):
Police investigating the John and Irene Bryant murders in North
Carolina and the separate force investigating the Sheryl Dunlop murderer
in Florida. Soon contacted Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who are
running the Meredith Emerson case.

Speaker 10 (25:16):
When we learned of those cases, then we began to
talk to both jurisdictions about the similarities, and there were several.

Speaker 11 (25:27):
The US Marshall Service offered their assistance. We basically gave
them all of the information for Meredith, all the information
for Garry Hilton, and they ran them through their system
and they basically came back said, you know where card
was tried. Somebody attempted to use your card at this location,
this location, in this location on the first and the second,

(25:49):
And I said, no, the bank's not telling me that
the bank should have known that her pen her car
was used, yet no money was taken out.

Speaker 10 (26:09):
The photographs of the person walking up to the ATM
was very, very similar, and then when we got our
photographs from our ATMs, there was no doubt that it
was the same person. There was mention of a van
in Florida where Gary Hilton was actually confronted with a

(26:30):
park ranger. We had a van in our case. So
everything began to line up fairly quickly. As soon as
we found out of both of those jurisdictions.

Speaker 12 (26:40):
I think he had been pretty self assured up until now.
I think he really did in his mind convinced himself
that he was going to continue along the path. Nothing bad,
you know, nothing bad was going to happen. And I
think this does start the beginning of the end for
Gary Hilton.

Speaker 9 (27:00):
Gary Hilton has been holding Meredith hostage for two days,
sixty miles south of Blood Mountain. Hilton's former boss, John Tabor,
hasn't heard from him in over seven months.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
I still remained armed with my pistol on my person
and my assault rifle in my vehicle. I would still
have someone sweep the woods, if you will, do a
quick walkthrough and make sure he wasn't there before I
drove home at night. I never felt completely comfortable, so

(27:33):
that's why I remained armed. Twenty four to seven. My
home gym is actually where I was when I first
heard about it. I was working out and caught the
top of the news where they broke to cover this

(27:54):
case of the missing girl I in North Georgia. They
said that there was evidence of a struggle in the
parking lot where they found I'm married to this vehicle.
But what really got my attention was they said they
found an expandable police baton.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
That's what really made me stop in my tracks.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
And now I'm just staring at the television, going, oh,
wait a minute, did I.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Just hear expandable police baton?

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Because that's something that I knew the Hilton had with
him all the time. So when I heard that, I
just remember just going numb, thinking Wow, I knew it
was something I had to do. So I called and
I ended up getting I guess it was a Union
County Sheriff's department on the phone.

Speaker 11 (28:38):
And says, I know who you're talking about. His name's
Gary Michael Hilton. I can give you the number, the
tag number to the van because I bought it for him.
People had heard him yelling at the dog and said
they thought he was saying Danny, and he actually said no,
his dog's name Dandy. So we knew we were probably

(28:58):
talking about the right guy. So we pulled a driver's
license photo of him and put it out onto the
news media, so it carries nationwide again.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Maybe six hours after I made that phone call, I
was trying to wrap up some business before heading to
cayl ride Over vacation and this is the part that
still stuns me today. My phone rang, answered the phone
like normal, and it was him. For seven months of

(29:31):
absolutely no communication, there he was on the phone with me,
out of nowhere, like a ghost. If there was anything
I was afraid of, it was not being able to
fight back.

Speaker 4 (29:44):
That was my fear. Fight to the death. Bring it on.

Speaker 14 (29:47):
I'm ready.

Speaker 9 (30:01):
Gary Hilton has been holding Meredith Emerson hostage since New
Year's Day. She's refusing to give him her bank pen number,
and he's desperate for money, so he's traveling to his
former boss's house where he hopes to pick up a check,
and calls him on the way. The last time the
pair spoke, Gary Hilton threatened John's family.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
I'm just sitting in my car in a state of disbelief.
He immediately apologized for what had happened and told me
that he wanted to come back to work, and I really.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
Feared in trying to start work again for undercauld.

Speaker 13 (30:41):
I fall that Robert what I'm getting at, because I'd
gotten any money out.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Her, But I played along.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
I acted as though I didn't know anything about anything,
and he said he needed some money to get started,
you know, to get back to work and whatnot, and
I said, hey, that's no problem. How much you need
We discussed an amount seven hundred eight hundred dollars. I
forgot what it was, but I said, yeah, I'll be
more than happy to give you the check. I said, well,
where are you because I was ready to get this

(31:10):
over with one wa or the other. But then he explained.
He just said that that's not possible. He could not
meet me then under any circumstances. But within the next
couple of days he would come get the check from
the office and that was it.

Speaker 10 (31:26):
Once we learned that there was a possibility that Hilton
would go to his former employer's office to pick up
the check, we got with the local jurisdiction and they
deployed their swat team and they were prepared to grab
him if you showed up, and we were hoping that
he would because if you showed up, most likely of
that Meredith with him.

Speaker 4 (31:46):
But he didn't show up.

Speaker 6 (31:48):
What'd you tell when I called him?

Speaker 4 (31:51):
That girl was a lie? Who she was in my van?

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Once you'd take him someone, you either killed him or
you get If you release them, you're gonna get caught.
I gave her a book to read and everything else there.

(32:18):
And I walked up and made as if to unsecure
the chain, struck her with the bar. It was a
jackhandled a just a straight jack handled the solid iron
iron bar. Struck her with that. She said, no, let
me go, put her hands up. I kept striking her shoe.

(32:40):
You'll see some defensive wounds to her hand. She lost
consciousness and I kept striking her till ensure she was dead.

Speaker 11 (32:49):
After finding out everything that she did, you know how
close we came to catching him on numerous occasions and
she was still alive to this day breaks my heart.

Speaker 10 (33:06):
Now, I was very familiar with that area called Dawson
Forest Wildlife Management Area. He had taken her head off
and moved it to another location about a mile away
from her body.

Speaker 9 (33:22):
At this point, Gary Hilton decides to release Meredith Emerson's
dog Ella.

Speaker 12 (33:28):
He seemed to have no trouble whatsoever murdering Meredith, but
he cannot murder Ella. And I think that's very, very significant.
It just speaks to the lack of attachment that Gary
Hilton seems to have with anybody.

Speaker 10 (33:45):
We got a telephone call to the tip line from
a lady about sixty miles south of Blood Mountain, who said,
I think I just saw Merdeth Emerson's dog walk into
a grocery store.

Speaker 11 (33:58):
Video valance at the grocery store shows it walking around.
It almost looked like it was asking for help.

Speaker 10 (34:05):
We were able to pick up the dog and identify
the dog as Ella through an ID chip that she
had in her so we knew that Ella was in
an area seventy miles south of the abduction site. We
had another call to the tip line from a lady
who had known Hilton in the past, who told us
he just called her asking for money, and she told

(34:29):
us she told Hilton, don't you know the world's looking
for you? And he hung up. She called immediately and
we were able to trace that phone number to a
telephone at a gas station just across from the grocery
store where Ella.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Had been found.

Speaker 10 (34:45):
So there was a lot of activity around that gas station.
The agents I sent down there found a dumpster in
the parking lot, and they decided to look.

Speaker 8 (34:57):
In the dumpster.

Speaker 10 (34:59):
That's where we found the things that I had hoped
that we wouldn't. We found bloody clothing, We found Meredith's
driver's license and wallet. We found other clothing, men's clothing
with blood on them. This was so much blood that
you could wring it out.

Speaker 5 (35:20):
The blood was wet, it was fresh. That was disturbing. Yeah,
because up to this point, you know, we were all
holding out the hope that Meredith's alive. We're going to
recapture the bad guy and recover.

Speaker 10 (35:30):
Her based on what we'd found in the dumpster. None
of us really thought that someone could survive and lose
that much blood.

Speaker 11 (35:45):
He goes to another convenience store at that location or
down near that location, and tries to clean more stuff
out of his van, basically everything that had blood on it,
or he thought had blood on it, during thing that
could tie him to Meredith.

Speaker 10 (36:02):
And it wasn't that long until the citizen called nine
one one and said, I think I'm looking at the
guy that y'all have been looking for all week with
the missing hiker. The person of interest in that missing
woman case is at this Chevron gas station on ash
Ford Dunwoodie.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
The van is here, the dog is he's the red dog.
And I saw the man's face and I've been watching
the news and I know with him, I know with him.

Speaker 5 (36:29):
He's throwing stuff in the dumpster here.

Speaker 11 (36:31):
And basically stayed on the phone watching him while officers
were responding to take him into custody.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Here comes the cops. Yeah, ala, yes, they got him.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
Now.

Speaker 15 (36:42):
Two crewsers pulled up on him.

Speaker 9 (36:46):
They got him.

Speaker 10 (36:49):
He was not talking, but we knew that there were
answers to some of our questions in the van.

Speaker 9 (36:57):
With Hilton now in custody, police look for evidence that
links him to the murders of John and Irene Bryant,
Cheryl Dunlap, and Meredith Emerson.

Speaker 11 (37:06):
We had the Cab County transport him to our headquarters,
which is into Cab County. In a conference room in
GBI headquarters.

Speaker 5 (37:15):
When I first walked into the conference room, Gary was
lying on the floor in a fetal position and kept
saying that he had multiple sclerosis and he needed an
immediate shot of folic acid and just kind of talking crazy.
Clay Bridges had actually laid down on the floor with
him and talked to him for a few minutes.

Speaker 16 (37:36):
Cheryl, and my name's Clay Bridges. I'm specializing with a GBI.
Would you be more comfortable in the chair? I can't, okay,
you got a urdigo? Is that from the multiple sclerosis.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yes, I'm through talking to you. I'm making those statements.
I don't want to be interrogated anymore.

Speaker 6 (37:54):
He put me back in the handcuff.

Speaker 11 (37:58):
He had a fingernail gap into his nose, pretty substantial.
It looked to be a defensive wound someone else that
had inflicted on a him. His hand was obviously broken,
it was swollen. He just stayed quiet.

Speaker 8 (38:12):
I had learned some things about him. He had one dog.

Speaker 11 (38:15):
In particular that he really cared for that was named Ranger,
and he had actually built a shrine to him where
he had buried him at At one point I told
him that I was going to go move Ranger and
see how he liked it. He became angry. He became
really angry. He he you know, cut his eyes up
at me and showed me his broken teeth and said,

(38:36):
just put the needle in my arm.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
It was so much in the van.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
So we've we got blood transfer powern that match John Bryant,
So that was huge. We had blood in the van
that matched Meredith Emerson. Cheryl Dunlap's car had a flat tire,
and there was a bayonet that we recovered, and Florida
forensics were able to match that to the puncture and
the tire.

Speaker 9 (39:04):
Despite the extensive evidence linking Hilton to the four murders,
police haven't found Meredith Emerson's body, but with Hilton doe
to face the death penalty, they propose a deal.

Speaker 11 (39:16):
They basically came back and said, he'll tell you if
you take the death penalty off the table. At that point,
we knew we had John Bryant in that van. Some
boots had Cheryl Dunlap's blood on it, so we knew.
We add a couple more bites at the apple of
given him the death penalty and agreed to take the
death penalty off the table for Meredith and recover her body.

(39:42):
And he started showing us on a map. He said, yeah,
the head will be missing.

Speaker 5 (39:48):
When it came time to do the recovery of the body,
we started at night. We brought out temporary lighting to
set up. We worked throughout the night, did the recovery.
Then we came back the next morning at sunrise and
process the scene over again in the daylight. Well, the
body was covered with leaves and limbs and debris. Literally,

(40:08):
you could be standing a couple of feet away and
not know there was a body there, so he had
done a very good job of concealing the body. Her
head was about a mile from that site, lying near
a log and get covered in leaves.

Speaker 8 (40:23):
I mean, is that difficult to do, to take so
Muchy's head off? I've never seen that done.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
I mean, all you gotta do is keep sewing, throwing, sewing,
swing sewing, and then get through the joint. It's just
like you would.

Speaker 6 (40:35):
That's what it's made for in the kitchen.

Speaker 8 (40:37):
Right to cut up me? Right, okay.

Speaker 11 (40:40):
I interviewed him about the crime itself, and truthfully, it
was the most horrific thing I think I had ever heard,
even as a law enforcement officer watching horror movies, any.

Speaker 8 (40:51):
Any aspect it was.

Speaker 11 (40:53):
It was undoubtedly one of the most devastating gut punches
that I've taken.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
I think killed and coach or any satisfaction.

Speaker 14 (41:03):
It was distaithful. It was dreadful. Trust me, it was.
Of course I was able to do it because in
my general wage against siety.

Speaker 11 (41:11):
You know, she was thinking, well, if I can just
keep him at bay, you know, just a little bit longer,
they're gonna find me.

Speaker 8 (41:17):
They're gonna find me. And then to listen to all
that in him, describe how he took her life.

Speaker 11 (41:22):
Once he was taken away, It it all flooded in
on me and I just began to cry. It was
nothing I've ever experienced before, nothing like anything I've ever
been around.

Speaker 9 (41:39):
At his first trial, Gary Hilton has found guilty for
the murder of Meredith Emerson. He's sentenced to thirty years
in prison. At a second trial for the murder of
Cheryl Dunlap, Hilton has found guilty. He receives the death penalty.
At a third trial for the murders of John and
i Rene Brilliant, Hilton has found guilty. He receives a

(42:04):
sentence of life imprisonment.

Speaker 8 (42:16):
I mean, he's just pure evil. You can see it
in his eyes.

Speaker 11 (42:20):
I have never met anybody that you could literally look
in their eyes and see evil but him, and he is.

Speaker 8 (42:28):
He's truly evil.

Speaker 12 (42:31):
I think when you look at Gary Hilton, you look
at his background. I think a lot of his not
fitting in was more a reflection of his personality, his
lack of coping skills, and this trauma he experienced as
a child. I do think once he crossed the line,
once he murders Irene and John, I think there is

(42:52):
no going back, and I think he would have continued
to kill until.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
He was caught.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
It was too much to even comprehend how he could
be that cruel, that evil, and commit the horrific acts
that he did.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
Sickening.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
It makes me sick today, sixteen years later, just thinking
about it. I'm sick to my stomach.