20/20 - Wild Crime: Deal With the Devil | S3 Ep. 3

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Wild Crime Season 3: Blood Mountain Episode 3: Deal With the Devil Hilton is caught, but where’s Meredith? Bloody clothes and Hilton’s confession confirm that she’s dead. Investigators make a deal with the devil, offering no death penalty if he takes them to her body. But what about the other dead and missing hikers?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. Here's Episode 3 of Wild Crime Blood Mountain. It's called Deal with the Devil. Three different national forests, three different cases, and they're all hikers. Investigators are looking for Gary Michael Hilton. We knew how dangerous he was. This witness felt so uneasy that they decided to just take a picture in case something happened.

Emergency 911. This is Chevron gas station, and the man who's been on the news who attacked hikers is here. We've been in. We found metal chains. Everything I collected had some kind of blood on it. Hilton was not expecting Meredith to fight back. Mr. Hilton, I got to ask you this. Was there any sexual activity between you two?

I knew I was making a deal with the devil, but it was a deal that needed to be done. Secrets in the wild. Beautiful, yet treacherous places. These are the stories of the investigators who solve crimes in the wilderness. It's been four days since Meredith has been missing and police have found out. The area that we are searching right now is going to be 401 square miles. If you put that down, that's going to be 253,496 acres.

That's a lot of area for us to be covering right now. Because people are still strongly looking, we're still hopeful. We are thankful that Ella has been found, but Meredith is still out there. This person of interest, Gary Michael Hilton. Gary Michael Hilton. 61-year-old Gary Hilton, Emerson. This is the picture that we have for Mr. Hilton at this time. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared.

I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit scared. For me, life has been sweet.

13-8-9-0-1, I'm in a safe state. When we put out his name and his photo, we knew that everybody was looking for him. The police announced that they were looking for a person of interest. We want your old Gary Michael Hilton. Your instincts tell you, get away from this person. We need him to come forward. I was at the command post on Blood Mountain. Approximately 8 PM, 911 calls began to go into the DeKalb

County 911 center. Emergency 911, what's the exact location of the emergency? I'm at Ashwood. I will be in Johnson's Ferry, there's a Chevron gas station and the man who's been on the news who attacked hikers is here. Can you tell us about that person, Gary Hilton? I'm in my vehicle, 15 feet away from home Washington. Gary Hilton, he was seen at a Chevron gas station off Ashford Dunwoody Road in North Metro Atlanta. The van is here, the dog is a man's, and I know he's emptying all this stuff out of his van.

We need to be quick. You guys gotta hurry. The call-in describes seeing Gary Hilton cleaning out his van. Oh my God. Is there somebody in the roof? Yes. Because he looks like he's been in shock. It's literally probably within two minutes that DeKalb County officers arrive and take

him into custody. Police, show me your hands. Get on the ground right now. Gary Hilton surrendered as soon as they approached him. I was with Don Cavell when the DeKalb County Police Department called. We got your white man. We got your white van. We got Gary Hilton. 13-42-01, this is.

But there's no Meredith Emerson here. No sign of the victim. The search for Gary Michael Hilton ended at this Chevron station at the corner of Ashford, Dunwoody, and Johnson Ferry Road. We're hopeful that there might be a break in this case that might lead us to the whereabouts of Ms. Emerson, but we don't know at this point.

They finally have in custody Gary Michael Hilton of DeKalb County, who was named as a person of interest in the disappearance of 24-year-old Meredith Emerson. And any question that he can answer, I mean, any... would be a positive step in the right direction. But police will not confirm what Hilton was doing, only that missing hiker Emerson was not with him. So now we had Hilton.

Hilton was hauled off to GBI headquarters for questioning. We're making progress, we felt like, but we just hadn't found Meredith. And there had been opportunities. 6.30, we restarted that search this morning at 8 o'clock. I think that broke a lot of our hearts that she was not in the van. At this time, Ms. Peggy Bailey from the family, who was the family's spokesperson, would like to make a statement from the family. Good evening once again. Thank you for... Peggy and Doug Bailey were very close friends of the Emersons.

Dave's still actively searching the trails. Susan's hoping that word comes soon. I don't think Peggy or the Emersons ever gave up hope. Hope was pretty much what her family, you know, was holding to. Meredith's middle name is Hope, And that's exactly what the Lord gives us for her. So we are hoping that we're talking of Meredith in the present tense. Cheryl Dunlap, a 46-year-old nurse and Sunday school teacher, disappeared seven miles from home. Her car found with a flat tire. Once we knew there was a Gary

Michael Hilton in existence as a result of Blood Mountain, we ran his license and he had been issued a citation by a forestry officer right in the heart of the Apalachicola National Forest, and the date was completely consistent with Cheryl's disappearance. We had an onslaught of tips and sightings. One of the sightings was a campsite off Joe Thomas Road, which is out off Highway 20. One of our crime scene detectives

saw some pine straw that had covered what looked like there maybe had been a fire or something. And so he moved the straw, and he started to find hard fragments. And those fragments were 100% identified as skull fragments. There were burned finger bones and skull bones. There were also a plastic bead and an earring, some burned clothing. Cheryl Dunlap's remains couldn't get DNA from them because they had been so, so burned at high temperatures.

I mean, he burned her hands and her head and beat it into pulp, you know, so as to hide the things that he was trying to hide. As soon as I saw the bead at the fire pit, I thought that they were very similar to the ones that were in her vehicle. Anytime you come in contact with something, you'll leave something behind, and then

you'll take something away. It's like a triangle. We're linking a victim, a suspect, and a scene together. And I found a clump of hair. It was the same exact color of the pine straw that was there. And in Cheryl Dunlap's car, I found a long hair and it was from the golden retriever. found a long hair and it was from the golden retriever. We really felt like we had our suspect. We felt like Gary was our guy. After Hilton was arrested in Georgia, several individuals advised they saw Hilton in North Carolina.

We still don't know where John Bryant is. The Sheriff's Department heard from an individual that happened to be in one of the National Forest picnic areas at Sycamore Flats in Brevard and that individual saw Gary Michael Hilton in his white van with his dog unloading the van at the picnic area. This witness felt so uneasy that they decided to just take a picture of it in case something happened. And that picture places him, without a doubt, in the area of the crime scene a couple of weeks before the murder of Irene Bryant.

We felt confident that he was our prime suspect, but we had not yet developed a sufficient amount of evidence to pursue it in court. Had that photo come sooner, we would have definitely done something different. He lived off the grid. So he wasn't in the system. How do we go from proving he was here at the right time to proving he was specifically at that scene with the Brines?

We shared these photographs with Georgia so that we could really begin that relationship to work this together. To be continued... for death experiences of people who have survived animal attacks, natural disasters, and deadly parasites alike. Hear how a triathlete is attacked by a shark while training and manages to escape after being pulled underwater. And how a hiker in Alaska survives a 1,000-pound moose attack after the animal crushes her limbs. I Was Prey features audio from hit shows like This Came Out of Me, Nature's Deadliest, and Still Alive, and Monst monsters inside me. Listen to I Was Prey wherever you get your podcasts. While Hilton was being transferred to GBI headquarters, I had two teams scouring for evidence that might help us find the location of Meredith Emerson. Investigators searched Gary Hilton's white Astro van well into early Saturday morning at this Chevron

It's also where they found Hilton and his dog Dandy Friday night When I first opened the van my impression was wow, there's a lot of crap in here It was full of garbage bags and tote containers and just all kinds of stuff. Hilton was making trips from the van to the dumpster at the Chevron. There were a lot of things on the ground around the van. He was in the process of cleaning it out. So we started in the dumpster.

There were some critical pieces of evidence in there. Sleeping bags, a couple of duffel bags, some pornography, camping gear, bed rolls. Gary was trying to get rid of anything in the van that he could see had visible blood, because everything I collected had visible blood on it. We tagged almost 700 pieces of evidence. Directly behind the driver's seat and the passenger's seat

was a space all the way across the van, but everything from there on back was just packed. Then we go to the van and start looking at the interior for hairs, fibers, blood stains. What's going to tell us something that we don't know? What's going to help us find where Meredith is? I found a yellow rain jacket with a fluorescent stripe. There was some blood found on some paper towels. There was some blood found on the driver's side seat. There was a transfer pattern on the

back of the driver's seat. It looked like a hair pattern where blood had gotten in contact with the hair. I assumed it would be Meredith's or Gary's. The scene at the Chevron probably took us four or five hours to get processed. We had the van towed. I left there, and I went to GBI headquarters in Atlanta. Mitchell Posey had found some disturbing evidence in a dumpster at the Quick Trip gas station. So I drove down from Blood Mountain to look at everything myself. When John Cagle arrived at the crime scene lab, he asked me for a briefing. He

asked me to tell him what we had and what it meant. We found metal chains with nylon rope attached to it that told me that Meredith had probably been tied up. I told him about the black zip ties that had been cut. We found bloody clothes. We found hiking pants that had blood spatter on them. And we found boots that had blood spatter on it as well. There was a fleece that had blood on it. The neckline was saturated in blood. This was heavy blood that you could wring out. My thoughts were battling each other. I said, John, I don't think someone would still be alive with this much blood on the neckline. I could tell

he did not want to hear that. I actually called our medical examiner. I said, let me describe this to you. Could someone survive after losing that much blood? But I knew that they couldn't. I knew I had to do one thing, and that's come talk to the Emersons. Reminding myself I needed to tell them the truth. Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead was pressed about whether there's any proof Emerson might still be alive.

It does not look favorable for that to be the case. So we went back to the cabin where they were staying and had to break the news to her both parents that it doesn't appear that Meredith has survived this. That was the worst part of being the public information officer for this, is knowing what we knew. I was able to report that we had arrested Gary Hilton. I let them know what we had found, and it was obviously not what they had hoped for. They held on to each other, cried.

That really broke my heart, because I knew that that positive part was done. We got the news yesterday, and that was devastating for them to hear it changed to recovery. But they are holding strong for Meredith. John Cagle looked at me. He said, go and find out where she's at. GBI agents transferred Hilton to the Union County Jail, where he was booked on a charge of kidnapping with bodily injury in connection with the disappearance of 24-year-old hiker

and Gwinnett County resident Meredith Emerson. Before I even introduced myself to him, I took pictures. He had a visible fingernail mark in the very point of his nose, like a defense wound. He had a broken hand that was crushed. And it looked like he was in a really good fight. He was on the floor laying on his side. He says that he was having a multiple sclerosis attack. And he said, I need my medicine.

I actually spoke with the doctor, and she said that he doesn't have multiple sclerosis, not even symptoms of it. He would not talk to us. I basically laid in the floor next to him and introduced myself. I said, hi, Mr. Hilton, my name's Clay Bridges. He cut me off. He said, I'm making no statements. I said, hi, Mr. Hilton, my name's Clay Bridges. He cut me off.

He said, I'm making no statements. I'm waiving no rights. I want to have an attorney present with me before any questioning. My primary mission was finding Meredith's body so that we could deliver her back to her family. There was nothing that he could say at that point that I could use against him in a court of law.

During the investigation, I had the opportunity to talk to Hilton's ex-wife, Sue, who was a former Stone Mountain police officer. She told me about a dog that he used to have back in the 90s named Ranger. He loved that dog more than anything or anybody in the whole world ever. She told me about a shrine that he had built for the dog in Stone Mountain. I didn't know where that place was, but I told him that I did.

I said, listen, I know where Ranger's located now. And I said, I want you to think about something. I want you to think about this girl and her family not knowing where she's laid to rest. And he just stared through me. I said, if you're not going to talk to me, I'm going to go and I'm going to dig Ranger up. And I'm going to move him to where you'll never know where he's at. He looked sharply at me and snarled the most terrible snarl and said, just put the needle in my arm, bitch. Once we collected the blood in the van, of course we submitted it to the crime lab.

We also submitted the bloody clothing we found in the dumpster at the quick trip. Our director Vernon Keenan had dedicated a DNA analyst to us for this case. We worked her to death because there was so much DNA. We were getting DNA from hundreds of samples of blood from the van, hundreds of samples of blood from both dumpsters. So she's pretty overwhelmed at that point with one case. We determined that Meredith Emerson's blood was both in the van and on the items from the Quick Trip dumpster. When I looked in his eyes, you know, he's just evil.

He's dangerous, but he knew where Meredith was. He was the only hope that we could find her quickly. I know I felt a lot of pressure. The next morning I get a call that he had been appointed a lawyer, and I went directly to the Union County Jail. I met with the lawyer, and I said, I want to know where Meredith Emerson is right now. Go talk to him, and I will wait right here. Finally, Hilton's lawyers came out and asked me if I would call the local prosecutor and ask him if he would consider taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for the whereabouts of Meredith.

For him to be promised that the state would not seek the death penalty for Meredith Emerson's murder, combined with the volume of evidence that we had in the case that was against him, that would be the best deal he was ever going to get. Because in the state of Georgia, you can convict somebody and not have the body. I think the Emersons understood what we were trying to do. We wanted to provide them with that closure and we were willing to give up seeking the death penalty in that situation because it's the right thing to do. And so the prosecutor in Union County agreed. I told the Hilton's lawyers that we would do that.

But they wanted him to sleep on it. I had to keep my composure and keep this thing going. I knew I was making a deal with the devil. But it was a deal that needed to be done. It would have made me feel like I was making a deal with the devil had I not known that I was looking at a certain two more shots and a death penalty with North Carolina and Florida. We had two more bites of the apple. Investigators from North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation

rolled into Georgia with boxes of case files, hoping the leads and all of the bags of evidence from the Meredith Emerson case could help crack bears. Early on in our case, when we just got organized up there on Blood Mountain, we didn't know anything. First time it really resonated with me was actually on the phone with you guys prior to this meeting. The ATM photo that y'all were sending us.

And then the ATM thing gave it a real criminal element, but we struggled to identify a suspect of any kind because bad people do bad things to each other. You know, he was living off the grid. Those are your hardest criminals to identify and capture. They have no ties to the community. They're just nomads. I mean, this guy lives in the forest.

You know, theft here, theft there. And he just seemed somehow to survive. We found maps of different national forest locations and campgrounds, both state and federal, that he kept with him. And we could trace some of his travels. He wasn't smart enough to take the evidence out of his van as a statement to the fact that he was so alone.

We knew that his van was going to be extremely important to the successful prosecution of Hilton in all these jurisdictions. If you look at the timelines, his hunger for killing was increasing. Mm-hmm. On January 7th, I got a call from the prosecutor who said that we had a deal. So myself, Director Keenan, and Clay Bridges traveled up to Union County.

Soon as we got there, they brought him into an office. I said, I understand that you wanna tell us where Meredith is. And when he said Dawson Forest, of course I knew exactly where that was. My name's William Thacker. I work for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. William Thacker, he was born and raised in these mountains. If there was ever anybody that I would trust to find things in Dawson Forest, it's William

Thacker. Dawson Forest is a unique piece of property. It is thick forest, several thousand acres. Very desolate, heavily wooded, and it had a surreal, eerie feeling, even if you weren't looking for a body. I asked Hilton if she was buried and he said no, that she was just covered with leaves and brush. He began to draw a map and he began to tell us details where she was. You know, you walk 120 feet down Shoal Creek Road.

It's basically a dirt road. There's nothing, nothing there. I asked him if she was intact, and he said the head would be missing. I asked him where her head would be, and he began to tell me, giving me more directions, which sounded like about a mile away. We wanted to find all the remains that night, but I was not convinced that we could find

both crime scenes. So we made the decision to carry him with us down to Dawson Forest. Clay Bridges traveled with him and his lawyer in a prison van from the sheriff's office, and I went ahead of them. Mr. Hilton? Yeah. Basically, I'm going to ask you aspects about what happened in this situation, okay? When we're transporting Hilton to Dawson Forest,

I took the opportunity to have him take me through the crime step by step. It is standard practice for the GBI to record all interviews with suspects. When did you come to the Reese trail and what day did you arrive? He had identified Meredith walking on the trail that January 1st. She was alone. She was hiking with a dog, which was good because he had a dog, she had a dog. It was a good way to meet up.

He struck up a conversation with her and they hiked along for a little bit. Then all of a sudden, she just took off. So he concealed himself in the woods. Hilton was very physically fit, working out all the time. He felt confident that he could overpower a woman. When he saw her coming back down the trail, he jumped out from behind a tree and showed her the bayonet and said, I just want your card and pin number. And then he said she grabbed the knife and took it away from me.

Hilton was not expecting Meredith to fight back like that. I knew that Meredith studied martial arts. She's not scared to fight. He said he went to the baton. And then she took that away from me. She kept fighting and fighting. Meredith almost got the best of it. He showed her the gun.

He said, I'll kill you right here. I'll put a bullet in you. He got control of her finally and carried her off of the trail. He tied her around a tree and told her that if she yelled out or screamed or anything, he was going to kill her dog. He had lost his baton.

He said she had lost several items there as well. And when he got back to the fight scene, he said there was somebody there already picking the stuff up. He kept thinking that the guy had found something, was calling law enforcement, so he had to get her out of there. He waited for a little bit longer and he moved her down the trail to the parking area. Got to her car and she was telling him that her car was under the seat. He got it and he told her to get in the van with her dog Ella.

He was going to kill her and kill the dog. He kept Meredith chained to the back of the driver's seat. He drove her to the back of the driver's seat. He drove her to the ATM. And she gave him the wrong PIN number. He said, she just kept giving me the wrong PIN number and convincing me that I was doing something wrong. And I believed her. So he left there and went to Gainesville.

She convinced him that he needed to try a different pen. The next day, he drives her to the Canton area where he attempts to utilize her ATM card again. Yeah, she sent me to that one four or five times. Each time I'd come back and tell her it wasn't working, she would convince me to go back and try again. He told her, look, I just want your PIN number. I don't want to hurt you.

Just give me your PIN number. She still gives him the wrong PIN number. She's thinking that's going to get us to her, that it's going to help get him captured. I got to ask you this. Was there any sexual activity between you two? No. And keep in mind that we will be able to find out.

But I'm asking you now. Yeah. There was? Yes, one time, first night. It wasn't forcible, but of course it was unwanted. Right, right. So it was rape, but it wasn't forcible. OK.

He says that once you've taken somebody, you either kill them or you get caught. She's gonna go out on her terms and not his. The night of January the 2nd, he drives her to Dawson Forest. They spend the entire day on January 3rd in Dawson Forest. day on January 3rd in Dawson Forest. On January the 4th, they're camping in Dawson Forest. Well, he leaves that campsite and is headed out and a DNR ranger meets him in the road. And Hilton throws his hand up and waves at him.

And he said he saw the guy hit his brakes. She was right there in the van behind me. It was that close. He says, they're gonna find us. So, you know, he panics, goes to a different location in Dawson Forest. He hangs out for a while at the van to make sure that the cops aren't coming. You know, once he realizes nobody's coming,

nobody's searching, he gets her out of the van. He says, I'm gonna let you go. I'm gonna tell you right now, there was never any plan to lock her in. And then he changed her to a tree. And she says, no, no, no, don't leave me. He says, look, I'm going to go get your stuff. I can't even think straight.

Got an iron bar, a jack handle. I walked up and struck her with the iron bar. And I kept striking her head off. So he takes her head to a different location within Dawson Forest for forensic purposes. So that, you know, it's harder to identify her. And he conceals it on top of the ground. He says, leaving it exposed to the elements gets rid of it faster. I think that he didn't do that to her because of forensic concerns. He did it because he liked it.

Mr. Hilton, I got one more question for you, and I'm going to do it in front of your car. I didn't want to ask you anything without him here. Was this difficult for you at all to do this? I know. Do you have feelings one way or the other about it? No, it was like a night of bodies. It was surrealistic. Of course it's surrealistic.

Removing a head is just unreal. Really? Unreal. They pull up in the van. John Cagle was already there. He had found her body, but not her head. Clay Bridges gets out of the vehicle, and I had never seen a look of shock

on somebody's face that was on Clay Bridges. bridge. By now we're deep into the forest. Walked him down a little road. He said, okay, stop here and walk up the bank and you'll find a dead tree on the ground. He said at one end of the tree there would be more clothes belonging to Meredith and at the other end would be her head. I began on my hands and knees spreading back leaves and brush as I went. And I found what looked to be a mound of leaves and I began to brush back those leaves. And there she was.

Just from the look on his face, I knew it was there. John asked me to secure that site while they did a quick search of the rest of the area. I sat down on the log and I did say a prayer for her family. But... I said, stay with Meredith. We're not gonna leave her. You can't forget something like that. I can still see her right now. I can still see the face right now. Uh, that stuff don't go away. I can still see the face right now.

That stuff don't go away. I walked down there, and she still got leaves and brush. That's when everything came flooding in, because you get to know this person almost as good as you know anybody. He's one of your friends or family. Then you listen to this guy almost brag about how efficient he is in capturing her and raping her and killing her. And I lost it. I just, I lost it.

I knew I had to call the Emersons. And at that time, the Emersons were staying with Doug and Peggy Bailey in Athens. And so I called Peggy, and I asked Peggy to let them know that we had found her and I hung up. But I realized I had not told them about the decapitation. So I called back and told Peggy that Meredith had been decapitated, that we had recovered all of her remains. There was silence on the phone, obviously.

And then she said she would, and she hung up, and I just started to cry. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit desjardins.com care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? We began to dismantle the command post and the search teams. All of the support staff at Vogel, the volunteers from the community that were feeding everybody, this was a big blow for our entire community. We would like to thank the untold number of friends and volunteers and family who helped search and support us all

and support all of us at this tragic and troubling time. The family had a memorial service for Meredith in Athens. Huge numbers of people that didn't even know her came. People were standing out front in the parking lot. They just wanted to be there, even though they couldn't get in. Deputies brought Gary Michael Hilton to the Dawson County Jail. Once we discovered Meredith's body in Dawson County,

we knew that that would be the venue where he would be charged with murder. And it's a different prosecutor and a different judicial circuit. On January 4th, 2008, Gary Michael Hilton did unlawfully and with malice of forethought cause the death of another human being, Meredith Hope Emerson, by blunt force trauma to the head. We charged him in Dawson County with one count of murder. I'm Lee Jarrah. I'm the District Attorney for the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. When the body was found, it became my case at that point. There was a chance that his confession might be thrown out because it was made under a promise of a more lenient sentence. of a more lenient sentence.

And I decided that the best course to take was simply to tell the defense attorney, fine, I'll honor this case. But he's got to accept the life sentence for the murder of Meredith Emerson, and he's gotta do it quick. I said, if you don't close it by January 31st, that deal made was off the table. Gary Hildy was convicted in Superior Court of murder on January 31st.

The father of Meredith Hope Emerson is Mr. David Emerson. He would like to address the court. The Emersons were given the opportunity to make a statement during the sentencing hearing. Your Honor, we stand before you as broken-hearted parents, having lost our beloved daughter to the vicious murder committed by Mr. Hilt. Our days are filled with tears, blank stares, and we constantly struggle through each day. You're Mrs. Susan Emerson, the mother of Meredith.

Your Honor, as far as I'm concerned, there is no such thing as justice in this case. Nothing will bring our daughter back. I have no doubt that her goodness and light intimidated the hell out of him. The truth is she is stronger and brighter than ever, while he has been diminished. You have any questions? No, Your Honor. This case came and went so fast, and that may be the reason that it's so hard to digest. It's almost like being below a dam when it busts and you get washed away and then it's

over with. We knew at that point that he was a serial killer, but we didn't know how vast his range was. Three different cases, three different national forests, and they're all hikers. That's commonality. And so we knew how dangerous he was. Did a background interview with him and we were doing that for Florida and North Carolina to assist law enforcement with their investigations. You go into an interrogation and you have to convince them that you feel the same way they do.

It's not easy to do, but it's something you train yourself to do. I was in Bravo, a rifle company, for a year before I went to Special Weapons. Just like most serial killers, Hugh Hilton likes to brag. He likes to talk in circles. Thought he was smarter than everybody. You get out of going to court by saying you're going in the army, you know? So yeah, I've got to be.

If Gary's talking, then he feels like he's in control. And he will talk about everything. I'm a sociopath, man. I'm like what they call an antisocial. That's the new name for it, an anti-social personality. I'm not some bum out there sleeping in my van. I'm a pro. Yeah, I've got to be.

The FBI profilers were watching the interview in an adjoining room. My name is Mary Ellen O'Toole. My name is Mary Ellen O'Toole. I was in law enforcement for four and a half years before I joined the FBI in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I specialize in psychopathy. Psychopaths, that's the new term for sociopath. These are people that have no conscience, they have no remorse for what they do. So we were working with GBI to

really develop a better understanding of Gary Hilton. They'll run it and they'll run it and they'll run it. And if they can catch it, they'll kill it. An alpha female... One of the 20 traits of psychopathy is grandiosity. And when you are grandiose, you'd have a tendency to want to dominate and to want to talk. People are enculturated in the program to only believe that life is valid if they're doing it with others.

My experience has been that the more you can get them talking, the more likely it is that they'll say something that is compromising. I know it. You know it. We're kind of hopeful that he might slip up and mention some of these other killings in North Carolina and Florida. But a wolf pack, if they detect another wolf from outside their pack...

Periodically, you'll see I leave the room to get more coffee or ask him if he needs anything. I'm actually going next door to ask them, you want to ask him anything else. I heard a wildlife policy... We focus on him. What's his history? What are his patterns? So your goal is to get a timeline and to see where he's been. And then you compare that to cases where people have been reported missing or there have been unidentified bodies. I grew up on racetracks all around the country.

I left Atlanta when I was six years old. Gary Hilton talked about his life growing up, traveling around the country with his mother and stepfather. Then a year later, she married my stepfather, and my mother moved to Tampa. He didn't appreciate the way his stepfather was treating his mother. And his stepfather had just made an offhand remark, and he said, well, just shoot me. And so he just shot her. Didn't kill him. After that he stayed a while in some kind of home down there in Florida.

Well you have to be careful because if you're dealing with someone who is conning and manipulative, somebody that's a pathological liar, you cannot take everything at face value. He talked about his experience in the military overseas. He was married several times and divorced. He bragged about staying in good physical shape, that he could run the trails. The only emotional attachment he had was to dogs. I'm not questioning that he didn't love dogs,

but they were a conduit to strike up a conversation with potential victims. He murdered Meredith, but he wouldn't harm Meredith at all. He said he was killing for money, that he needed gas, he needed food. I think that might have been an initial motivation, but once he took somebody, I think it shifted. I was like Meredith. I had $40 and several days' food.

I was going to kill somebody in that period of time. I got the dog, I got the van. I'm here. I'm famous anyway regardless. And I knew it, once you've taken someone, you either kill them or you get caught. The way that he treated his victims was unbelievably violent and just a stunning lack of empathy for a fellow human being. You know, I have a reason in society and I guess most people would

fit the bill as far as the victim goes. I think his ultimate goal was to take their life. The power that he felt, the thrill that he felt from taking their life. She's the man, she's the man, she's the man. It's extremely hard to sit within a short distance from him without putting your hands around his throat. It was about control. That's what a psychopath is about, controlling somebody.

Catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar. You do not become a psychopath at 61 years old. You become that in your late teens, early 20s. And I don't think you just wake up and start doing that. Nobody believes that. We got calls from all over the United States that had missing hikers or missing people near the National Forest. And that's why it was so important for us to try to backtrack on Hilton's movements. He picks his locations carefully.

He could drive around in his van to any location, really in the US, victimizing people, and no one would ever know. He spent years traveling around the Southeastern United States. Just how many more victims are out there? Where is John Bryant? It's just a huge unknown.

This is Deborah Roberts. Wild Crime was produced by Lone Wolf Media for ABC News Studios. Join us next week for the conclusion of Wild Crime Blood Mountain. You can also find the series streaming on Hulu along with episodes of 2020. Thanks for listening.