Dateline NBC - Mystery on Blood Mountain

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

In this Dateline classic, hiker Meredith Emerson goes missing on Georgia's Blood Mountain on New Year's Day 2008. Law enforcement officers become concerned after finding a police baton with some her possessions on a trail. Dateline NBC's Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on August 26, 2011.

I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline. The first thing that really got my attention is where she went missing. Blood Mountain. You know, you have to be aware of your surroundings all the time because you just never know. It started with a frightening horror flick from the 80s. The premise of the movie is we're going to take some women into the woods and then poof, they're going to be hunted down. Decades later, it was happening for real. A strange vanishing in the forest.

We began to get disturbing news. Your heart just broke. Then, another. The tire looked like it had been purposely flattened. If someone has her, she's afraid. Do we have a killer running around loose in the National Forest? Could this old movie hold the key to these new cases? This film where he's setting women out in the woods,

do you think that's the template for what he does? That's what's so chilling. If anybody could survive it, it was Meredith. And if anybody could fight, it was Meredith. Here's Dennis Murphy with Mystery on Blood Mountain. Our national forests are places of refuge for folks that want to get away from the city and have a sense of peace, commune with nature. But you have to be aware of your surroundings all the time because you just never know. The splendors of America's national parks and forest lands

are poems just waiting to be written by each new visitor. From the cathedrals of the Rockies to the quiet glades and old growth of the Appalachians. It's here in the parks we have the promise of stepping out of the hubbub of our chattering daily routine. That was the kind of serenity Meredith Emerson sought on a crisp New Year's Day in the North Georgia mountains. Not more than foothills, really, for a young woman who loved to trail climb her native Rockies.

It was 2008 as the young sales assistant set out from Beaufort, Georgia with her dog Ella. Her roomie, Julia Karrenbauer from college days, had slept in that morning. She had left me a note, just a little note on a chalkboard. Took Ella, went hiking. Not where, not when, not when I'm going to be back. So it wasn't really anything, you know, out of the ordinary. Meredith, like Rumi Julia, was a dog person. She doted on Ella, her black lab mix, since finding her at a rescue shelter. She had two dogs growing up and she wanted one of her own. And so she just kind of talked about it and researched what she wanted and definitely wanted to rescue a dog.

And finally found one, went out, loved her, brought her home, and it really was the light of her life. Julia, the roommate, didn't know that Meredith and Ella were heading 40 miles north to Blood Mountain in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Despite the creepy teen slasher movie name, Blood Mountain is one of the most popular places to hike in the southeast. The famous Appalachian Trail to Maine takes off from just south of here. Back in Beaufort, the roommate spent her New Year's Day with friends and did notice that Meredith hadn't come home until the next morning, a back-to-work day.

She would leave Ella in my room, and I would take care of her in the morning. And I'm like, oh, Ella's not here. That was a little strange to me, and I called her cell phone, and I went straight to voicemail, and kind of thought maybe she was at work. When did you become anxious, Jillian? When I got to work. She worked with a good friend of ours, and the friend called me and said, Meredith didn't show up for work. And Meredith was always at work.

She was the first one at work. Reliable Meredith wasn't where she was supposed to be. Julia called the sheriff's office. Then she and some of Meredith's other friends assembled a search party. Maybe she'd twisted her ankle hiking and taken a tumble. They started with that note on the chalkboard. Do you know where I'm going hiking would naturally be? We had a few ideas.

We took some books that she had and some places that she highlighted and kind of just started driving. The friends split up, looking for Meredith's car at trailheads she'd marked in her hiking guides. There was four of us in the car. We were trying to call park rangers and anybody that may have seen her or her car. And then a friend of hers found her car, called us, and said, I found it, and there was snow on it. The car was in a parking area at the base of Blood Mountain.

And we drove as fast as we could there and just knew, you know, just that sinking feeling when you first see it. The friends raced up the Blood Mountain feeder path to the Appalachian Trail, but no trace of Meredith or Ella. So by nightfall, the search became all the more urgent as a cold front moved in and temperatures on Blood Mountain plunged below zero. At daybreak, Thursday now, the friends were joined by deputies from the local sheriff's

office. John Cagle, just shy of retirement, was the agent in charge for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the state's top cops. We received a request from a local agency to help with a missing hiker. The case of the hiker missing for two days didn't look good to the seasoned detective because of some disturbing items that had been recovered on the trail. What were the things that were found out in that trail area that you thought were alarming? A couple of water bottles, a dog leash, and a police expandable baton. This is a piece of professional gear. It is. It's just a metal pipe that is expandable.

You see almost every uniformed police officer in the nation carrying these things. Did those artifacts, the water bottle, the baton, found together tell you a story at all or suggest something ominous? Yes. We found those items in an area where the ground had appeared to have been disturbed. Then we became concerned that possibly a struggle took place there meredith's water bottles ella's leash and signs of a struggle nothing about the scene looked good to the veteran lawman especially that expandable police baton that was found he called in help we eventually partnered with over 18 or 19 police agencies to help with the search for Meredith. Her friends were naturally beside themselves. You know, your heart just broke because you think something happened.

Somebody had a weapon and her stuff was there. So you're thinking at the very least she's been abducted. Yep, and it was so hard because it wasn't something that we could talk about until we could actually prove that. The cops commandeered a park building as headquarters. We began getting information pretty quickly. From people who had hiked the trails that day? Right. Remembered her?

Remembered her. And we began to get disturbing news of a strange-looking individual with Meredith, who also had a dog. Thumbnail description, this other person, what were you hearing? Strange-looking, just a wiry kind of guy. Older guy? Older guy. had a dog. Thumbnail description. This other person, what were you hearing? Strange looking, just a wiry kind of guy. Older guy? Older guy. We even developed a vehicle description, a white van. The lead on the van came from this photo taken by a hiker in the Blood Mountain parking lot the night before Meredith Emerson went missing. A Be On The the lookout advisory went out for the guy driving a white van accompanied by his reddish dog. It is going to be a white male between the ages of 50 and 60 years old, approximately 160 pounds. It was described as he has bad dental. He had a dark reddish colored retriever. We put out that information through the media in Atlanta

and actually got a call from someone who said, I think I know who this is. When we return, this mysterious stranger would prove to be stranger than anyone expected. I just turned white. I felt the blood leave my face. Meredith Emerson had not been the only one missing in the forest. If she's still alive and someone has her, she's afraid. Meredith Emerson and her lab Ella were two days missing on Georgia's Blood Mountain early in a freezing January of 2008. Her friends had alerted the authorities and people from all over greater Atlanta were scouring the hiking trails. So many volunteered, they couldn't use all of them.

People just showed up and just said, I have a daughter who likes to hike, I have a sister who could have been Meredith easily, and they just volunteer their time. But the search in the National Forest had become something more ominous than a lost hiker incident. Meredith had been last seen in the company of an unsavory-looking stranger, and law enforcement was about to identify him. The tip came from John Tabor, an Atlanta businessman. He was watching the continuing news coverage of missing Meredith during his morning workout. When they started giving the description of the person

of interest, my ears really perked up. I think I just turned white at one point. I felt the blood leave my face. Tabor, the businessman, thought, this has got to be Gary Hilton. Hilton was a guy who'd worked on and off for him for years, first as a telemarketer, then as an independent contractor in a siding business. He even lived for a while in this little house that Tabor owned. What was the thought that was taking shape as you're listening to this? The first thing that really got my attention is where the event happened, where she went missing.

Blood Mountain. I knew that was a place he liked to hang out, that he had a dog with him, and most importantly was the evidence that they had found at the scene. I knew Hilton always had an expandable police baton with him. The tip and a name quickly led to a Georgia driver's license for 61-year-old Gary Michael Hilton. Investigators showed the photo to hikers who ID'd him as the scruffy mystery man seen with Meredith on Blood Mountain.

The manhunt was on. We put that name and face out. And it's plastered all over the metro Atlanta area. It is. The APB went well beyond the Georgia border. Hilton's name and picture were all over the regional news. Light bulbs began going off to the south around Tallahassee, Florida's capital, when people there saw his photo on TV.

The search for Gary Hilton was about to widen. The mystery man, person of interest in the Meredith Emerson case, looked familiar to people who thought they'd seen him just about the time they'd learned of the sad case of another woman who'd gone missing, Cheryl Dunlap, a nurse and mother. When Cheryl didn't turn up for church one December Sunday in 2007 and then missed her Sunday school class, red flags went up. Next door neighbor and friend Tanya Land. Sunday morning at church, I turned around and looked at her usual spot, and she wasn't there. And she didn't teach her class?

TANYA LAND, She didn't. And immediately we knew something was wrong, because that's just not like her. Everyone who knew her agreed. Forty-six-year-old Cheryl was reliable, a woman solid in her faith and set in her habits. Her fellow nurse, friend and prayer partner, Laura Walker. She always liked to hear what we call our praise reports, like something good that happened with a patient or a co-worker. When Monday morning rolled around and Tanya still hadn't been able to reach Cheryl,

she walked next door. I went back down to her house and saw that the dog was at the house, but the car was gone, so I called her office several times and they hadn't seen her. Cheryl's daughter-in-law, Tabitha, called the sheriff's office to report her missing. When Tanya said she didn't show up for work, I knew that there was a problem. After that missing persons report was filed, the friends heard about a car that looked like Cheryl's, spotted on the side of the highway leading into Tallahassee. They headed up there.

It was Cheryl's car, and immediately they sent a deputy up there and just took over from that point. Are you apprehensive? Yeah, I was very uneasy. I knew that there was something wrong. Cheryl's car was parked well off the highway. Florida Department of Law Enforcement Agent Annie White... It was pretty clear from the beginning that that's not some place that she would have parked it,

as well as the tire looked like it had been purposely flattened on the vehicle. An abandoned car, a slashed tire. Lord, where is she? Searchers, law enforcement, volunteers began fanning out into the adjacent 57,000-acre Apalachicola National Forest, all of them with dread in their hearts. I would be devastated if something like this happened to my family, and so that's why I want to be out here and try to help as much as I can. There were massive searches in town.

Thousands of people showed up to comb the woods looking for her. It was clear very early on that this was unusual for her. She would not have gotten in the car with someone. She just was not the person who would have disappeared. Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Jennifer Portman covered the story. We're talking about North Florida in the Panhandle area. People are bound by their schools, by their family, by their churches. And Sunday school teachers with children and a grandchild don't go missing.

That's exactly right. Her friends and family were as baffled as the police by Cheryl's disappearance. Law enforcement was trying to put the pieces together. When they looked into Cheryl's background, nothing jumped out at them. Two sons, a long, settled divorce, no boyfriends. Then, on Tuesday, four days after she was last seen, the cops got her bank records. Something was up. We found where some ATM activity had occurred in Leon County. So that's a big break.

Yes, sir. And then upon viewing that video in Leon County, it was clear it was not her. This was a male subject using her card. He was disguising his face. So we knew at that point definitely that it was probably not going to be a good outcome for Ms. Dunlap. The disguised man made three separate withdrawals of $700.

The ATM he tapped was in downtown Tallahassee near the campus of the State U, miles from where Cheryl's car was found. So you and the team stake out the ATM machine? We stayed there several days, day and night, watching the ATM, and he never came back to that one. The search for Cheryl stretched on for weeks. A lot of us went out on our own and searched the woods and went to places we thought, you know, she could possibly be.

But the more time goes on, inevitably, the fear sinks in. Yeah, just sleepless nights, just because I'm thinking if she's still alive and someone has her, she's afraid. Mid-December, two weeks after Cheryl disappeared, some hunters out training their dogs in the National Forest noticed a vulture circling in the sky above them. And went to check it out and discover the body. A female body missing its head and hands, a grisly fact not released at the time.

You'd think that this is someone trying to conceal the identity. Very much. It took a DNA sample from her toothbrush to identify the remains as those of Cheryl Dunlap. Someone called and said, Laura, they found a body. We pulled over on the side of the road and just, you know, just... That was it, huh? Yeah. The awareness was it, huh? Yeah. The awareness was there.

It was surreal. You know, the thing you hear about in movies. It was so close to home that in our small community that something like this could happen. Now with cops in Florida looking hard at Gary Hilton in the Dunlap murder, and counterparts in Georgia convinced that he'd taken Meredith Emerson, authorities started hearing about yet another National Forest Homicide, this one in North Carolina. So then you've got to be saying to all your team of investigators, what do we have here? That's right. And so now we're really wondering who we have here, and where is he? And more importantly, where's Meredith?

Coming up... Do we have a killer running around loose in the National Forest? Concern for Meredith deepens, but her friends know something that man on the mountain couldn't. A blue belt in Aikido and a blue belt in Judo. If anybody could survive it, it was Meredith. When Dateline Continues. Where was Meredith Hope Emerson?

Could she still be alive somewhere out there in Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest? And did the 24-year-old hiker have a prayer if she were indeed in the clutches of mystery man Gary Hilton? The search on Blood Mountain went into a third day. We had the hope. I mean, we were there from sunup to sundown plus. I mean, we were there through the night and the cold and all the searchers. But if anybody could survive it, it was Meredith. And if anybody could fight somebody like that, it was Meredith. Meredith's parents had flown in from Colorado and joined the searchers. Peggy Bailey, a family friend, was their spokeswoman. Let me tell you something. Meredith Emerson could do anything. She is feisty. She is strong. She's

tiny and petite, 120 pounds. But let me tell you, I have every hope that if anybody could, she can run those mountains. She's a strong person. If anybody can survive this, she can. The missing woman was deceptively strong, not just an experienced hiker, but an accomplished martial arts enthusiast as well. A blue belt in Aikido and a blue belt in Judo. So take her on at your peril. Absolutely. I mean, she would fight you and she would actually come home and tell me, you know, I threw this 220 pound man. I beat him up today in class. By now, with half of Georgia looking for this Gary Hilton, authorities outside Tallahassee, Florida to the south were wondering about his connections with the missing woman there.

It was then that the detectives got solid information about another killing in a national forest. We were in our command post, and a detective walked in and said that they had a case. It took place in North Carolina involving a husband and wife, that the wife had been murdered in the Pisgah National Forest. That detective was working an unsolved case that had cops in North Carolina bewildered. David Mahoney is sheriff of Transylvania County, a beautiful place with an ominous name that has nothing to do with fangs dripping blood. We have some wonderful attractions here. All those things along with the slower pace of life

is what brings folks and keeps folks here. Folks like John and Irene Bryant, who after raising a family, retired here far from the brutal winters of upstate New York and close to the hiking trails they loved. Holly Bryant is the youngest of their four children. They love the outdoors. When they were first married, they used to go out hiking in the mountains. They would take us hiking. And as they got older, they'd take the grandchildren out hiking, too. The Bryants had a lifetime of outdoors experience, had hiked all over the world. My father completed the Appalachian Trail, which is 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. They traveled extensively to New Zealand and all through Europe, all through America,

especially the southwestern and northwestern United States. In late October, two months before Meredith Emerson disappeared, the couple set off on a day hike in the 500,000-acre Pisgah National Forest. No one heard from them for two weeks. They always let us know if they were going on one of their many trips, so it was totally unlike them to just disappear. Their son Bob flew in from Texas. The newspapers were around the doorstep. He broke into the home and found their breakfast was still out on the table but obviously many days old and he knew something was terribly wrong.

My brother searched. He went up and down every little back road throughout the park. He found their car at a trailhead in the National Forest. By then Sheriff Mahoney's office was involved. The rescue squad began a search assuming that there had been some medical problem or some illness that had fallen upon them. In my heart, I knew that wasn't the case. There was just no way they would both be hurt like that. They were very, very experienced. Unfortunately, it was not very long after we began that search that we discovered the body of Ms. Bryant. It was a sense of finality.

I knew she was gone already, but that little glimmer, particle of hope, was extinguished when they found her body. Irene Bryant's remains were located 30 yards from where her son had come upon the car. She had been bludgeoned to death, but where was the husband? We began an even more extensive search for Mr. Bryant. That search really involved the entire area of the Pisgah National Forest. Within hours of discovering Irene Bryant's body, detectives learned $300 had been withdrawn from the Bryant's accounts using an ATM card in Duxtown, Tennessee.

They had a picture from the machine. A man that had concealed his head and face that was able to successfully use the Bryant's ATM. Whoever was making the withdrawal, it wasn't 79-year-old John Bryant. But time and geography were working against the lawmen. We spent weeks everywhere in that entire area. We did everything from vehicle patrol, ATV patrolling, horseback, on foot, everywhere. John Bryant had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. The FBI posted a $10,000 reward for information, but the Bryant case went cold until Meredith Emerson loomed on the lawman's radar. Our lead investigator began following that case, and immediately there were some similarities that we saw between the two cases.

Both of these incidents occurred on Forest Service land. We really felt like that the two were probably connected. We may go years without a homicide. This was very, very different. Do we have a killer running around loose in the National Forest? In Georgia, the searchers looking for Meredith Emerson and her dog Ella on Blood Mountain were hoping and praying that they weren't dealing with a homicide. Do everything we can do to make sure that if she's up there that we get her out of there, get her out of there safely. If she's not up there, to do everything we can do to eliminate that as a possibility

and then continue the investigation from there. Georgia authorities were compositing a profile of Gary Hilton who was starting to look like a person of interest not only in the Meredith Emerson disappearance case, but in at least two unsolved murders in the National Forest. Their findings were deeply troubling. Coming up, might a movie hold the key to this case? The premise of the movie is we're going to take some women into the woods and then poof, they're going to be hunted down. Is Gary involved in this?

Gary is helping me throughout. On Blood Mountain, there was still no trace of Meredith Emerson. Her friend Julia and the other searchers found no news to be good news. I think it might be a good thing that, you know, she might be somewhere warm, their dog, you know, and somebody might just have her or something like that. Kind of makes me feel a little better knowing that we haven't found anything here yet. While hundreds of volunteers and deputies scoured the forest for clues,

detectives were trying to get a handle on Gary Hilton, the suspect in her disappearance, and who was by now a person of interest in at least two murders. John Tabor, Hilton's former boss, gave investigators what background he had on his eccentric loaner employee. Tabor had known him for nearly a decade. The only interest that he had in life seemed to be his dog and going out camping with his dog for extended periods of time in the wilderness. Hilton's dog, Dandy, had been at his side since he started working for Tabor.

The former boss had come to regard Hilton as a hair-triggered nutcase. He often told stories of going to parks with his dog, and he would end up in altercations with other pet owners. It was always the same story. He would reprimand the other dog owner's behavior. Then the other dog owner would get angry at him and verbally or physically assault him. So he was always the victim. For the first nine years, Hilton worked at his siding business.

Tabor recalled him as a good employee. Then something seemed to snap. Things started to change quite dramatically starting in 2007. And what happened then? He just wasn't doing any work. I decided to go and just see what was going on over there. It was a very bizarre scene. How so?

His physical appearance was quite different. He immediately smiled to show that he was missing several teeth. And he went on to explain that he had actually taken a pair of pliers and removed some of his teeth. And he said he enjoyed doing that because it frightened people. Tabor fired Hilton, who then turned around and claimed Tabor owed him money. By mid-summer 2007, the siding guy said

he feared for his safety. He finally threatened to kill me. I mean, he made it very clear. Tabor took those threats seriously. I immediately armed myself with a Glock 9mm and an AR-15 assault rifle. Started driving rental cars so he wouldn't know what vehicle I was in. He was your boogeyman.

Absolutely. It was a terrifying ordeal not to know what was going to happen. To pull in your driveway and have someone jump out of the bushes and maybe assassinate you. When the former boss finally went to the police with his story, it seemed to do the trick. Within a day or two, he had packed up all of his belongings and moved on. Put all his stuff in the van and took off? Yes. John Tabor was relieved to see Hilton in his rearview mirror, but he was nonetheless puzzled by the change that had come over the man.

When you're around someone for nearly 10 years and it's uneventful, there's nothing that ever happens that suggests a demonic, violent personality that apparently materialized somehow. Tabor had part of the Gary Hilton picture. A veteran Atlanta criminal defense lawyer added more. Sam Rayl had defended Hilton years back on some minorish beefs. We did a jury trial on a drug case possession. He was accused on a misdemeanor of acting like a charity, and he really wasn't a charity. He raised money to help the little children.

Of course, he pocketed it. Did he have a job to speak of or anything that he did professionally? His job was scamming. That's what he did, mostly. You knew him as con man, basically. Right. He was a little con. And when he got tripped up, he'd go call on you. He did.

Rael, the lawyer, wears two hats. He's also a movie producer. Not Hollywood, but more of the release direct-to-video school. This is his latest release. Robert, I can't do that! Don't do it! Shoot me, Rael! Shoot me! Horror, gory. What's the genre't do it. Shoot me, Neil. Shoot me!

Horror, gory. What's the genre? Try not to make it gory, but at the end of the day, a little blood, a little sex, a little violence can't hurt. As it turned out, cops on the Meredith Emerson case were particularly interested in Rayl's first movie, Deadly Run. He made it back in 1985 with the assistance of his scam artist client, Gary Hilton. The premise of the movie is that we're going to take some women into the woods, then we're going to befriend those women, and then poof, they're going to be hunted down and killed. Is Gary involved in this in the sense of like a script writer or anything that formal? and then poof, they're going to be hunted down and killed.

Is Gary involved in this in the sense of like a script writer or anything that formal? Gary is helping me throughout and then helping the star figure out how to be a serial killer. These are ideas you guys are knocking around. Gary has a dark side sometimes here and there. He wants to get involved in the movie, but he wants to make it darker and more horrible. He'd like to have more blood, more gore, have rape, have more killings, things like that. I thought we toned it down and made a better movie. He suggested that we do it up in the woods. He helped me find some of the locations. We found the cabin. That cabin used in the movie happened to be in the Chattahoochee National Forest, just north of where Meredith Emerson went missing.

He's around the table as you guys collaborate on this film. How's he behaving around your group of movie people? When the movie was being made, he's animated, but interesting. So he's not a loner. No, he's a loner. He's a psychopath. He's a sociopath. He's always trying to get one step ahead of the law. He's always doing something a little bit wrong. But all my clients, they do that too. It sounds like you're talking about kind of a charming guy.

He was charming. He was personable. He was a fellow that you'd want to meet. Which are all skills you need to be a successful con man, if you're going to keep an edge. But the lawyer and movie producer had a falling out with Hilton over, of all things, a dog. Dogs seemed to be important to him. Dogs were very important to him. He wound up with my dog. What do you mean? I had a dog, a nice little golden retriever. We had him in the backyard. All of a sudden, I come back one day, the dog is gone. Of course, I'm very upset about it. Then I find out that Gary took the dog. He stole your dog?

Yeah. As their profile of Hilton became clearer and became more troubling, investigators looking for him and Meredith were desperate for any lead on his whereabouts. And they were about to get one. I answered my cell phone and I heard his voice. Couldn't believe it. Coming up, a trap is set to lure Gary Hilton from the hiding spot. He's trying to play it cool. And a dramatic new lead. Could it lead police to Meredith? She could be alive, and we just can't let up.

When Dateline continues. Police were convinced the missing hiker Meredith Emerson was under the control of Gary Hilton somewhere in North Georgia. The more they learned about the survivalist oddball who was a person of interest in two murders in National Forest elsewhere, the more they feared for her. A friend of Meredith's family appealed directly to Hilton. I hope that if he realized that this would be helpful, that his heart would be softened and turned to coming forward with information. So please, please have the courage to come forward. We need you. Their next lead, the big one, came from an unlikely source, the suspect himself.

Three days into Merida's disappearance, Gary Hilton called his old boss, Tabor. I answered my cell phone and I heard his voice. Couldn't believe it. He pretended and acted as though nothing was wrong. So he didn't let on to you that he was the subject of a manhunt? No, absolutely not. He acted as though he knew nothing about it, which apparently was the case. He apparently had no idea. Startled but thinking fast, Tabor tried to lure Hilton to an agreed-upon location with a promise of money. I was trying to play it cool as though I didn't know anything about what was going on. I told him that I would give him a check for $800, and we discussed a place to leave the check. Were you baiting that place that he knew to come and show up?

Well, it was certainly my objective to get him to a place where authorities could apprehend him. The trap was set at a building owned by Tabor where Hilton had lived for a while. The SWAT team was dispatched. Would Hilton fall for the pick-up-some-money ruse? And what about the missing woman? In your gut, did you think Meredith was still alive? You know, Meredith's name was Meredith Hope Emerson, and we all hoped that she was alive. As the manhunt continued, there was a glimmer of hope. Friday morning, four days after Meredith vanished, the U.S.

Marshal Service traced activity on Meredith's bank cards. The card was used at a local bank, you know, 15 miles from the abduction site, and then again 50 miles south of the abduction site, and then the next day, 80 miles. These were attempts where no money was taken. Which suggests what? Suggested that Meredith wouldn't give him the right pen. Which also suggests maybe she's still alive. That's right.

Investigators, meanwhile, had been able to trace the phone Gary Hilton used earlier to call his old boss, John Tabor, who'd set that trap for him. That call was made from a restaurant about 50 miles from Blood Mountain. Hilton, it seemed, was moving south towards Atlanta. Metro PD SWAT concealed themselves in and near Tabor's building. That was the drop point where his old boss had promised Hilton he'd leave him $800. You stake out the location, you're surveilling it, and?

He didn't show. No show? No show. We're still looking and wondering where could this guy be? Now we have him 50 miles from Blood Mountain. The tip line kept ringing with leads good and bad. Then four days in, a Friday afternoon, a shopper called to say that she'd found a black lab mix wandering around a

supermarket parking lot. I was surprised to see any dog running loose in the parking lot and then to find out that it's the one that Meredith was her dog was, you know, a pretty big surprise and a shock. She took the dog to an animal clinic where the vet was able to read an identity chip implanted in her. Sure enough, it was Ella. But where was her owner, Meredith? Now events were moving quickly, right away came another tip. We get a call from a female acquaintance of Hilton stating that she had just hung up the

phone. He had called her and wanted money, and she commented that she said, don't you know the world's looking for you? And he hung up. Hilton called from a pay phone at a convenience store near where Meredith's dog had turned up. You have a living pet, a missing owner,

and a phone which is somewhere in the vicinity of this guy you believe is her abductor. While the agents are searching in an area of the convenience store, they look in a dumpster. And it was in the dumpster we found Meredith's identification or purse, bags of bloody clothing. And at that point, we felt like this was not going to turn out as we'd hoped. Then, around 8 that night, still Friday, not far from where Tabor had set the trap for Hilton, more than one eagle-eyed citizen noticed a man emptying a white van.

At the gas station up here, there's a white van and a red dog laundering around. Calls lit up 911. This one lasted for 12 minutes. The person of interest in that missing woman case is at this Chevron gas station on Ashford, Dunwoody. The man is there? The van is here. The dog is here, the red dog. And I saw the man's face. And I've been watching the news, and I know it's him.

I know it's him. He's emptying all this stuff out of his van. He's looking around like he's as guilty as sin. I can go take him down if you want. No, stay right there. Here comes the cops. Yes. You sleep there?

They got him now. Here. Two cruisers pulled up on him. Two of the cabs trying to save him. Gary Hilton was under arrest. Detectives swarmed over the filthy Astrovan and inventoried his possessions looking for any clue to Meredith's fate. A GBI spokesman updated the media. It's a missing persons investigation right now, and that's how we're pursuing it.

The important key might be any knowledge that Mr. Hilton has. Take me inside your situation room when you get the news that Atlanta's got him. We're very pleased with the fact that now we have this man, but we can't lose sight of the fact we don't have Meredith yet, and the possibility that she could be alive, and we just can't let up. And so we attempt to interview him. He refuses. In no statements, I'm waiving no rights. I want an attorney appointed to represent me.

I want to speak with that attorney, and I want that attorney present during questioning. Cops had their man, but not Meredith. Could they crack him, get from him the story of what had happened in the National Forest? In your decades of law enforcement agent, have you ever had a session of interviews like this one? No. No.

He was very straightforward and was very nonchalant. Saturday morning, five days after Meredith Emerson vanished on Blood Mountain, Gary Hilton was charged with a crime against her, kidnapping with bodily injury. Hilton was in custody, but he was uncooperative, zipped up, giving his interrogators nothing on Meredith's whereabouts and what he'd done with her.

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 and that we will be finding her and that she will safely come home to us. The searchers in the field, meanwhile, shifted their focus from Blood Mountain to these woods called Dawson Forest, about 30 miles to the south. It was from around here that Hilton had made those phone calls to his ex-boss. Remember, by then, Merida's bloody clothing had been retrieved from a dumpster. Not a good sign

at all. But as long as there was the most remote chance that she was still alive, the search was going to continue. But lead agent John Cagle knew these vast woodlands very well, and he knew the odds of finding needles and haystacks. As he saw it, he had only one option, repugnant as it was, and that was to cut a deal with Gary Hilton. Sunday morning, we got him a lawyer, and I went up and had a talk with our lawyer and essentially laid out our case. Hilton's lawyer then conferred with his client. The district attorney was brought into the loop and a deal went down. Hilton would plead guilty to murder because that is what it had been.

And then he said he'd lead investigators to Meredith's body in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. Nobody in law enforcement likes to make deals without holding their nose. We had to do it. And we needed to find Meredith. And given the circumstances, I would do the same thing now. So I'm guessing, agent, the situation in your interview room is, Gary, you told us what you did to her. Now, where'd you put her? Yes. And he told us.

A manacled Hilton was loaded into a vehicle, and he led lawmen down a trail in Dawson Forest. You said the body is down there on the left, how far off the road? The body will be approximately 40 yards or 120 feet. It's covered by leaves and brush. The head will be missing. Where's the head? The only reason, by the way, the head was removed was forensically. Yeah, right. A clearly shaken Agent Cagle told Atlanta about the tragic outcome. At approximately 7 30 this evening, the body of Meredith Emerson was discovered in a wooded area.

The specific information given as to the location of the body was given to me by Gary Hilton. The kidnapping charge was anteed up. Mr. Hilton is being charged with one count of murder of Meredith Emerson. He has been taken into custody and brought to our detention center where he's been housed. In your decades of law enforcement, Agent, have you ever had a session of interviews like this one? No. No, he was very straightforward and was very nonchalant about the whole thing. So you get down to the point where, well, like Meredith, I had $40 money and several days food. I was going to have to kill somebody in that period of time. After his initial confession, Gary Hilton, the man of stony silence, became a chatterbox, spilling out a story that sickened detectives

who thought they'd heard everything. He began with Meredith's abduction here on a hiking trail on Blood Mountain. He said that he ambushed Meredith and her dog Ella as she came down the trail. It was a struggle. And Meredith, with her martial arts skills, as Hilton tells it, very nearly got the better of him. Twice she disarmed him, first taking away his knife and then his police baton. I lost control of both of them, both the knife and the bat. She was real quick with her hands and had no hesitation about grabbing weapons and everything. And not only that, she was hard to subdue. She fought like hell, man.

Hilton said they scrapped so hard they tumbled off the trail, separated by a few yards now from that dropped police baton and Meredith's water bottles, the dog's leash. Objects, importantly, very soon to be recovered. Meredith, meanwhile, kept right on Hilton. Started fighting again, and I had to fight her again for several minutes. And her doing that is what got me caught, because if I had been back to the crime scene just a few minutes sooner, just several minutes sooner, I would have beat those people that found the bat,

and I would have picked it up. He talks about fighting with Meredith, that she almost took him. I don't really believe everything that he says, but that part I believe. There's no doubt that she fought. And, you know, maybe it's a little bit that kind of gives you a little smirk to know that, you know, she almost got him. She gave him a run for his money, and I'm sure that he may have thought I should have maybe chosen somebody else. Eventually, Hilton wore Meredith down.

By then, they were way off the main trail. Hilton tied his captive to a tree and then doubled back to that site where he'd been stripped of his weapons. The bayonet was gone, lost on the forest floor, and a hiker had already picked up the police baton. Hilton returned to Meredith. And I told her that I had a gun and that, you know, I'm just going to shoot her ass down. Skirting the main trail, Hilton led Meredith back to his van in the trailhead parking area. There, he secured her with chains in the back of his vehicle and then proceeded to steal her bank cards from beneath the front seat of her car. Hilton drove off, heading 12 miles north to an ATM in Blairsville, Georgia.

He told detectives Meredith had given him her pin numbers back on Blood Mountain. Did Meredith suspect it would be all over for her if she gave him the correct numbers? In any case, she'd given him bad information. He's still telling me it's going to work. It's going to work. It must be a long thing. Hilton next tried to use Meredith's cards at a bank 50 miles south in Gainesville, Georgia. Again, no dice. He made camp that night with his captive in a remote spot in the forest. The next morning, Hilton attempted to use Meredith's bank cards still again at an ATM in Canton, Georgia. Nothing.

They returned to his hidden campsite. He held Meredith all together in the woods for four days. And what nature of man is Gary Hilton? Well, listen to the confession tapes to what he says about Meredith's dog, Ella. Hilton says he knew the pet had that identifying chip when he let the dog go in the supermarket parking lot. If I wanted to ensure that no one would associate the dog with her, I would have killed the dog. But there's no way I could do that. He was too much of a softie to kill the dog, as he explained it.

But poor Meredith, Ella's owner, never had a chance. I thought that she was dead from the beginning. Yeah, she was. She was because I just told you, once you've done it, you're either going to kill her or get caught.

There's no other solution. And that sounds cold and cruel. Yeah, it was. In his unbelievably cold recollection of the crime, Hilton said he told

Meredith he was going to let her go after four days of captivity. We're packing up and telling her I'm taking her and I'm going to release her.

Instead, Hilton went to the van, came back with a tire iron, and bludgeoned Meredith Emerson to death. In an attempt to thwart investigators, he decapitated and poured bleach over the body. This is gruesome beyond belief. Yes. For what reason?

You know, I don't know. Hilton had confessed to killing Meredith Emerson. But what about those other cases in the National Forest? A woman in Florida, the elderly couple in North Carolina. He would not talk about anybody to us other than Meredith. Because you have to wonder when the switch was thrown in this man. I know. I know. How many decades maybe does this go back?

I don't know. Do people just wake up when they're 61 and start to do these kinds of crimes the way he did them? And, you know, I would think not. Coming up, how a terrifying movie fantasy morphed into real life. Do you think that's the template for what he does decades later? That's what's so chilling. When Dateline continues. Continuing with our story, Meredith Emerson went for a hike with her dog on Blood Mountain in the Chattahoochee National Forest, then suddenly vanished.

Your heart just broke. We became concerned that possibly a struggle took place. Days later, a survivalist named Gary Hilton confessed to her murder. He talks about fighting with Meredith, that she almost took him. She almost got him. She gave him a run for his money. Investigators fear there are more victims. Could this old movie hold the key to these other cases?

Are there scenes that were reenacted? There's definitely a lot of similarities. That's what's so chilling. Here again is Dennis Murphy. Meredith Emerson went missing New Year's Day. Less than a month later, Gary Michael Hilton appeared Meredith Emerson went missing New Year's Day. Less than a month later, Gary Michael Hilton appeared in a Georgia courtroom and pleaded guilty to her murder.

Meredith's parents were there. Her mother, Susan, addressed Hilton. I believe he is nothing more than a bully and a weak-minded coward who preys on others. He fancies himself a survivalist. While anyone can see he's a scared little man on the run. The state honored the deal it made with the killer, no death penalty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Hilton admitted nothing beyond the Emerson murder.

This is the first time you've done anything like this before. I'll let my attorney answer. By now, investigators from a half dozen southeastern states, as well as FBI profilers, were rummaging through Hilton's past. By the time he was captured, he wasn't much more than a vagrant in a van, but his past was more complex. As an Army veteran, Hilton had earned an associate's college degree, gotten a private pilot's license on the GI Bill, and been married three times before the wheels apparently came off. True crime author Fred Rosen has written more than 25 books, including Trails of Death, about Hilton.

To underestimate him is foolish. This is a very dangerous person. According to Rosen, he was shaped by a number of factors. Hilton, who never knew his biological father, was raised by his mother and a stepfather, a horse trainer from Argentina. Do juvenile authorities run into young Gary Hilton along the way? When Gary is 14 years old, he takes a gun and he shoots his stepfather. He doesn't kill him, but he wounds him very severely. And he's institutionalized.

They put him in a mental hospital out in Miami. Hilton went to high school in Hialeah, Florida, played in a rock band, and eventually joined the Army. Akaki Hilton made sure that the cops who arrested him knew of his Army service back in the 60s with a unit armed with tactical nuclear weapons. I've handled atomic bombs. I was in the Special Weapons.

And I've handled atomic bombs that damn big that weigh 79 pounds. And Hilton bragged to the officers about his conman criminal past. I've never worked full-time anyway in my life except for the U.S. Army. I've been a criminal, okay? I was a career criminal in lawful charity from 73 to 93, okay, for 20 years. He's collecting money for charities. He's a scam artist.

He's a scam artist, exactly. And what about Hilton's dip into the movie business with that semi-slasher flick, Deadly Run, that he helped make in the 1980s. This film where he's setting women out in the woods and killing them, hunting them. I hope you like your little outfit I picked out for you, Barbara. I think the look is definitely new. Do you think that's the template for what he does decades later?

Yes, I do. And that's what's so chilling to me about the whole thing, because in the millennium, he'll make art into reality. You can hear the echoes of this, huh? You're already beginning to see the lack of conscience. In his interview with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Hilton put forth a grandiose sense of himself, a renaissance man of many hats. I'm a philosopher, I'm a soldier, I'm a scientist, and I'm an artist. What do you mean by artist?

My art is my life. And my art is weird. He's kind of a philosopher king, isn't he? I'm an artist, and you poor dumb cops don't have the luxury of being able to think the big cosmic thoughts that I do. He almost feels sorry for them that they can't keep up with him when he starts going about this, that, and the other thing. Hoping for crumbs of clues in those other open cases, murders in the national forests, the agents wanted to keep Hilton talking. Where all have you been all over the United States's forests?

Oh, I know what you're getting at, the unsolved murders. Gary Hilton thinks he's smart. Is he? Gary has an IQ of 120, and that's considered to be way above average. The reason I'm so seemingly intelligent is that I, alone amongst almost anyone, including you dudes, have time to actually stop and think about things. He'll rattle on as long as someone will listen to him.

Yes. On any topic under the sun, virtually, huh? Yes. Pick a topic, any topic. How about volcanology? Hey, don't you know the supervolcano under Yellowstone? There's over 70 supervolcanoes. When it erupts, it basically blankets the, you know, in a cone, the whole eastern seaboard of the U.S. under several feet of ash

and would just destroy any civilization in that area. The fast-talking flim-flam man was on display in some of Hilton's home videos found in his van. Here's Hilton giving a cop that stopped him some lip. You tell me what, that you're the law man, you are the law. I'm going to check it out, and if it ain't the law, then you're wrong. You come talking to me. I'm not talking to nobody. I'm filing and I'm suing because you're interrupting my work.

You hear Gary bragging about how smart he is, how well he does his job. But at the same time, what you hear is an incredible narcissistic personality, which is typical of serial killers. He sets up the camera, and there's Gary going, 171 pounds. And he starts pumping up his biceps like he's Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean, he's, you know, very narcissistic. So why were detectives enduring Hilton's self-centered ramblings?

Clearly, they were hoping he'd blurt out something about his involvement in the other unsolved cases in the National Forest. But Hilton was admitting to nothing. He'd escaped the death penalty in Georgia, but despite his denials, Hilton remained the prime suspect in the murder of that elderly couple, Irene and John Bryant. Mr. Bryant's remains had been found in January in the North Carolina forest. As a result of the investigation in Georgia, I was absolutely convinced at that point that Gary Hilton was our suspect. But there was another open homicide case that seemed to fit Gary Hilton like a custom-made suit.

Down in Florida, the body of Cheryl Dunlap had been found in a national forest. Her ATM card stolen, the remains decapitated. Detectives thought that fit Hilton's M.O. to a T. And Gary Hilton, still playing the smartest kid in the class, defied Florida to come after him. All that time, all that money. They want to spend a million dollars, two million to convict me, and then another two million to get death,

and then another eight million to defend the death penalty and get around and get around to executing me 17 years from now when i'm 78 years old and i'm decrepit in anything hey they can do it two tough florida prosecutors it turned out would be the match of his defiant talk my belief is is this is, bad person, and there ought to be a consequence in life to evil acts. Coming up, justice for Cheryl. The hunt for evidence begins. She took the floors up, the seats out. She dismantled that van. Suspected serial killer Gary Hilton had already pleaded guilty to the murder of Meredith Emerson in the Georgia mountains, but he cheated the executioner there with a plea deal that led

police to his victim's body. To the south, authorities in Florida were convinced he had murdered nurse and mother Cheryl Dunlap, whose partial remains had been recovered two weeks before Meredith Emerson went missing. Hilton was defying the authorities in Florida to make the charges stick. If they want to spend a million dollars, two million to convict me, and then another two million to get death, hey, they can do it. Leon County, Florida, state's attorney Willie Meggs had heard enough and indicted Hilton for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap. Willie, he's gone away for life. He's going to be leaving Georgia Corrections in a pine box. Why does Florida even need to go to the expense of a capital murder trial? My belief is, is this is an evil, bad person, and there ought to be a consequence in life to evil acts. I don't think murders ought to be

cheaper the more you do. With the Dunlap case looking like a carbon copy of the Meredith Emerson murder, you might think the case would like a carbon copy of the Meredith Emerson murder, you might think the case would be a gimme for the prosecutors, but far from it. They would not be allowed to introduce Hilton's conviction in the Emerson murder, despite its similarity to Cheryl's, nor his connection with that horror movie, Deadly Run, or the fact that he was the prime suspect in the murders of two elderly hikers in North Carolina. Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Annie White was part of the team charged with making the case. Months earlier, the cops had developed a partial chronology

for Cheryl Dunlap on the Saturday she vanished. We started receiving calls, people saying, you know, we saw her at Walmart, we saw her here. And so we started backtracking those, just trying to get the timeline. The investigators knew that Cheryl's morning had included some shopping in Tallahassee, cashing a check at the bank, and using a library computer to send some email to her son in the Army. They even had a last sighting. Witnesses identified Cheryl as the woman peacefully reading a book here at a popular spot called Leon Sinks in the National Forest.

The couple that I interviewed that saw her there at the sinkholes was very adamant that that was her. But the trail had gone cold at the Tallahassee ATM, where a disguised man had withdrawn money using Dunlop's bank cards. A month after Cheryl went missing, the bee on the lookout for Gary Hilton during the Meredith Emerson investigation had the phones in Florida lighting up again. When he started hitting the news media, our citizens here started seeing him and immediately recognized him and started calling. And that tip line kept ringing. One caller remembered an odd guy with a handsome red dog. That sighting led investigators down another National Forest path and to another discovery. More remains.

He was positive it was Mr. Hilton, described the dog, the van, and so that was one of the camps where the bones were found. Deep in the National Forest, five miles from where Cheryl Dunlap's torso had been found, investigators came upon a charred piece of skull and the bony fragments of a human hand in the ashes of a campfire. They were badly burned. A little campfire pit kind of thing? Yes, sir, and he had actually done a pretty good job of covering it up as well.

He had covered it up with straw and took measures to tie it as tracks. The fire had been so thorough, it was impossible to extract DNA from the bones. Whoever killed Cheryl Dunlop had gone to extraordinary lengths to eliminate any physical evidence. So you'd think that this is someone trying to conceal the identity. Very much. Chills must have gone up your spine when you heard the details of what had happened to Meredith and how closely it matched Cheryl. Yes, sir. Both taken to the closely it matched Cheryl. Yes, sir.

Both taken to the woods, abducted. Yes, sir. Both decapitated. It was just, you know, eerily similar. There was one thing about tracking the odd guy with a red dog that they had going for them. State's assistant prosecutor, Georgia Kappelman. Fortunately for the investigation,

if somebody saw Gary Michael Hilton, they remembered him. He's got that kind of a face or presence that you don't forget. Once we had the description, we had tons of witnesses coming forward. While doing the legwork that was turning up more witnesses putting Hilton in the area, Agent White screened Deadly Run, the horror thriller about tracking down and killing women in the forest that Gary Hilton had worked on years before. Are there scenes that you see in the movie that were reenacted in this actual spree of crimes? Not in every detail, but there's definitely a lot of similarities.

And investigators had those home videos of Hilton to screen as well. Last time it was Swanee that was out here. I don't think Swanee was here unless they followed you. No. Watching the videos was very educational because I saw him by himself. I saw him with other people. People like this restaurant manager suffering a rant from Hilton about his delivery drivers. You tell these guys to quit terror driving. Has he received any driving safety education?

Sure he has. I saw him with law enforcement. He had many different sides. I'm leaving. I'm getting out of here. God almighty. And he thought he was the smartest bear in the woods. Definitely.

Smarter than the officers apprehending him. Definitely. Definitely. They now had numerous Hilton sightings around where Cheryl Dunlap vanished. But despite all the investigative work by multiple sheriff's offices and the FDLE, no witness came forward to put him together with Cheryl Dunlap. The nurse's remains were in such poor condition they told investigators nothing about how she died. But there were thousands of other pieces in the puzzle investigators were trying to solve. Hilton's van, jammed to the

roof with hundreds of items, was trucked to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab. Our crime scene analyst spent day and night, literally, weeks processing it. That van was a mess, right? She lived in that van for weeks. She dismantled that van. Every item that was in it was taken out, and then the van itself was dismantled. She took the floors up, the headliner out,

the seats out, every scrap of paper, every piece of hair. All that evidence from the van was added to items recovered from the dumpster outside Atlanta where Hilton had been captured. A Georgia cop on Blood Mountain with a metal detector had found the bayonet Meredith Emerson had wrestled away from Gary Hilton. Now investigators in Florida had a theory. What was interesting about that knife is before we knew of Mr. Hilton, before he had killed Miss Emerson and been caught, our analysts in our lab showed us this is the style, this is what the knife is going to look like. Cameras and memory cards were found inside the van. The techie detectives in the FDLE computer lab

were working overtime trying to unscramble deleted material from the evidence. And deep in their DNA lab, more than 700 samples were being analyzed in an attempt to find some link between Gary Hilton and the late Cheryl Dunlap. Had Gary Hilton managed to outsmart them all? Would Florida be able to make the case against him? Four years after Cheryl Dunlap's death, it was finally going to trial.

Coming up... Your palms are sweaty and your heart's beating. The dramatic case begins. How would it end? You could just see the jurors. you saw it in their eyes and knew. When Dateline continues. Gary Hilton's trial for the Florida murder of Cheryl Dunlap began in February 2011, a little more than four years after he pleaded and skated the death penalty in Georgia. But there was no chance of a plea deal in this Tallahassee courtroom.

He might be doing life in Georgia, but this was a capital murder case. If convicted, Hilton could die by lethal injection. Remember, lead prosecutor Georgia Kappelman couldn't tell the jury about Hilton's conviction in the Meredith Emerson murder, or mention he was the prime suspect in that North Carolina double homicide, nor tell the jury anything about that slasher-in-the-forest movie Deadly Run that he'd helped make. Ms. Dunlap found herself in a situation and ultimately came to an end that is something that we only think about in nightmares. The state built the brick and masonry of its story on the timeline investigators had so painstakingly assembled. An attorney

hiking with her husband in the National Forest at Leon Sinks that Saturday morning remembered seeing Cheryl. I looked at her and I said, it's peaceful out here, isn't it? And she looked at me and she nodded and she smiled and then she exited the boardwalk. Then a parade of witnesses testified to seeing Hilton out and about in the National Forest. There was the motorist who noticed a man near Cheryl's car with a flat tire.

How confident are you that Mr. Hilton was the man that you saw at that vehicle? Very confident. Others remembered Dandy, the man's good-looking reddish retriever mix. I'm going to show you what I marked as State's Exhibit 37. That's it. That looks like the dog you saw that day? Yes.

A picture of Hilton's dog Dandy, Exhibit 37, was looking to be the State's key piece of evidence. I'm quite sure that's the dog. Another witness recounted a creepy conversation with Hilton at a country store. And then he said, isn't it bad about that girl that was murdered? And I said, yes, it is. He said, well, you look like her. And I said, well, I don't think so. And hunters, too, identified the old guy with the nice dog.

He was just acting real weird. He came up, he was flagging us down like it was an emergency or something. What the prosecution couldn't tell the jury was exactly how Cheryl had died. A county medical examiner had to work with severed remains that had been exposed to the elements he thought for at least a week or more. Are you able to tell this jury how this woman died? No, ma'am. Not a cause of death,

but what the prosecution did have was forensic evidence galore. Hundreds of items recovered from his van and from Hilton's suspected campsites deep in the woods. There's two items here, duct tape with hair, and then there's another piece of duct tape or masking tape with hair. One of the items crime scene techs recovered was Hilton's video camera. He'd tried to delete the images on it. I'm able to see the entire device, so I'm able to recover those previously deleted files.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab experts had been able to salvage the audio Hilton did not want the world to hear, and with good reason. This is Gary Hilton two days want the world to hear, and with good reason. This is Gary Hilton two days after Cheryl Dunlap's disappearance, singing into the camera microphone and gassing with his dog, Dandy. Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan. Where are they, boy? It sounded as though he was confessing to the dog.

I killed him with it. A hushed courtroom listened to Hilton's monologue. I got to kill him. Go to the park. Yeah. But first, I got to go hide it somewhere else. The state's forensic people introduced evidence about Cheryl's slashed tire. A Toolmark expert said the bayonet recovered on Blood Mountain up in Georgia was an exact match for the sharp object that caused the puncture down in Florida. But the state's say-goodnight evidence was without question the DNA work.

Genetic expert Joe Ellen Brown spent two years testing more than 750 pieces of evidence in the case. Brown told the jury she was able to match Cheryl Dunlap's DNA to blood on two of Hilton's sleeping bags and on the shoelaces of his hiking boots. The major donor does match Cheryl Dunlap. The frequency of occurrence of this major contributor DNA profile is one in 29 quadrillion Caucasians. That's a 29 with how many zeros? 15 zeros. And with that, after six days of testimony, the prosecution rested. Now the defense, holding a very poor hand, would have to fight for Gary Hilton's life. Its case was brief. Lead attorney Inez Suber called only one witness, an expert on tool mark identification who testified by videotape, arguing that the bayonet and evidence could not,

in her opinion, be determined to be what had been used to slash the victim's tire. Subjective. It's based on the individual examiner's training and experience. The defense was trying to impeach the testimony of the state's expert, who said Hilton's bayonet had slashed Cheryl Dunlap's tire and that was it for the defense. Gary Hilton declined to take the stand. Do you wish

to testify? No. One in 63 million. In her closing argument the prosecutor reminded the jury of those big number DNA matches. What are the odds that somebody else's DNA is on that sleeping bag other than Cheryl Dunlap? One in 11 trillion Caucasians. Inez Suber's close for the defense was far more vigorous than her limited witness list might have suggested. We have absolutely no evidence, no direct evidence, that Mr. Hilton committed murder. The jurors began their deliberations. Kappelman and her boss waited for them to return their verdict. You've done a lot of trials. Is this just another day at the office?

No. Oh, no. It's never. When you're waiting for a verdict, your palms are sweaty and your heart's beating and you're very nervous. And I can tell you, I've been doing it 35 years now. It's never gone away from me. There's this, oh, you'd really like to throw up while you're waiting on them to do it. Until you hear it read, it is tense. Coming up, what would they decide? We, the jury, find they decide? The verdict.

The trial of Gary Hilton for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap had taken seven days. The six-man, six-woman jury needed less than three and a half hours to reach its verdict on multiple counts. The state of Florida versus Gary Michael Hilton, we the jury find as follows as to count one of the indictment. The defendant Gary Hilton is guilty of first degree murder. Count two of the indictment. Gary Hilton was found guilty of the first degree murder of Cheryl Dunlap, guilty on all counts except car theft. The same jurors would soon reconvene to decide if Hilton would die by lethal injection.

He dodged death in Georgia, and now it was time to see if he could do it again. You might think that capital punishment for Florida's active death row would have been a given for Gary Hilton, but not so, says Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Jennifer Portman. In Leon County, we had not even sent anyone to death row in 20 years. So it's not a foregone conclusion that this is going to be a hang-up jury? Absolutely not. We've had our share of horrendous crimes, don't get me wrong. But the jurors here are just very uneasy about sending people to death row.

This man, Mr. Hilton. Assistant State's Attorney Georgia Kappelman got the initial conviction of Hilton. What are the words you'd use to describe this guy? He's a psychopath. And, you know, there's crazy sick and there's crazy mean. He's just crazy mean. He's intelligent. He's a college graduate.

He was a member of our armed forces. He's probably smarter than everybody sitting in this room. There were different rules in this, the penalty phase. Unlike in the trial, prosecutors were now able to disclose to jurors that Hilton murdered Meredith Emerson on Blood Mountain. And state's attorney Willie Meggs did just that, calling to the stand Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents who'd worked on the Emerson case. You indicated that Ms. Emerson's body was nude. Did Gary Michael Hilton tell you why it was nude? He did. He basically stated that he had removed the head and stripped the clothing for forensic purposes. Meggs was able to introduce portions of those chilling interviews that Hilton gave the authorities in Georgia. Once you've taken someone, you're either going to kill them or you're going to get caught. It's as simple as that.

Penalty phase was one of the more interesting parts of the trial. That's where you started getting this information about Emerson. That's the first time the Georgia information was allowed into them. Correct. So that is when you really start seeing the jurors taking in the enormity. Then you really see the impact of all this coming through. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Robert Friedman was the defense's lead attorney in the penalty phase. His strategy was to present Hilton as so mentally damaged as to be incapable of responsibility

for his actions. Friedman began with a PET scan expert who testified about traumatic brain damage Hilton had suffered as a 10-year-old when a Murphy bed accidentally fell on him and nearly scalped him. He was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa and given 200 stitches, and this is an example of a Murphy bed. And jurors, that's not all the defense's expert continued. Hilton was abused as a child, and he lashed out as a teenager. The doctor testified that Hilton was so deluded that he believed he had worked on a movie about killing women in the

forest. That, of course, was a slip-up. Hilton had done just that, and the defense error opened the door for the prosecution to tell the jury about the movie Deadly Run. Would that be delusional if it's the truth? No. A defense neuropsychologist tested Hilton, who it turns out is as bright as he thinks he is. On the Wechsler Adult's Intelligence Scale, he scored an overall verbal IQ of 120, which puts him in the upper 10% or so of the population. Another psychiatrist diagnosed him with schizoaffective and antisocial personality disorder, compounded by an old-fashioned Oedipal Complex. We call it an unresolved edible complex,

and a child can grow up with this emptiness inside of them. To top it off, the defense continued, Hilton was self-medicating with prescription drugs. Ritalin and Effexor will basically push you over that line. The defense then treated jurors to Gary Hilton, This Is Your Life, a saga of abuse, neglect, and injury. It included an audio tape of Hilton's late mother talking about how, as a teenager, Hilton had wounded his stepfather. And he said, shoot me, shoot me, go ahead, shoot me. I dare you to shoot me.

Gary shot him. In the legs or in the... The stomach, the lower part of the stomach. A junior high girlfriend testified that Gary wasn't a bad legs or in the stomach, lower part of the stomach. A junior high girlfriend testified that Gary wasn't a bad guy back in the day. He was funny and outgoing and smart. The defense rests. Once the defense rested, Willie Meggs called his rebuttal witness, a clinical psychologist, to revisit the essential issues. Did Mr. Gary Hilton, did he know right from wrong? My opinion is that yes, he clearly knew right from wrong and clearly he knew the criminal

nature of his conduct. My opinion is that he is a psychopath and that's what generated the murders and nothing else. The attorneys made their final appeal to the jurors. I'm going to ask every one of you individually to go back in that jury room and vote to recommend that Gary Hilton be put to death. On behalf of Mr. Hilton, I'm asking all of you collectively and individually to recommend a life sentence in this case. The jurors then retired to deliberate nothing less than whether Gary Hilton should

live or die. Coming up, another haunting question. Were there more victims out in the forest? I personally believe there are. And a legacy. She's really the hero. It was through her efforts that we were able to catch her killer. Remembering Meredith Hope Emerson, when Dateline continues. The same jurors who found Gary Hilton guilty of murdering Cheryl Dunlap were now trying to decide if they should recommend Hilton spend life in prison or be put to death by lethal injection. Their life-or-death debate lasted an hour and 20 minutes. A majority of the jury, by a vote of 12 to nothing,

advised and recommended to the court that it impose a death penalty on Gary Michael Hilton. Hilton sat expressionless as the results were read. Two weeks later, an equally emotionless Hilton listened as the judge pronounced his sentence. It is ordered and judged that you, Gary Michael Hilton, be sentenced to death for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap. May God have mercy on your soul. Gary Michael Hilton was sent to Florida's death row for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap. Three months later, he was shackled and transported to western North Carolina

and indicted in federal court there for the murders of John and Irene Bryant. The government alleged the serial killer murdered the elderly couple in October of 2007, shortly before killing Cheryl Dunlap and Meredith Emerson. Hilton pleaded not guilty. The forensic team from Florida that helped convict him there was all set to testify in the federal trial. And all that evidence, stored in the FDLE's basement just across the hall from the boxes containing evidence against Florida's more infamous serial killer Ted Bundy, was ready to get trucked north.

Hilton was facing another death sentence in the federal trial. And David Mahoney, the local sheriff, was certain a jury would provide justice for the Bryants. We have a good case. Tremendous number of man hours spent in the investigation. Tremendous cooperation between all of the local, state, and federal agencies that were involved in all three states. But a trial wouldn't be necessary. In March 2012, Hilton pleaded guilty to killing John and Irene Bryant and got another life sentence.

Law enforcement officials from across the Southeast have met with Hilton on Florida's death row, attempting to find out how many more of his victims might be out there. You think there are others? I think there's certainly the potential to be others. I don't know that we'll ever know for sure unless he tells us. So far, Hilton is sticking to his story that he started hunting, as he describes it, in October of 2007, that there were no murders before then. Like most of the other officers who've investigated

Hilton, Agent Annie White isn't buying it. She says they have a lot of work ahead. Is it your belief, Annie, that there are more out there, more victims of Gary Hilton? I personally believe there are. He's just been too many places. So it just makes me think that there's probably more. We're going to continue to look at every case that we can and compare profiles and look for evidence. The pain and suffering of the families of Hilton's victims and suspected victims dulls but never ends. He's taken so much from me and my family. What can you say to someone who would murder two wonderful people for $300, and Meredith Emerson, a beautiful young lady, and Cheryl Dunlop, and very possibly many more. The man is not even what I think of as human.

He is something else, a true psychopath who needs to be put where he can never harm anyone else again. For Cheryl Dunlap's friends and family in Florida, Hilton's conviction provoked conflicting feelings. And I think, believe it or not, that Cheryl would want us to forgive. And when I went into the courtroom and I actually saw him, my thought was not that they put him to death or this or that. I was glad he was off the street. But I have to forgive Gary Hilton.

I have to. Tabby, in the family, it was a death penalty case and the jury recommended the death penalty and that was the sentence. Does it matter to you? We were pleased with the outcome, yes. And like Laura said, he's off the streets. He's not able to hurt anyone again. Yes, I think it matters. And there are regrets on the part of the officers who investigated the Hilton cases. Could there have been one tip line that had come in sooner? Could it have been one fragment of information we could have put together more quickly and spared her?

There hasn't been a day go by since then that I haven't thought about Meredith Emerson and what we could have or should have done differently. But see, she's really the hero. She did the best she could in hopes that we could catch up. It was through her efforts that we were able to catch her killer, but also the killer that was responsible for the killing of Cheryl Dunlap. In Georgia, for Meredith Emerson's closest friends, it's time to forget about Gary Hilton and remember her.

He took our friend, he took a daughter, a sister, but he can't take her memory, he can't take the things that we love about her away. There is, they say, important work to be done. We started an organization in her memory. Julia Karrenbauer, Meredith Emerson's one-time roommate in Georgia, has founded, along with others, something called Right to Hike, advocating hiker safety. We didn't want anybody to go through this again either, to bring awareness of what happened and how it happened

and maybe make you think about going hiking by yourself twice and take a friend, you know, to be a little safer. The organization founded by Meredith Emerson's friends has sponsored events with a huge turnout of people and dogs. Meredith's dog Ella went to live with her parents in Colorado. Any event that we ever have for Right to Hike, just seeing people come and say, I never met Meredith, but I feel like I know her, and I wanted to come out and support. And that was the biggest thing, the community outreach after everything happened. Right to Hike has aided humane societies, educated hikers on safe practices, and put cell towers on trail heads.

One of the big things that we realized very quickly on these trails that our cell phones didn't work and Meredith had her cell phone with her and that didn't help her. And if you ever hike Blood Mountain you just might notice a little sticker there as you head out. Remember me, M.E. Meredith Emerson. She most of all would like you to enjoy your day in the outdoors. She just really enjoyed being out with nature and, you know, watching Ella run through the forest and, you know, play with other dogs. I think it was just a really peaceful place for her to be.

People go to these places to relax and get away from everyday life and enjoy the outdoors, and they should continue to do that. These are some of the safest places there are to go. Until the monster shows up. Yeah. Gary Hilton has been on death row since April 2011. His appeals continue. The average stay on Florida's death row is 12 and a half years. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.