APPALACHIAN TRAIL KILLER - GARY MICHAEL HILTON

The Appalachian Trail is approx. 2160 miles from one end to the other.  Georgia has 75 miles of the trail, including Springer Mountain, and Blood Mountain which is the highest point on the trial in Georgia. Only 75 miles, and a danger awaited the hikers in that small stretch of the Appalachian Trail.  He could have chosen anyone, and many believe that he was scouting around always for victims.

Many Appalachian Trail hikers post online in journals and blogs as they are trekking through the trail.  Many of them wrote about a man with a white van and a dog, a mean man... he walked with some of them to see if they were alone, he made people uncomfortable, gave them the creeps.  A few wrote about being chased by this man in his van, about how they stopped at a look-out to see the view, and got right back in their cars when they noticed this strange man watching them, and back out on the road he followed, sometimes driving recklessly trying to catch up and to make cars between him and his prey get off the road so that he could follow them closer.  Nine-one-one was called, he was not caught.

A man lived at one of the shelters that the hikers can sleep in with out having to put up a tent; they are allowed to stay for two weeks.  A man would stay for two weeks, leave for a day and come back for another two weeks.  He wouldn't let other campers stay with him in the shelter.  Park rangers and police were told, but nothing was done.

Hunting season had just started October 26, 2007 a deputy went to a private hunting preserve to evict a trespassing camper. The exchange was caught on dashcam video – the man was Gary Michael Hilton and the exchange is spooky.  Hilton is a very scary person to watch, full of meanness and it seems he doesn't like anyone; just a very unhappy person is how he comes across.  Definitely he is not a people person.

Meredith Emerson, 24, decided to take a walk up Blood Mountain one day with her dog as company (read protection?  Did the dog make her feel safe?) And she met a man, a man with a dog.  He was older, and they walked together.  Somehow he convinced her to let her dog walk off-leash and the two dogs walked and played together.  She probably sensed that the man might mean danger, but she couldn't get her dog back on the leash fast enough to get away.

Before she knew what was happening, her instincts kicked in, she was healthy and knew martial arts, at one point when the man tried to subdue her with a baton and knife, she grabbed the knife blade and began fighting with him, and she knocked both of the weapons out of his hands.  They fought and rolled down a hill together.  Finally she was overcome and he somehow got her to get into the white van.  Two hikers were seen by Hilton and he thought for sure that they had found the weapons and so he was very much in a hurry to get out of there with his victim.

She lived for three days before he killed her – by this we know that when he stopped at a Waffle House to use the phone to call his old boss about getting his old job back... Meredith Emerson was in the Van - alive.

Emerson kept Hilton off-balance by repeatedly giving him the wrong PIN for her ATM card. She bought time with that ploy. Three days.

Hilton admitted to raping her.  He said he tied her to him during the night so that he would know if she tried to escape.  She fought him the whole time before she died.

Blunt force trauma to the head is what killed her, and after she was dead she was decapitated.

Surveillance video had identified Hilton as he tried to use one of Emerson's credit cards at a bank in Canton, Georgia.  This wasn't the first time he'd killed for bank card information. 

I sat and watched as the local television station ran the 911 tape of the citizen who called saying that he could actually see the white van that they police were looking for, and he could see Hilton.  He described the scene as Hilton was trying to clean up the van.  That man on the phone asked the operator if he should go and apprehend the man, holding him there until the police came.  He was told by the operator to hold on and wait for them, the man told the operator that the police better hurry then because there was no way that he was going to let the man leave with that van.  The police did get there, and arrested Hilton.

Leon County, Florida, a grand jury indicted Hilton on charges of murder, kidnapping and two counts of grand theft in the death of Cheryl Dunlap. Her body was discovered December 16 in the Apalachicola National Forest southwest of Tallahassee. She was found three days after she disappeared. He used her credit card with a coat over his head or a mask so he couldn't be identified on video. 

Hilton is also the suspect in the deaths of John Bryant, 80, and his wife, Irene, 84, who disappeared while hiking in Pisgah National Forest October 21.  They had moved close to the forest so that they could walk whenever they wanted.

Irene Bryant's body was found near the couple's car November 9; a hunter discovered John Bryant's remains three months later. Hilton used their credit card wearing a yellow coat, probably the same coat he was wearing when he took Meredith Emerson.

Hilton is also suspected in the killings of Patrice Tamber-Endres - Body found December 2004 and Cayle Bywater - She was last seen with her dog at Memorial Park in Athens on the afternoon of Dec. 29.

"Deadly Run," a movie shot in 1995 was co-written by Gary Hilton.  It's a movie about a killer who lures beautiful women into the wilderness of Georgia and hunts them down and kills them. Ain't life strange... or rather, death?