Gary Michael Hilton was a 61-year-old drifter who lived out of a van, camped in the national forests of the southern Appalachians and north Florida, and walked the trails with a golden retriever named Dandy. Between October 2007 and January 2008 he killed four people he met in or near those forests: an elderly couple hiking in North Carolina, a nurse reading in a Florida nature area, and a young woman hiking with her dog on a north Georgia mountain. In each case he wanted the victims' bank cards and the numbers to use them.
He was caught in January 2008, days after Meredith Emerson disappeared on Blood Mountain, Georgia. He pleaded guilty to her murder that month. A Florida jury convicted him in 2011 of the kidnapping and murder of Cheryl Dunlap, and he was sentenced to death. In 2012 he pleaded guilty in federal court in Asheville to killing John and Irene Bryant. His Florida death sentence has been upheld by the Florida Supreme Court and, in April 2026, by a federal appeals court.
Little reliable record exists of Hilton's life before 2007 beyond what his lawyers put before the Florida jury in 2011. The defense described an abusive childhood, abandonment by his parents and time in foster care. He earned an associate's degree from Miami-Dade College and served in the U.S. Army, from which, his lawyer told jurors, he was discharged for psychiatric problems. He later lived in Atlanta and, after losing a telemarketing job, took to the woods, the Associated Press reported from the penalty phase.
The trial judge accepted some of this as mitigation. In his sentencing order, as summarized by the Florida Supreme Court, Judge James Hankinson found that Hilton had grown up in an abusive household, had been deprived of a relationship with his biological father and of a bond with his mother, had been removed to foster care, had abused the stimulant Ritalin, had suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child, and had served in the military. He gave each some weight, and military service very little. He rejected claims that Hilton came from a financially poor family and that he had severe mental defects.
A defense neuropsychologist, Charles Golden, testified that a childhood brain injury, an emotional disorder, drug use and sleep deprivation left Hilton unable to act rationally or obey the law. Under cross-examination he agreed that Hilton had scored in the top 10 percent, with an IQ of 120.
In the north Georgia mountains Hilton was a familiar figure. Union County Sheriff Scott Stephens described him in January 2008 as a drifter well known in the area, often seen with his dog and a police-style baton. The AJC later described him as a survivalist and Army veteran; the prosecutor in Florida called him "a woodsman, a survivalist and proficient bayonet fighter."
John D. Bryant was 80 and his wife, Irene W. Bryant, was 84. They lived in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where they had retired. Irene Bryant was a veterinarian. Born in Oregon, she earned her veterinary degree from Washington State College in 1947, practiced large-animal medicine in Montana, where few women were veterinarians, and later owned a practice in Skaneateles, New York. In retirement she gardened, taught gardening and flower arranging, judged flower shows, served as president of a garden club, and studied judo and karate, the journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association reported in 2008.
On October 21, 2007, the couple set out on a hike in the Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County. Phone records later showed that someone had tried to make a 911 call from their cell phone that day and that the signal was lost. The next day $300 was withdrawn from their bank account at an ATM in Ducktown, Tennessee.
Searchers found Irene Bryant's body near a hiking trail on November 9. She had died of a blow to the head. John Bryant remained missing. Investigators came to believe he had been taken away so he could be made to give up the security number for the couple's bank account. In both this case and the later Georgia case, investigators were looking for someone in a yellow jacket.
In January 2008, after Hilton's arrest in Georgia, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said numerous sources placed him in northeast Georgia in late October 2007 and asked anyone who had seen him or his white van in Towns County that month to call. The license plate on the van he was driving when he was arrested had been stolen from a disabled car in Transylvania County, North Carolina; its owner had not noticed until he heard of the arrest. On January 23, 2008, federal, state and local agencies announced a search of northeast Georgia for John Bryant's body.
He was found elsewhere. On a Saturday in early February 2008 a hunter came upon skeletal remains in the Nantahala National Forest in Macon County, North Carolina. They were identified as John Bryant's on February 4. Macon County Sheriff Robert Holland said investigators believed he had died violently. Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney said the recovery let the case move to "the prosecutorial side." He said he believed Hilton was responsible, that evidence linked the North Carolina deaths to the Georgia killing, and that he thought Hilton's trail had begun in North Carolina and ended in Georgia. "We've got a good case," he said.
Cheryl Hodges Dunlap was 46 and lived in Crawfordville, in Wakulla County, Florida. She was a nurse at Florida State University and taught Sunday school. A cousin, Gloria Tucker, said after the trial that Dunlap had grown up with a bad home life and had become a lovely person. Tucker called her Sherri.
On the morning of Saturday, December 1, 2007, she made plans to have dinner that evening with a friend, Kiona Hill. At 11:17 a.m. she cashed a check at a bank drive-through. At about 1:30 p.m. a couple, Michael and Vikki Shirley, saw her sitting and reading at Leon Sinks, near Tallahassee, in jeans and a sweater with a hardback book.
She did not come to dinner, and she did not appear at church the next morning. A friend, Tanya Land, went to her house, found her dog there and her car gone, and called the police. A Wakulla County deputy took a missing person report on December 3. That day her white Toyota Camry was found on the side of Crawfordville Highway near woods. One tire had been deliberately punctured. A state trooper had ticketed the car as a disabled vehicle on December 1. Her purse was inside, but her money was gone.
On December 2, 3 and 4, someone used her bank card at a Hancock Bank ATM on West Tennessee Street in Tallahassee, taking $700 in three withdrawals; two more attempts were declined because they exceeded the daily limit. Bank video showed a person in a blue and white patterned long-sleeved shirt, glasses and a hat, with tape over the face.
On December 15, a hunter named Ronnie Rentz found her body in the Apalachicola National Forest, near a forest road and covered with brush and limbs. The medical examiner, Anthony Clarke, could not determine the cause of death but believed it was a violent homicide. He found a significant bruise on her back made before death, and he estimated that she had died between December 5 and 8. She was identified from a tissue sample. (News reports at the time gave the discovery as December 19; the court record gives December 15.)
Leon County investigators learned that a forestry officer had run the tag of Hilton's vehicle during a routine check in the forest, which placed him in the area. A hunter also reported seeing a disheveled man with a knife in the forest on December 7. Witnesses later testified that they had seen Hilton in the area in late November and early December; one met him near his camp and heard him talk about a nearby sinkhole. One of them, Celeste Hutchins, saw him going through a white Camry on the highway on December 1. Another saw him on December 10 in a shirt like the one in the ATM video. Others saw him in the national forest on December 11, 12 and 14. On December 18, in Bristol, he told a woman named Teresa Johnson that she looked like Dunlap and that it was "too bad" about that girl.
Meredith Hope Emerson was born in 1983. She grew up partly in Holly Springs, North Carolina, before her family moved to Georgia, and she studied at the University of Georgia, where professors remembered her as an outstanding student of French language, literature and culture. She lived in the university's French Language Community in 2003 and 2004, won a national scholarship for study abroad from the French honor society Pi Delta Phi in 2004 and the department's Cecil Willcox Award for Excellence in French in 2005, and served as an officer of the honor society's campus chapter. Her parents, Dave and Susan Emerson, later said her time abroad had changed her life. She had trained in martial arts. Her boyfriend called her "brilliant" and "the single most amazing thing in this world." Brent Seyler, an officer of a hiking safety group later founded in her honor, remembered her strength and her spunk. She hiked with her black Labrador mix, Ella.
On New Year's Day 2008 she set out from the Byron Herbert Reece Memorial Trailhead in Union County, Georgia, to hike on Blood Mountain. Early reports said she was last seen hiking with her dog at Vogel State Park, about 90 miles north of Atlanta. Hilton was on the trail with his dog that day. Witnesses later recalled seeing the two of them letting their dogs play.
Hilton later told investigators what happened next, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained the recorded interviews from the GBI. He said the two had walked together but that he could not keep up. When she turned back down the trail, he was waiting with a military-style knife and demanded her ATM card. She grabbed the blade, and he used a baton against her. They fought, and he struck her repeatedly; he said he broke his hand doing it. "She wouldn't stop fighting. And yelling at the same time," he said. "So I needed to both control her and silence her." He told her he wanted only her card and her PIN, led her down the mountain off the trails, and put her and her dog in his van.
He held her for four days. She gave him a wrong PIN three times, insisting each time that it was correct, and each failed attempt bought her another day. On January 4 he told her she was going home. He then killed her, striking her with the handle of a car jack. He told investigators that he had found it hard, and that he could not bring himself to kill her dog.
Georgia's chief medical examiner, Kris Sperry, found that she died of blunt force trauma to the head. Her body was left in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area in Dawson County, nearly 50 miles from where she had disappeared.
Searchers looked for her for days. On January 3, at about 4:30 p.m., Hilton used the business phone at a Huddle House restaurant in Marble Hill, Georgia; a waitress thought him fidgety and later wondered whether Emerson had still been alive in his van. Authorities believe she was killed on January 4.
Ella was found that Friday in a grocery store parking lot in Cumming, in Forsyth County, about 50 miles from the trail, and identified by her microchip. Hilton was detained the same day and charged with kidnapping with intent to cause bodily injury; his arrest was reported in Chamblee, in DeKalb County. Investigators said he had been the last person seen with Emerson on the trail and had tried to use her credit card. In a trash bin beside a convenience store where he had used a pay phone they found three bloody fleece tops and a bloodstained piece of a car seat belt. His 2001 Chevrolet Astro van was missing its rear seat belt, and he had tried to vacuum and wash it. Officers also recovered from a dumpster a U.S. Forest Service citation, a knife and sheath, boots, a chain, a padlock, gloves, a jacket, a folding police baton and a blue backpack, the Florida Supreme Court later recorded. Hilton later said he would not have killed her if he had known the police were looking for him, and he blamed a former employer who identified him to the police for his capture.
At first he did not cooperate. Then, after a judge denied him bond on Monday, January 7, he showed investigators where her body was, hours before a new search was due to begin. Enotah Judicial Circuit District Attorney Stan Gunter had agreed that in return the state would not seek the death penalty. Emerson's family said they were relieved to know what had happened and wanted finality. Hilton's public defender said the case involved "significant mental health issues."
In mid-January the GBI asked for help finding a van Hilton had owned earlier, a white 1996 Chevrolet Astro. A hunter had seen it about a month earlier, abandoned at the end of a forest service road in the Tray Mountain area of White County. After news coverage, a man told agents he had seen a tow truck haul it away; agents traced it to a scrap yard in Habersham County and took it, stripped and in very bad condition, to be processed for evidence.
Within days, investigators from Georgia, North Carolina and Florida, with the FBI and the U.S. Forest Service, met in Cleveland, Georgia, to share evidence from the Emerson case.
On January 31, 2008, a special session of the Dawson County grand jury indicted Hilton on one count of murder, charging that he killed Meredith Emerson by blunt force trauma to the head on January 4. That afternoon, in an orange jumpsuit and a bulletproof vest, he stood before Judge Bonnie Oliver in Dawson County Superior Court. Asked how he pleaded, he said, "Guilty."
He was sentenced to life in prison, with parole possible after 30 years. District Attorney Lee Darragh of the Northeastern Judicial Circuit, which includes Dawson County, said Hilton had planned to abduct her to take money from her accounts but came to intend to kill her. Judge Oliver said she accepted the agreement because the 61-year-old Hilton would probably die of natural causes in prison before the state could execute him. Darragh said the family supported the outcome. Her father, David Emerson, said no punishment was too great. Her mother, Susan Emerson, told the court that a death sentence would have been an easy way out for him and that he should stay alive and slowly rot.
As part of the agreement Hilton asked that his dog be placed in a good home. Dandy went to a new family, and Emerson's parents took Ella to live with them in Colorado.
Ten years later Darragh said it was regrettable that the death penalty could not be sought, but that the agreement had led to Meredith Emerson's body. Of the many homicides he had seen, he said, this one was at the top of the list. Her friends founded a group in her name, Right to Hike, which promoted hiking safety and held an annual Ella's Run for ten years. The University of Georgia created a memorial award in her name for students studying in French-speaking countries.
On February 28, 2008, a Leon County grand jury indicted Hilton for the first-degree murder of Cheryl Dunlap, kidnapping, grand theft of a motor vehicle and grand theft of currency. Investigators had named him the prime suspect in early February and had brought two truckloads of evidence from Georgia to Tallahassee. On June 6, 2008, officers drove him from the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson to Tallahassee. He talked for nearly the entire five-hour trip, and the conversation was recorded. "I'm not all bad," he said at one point, and at another, "I just, you know, lost my mind for a little bit." He also said, "Nothing before September, okay?" He pleaded not guilty on March 14, 2008, according to the court record.
The forensic case grew while he waited. On January 9, 2008, investigators had found charred bones in a fire pit at the Joe Thomas campsite, about seven miles from where Dunlap's body lay; they were believed to be hers, though no DNA could be recovered from them. A forensic anthropologist testified that the hand bones came from an adult with small hands. Hilton told Georgia officials where to find his bayonet, on a Blood Mountain trail, and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement tool mark examiner matched it to the punctures in Dunlap's tire. Her DNA was found on items from his van, including two sleeping bags, a duffel bag, a pair of pants and a pair of boots. His DNA was on cigarette butts at the campsite with the fire pit.
Technicians recovered erased video from a camera in his possession, dated December 3, in which he talked to himself or his dog about hiding things and killing people. At trial the jury heard him say on the video, "She was no good. She was nasty." A Leon County jail officer, Caleb Wynn, testified that he overheard Hilton tell another inmate that he would answer the prosecutor's questions in exchange for a life sentence, that he would reveal where missing remains were, that his bayonet had been used on Dunlap's tire, that he had spent hours or days with her, and that he regretted only getting caught.
Jury selection finished in Tallahassee at the start of February 2011, and testimony began before Circuit Judge James C. Hankinson. The state, led by State Attorney Willie Meggs and Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman, listed as many as 165 possible witnesses. Hilton did not testify. Assistant Public Defender Ines Suber argued that the case was circumstantial: no one saw an abduction, no fingerprints tied him to the crime, and the medical examiner could not confirm that the bones from the fire pit were Dunlap's. Cappleman answered that the remains could not be identified "because of the defendant's own handiwork."
On February 15, 2011, after deliberating three hours and 40 minutes, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. The federal appeals court later described his Florida convictions as first-degree murder, kidnapping and grand theft; the AJC reported that the theft conviction concerned Dunlap's ATM card.
The penalty phase began on February 17. The state played a recorded police interview in which Hilton described taking and killing Meredith Emerson. He said he got no satisfaction from it, called it "distasteful" and "dreadful," and said he coped by pretending it was not real. He spoke of a "sociopathic rage against society" as part of his reason for killing rather than robbing banks, and he said, "Once you've taken someone you're either going to kill them or you're going to get caught." GBI agent Clay Bridges testified about the Georgia conviction. The defense called four experts, a brain imaging psychiatrist, Golden the neuropsychologist, a psychopharmacology psychiatrist and a psychiatric pharmacist, and nine other witnesses. Assistant Public Defender Robert Friedman described Hilton's childhood and military discharge. The state answered with a rebuttal expert, Greg Prichard.
On February 21, 2011, the jury unanimously recommended death. "We are extremely pleased with the death verdict and even more so that it was unanimous," Cappleman said. Meggs said this was exactly the kind of case that warranted it. Gloria Tucker said she did not think any of the family had received justice.
At a hearing on April 7, three people spoke about Dunlap's life and loss: an aunt, Emma Blount; a best friend, Laura Walker; and Tucker. Hilton presented no witnesses. On April 21, 2011, Judge Hankinson sentenced him to death. "May God have mercy on your soul," the judge said. He found six aggravating circumstances: the prior violent felony conviction for Emerson's murder, that the murder was committed during a kidnapping, to avoid arrest and for money, that it was especially atrocious or cruel, and that it was cold, calculated and premeditated. Against them he weighed one statutory mitigator, that Hilton was under extreme emotional distress, and the eight nonstatutory mitigators. John Cagle, the Dawson County sheriff's officer who had led the Emerson investigation for the GBI, watched online. He said it was the first time Hilton had looked scared, and that the Georgia conviction had supplied an aggravating circumstance in Florida. The next day Hilton was listed at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
Because John and Irene Bryant died on national forest land, their case went to federal court. In June 2011 a federal grand jury in the Western District of North Carolina returned a five-count indictment charging Hilton with the October 2007 kidnapping, robbery and murder of the couple.
On March 27, 2012, in U.S. District Court in Asheville, he pleaded guilty to murder, robbery, kidnapping and firearms offenses. He admitted that he killed John Bryant with a firearm in the Nantahala National Forest in Macon County and killed Irene Bryant in the Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County. The plea agreement called for life without parole, and prosecutors did not seek death. "This is a just outcome, reached after consideration of all the facts and circumstances of this case," said U.S. Attorney Anne M. Tompkins.
On April 25, 2013, U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger sentenced him to four life terms for the kidnappings and murders and 15 years for a related robbery offense, and ordered the federal sentences to run consecutively to his sentences in Georgia and Florida. Federal sentences carry no parole. Cagle said evidence gathered in Georgia in 2008 had strengthened the North Carolina case.
Hilton's death sentence has been through three rounds of review.
On direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and death sentence on March 21, 2013, in Hilton v. State, 117 So. 3d 742. He argued that his statements during the transport should not have been admitted, that the state's rebuttal expert had improperly put his past conduct before the jury and should have been excluded from the courtroom, that the evidence did not support the cruelty and premeditation findings, and that the judge was wrong to reject a mitigator for lack of capacity. The court rejected every claim. It found that Dunlap had been held for between two days and a week and had been injured badly enough to leave blood on his belongings, and it relied on his own talk of "hunting," the calculated disposal of her body and the time he had to reflect. It found the sentence proportionate.
He then sought postconviction relief in the trial court in November 2014, arguing chiefly that his trial lawyers had been ineffective. After an evidentiary hearing, relief was denied on February 12, 2019. At oral argument in the Florida Supreme Court on September 9, 2020, his lawyer, Robert Morris, described infighting among the trial defense team and argued that Hilton's severe mental illness should have made him ineligible for death. "He hunted people for fun and he killed them," Assistant Attorney General Michael Kennett told the justices. On August 26, 2021, the court affirmed the denial of relief and denied a separate habeas petition. It held that the evidence of aggravation was overwhelming, so there was no reasonable probability that more evidence of his abusive childhood, drug abuse or brain damage would have led to a life sentence; that his prior Georgia murder and the kidnapping satisfied the requirement of a unanimous jury finding; and that the claims of judicial bias, pretrial publicity and juror challenges failed. Gloria Tucker said she appreciated the court "affirming the value of Sherry's life."
In federal court, Hilton petitioned for habeas corpus in the Northern District of Florida, and the petition was denied. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit heard argument in Atlanta on March 18, 2026, on four questions: whether his defense team had been in disarray, whether it failed to present a cohesive defense, and whether his appellate lawyer should have appealed the denial of a change of venue and the denial of juror challenges. On April 1, 2026, the panel of Chief Judge William Pryor and Judges Newsom and Abudu affirmed. It held that the Florida Supreme Court had reasonably found no prejudice on the first two claims. On the last two it found that the state court had applied the wrong standard, but decided on its own review that Hilton had not shown that the omitted appeals would have succeeded, given what it called overwhelming evidence of guilt. Judge Abudu concurred, writing that communication within the trial team "was not just poor; it was non-existent" and that the court "should still denounce the representation he received," though the failings had not changed the outcome. The court denied rehearing on May 29, 2026.
On August 4, 2026, lawyers from the federal public defender's capital habeas unit in Tallahassee asked the U.S. Supreme Court for more time to file a petition for review. Justice Clarence Thomas extended the deadline to September 28, 2026. As of October 21, 2026, no petition had appeared on the Supreme Court's docket.
Hilton has been on Florida's death row since April 2011, WCTV reported in 2021, citing state corrections records. In his own Supreme Court filing in August 2026 his lawyers described him as a death-sentenced Florida prisoner in state custody. No death warrant had been reported as of October 21, 2026.
In December 2024, at a Florida prison, Hilton gave his first interview in 17 years, to David Scott, an Atlanta-based investigative reporter, for the Court TV series Interview with a Killer. It aired on April 13, 2025. "It's time after 17 years to break my silence," he said. He was 78 and had congestive heart failure, and Scott said Hilton wanted to leave an account of what he had done. Scott, who had one hour to cover four killings, said Hilton bristled at one of his descriptions of the crimes, and that he seemed perversely proud of them. Hilton remarked that 61, his age when he killed Emerson, was unusually old for such crimes. Scott called Meredith Emerson "the hero of the story" for the trail of failed PIN attempts she left for police.
From the start, investigators asked whether Hilton was linked to other deaths. He has never been charged in any of them, and none is proven.
Michael Scot Louis, 27, a stock clerk, disappeared in Ormond Beach, Florida, on November 22, 2007. His remains were found in trash bags near Tomoka State Park on December 6. Hilton was named a person of interest in June 2009, and in 2013 the Dawson County News described him as a prime suspect who had not been charged.
Rossana Miliani, 26, a Miami woman, was last seen in Bryson City, North Carolina, on December 7, 2005, after telling her family she planned to go hiking. A store clerk later told a private investigator hired by her family that she had come in with a white man in his late 50s or 60s who said he was a preacher who visited campgrounds, and that she seemed nervous. In 2009 her father, Anibal Miliani, said a sketch of the man resembled Hilton. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said it was considering a possible connection but that Hilton was not its only focus.
After the trial, the Associated Press described Hilton as a suspect in at least three other killings in Florida and North Carolina, without naming them. Sheriff Mahoney said in 2008 that he knew of no other killings linked to the Emerson and Bryant cases. As for his remark on the transport to Florida, "Nothing before September," the Florida Supreme Court held that his transport statements did not implicate him in any other crime and were admissible as relevant to premeditation.
Proven by final judgment: the murder of Meredith Emerson (Georgia, guilty plea); the kidnapping and murders of John and Irene Bryant (federal guilty plea); the first-degree murder and kidnapping of Cheryl Dunlap (Florida jury verdict, affirmed on direct appeal and in state and federal collateral review; time to seek U.S. Supreme Court review ran to September 28, 2026).
Not proven: any role in the deaths of Michael Scot Louis or Rossana Miliani, or in any other death.
Points on which accounts differ: the date Dunlap's body was found (December 15 in the court record; December 19 in several 2008 news reports); John Bryant's age (80 in most reports, 79 in one); whether Emerson was from Athens or Buford (AP and the AJC differ); and whether Gloria Tucker was Dunlap's cousin (Florida Supreme Court and WCTV) or a close friend (CBS News, 2011). Some later reports wrongly say the Georgia sentence is life without parole or that the Dunlap sentence was imposed in 2001.
December 7, 2005: Rossana Miliani is last seen in Bryson City, North Carolina (Hilton suspected, never charged).
October 21, 2007: John and Irene Bryant set out on a hike in the Pisgah National Forest; a 911 call from their phone drops.
October 22, 2007: $300 is taken from their account at an ATM in Ducktown, Tennessee.
November 9, 2007: Irene Bryant's body is found near a trail.
December 1, 2007: Cheryl Dunlap is seen reading at Leon Sinks and disappears.
December 2 to 4, 2007: $700 is taken from her account in Tallahassee.
December 3, 2007: her car is found on Crawfordville Highway.
December 15, 2007: a hunter finds her body in the Apalachicola National Forest.
January 1, 2008: Meredith Emerson disappears while hiking on Blood Mountain, Georgia.
January 4, 2008: Emerson is killed in Dawson County (per her indictment).
Early January 2008: Hilton is detained and charged with kidnapping.
January 7, 2008: Hilton leads investigators to her body in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area.
January 9, 2008: charred bones are found in a fire pit at a Florida campsite.
January 31, 2008: indicted and pleads guilty to Emerson's murder; life with parole possible after 30 years.
February 2008: John Bryant's remains are found in the Nantahala National Forest and identified on February 4.
February 28, 2008: Leon County grand jury indicts Hilton in Dunlap's death.
June 6, 2008: transported from Georgia to Tallahassee.
June 2009: named a person of interest in the death of Michael Scot Louis.
February 15, 2011: Florida jury convicts him of first-degree murder.
February 21, 2011: the jury unanimously recommends death.
April 21, 2011: sentenced to death by Judge James C. Hankinson.
June 2011: federal indictment in North Carolina.
March 27, 2012: pleads guilty in federal court in Asheville to the Bryant murders.
March 21, 2013: Florida Supreme Court affirms the conviction and death sentence.
April 25, 2013: four federal life terms plus 15 years.
November 26, 2014: files for postconviction relief in Florida.
February 12, 2019: postconviction relief denied.
August 26, 2021: Florida Supreme Court affirms the denial and rejects his habeas petition.
December 2024: interviewed for Court TV; the episode airs April 13, 2025.
March 18, 2026: Eleventh Circuit hears argument.
April 1, 2026: Eleventh Circuit affirms the denial of federal habeas relief.
May 29, 2026: rehearing denied.
August 13, 2026: Justice Thomas extends the time to seek Supreme Court review to September 28, 2026.