Original subtitles

[reporter] Authorities believe this was the man

on Freeman Trail on Blood Mountain

talking to 24-year-old Meredith Emerson.

She left me a note that said she was going hiking

yesterday afternoon.

She didn't come home.

This case came in initially as a missing hiker case.

It was not your typical missing hiker.

We began to get the reports of a strange looking man.

He has duct tape on his shoes.

He's got a dog with him.

And they saw him around a white van.

[dramatic theme music]

[Jerry]ú My name is Jerry Carnes.

I am a former journalist

who spent 35 years workingú for WXIA-TV in Atlanta.

I love Blood Mountain. I've hiked it numerous times.

It is a beautiful area,

a great place to clear your head,

great place to kind of reset.

And it just makes sense to go up there

for a hike on New Year's Day.

I was driving homeúand received a telephone call

from the chief deputy ofúUnion County Sheriff's Office.

He contacted me and said that they had

a missing person on the mountain,

is what he referred to it as,

Blood Mountain, a missing hiker.

[narrator] The missing hiker

is 24-year-old graduate Meredith Emerson.

Meredith Emerson had gone to the University of Georgia.

She had family in the Atlanta area.

[John Cagle] Meredith Emerson was the all-American girl.

Very bright, very brave.

Talented, outgoing.

She was just a very good young lady.

She left me a note thatú said she was going hiking

yesterday afternoon.

She didn't come home, you know, okay.

And then her dog wasn't there this morning,

which it usually is.

And then we heard that she did not show up for work,

which is very unlike her.

[narrator] Meredith has failed to return to her car

from her New Year's Day hike.

So her friend calls police to report her missing.

When I arrived to Blood Mountain,

there were probably alreadyú a couple of satellite trucks

and some news media there.

And, of course, it was kind of a story

which was a little bit of anúall-hands-on-deck kind of thing.

A lot of journalists at our TV station

got involved in coverage.

We set up a command post at the Vogel State Park,

which is right there at the base of the mountain.

It was very cold at this time.

A lot of what we were doingú was making phone calls,

just trying to identify anyoneú who may have seen anything.

[reporter] Authoritiesú and volunteers spent...

We asked for anybody that had been on the trail

for the last couple of days, ú if they had seen Meredith.

We blasted out a picture of Meredith and her dog.

I'd covered a lot of stories up in the North Georgia mountains,

and typically it was someone wandered off a trail

or they'd fallen.

There might be a search or a rescue.

Most of the time,

those situations turned out well.

They turned out positive.

[Jeff] This case came in initially

as a missing hiker case.

So we were looking for a lost hiker.

And as you can see, you look howúdense this mountain laurel is.

This is a very difficult areaúto search for a human being,

much less search for veryú small items of evidence

like drops of bloodú or those types of things.

It is a very, very rugged terrain.

[reporter] Those eager to find Meredith Emerson

spend the morning waiting.

Stay strong, Meredith. We know how strong you are.

[narrator]ú While detectives move fast,

they begin to fearú this could be more than

a missing person case.

As the investigation gathers pace,

multiple witnesses come forward

describing a strange man seennspeaking to her in the car park

shortly before she vanished.

[John Cagle] The tips we began to receive

were sightings of Meredith and her dog, Ella,

that she took with her that morning to go hiking.

And we began to get the reports of a strange-looking man,

who also had a dog with him,

interacting with Meredith as they went up the trail.

One of the eyewitnesses has described him

as being weathered and no teeth,

and looked as he had beenú hiking for quite some time.

They all described him almost identical, you know,

older gentleman, very fit, wearing high-end hiking gear,

but he has duct tape on his shoes,

he's got a dog with him,

and they saw him around a white van.

[narrator] Although anxiousabout Meredith's disappearance,

friends and family try to stay positive.

She's strong. She's athletic.

She's feisty.

I've watched her fight to a standstill,

people that were half, ú again, as big as she was.

And I have every faith that she's doing well out here.

She's a tough girl. She really is.

I would not want to be

the person that tried to jump her.

[narrator] As the search for Meredith

stretches into its sixth day,

detectives grow desperate for answers.

We work a lot of homicides in this business.

It's very unusual for someone to be abducted by a stranger,

and so this felt very different from the beginning.

As more and more information came out,

it was not your typical missing hiker.

[man] I"ve gained 20 pounds in three or four months.

[narrator] The wild open country of North Georgia

is also where divorcee Gary Hilton

spends his time away from work.

[John Tabor] My name is John Tabor.

I own a telemarketing operation,

and I first met Gary Hilton

when he replied to a help wanted ad

for telemarketers.

He was fond of the outdoors,

and enjoyed taking his dog out into the national forests

where they would

camp, like I said, for maybe a week at a time.

John Tabor had a businessúwhere they would go to homes,

they would do construction, build decks.

He employed Gary Hilton as a telemarketer.

So Gary Hilton's job for the better part of a decade

was to drum up business for John Tabor.

He had proved himself to be a reliable and

valuable employee.

He was a smart individual,

and you didn't have to spend much time talking to him

to realize that.

He was articulate, he was great with numbers,

he could do rather complex mathematics in his head,

and spit numbers out that most people couldn't do.

[narrator] But in 2007,

the financial crash leads to a global recession.

The telemarketing operation is shut down.

He suggested that he do his own marketing on my behalf,

and then I could just pay him commissions

based on his production.

And since the phone room was shut down,

I really didn't have any need for that office building.

It was an old commercial property.

So Gary and I came to an agreement

where he would actually live at the property

so he could keep an eye on things.

But it was toward the last year of his employment,

Tabor told me that he started to see this decline

in Hilton's mental health.

He was on medications.

He stopped coming to work.

And, eventually, Tabor told me

that Hilton started demanding money from him.

[John Tabor] And I kind of laughed

when he first made the demand.

And it was only after he followed up with that

and said, you know, "John, you've got a great life,

beautiful wife, this beautiful young son.

It would be such a shame for you to lose all that."

I just knew that something bad was going to happen

and probably would be sooner than later.

[narrator] John Tabor decides to make a surprise visit

to the office where Hilton is staying

to find out what's going on.

[John Tabor] The whole situation was just creepy.

I just had this feeling of doom.

Nothing seemed right. Everything seemed out of order.

And then suddenly,

he pops out of a doorway.

And he's kind of laughing, and he's animated.

And he's, "Oh, yeah, I'm so glad you stopped by."

So I immediately noticed that he was much more

dishevelled than normal.

And at that point, he smiled at me

when I could... where I could see him

in the light.

And I noticed that several of his teeth were missing.

And I was pretty shocked by that.

And I just said, "Oh, well, you know,

what happened to you?"

He goes, "Oh, yeah, my teeth."

He goes, you know, he said,

"I pulled them out with this pair of pliers."

He said he did it so it would frighten people

when they looked at him.

I knew at that point I needed to get the hell

out of there as soon as I could.

Tabor got frightened enough to the point where he

even moved his family out of his home temporarily.

He armed himself. He was afraid of Gary Hilton.

And he notified authorities about the threats.

It didn't result in an arrest.

[narrator] In October 2007,

Gary Hilton is living rough in remote forest areas,

moving between hiking trails in North Georgia.

Cherokee County authorities

came across Gary Hilton camping out in his van

in a area where that is private property.

So someone called and said, "Hey, there's this guy.

He's living in his van on property that's private.

Could you go run him off?"

And there's body camera video of this deputy

approaching Gary Hilton.

But the one thing that came out of that

that's kind of eerie is that Hilton had a retractable baton

with him at the time,

and acknowledged that he had it.

[reporter] The sun risesúin North Georgia mountains...

If you can get more people.

[reporter]...ending the third bitter cold night

since Meredith Emerson disappeared.

[narrator] As the search forúMeredith Emerson intensifies,

detectives uncover a clue in her disappearance.

There were some items found onúthe trail that concerned them.

And they were a water bottle, dog leash, dog treats,

and a police expandable baton.

And those items were turned in to a little store nearby.

Meredith's middle name is Hope.

And that's exactly whatú 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.

[narrator] By January 4th,

Meredith has beenú missing for three days,

and there is still no traceú of her on Blood Mountain.

We have nothing right now.

We're still following leads.

[reporter] Meredith's friends cover the world

with a website called helpfindmeredith.com.

[narrator] Hilton's former boss, John Tabor,

is at home watching TV

when a story about Meredith happens to come on the news.

I was working out and caught the top of the news

where they broke to coverúthis case of the missing girl

in North Georgia.

They said that there was evidence

of a struggle in the parking lot

where they found Meredith's vehicle.

But what really got my attention was they said they found

an expandable police baton.

Now that's what really made me stop in my tracks.

He showed me his police batons hundreds of times,

how fond he was of them, and he used those to protect

his dog from other dogs approaching his dog.

So I called, and I ended up finally getting...

this was Union County Sheriff's Department on the phone.

And says, "I know who you're talking about.

His name's Gary Michael Hilton.

I can give you the tag number to the van

because I bought it for him."

So we pull a driver's licence photo of him

and put it out onto the news media.

So it carries nationwide again.

[reporter] Authoritiesú believe this was the man

on Freeman Trail on Blood Mountain

talking to 24-year-old Meredith Emerson

the day she and her dog, Ella, disappeared.

We needed to find Gary Hilton.

We began to get information and descriptions of him

almost immediately.

[narrator] Police receive tips

and notice similaritiesú between Meredith's case

and their investigation intonthe killing of an elderly couple

who were murderedú out hiking the year before.

[Clay] John and Irene Bryant were retired.

They were, from what I understand,

very friendly people,

well-liked in the community.

Irene was a retired veterinarian,

and they took out one afternoon

to just do a day hike inú the Pisgah National Forest.

[narrator] Irene is killed near the couple's car,

but her husband's body isn't found until much later.

Her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head,

and John was not to be found at that time.

Their investigation revealed that

later on in the same day, the same afternoon,

John's debit card was used at an ATM

in an area called Ducktown, Tennessee,

which is about two hours from the Pisgah National Forest.

And so, when the authorities began to search

for John and Irene.

They found the body of Irene, but no signs of John.

And it was later on that John's body was found

in the Nantahala National Forest.

[narrator] At the same time,

police in Florida also get in touch

about another murdered hiker.

[Gloria] My name is Gloria Tucker.

I live in Tallahassee, Florida.

My cousin, Cheryl Dunlap,

which I refer to herú as Sherry all the time,

she was a beautiful person inside and out.

Cheryl Dunlap lived just outside Tallahassee, Florida.

She was a nurse and Sunday school teacher.

She went for a day hike in the Apalachicola National Forest

in an area called Leon Sinks.

When she didn't come home or go to the Sunday school class

that she normally teaches the next day,

her friends reported her missing.

[Gloria] It was a calm place,

she thought, a nice place, a beautiful place.

And she just kind of contemplated

and read a little book, and then...

and then she was kidnapped.

I think everyone in our family had nightmares

for a number of months.

It was very hard on our whole family.

[narrator] Police investigating Cheryl's disappearance

uncover security footage of her card being used at an ATM.

It shows a shadowy figure

wearing a disturbing homemade mask.

He had his face taped up, his hands taped...

He didn't want anyone to recognize who he was.

He was very wiry.

And in a couple of weeks, some hunters in the forest

saw some buzzards circling an area,

and went over and found the remains of Cheryl.

[narrator] Cheryl Dunlap's body has been left mutilated

in the Apalachicola National Forest.

The county was a very friendly county,

and to have something so horrendous like that happen,

you know, it just shook up the whole county.

[narrator] As with Cheryl Dunlap,

whoever killed John and Irene Bryant

also used their bank cards to withdraw cash from local ATMs.

When we learned of those cases,

then we began to talk to both jurisdictions

about the similarities, and there were several.

The ATM traffic,

the attempts,

and then successful withdrawals.

[narrator] When detectives explore discrepancies

in Meredith's bank account,

they uncover multiple attempts to use her bank card,

all of them unsuccessful.

[Clay] The US Marshals Serviceú offered their assistance,

and we basically gave them allúof the information for Meredith,

and they ran them through their system.

And they basically came back and said,

"You know what, somebody attempted to use your card

at this location, this location, and this location

on the 1st and the 2nd."

And I said, "No, the bank's not telling me that."

[John Cagle] We had initially been told

that there was no activity.

But Friday morning,

we learned that there, in fact, had been.

And we were working very strongly

with North Carolina and Florida

to compare the photographs of subjects at the ATMs.

And that's when, Friday morning,

we realized that we had the same guy.

This guy has done all of this.

First, that told us that Meredith Emerson's alive.

Second, it told us that she's given him the wrong PIN number

in hopes that she could buy some time

that we could catch up.

So she was very, very smart.

[narrator] A white van witnesses also reported

seeing close to where Cheryl Dunlap vanished

is a close match to the one Gary Hilton is driving

the day Meredith Emerson goes missing.

There was mention of a van in Florida

where Gary Hilton was actually confronted with a park ranger.

So we had a van in our case.

So everything began to line up fairly quickly

as soon as we found out of both of those jurisdictions.

[narrator] Detectives searching for Meredith Emerson

strongly suspect Gary Hilton could be responsible

for her disappearance

and the murders of three more hikers.

Out of the blue,

Gary Hilton's former boss, John Tabor,

gets an extraordinary call

from Gary Hilton.

It was him.

It was him.

After seven months of absolutely no communication.

I was still armed.

I was still looking over my shoulder.

And there he was

on the phone with me

out of nowhere, like a ghost.

He immediately apologized for what had happened

and told me that he was really sick back then

and he just wanted to apologize

and wanted to make it right and...

he wanted to come back to work.

Now, I'm just,

you know, sitting in my car

in a state of disbelief.

And he said he needed some money to get started,

to get back to work and whatnot.

I said, "Hey, that's no problem. How much do you need?"

We discussed an amount.

$700, $800. I forgot what it was.

[narrator] John Tabor tries to buy himself some time

while he works out what to do.

I played along.

I acted as though I didn't know anything about anything

that we've been talking about here.

And I told him that that was great.

I was glad to hear from him,

and that it'd be great if you wanted to come back to work.

Hilton acted like nothingú had transpired negatively

between the two of them.

No mention of the previous threat.

"Give me money, or I'll do something to you."

There was none of that.

[John Tabor] So, I was more than anxious

to give him his cheque and meet him as soon as I could.

But then he explained,

he just said that that's not possible.

"I can't meet."

He could not meet me then under any circumstances.

[Jerry] So he told Hilton,

"I'll leave you some money

at my office on Claremont Road,

and you go by and get it,

and then we'll talk about you going back to work for me."

Of course, he didn't leave any money there.

He hung up.

[John Cagle] Once we learned that there was a possibility

that Hilton would go to his former employer's office

to pick up the cheque,

we got with the local jurisdiction in Atlanta,

and they deployed their SWAT team

around the business,

and they were prepared to grab him if he showed up.

And we were hoping that he would,

because if he showed up,

most likely he'd have Meredith with him.

They stayed all night into the next day and into Friday,

and he didn't show up.

[narrator] Despite Hilton's no-show at the office,

the net is closing in.

But will it catch Gary Hilton

before he brings any harm to Meredith Emerson?

On January 4th,

Meredith's dog Ellaú is seen outside a store

about an hour's drive away

from where she went missing on Blood Mountain.

Friday afternoon came,

we got a telephone call to the tip line

from a lady about 60 miles south of Blood Mountain,

who said, "I think I just saw Meredith Emerson's dog

walk into a grocery store."

Surveillance at the grocery store

shows it walking around

almost...

it almost looked like it was asking for help.

[woman] The dog looked very similar

to the one that was in the picture.

So I went up to the dog and, you know,

was trying to see was it the same one?

[reporter] Michelle Preston found the black lab

wandering in the parking lot of a Forsyth County Kroger.

So I put the dog in the car,

and took her over to the vet across the street.

I'm just concerned about the girl.

That's my main concern.

And so we were able to pick up the dog very quickly

and identify the dog as Ella through an ID chip

that she had in her.

So we knew that Ella was in an area

70 miles south of the abduction site.

So where's Meredith and Gary Hilton?

[narrator] Detectives search the gas station

opposite the grocery store where Ella is found.

We're here on Keith Bridge Road just off of 400 where there

are two major developments in Emerson's disappearance.

Not only did they find Emerson's dog

in a Kroger parking lot adjacent from where we are,

but they also found several of her personal belongings

in a dumpster at this QT behind me.

[John Cagle] And the agents I sent down there

found a dumpster in the parking lot.

And they decided to look in the dumpster.

And that's where we found the things

that I'd hoped that we wouldn't.

We found bloody clothing.

We found Meredith's driver's licence and wallet.

We found other clothing,

men's clothing with blood on them.

And this is not just blood stains.

This was blood that you could...

so much you could wring it out of the shirts.

[Jeff] The blood was wet.

It was fresh.

That was disturbing.

You know, 'cause up to this point,

we were all holding out the hope that Meredith's alive.

We're gonna capture the bad guy and recover her.

It's gonna have a happy ending.

And that was what weú certainly were hoping for.

[narrator] By now, the police tip line

is buzzing with calls from the public

with sightings of Gary Hilton and his van.

Everybody in Atlanta hadú been alerted to this story.

Very few people did not know

that Meredith Emerson was missing,

that authorities were looking for her,

that they were looking for Gary Hilton.

It was on the minds of everyone.

It was just that shocking a story,

and everyone wanted resolution.

For Gary Hilton, you know, to stop at a gas station

and not think, "People are looking for me.

The cops are looking for me.

My face is out there."

It was kind of brazen.

He stopped there to clean out his van,

probably to clean out any evidence,

hoping to clean out any evidence

of what he'd done to Meredith Emerson.

[dispatcher] Police are there?

[dispatcher] They got him?

Investigators say that Gary Hilton

did not put up a fightú when approached by police.

[reporter] This appears to be 60-year-old Gary Hilton

heading to GBI headquarters in the back of a patrol car.

You can see a white van,

matching the description of Hilton's,

parked near the Chevron gas station's vacuum cleaner

and trash cans.

Through its open doors,

you can see it's packed full of stuff

with bags on the ground nearby.

[narrator] Inside Gary Hilton's van,

detectives uncover chilling evidence

that confirms their worst fears.

There was a hair transfer stain,

a blood stain made from contact with hair,

blood on a non-bloody surface.

In this case, it was the back of the driver's seat.

When I saw that initially,

I assumed It would have been Meredith Emerson's hair.

We took a DNA sample, sent it to the lab.

The laboratory called me back, and they said,

"Hey, this is not Meredith Emerson's blood.

It's male blood, but it's not Gary Hilton's blood."

And then we were able to eventually identify that

to John Bryant.

He is being questioned about his knowledge

of her disappearance.

There have been no charges filed at this point,

and that remains to be seen

what will occur with respect to any charges.

Right now, it is a continuing investigation.

And the important thing in the next step

would be locating Miss Emerson.

We were pleased that we had him.

But the bad part of that, I suppose,

is the notion that we didn't have Meredith.

[reporter] Just before 9 PM

GBI agents drove suspect Gary Hilton

into the Union County Jail

to face a charge ofú kidnapping Meredith Emerson

with bodily injury,

as she hiked near Vogel State Park

in Union County on Tuesday.

[narrator] With Gary Hilton in custody

and the blood of dead hiker John Bryant in his van,

police also fear Meredith is no longer alive.

[reporter] Late in the afternoon,

the announcement from John Bankhead of the GBI

brought Meredith's familyand friends to speechless tears.

There will no longer be a search and rescue mission

to save Meredith, he said.

It is now a search and recovery mission.

Investigators no longer believe Meredith is alive.

[narrator] Detectives are hoping Gary Hilton will at least

help them find her remains.

We had DeKalb County transportú him to our headquarters,

which is in DeKalb County,

in a conference room in GBI headquarters.

Well, when I first walked into the conference room,

and Special Agent Bridges was in there with Gary,

Gary was lying on the floor

in a fetal position

and kept saying that he had multiple sclerosis

and he needed an immediate shot of folic acid,

and just kind of talking crazy.

And Clay Bridges actually laid down on the floor with him

and talked to him for a few minutes,

just trying to see if we could establish

some kind of communication.

He had a...

a fingernail gouge into his nose.

Pretty substantial cut on his nose from a fingernail.

It looked to be a defensive wound

someone else had inflicted on him.

And his hand was obviously broken.

It was swollen.

He just stayed quiet.

Investigators say thatú Hilton is not cooperating

and not talking.

Now later today, searchers are expected

to search the mountain roads and the highways

in Union County,

hoping to see if maybe they can find Meredith's body

in the deep ravine somewhere there.

I appeal to everyone to search their hearts and memories

for anything they can remember

and do to help us find Meredith and return her home.

[narrator] The detective leaves Hilton with a final thought.

[John Cagle] Sunday morning, January 6th,

we get him a lawyer.

And I go up to the jail where we're holding him,

and tell the lawyers

that I want to know where Meredith Emerson is.

Go talk to him.

And they talked to him for two or three hours.

And I waited right outside the door.

And they finally came out

and asked me if I would call the prosecutor

and see if the prosecutor might consider

taking the death penalty off the table.

We both were in agreement that that would be the thing to do,

because the Emersons needed closure.

And so he began to tell us the story,

very nonchalant, very direct.

I interviewed him about the crime itself.

And, truthfully, it was the most

horrific thing I think I had ever heard,

even as a law enforcement officer.

It was undoubtedly one of the most

devastating gut punches that I have taken.

She was on her way up,

he was trying to hike along with her

and talk to her about her dog and everything else.

Eventually, she said, "Okay, I'll talk to you later,"

and just basically left him.

She pretty much ran up the trail

and she probably sensed that there's something,

something wasn't good about it

and left him behind.

This is the trail that leads from the Appalachian Trail

down to the Byron Reece Memorial parking area.

This is the area where Meredith Emerson

initially hiked up this to the trail,

and then was abducted by Gary Hilton.

Gary laid in wait in this area right here for Meredith.

[Clay] Some people had actually seen him hiding,

crouching behind the rocks,

and it made them think, "What's this guy doing?"

He waited for her to come back down the trail.

And when she came back down the trail,

he basically jumped out with his bayonet knife

and told her that he wanted,

all he wanted was her debit card and her PIN number

and he would let her go.

They rolled off the trail down into the woods,

away from the trail.

And Meredith was trained in martial arts.

And Gary Hilton would later tell us that she almost took him.

In other words, she almost beat him up.

So they tussled down the hill.

And you could actually see, even two days into it,

when I arrived up there, you could actually see

the ground was so disturbed in that area

where you could tell it was a very violent fight

that had taken place right there.

[Jerry] All I can think is,

"Boy, he picked the wrong female."

I mean, he picked Meredith Emerson.

He targeted her because he thought, "Female,

I can overtake her, weaker."

He picked the wrong female.

This is somebody who trained in martial arts,

by all accounts from everyone who knew her,

very strong-willed person, and she fought him.

And she fought him hard.

He finally got control of her by convincing her he had a gun.

He tied her to a tree there

and told her that if she screamed

or did anything out of the way, he was going to kill her dog.

She was very clever,

and kept giving him incorrect PIN numbers

when he'd take her to the bank for money,

which was his intent.

His purpose was to get money from her.

And she would continue to give him the incorrect PIN numbers.

And her hope, of course,

was that the police would be alerted

and be able to run him down and locate him.

As the afternoon continues and it becomes dusk,

and so he makes his way back down to the parking lot

and forces Meredith into the van

along with Ella, and they leave.

I can't imagine what she was going through for

those days that she was in that van with him.

And, you know, she's just trying to think of anything

she can do to stay alive,

and frustrate this man who's taken her hostage.

He makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up

when I'm in a room with him.

He just feels like he's evil.

And he began giving us descriptions of where she was

and what he had done to her.

And the fact that he had taken her head off,

and moved it to another location

about a mile away from her body.

At approximately 7:30 this evening,

the body of Meredith Emerson wasú discovered in a wooded area.

Well, the body was covered with leaves and limbs and debris.

Literally, you could be standing a couple of feet away

and not know there was a body there.

So he had done a very good job of concealing the body.

And the most shocking detail of that being

that he had beheaded her.

And, you know, as a journalist,

you cover a lot of grisly things.

You cover a lot of things that are depressing and shocking.

That was one of the most shocking things

I remember from my 42-year career in TV journalism,

that this guy felt the need to behead her.

Why? You've, you know, you've held her captive

all this time, basically tortured her

by hanging the possibility of death over her that entire time.

And then the final thing you have to do to her is behead her.

It just seemed just over the top,

calloused and cruel.

When I went to the jail to execute the search warrant

on Gary Hilton to collect pubic hair,

when Gary walked in the room,

he kind of looked at me head to toe,

and he saw that my pants were dirty, and he said,

"Huh, looks like you have some Dawson County mud

on your pants,"

and with just kind of an arrogant smile on his face.

So, he knows where I had been

and he knows what I had been doing.

[John Cagle] So we got him out of there very quickly

and took him back up to the jail.

And then we charged him in that jurisdiction with murder.

[narrator] Between 2008 and 2012,

across three separate prosecutions

in three different states,

Gary Hilton is convicted of the murders

of Meredith Emerson, Cheryl Dunlap,

and John and Irene Bryant.

He receives the death penalty in Florida,

for Cheryl Dunlap's murder,

where he currently waits on death row.

Sitting through all the court hearings,

it was obvious that he is just,

he's just a maniac.

You know, when you think you've got someone

who's taking your family members

and taking them out somewhere and,

you know, trying to disguiseúthemselves from killing them,

you know, it's a horrible thing.

He was a wicked, wicked person.

Just absolutely, totally wicked.

He doesn't even deserve to be on death row.

He deserves to be dead.

I think these four, the Bryants,

and then our case, and then the Florida case,

those are the four we can prove.

I think there's more.

I don't think Gary just killed those four people.

Gary Hilton's absolutely evil.

You look in his eyes and you can tell that.

He brags about being the smartest guy in the room.

Yeah, he's definitely a special kind of crazy.

[dramatic music]