At the Hands of a Stranger (18 page)

During the course of a law enforcement juggernaut that had covered hundreds of miles and used hundreds of man hours, Lee Darragh, district attorney for the Georgia Northeastern Judicial Circuit, seemed to have been inadvertently left out of the loop. Like a giant earthquake or a volcano that causes a tsunami, the tips to police officers throughout the region had the mountains trembling as the investigation changed minute by minute. When Hilton had decided to start talking, the first words the GBI thought about were “plea bargain.” Dawson Forest was huge and their chances of finding Emerson's body were remote.

Federal officers involved in the case weren't anxious for Hilton to be convicted and sentenced to death. They believed he had more than a few killings under his belt. As the chief law enforcement officer in the county where Emerson was killed, Darragh should have been the one calling the shots for adjudicating the case. This chase had covered so much territory—so fast—that their heads were spinning. Who had jurisdiction?

Emerson had been reported missing in Gwinnett County, and Blood Mountain, where she was kidnapped, was near Blairsville, near Enotah County. The law officers brought in Enotah County public defenders Ines Suber and Steven Been, who were appointed to represent Gary Hilton in plea bargain talks. The most serious choice against Hilton at the moment was kidnapping with intent to do bodily harm. There was no doubt, even in Hilton's mind, that he had been caught with a smoking gun in his hand. That would be murder with the maximum penalty of death—the thing that had terrified Hilton since he was four years old.

Hilton was taken into custody by the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office in Atlanta and was taken to Union County, where he was being held pending his appearance in magistrate court, similar to a grand jury, to decide whether or not he would be brought to trial. Emerson had been murdered in Dawson County.

The plea bargain had already been agreed to by Hilton and the state by the time Darragh was notified that it was even in the works.

“I have no involvement,” Darragh told the press. “I have had no discussions with the defendant nor any representative of the defendant concerning any plea negotiations in the case.”

The only thing he knew about a plea deal, he said, was that federal prosecutors had urged the state to take the death penalty out of play.

GBI special agent Clay Bridges said there had been significant evidential discoveries in Hilton's Astro van. When a federal agent talked with Bridges about the death penalty, he said, “Somebody's going to get him on the death penalty.”

When Hilton was to appear in magistrate court, Darragh reiterated that he was not part of the plea bargaining.

“I have no involvement,” he said at a press conference. “No involvements in any discussions between the defendant and DA Stan Gunter. I have had no discussions with the defendant nor any representatives of the defendant concerning any plea negotiations in this case.” (Gunter was the DA for Enotah County circuit.)

“I was made aware of the discovery of the body and the possibility that she was killed in Dawson County,” Darragh continued. “Neither I nor any member of my staff was made aware of, or was involved in, or invited to, any part of any discussions between the U.S. Attorney, DA Stan Gunter, of Enotah Judicial Circuit, nor any attorneys for the defendant.”

Law enforcement officers in North Carolina, where Irene and John Bryant were killed, and in Leon County, Florida, where Cheryl Dunlap was beaten to death, said there was evidence in the van that linked Hilton directly to all three of these murders. Irene Bryant and Cheryl Dunlap were both beaten to death with a blunt instrument, just as Meredith Emerson had been killed. Emerson and Dunlap were both decapitated after death, but Bryant was not. John Bryant's body had not been discovered by the time Hilton faced magistrate court, although he was reported missing in September 2007.

On the morning of January 6, 2009, Hilton was brought to magistrate court under heavy security. People in the area had developed a deep hatred for Hilton based solely on news reports. He wore an orange jumpsuit over body armor that protected him from his neck down to his hips. A SWAT team had been called on duty to protect Hilton, and there was at least one SWAT sharpshooter on the roof of a tall building.

Hilton entered the magistrate court in handcuffs, leg irons, and shackles, and his face glowered. When Dawson County chief magistrate Johnny Holtzclaw asked how Hilton pleaded to the charges, the prisoner boomed out, “Not guilty!” A motion for bail was promptly denied and Hilton was taken to Dawson County Detention Center. There he was arrested on a warrant for the malicious murder of Meredith Emerson.

 

Waiting in the wings with his own warrant for the first-degree murder of Cheryl Dunlap was Leon County sheriff Larry Campbell in Tallahassee, Florida. The ongoing investigation by the GBI to wrap up the Emerson case was yielding strange finds. A criminal lawyer, who also produced DVD movies for retail sale, stepped forward to say that Hilton had developed the story line in 1995 for a movie called
Deadly Run.

Samuel Rael said that Hilton came up with an idea about a serial killer who takes people to his cabin in the woods, and then hunts and kills them. The killer kills men and women alike, and is not limited to a club as his weapon choice. He uses a pistol to murder two girls close-up after he picks them up in a bar and flies them in his pontoon-fitted airplane to his remote mountain cabin. Minutes later he kills with a rifle, and also kills a group of pursuing police officers with a hand-carried rocket. The bodies in
Deadly Run
drop like flies, until the serial killer finally takes a bullet.

Killing people in the remote woods seemed to be a theme of which Hilton was quite fond.

“I knew he was a sociopath, but I thought he had a very creative imagination,” Rael said. “He was very enthused about that. He helped me outline the plot, the concept, and the ideas behind it. He had ideas of how we could do what we did, having people let loose in the woods and hunted down like prey.”

Rael said that Hilton helped write the script, shoot locations, and gave the lead actor lessons on killing. Hilton was “very enthused,” the lawyer-producer said, about the project.

 

Hilton attempted to fight extradition to Florida, where he faced the death penalty if found guilty of Dunlap's murder. In April, he screamed at a Lamar County Superior Court judge, Thomas “Tommy” Wilson, that he would fight extradition to Florida from Georgia. He also demanded a court-appointed attorney. Since extradition is a civil matter, Wilson did not grant Hilton's request for legal help, but he gave him twenty days to file a habeas petition to challenge his arrest.

For this appearance Hilton wore white coveralls with blue trim and a strap on his arm that contained an electronic control device. A state corrections employee stood by to shock Hilton, should he start causing trouble. Following the hearing Hilton was taken to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GDCP) in Butts County. There he lived what was a high life by his standards. He was separated from the other inmates in what is called “administrative control,” where he has a small private cell, a toilet, hot and cold running water, sink, desk, built-in bed, and “three square meals a day.” He claimed to be content and that the other inmates had a nickname for him—“the stud hiker.”

On April 17, 2008, Captain Dewey Smith, of the Pickens County Sheriff's Office (PCSO), South Carolina, interviewed Hilton at the Georgia Corrections Center. Jason Knapp, who was a sophomore at Clemson University, had disappeared while hiking in South Carolina in the Table Rock area. The case was cold and there had never been any strong suspects. No remains were ever found. There were three other unsolved murders in the general area; and since Hilton had surfaced, he immediately became a “person of interest.” Smith was hoping that Hilton might provide answers to solve the cases, once and for all.

But Smith had misjudged this man by thinking he might appeal to the compassionate side of Hilton's nature by stressing how much pain the unsolved cases caused their friends and family.

Hilton stuck out his hand when Smith and his deputy walked into the interview room.

“Hi, everybody!” he said cheerfully. “I'm Gary Hilton.”

The two police officers introduced themselves.

“Hey, great, man! I didn't think y'all looked like attorneys, y'know?”

“No, we're not attorneys.”

“I thought these guys are just too tough, man. You know, attorneys are pussies. Half of 'em are metrosexuals.” He laughed heartily. “You got a look on you that you could be in Hollywood, I'll tell you.” He laughed again.

“By the way,” Hilton smiled. “Today is Friday, isn't it?”

“Today is Thursday, the seventeenth.”

“By God!” Hilton laughed. “Time flies by here. No one messes with me. They treat me real good. I'll be glad to talk with you, all you want,” Hilton said. “I would love nothing else but to clear up only things that I have been involved in, for the family.”

Hilton said anything he told them would be a “professional recitation.”

“I have remorse for what I have done,” Hilton said. “But once you get past the initial embarrassment of talking about it, which is only right at first, it just became a professional recitation.” Hilton said he was giving up no information to the state of Florida or anyone else “for free.” He said he just wanted to be left alone to live his life in peace.

He said he would give one piece of information for free: that he had committed no felonies in September 2007. Following that, Hilton presented a rambling recitation that produced nothing relevant to anything being discussed. He went on for half an hour.

The police officers showed him a picture of Knapp and said it was a photo of the young man who was missing. They asked him if he recognized the face.

“Yeah, I seen this type of face a million times,” he said. “This is almost a generic young yuppie face living in a virtual la-la world. I always ran down those loose male dogs I'm afraid of. Don't let your dog confront me. I got a bad attitude. Better keep this dog away from me. Gonna rip his head off, always bigger than me. They come up to me, and the next thing they know, they'll be running for their lives.” Hilton howled with laughter.

Hilton made a sarcastic apology in which he poked fun at the police officers for being emotional about the case and the families for seeking any kind of closure.

“Oh, let me tell you directly, I'm sorry about your loss, and I see victims' families crying in court—my victims' families crying in court. I know what you're missing. I know what you would be missing if you knew your son was gone. And so I know what you're going through, not knowing what happened to him, where he is. And I want to assure you, ma'am, that if I knew anything that had happened to your son, I would not refuse to answer. I want to assure you that there is absolutely no light I am going to shed on the matter of your son. I say that, realizing that it certainly fits in with the modus operandi that I am assumed to have used in several crimes that I am suspected of. And in this case it is coincidence, and, ma'am, you gotta always leave room for coincidence. So I'm sorry I can't bring you any closure ultimately.”

Hilton mentioned that he was suspected of two murders in North Carolina and another in Florida. “I am not going to tell you I did those, but I am telling you is, I'm not telling anybody I didn't do them, okay?” he said. “I'm not saying I didn't do them, but what I'm saying is there's nothing outside those three murders, no nothing.”

The interview continued with Hilton giving his opinions on the police, yuppies, society, doomsday, and other subjects close to him, and how glad he was to be a sociopath. And then he gave a horrible description of killing someone and said that only his cold, calculating, sociopathic paratrooper experiences could have prepared him for this.

“It's hard to beat someone to death,” he said. “What I mean, it's hard emotionally, and it's hard physically. You take an iron bar this long and you think, ‘Solid iron bar,' you can hit one time and crush their skull, and it doesn't happen that way. That thing bounces the fuck off, just like smashing a concrete block with a rubber cover—don't smash like eggshell. They don't go unconscious. They start screaming! Man, you gotta beat 'em and beat 'em and beat 'em and beat 'em. And finally you get the skull fractured enough, until blood starts coming and starts splattering everywhere—in your face, blood spurts, and blood gets mist in your eyes—and it just puts a red film over everything. It's tough as hell, okay? And I was able to do it.”

The two detectives left the interview without having learned anything useful that might help them solve the mystery of Jason Knapp's disappearance.

 

A hunter stumbled upon the skeletal remains of Jack Bryant on February 2, 2008. The remains were in Macon County, just off a Forest Service Road, not far from Standing Indian Campground, in northwestern North Carolina. It was almost two hundred miles away from where the Bryants' vehicle had been found. Transylvania sheriff David Mahoney said there was “no question” that Hilton was responsible for the two murders. Mahoney said there was more than enough evidence to meet North Carolina's “minimum” standard for the death penalty.

At first, there was a question of whether the state or the federal government would have jurisdiction over the case. The murders were committed on federal land. The U.S. Attorney General's Office had taken over the case and was going about gathering evidence for a trial. Mahoney said that Gary Hilton was the one single suspect and that the evidence against him was overwhelming. Public defenders representing Hilton were wildly successful in enforcing a gag order that put an iron curtain around information surrounding the Hilton case. Not a glimmer of information was released since the gag order was put in effect, although it was known that there were over four hundred witnesses expected to testify for the state, including Samuel Rael, the producer of
Deadly Run.
Reportedly, two vans loaded with evidence were shipped from Georgia to Florida.