At the Hands of a Stranger (27 page)

On the second day of the trial, Prosecutor Georgia Cappleman came to court barely able to speak, having begun to lose her voice after the previous day's activity. She soldiered on, however, and was ready to call her witnesses.

Some of the first testimony concerned the ATM photos of the masked man wearing a striped dress shirt who had used Cheryl Dunlap's ATM card on three consecutive days following Cheryl's disappearance. The photos had been taken at the Hancock Bank on West Tennessee Street, and Agent Ronald Weyland, with the Orange County Sheriff's Office (OCSO), had analyzed the surveillance film. He had captured several still photos from the video, and said the man shown doing the withdrawals had worn the same shirt every day. However, on the first two times, after dark, the man had what appeared to be a homemade mask over his face. The third day, however, it was daylight and the man held a cloth over his face, instead of donning a more noticeable mask.

Weyland also told the jury that it appeared to him that the man was carrying a holstered gun on his left hip. Weyland told the jury that he had not been able to estimate the height and weight of the man shown on the tape.

 

Cherokee County, Georgia, deputy William Ballard testified that he had seen Hilton in October 2007 and told him he couldn't camp in the Wildlife Management Area where Hilton had parked his van. Hilton told Ballard to “be safe.”

That afternoon one of the hunters and hikers testified about seeing Hilton in the forest; when one of them took authorities to the place where he had spotted Hilton, they found a beheaded dog at the site. Speculation on the message board, running onscreen alongside the live video coverage of the trial, immediately ran wild. Consensus of opinions was that a dog had come sniffing around the area, attracted by the scents it was picking up from what had happened there, and Hilton killed it to keep it from drawing attention. He had bragged many times about killing dogs that he thought were threatening to attack him. This was strange behavior from someone who evidently loved his own dog, Dandy, to distraction.

Hilton had evidently had two different campsites, one off L. L. Wallace Road and another off Joe Thomas Road, according to testimony. Several of the hunters and hikers who were questioned had reported encounters with Hilton near both areas. One, who had stopped to ask him how far it was to another location in the forest, said Hilton had told him the distance in paces instead of miles, and also told him there was a limestone sinkhole nearby.

Another man said that when he spoke to Hilton and told him that hunting season was about to begin, Hilton appeared to be worried about that.

Brian Bauer testified, “He asked me if there was going to be a lot of hunters in the woods that next day, and I said, ‘Yes, there's going to be a lot.'”

Hilton then swore, turned away, and he and Dandy walked off.

All those who had encountered Gary Hilton in the forest had described him as being friendly and talkative, but Bauer had evidently told Hilton something that caused him concern.

 

When testimony began about items found at Hilton's campsite's fire pit, Leon County Sheriff's Office detective William Punasuia was one of those who recovered some of the bone fragments. When Suber cross-examined him, she asked if any of the items he recovered had been tested for fingerprints. He told her they had not by his agency, but they might have been processed by another agency or detective.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime analyst Amy George testified about what she found when she was brought into the case when Cheryl Dunlap's body was found.

“Her body was covered with limbs, tree limbs, and palmetto fronds,” George said, “and was decapitated and her hands were missing.”

When George processed the fire pit at the Joe Thomas Road campsite, she found hand and skull bones, she said, along with a bead and some pieces of metal. A photograph of the bead was shown, along with photos of similar beads found in Cheryl's car. Apparently, the beads in the car had been overlooked by investigators until the matching bead was found at the campsite; then George went back and processed the car herself and found the other beads.

After the photos of the beads were revealed, the Internet message board was again flooded—this time with opinions about their origin. Everyone's comments indicated that the beads looked to them like those that were frequently used in Sunday school and Vacation Bible Camp craft projects: One of Cheryl's Sunday School kids probably made them, that breaks my heart.

Other items that Amy George had processed were a beige Publix plastic bag that held feces, newspaper, and paper towels. The newspaper, George said, was the December 11, 2007, issue of the
Tallahassee Democrat.

Good use for the Democrat, someone posted on the message board.

The following day's testimony began with the cross-examination of FDLE crime analyst Amy George. Defense attorney Ines Suber questioned George about how Cheryl Dunlap's car was examined and processed, and went into detail about how a sexual assault kit was processed. Suber's heavily accented speech made the testimony slow because of the time it took her to choose the correct wording for her questions.

 

The next witness called to the stand was associate medical examiner (ME) Dr. Anthony Clark, who conducted the autopsy of the unidentified torso of a woman found in the forest, which was soon officially identified as Cheryl Dunlap.

Clark had submitted X-rays that showed that the body had been decapitated at the C7 vertebra, and also photos of her body without head and hands.

Suber called for a sidebar meeting with the judge and objected to the admission of the autopsy photos; the judge denied her objections and admitted all the photos. Clark continued his testimony, but Suber made it difficult to proceed by objecting to nearly every question Georgia Cappleman asked him. Clark was able to confirm that the bones in the fire pit were all human head and hand bones, similar to those missing from Cheryl Dunlap's body. Suber objected, and was overruled. Clark said he had sent the bones to a forensic anthropologist to be tested in further detail.

On cross-examination Clark told Suber that he could not determine from the rape kit whether Cheryl had been assaulted premortem, and said there were no premortem injuries to the vaginal area. The decapitation had occurred postmortem, he said, according to his December 16 autopsy.

Clark also said that Cheryl had died from seven to ten days prior to her body being found, based on decomposition and insect activity. He had listed her cause of death as undetermined homicidal violence, saying that he felt Cheryl might have been beaten, strangled, or suffered head trauma. Again, the condition of the bones after having been burned made it difficult to precisely pinpoint the cause of death.

“Would it be safe to assume that whatever caused her death probably occurred to her head?” Cappleman asked.

“Head or neck, yes, ma'am,” Clark said.

The autopsy had revealed a deep bruise on her right buttock, Clark said, and a second autopsy, on December 20, determined it was from blunt trauma, not a fall.

By that point Suber had interrupted the questioning of Dr. Clark so many times during his testimony that Judge Hankinson finally lost patience completely.

“Ms. Suber, would you quit interrupting counsel and
sit down
!” he thundered.

Suber did so, but began plotting to use the judge's orders to her client's benefit.

 

The next witness was a young man from Georgia named Steven Scott Shaw. He testified to what he saw on January 4, 2008, at the QuikTrip convenience store in Cumming, Georgia. He was sitting in his truck, on the cell phone with his cousin, he said, when he saw Hilton, wearing bright purple-and-green clothing, out in the parking lot beside the store. The bright clothing was what first caught his attention, he said, and he described it to his cousin.

As Shaw started to back out of the parking lot, he said, he saw Hilton going toward the Dumpster carrying something. Shaw said he couldn't see what it was that Hilton was carrying, but the whole thing struck him as very suspicious, and he called the police. Shaw identified Gary Hilton in court as the man he had seen.

 

Suber declined to cross-examine the witness, and there was a recess, during which the message board carried items from a couple of people who apparently had a great deal of knowledge about the Meredith Emerson case: Hilton kept his trash in black garbage bags; the stuff he wanted to keep or cared about, he kept in white bags. Meredith Emerson's head was found in a white garbage bag.

That post went on to say that had Hilton not been caught by police, he had reportedly planned to return to Blood Mountain to retrieve the head.

 

When the trial resumed, Suber immediately moved for a mistrial on the grounds that the judge had prejudiced the jury against Hilton when he had told her to sit down and be quiet when she had tried to voice so many objections during the questioning of Dr. Clark.

Saying that Ms. Suber's behavior had been unprofessional when she repeatedly continued to interrupt the prosecution's questions, Judge Hankinson denied her motion.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent Mitchell Posey took the stand and described some of the contents of the eight trash bags that had been collected from the QuikTrip Dumpster on January 4, 2008. There was an enormous amount of items bagged and tagged for testing, and Posey said that they included a sheath of the type that would fit Hilton's bayonet, and a Forest Service citation for illegal camping.

Suber popped to her feet and objected to each of the items, hoping to have them ruled inadmissible, but to no avail. Other items from the huge mountain of plastic bags with red evidence tape that were ruled admissible—despite Suber's objections—were a black pillowcase that contained three heavy chains, a pair of “hobo” gloves with the fingers cut off, a half-dozen padlocks, a pair of black nylon pants, and a collapsible nightstick.

 

Following the lunch break, Ines Suber immediately challenged Posey's testimony, saying he wasn't on the state's witness list and she was not notified that he would appear; therefore she couldn't prepare. She yet again requested more time to prepare, or said the court should strike his testimony.

The prosecution admitted that Posey was not listed as a “Category A” witness and should have been. They claimed, however, that Suber was given several reports with Posey's name as the primary case agent in charge of the items from the QuikTrip Dumpster evidence, and all of the evidence was reviewed by both parties in November 2010 at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Not seeing Posey as a potential witness was an oversight on Suber's part, Georgia Cappleman told the judge.

Suber argued that the fact that Special Agent Posey's name was not on the witness list was not fair to Hilton, and she wanted two days to prepare. The state had 650 Category A witnesses, she said, and it was not her job to go through reports to find other potential witnesses.

Posey told the judge that he had received a document request from Suber in 2008, and the judge ruled that it was not a willful violation on the part of the prosecution; therefore his testimony would not be struck. He then dismissed court for the remainder of the afternoon so that Suber would have at least some of the time, which she had requested, to prepare.

The fourth day of testimony kicked off with an argument before the jury was seated about some of the things that Gary Hilton had voluntarily said to the Leon County deputies when they went to collect DNA evidence from him during his transport to Tallahassee.

Sergeant David Graham was one of the officers who went to Georgia on both occasions, and he had stated that he and the other sergeant who accompanied him were told not to talk with Hilton or ask him any questions. Graham said, however, that Hilton kept up a running commentary throughout almost the entire time they had spent in his company.

The prosecution claimed that Hilton had told the officers: “If they want to give me immunity, I will give them a full and complete statement.” The defense, in their objection to that remark, said that his reason for saying this was that he had been able to enter a guilty plea in Georgia to avoid the death penalty and hoped that Florida would do the same.

Other comments he made on that trip that drew objections from the defense included: “It'll take four years to take me to trial, fifteen years to execute me. That's nineteen years, and my life expectancy is seventeen-point-one years,” and “It's gonna cost you ten million bucks, and I'll fight it.”

The prosecution also said he told the deputies: “I started in September of last year (2007), nothing before that,” and “I started hunting in September.”

Suber immediately objected. Those statements and the others, the defense claimed, referenced other crimes and were highly prejudicial.

Judge Hankinson ruled to admit Hilton's statements to the deputies about hunting because they were highly relevant, but he agreed that Hilton's comments about pursuing appeals and what his execution would cost taxpayers were, indeed, prejudicial and would not be presented to the jury.

When the trial resumed, evidence testimony was given by several witnesses for most of the morning, with Special Agent Mitchell Posey re-called to testify about the DNA sample he had obtained from Hilton on February 12, 2008. Posey said Hilton had swabbed the inside of his cheek in the presence of two Leon County deputies, but Judge Hankinson would not admit the DNA sample until an FDLE analyst testified on DNA evidence later.

Posey told the defense, on cross-examination, that the hiking boots that were recovered from the Dumpster at the QuikTrip were lying loose in the Dumpster, not in any of the eight trash bags.

 

When Special Agent Clay Bridges, of the GBI, took the stand to testify about his interviews with Hilton following Gary's arrest in Georgia, he was asked about statements Hilton had made during the second interview. Hilton had initially refused to talk without an attorney present during the January 4, 2008, interview. However, when Bridges spoke to him again, on January 7, an attorney was present; and Bridges said Hilton had already made a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Hilton told him at that time, Bridges said, that he had used a bayonet to kidnap Meredith Emerson. Hilton gave him directions to the bayonet's location on Blood Mountain and also to where Meredith's body could be found.

Hankinson ruled that the statements were not admissible at that point because there was no paperwork to indicate whether a plea bargain was made until several weeks later.

Also called to the stand was Jeff Branyon, a former GBI crime scene specialist who worked the scene at the Dumpster and Hilton's van on the night of his arrest in Georgia. Hilton had been arrested, Branyon said, on Ashford Dunwoody Road at a Chevron station, where he had parked by the vacuum cleaner unit. There were many items piled outside the van at the time, Branyon said, and even more had been left in the gas station's Dumpster. The list of items collected as evidence included a pink nylon jacket, a purple fleece jacket and pants, two yellow jackets, a black fleece jacket, three sleeping bags, a black baton case, teal pants, two duffel bags, and some lottery tickets.

All the items collected at the Chevron station and the QuikTrip Dumpsters had been tagged, bagged, and sealed, and were piled high on tables, under tables, and in boxes that literally filled the front, sides, and every other available space in the courtroom.

There were bones from at least two human hands—those of an adult man or woman with small hands—in the burn pit of Hilton's camp, according to Dr. Anthony Falsetti, an expert forensic anthropologist. He confirmed the charred bones included skull and wrist bones, in addition to the hands. They were all burned to the point that even those less damaged were too burned for DNA identification. Falsetti also received bones from a neck vertebra to look for signs of damage. He told the court that there was a sharp-force injury to one, along with six other cut marks. Four of the five wrist bones sent to him also had cut marks, he said.

When Patricia Aagard took the stand as the next witness, she confirmed that there was no DNA to be found in the fire pit bones. An FBI forensic mitochondria DNA examiner, Aagard testified as the state's expert. The bones had been subjected to such high temperatures that there were no longer any living cells to test for DNA. It would be said later that the fire pit burned so hot that the trees above it were scorched.

When Georgia investigator Mark Cecci was sworn in, he was immediately asked by Cappleman about a bayonet that he recovered from Blood Mountain. Before the recovery site was mentioned, however, Suber objected, and the attorneys went to sidebar. Judge Hankinson sent the jury out of the courtroom and the matter of the bayonet was argued, with Cecci being questioned further.

The bayonet was found on the same trail where Meredith Emerson and Hilton were both seen by witnesses, and Cecci said Hilton's statement led the investigators to the location where they also found an expandable baton. Special Agent Clay Bridges had found out about the bayonet from Hilton's statements, but neither the prosecution nor the defense knew whether those statements were protected under immunity.

Judge Hankinson said that he would have thought Suber would have found out from Hilton's Georgia attorneys whether or not there was immunity at that time, and said he would have to settle that issue before he put the bayonet information into evidence. It would be “fool-hardy” for him to do otherwise, he said.

When Matthew Ruddell, an analyst for the FDLE Crime Lab, was called to the stand, he said he had been asked to check a Sony memory stick that had been recovered. Suber immediately objected. There was a question about the chain of custody, and the judge said he wanted documentation to be sure the memory stick had not been tampered with along the way. It was not admitted into evidence at that time.

 

Following Ruddell's testimony, a very tired jury was sent home for the day and was instructed to return the next morning at eight forty-five. The attorneys, however, remained in the courtroom. Suber began objecting hotly to the presentation of an audio recording made while Hilton was being transported to Florida following his extradition. Suber claimed that the prosecution wanted to edit the four-and-a-half-hour tape and only pick and choose the parts of it they wanted the jury to hear. She said the statements needed to be reviewed because Hilton was talking out of frustration, rambling on a wide variety of topics not related in any way to the case, and the prosecution's selections were taken out of context. As such, Suber claimed, they would be inflammatory and were not an admission of guilt.

The statements that she was concerned about on the tape included:

“I'm not all bad. No, I'm not all bad. I just lost my grip on myself.”

“I just lost it.”

Hilton stated that a “sense of victimization” set him off. He also went into detail on the recording about his bayonet training in the military:

“The drill sergeant would shout, ‘What's the spirit of the bayonet?' and we would answer, ‘To kill!'”

Hilton also told the officers he wouldn't refer to himself as a “serial killer” because he had only been
accused
of being a serial killer.

Judge Hankinson ruled that the jury would not hear the complete taped conversation, but they would at some point be allowed to hear certain portions. Hankinson said that though the statements were disturbing, “he says he went off, and that's why he murdered her, and I can't imagine anything being more probative.”

 

When testimony began on the fifth day of the trial, February 20, 2011, FDLE special agent Annie White told the jury of her trips to Georgia to collect evidence. Her first trip, to pick up a bayonet and a couple of other items, was made by car. The next time, it took a semi-truck.

Along with Hilton's white Astro van, the truckload included hiking boots, jackets, sleeping bags, backpacks, and a digital camera.

When FDLE digital evidence analyst Matthew Ruddell took the stand again, the judge was now ready to hear about the contents of the digital camera's memory stick. Ruddell had been able to retrieve the contents of the memory stick, both audio and video, even though Hilton had deleted them. There were several clips that were relevant to the investigation, Ruddell said, with one of them dated December 3, 2007, at 5:49
P.M
., just two days after Cheryl Dunlap disappeared. Hankinson admitted the contents of the memory stick into evidence, despite Suber's objections, but he said he wanted to see all the clips before showing them to the jury. After he reviewed them, the jury returned to the courtroom and the videos were shown.

The videos, made prior to December 3, 2007, contained a confrontation with a Papa John's pizza employee, with Hilton complaining about a delivery driver and telling the man, “You tell these guys to quit terror driving. You tell them to keep at least a vehicle away.”

Another clip shows Hilton arguing with police, saying that “[other officers] stopped me right there, on foot, jogging with my dog.” In both clips Hilton is talking very fast, gesturing, and using a very confrontational tone.

In other clips Hilton posed with his dog, Dandy, hugging him and saying, “This is my baby.” Then Gary showed off his physique for the camera, saying, “I've gained twenty pounds in three or four months, one hundred seventy-one pounds.” He made statements along the lines of “We got to document it” and “We're having a good time.”

In the video clips Hilton is seen wearing the purple-and-green clothing that was described earlier in the trial by witness Steven Scott Shaw, who saw Hilton at the QuikTrip Dumpster.

Then came two videos that contained almost no images on screen; it appeared that Hilton might not have known the camera was on at the time. Both were recorded on December 3, 2007, during the afternoon of the day it is believed that Cheryl Dunlap was murdered, and they were the ones that the prosecutors most wanted the jury to hear. Both contained a great deal of Hilton's bizarre humming and singing, talking to Dandy, driving, stopping, and driving some more. The enhanced audio revealed rustling noises like plastic sheeting or bags being moved around, grunting noises, mumbling, and lots of other sounds, as though Hilton was exerting himself in some way.

Bloggers on the live video feed, provided on the Internet by WCTV, went wild:

Then Hilton was heard making several remarks which, when enhanced, were intelligible enough to cause an uproar on the message board: “…Killed those bitches,” he said; then “…Killed them with this.” After several more minutes of driving around on what sounded like un-paved dirt roads, he said to Dandy, “Okay, we're going to the park. We're going to the park, but first I've gotta go hide this somewhere else.”

One blogger observed, This is it! This is it! He's hiding her body.

While the audio was being played, Hilton had sat in the courtroom, fidgeting, moving around in his seat, leaning back, rocking, and continuously moving his lips, clearly uneasy with what he was hearing but attempting to hide his nervousness. The rocking and lip moving had been constant throughout the trial; but at that point Hilton ratcheted it up quite a bit as he watched and listened to himself.

 

When the trial resumed after a lunch recess, the jury remained out of the courtroom while the state placed a phone call to Stan Gunter, a Georgia attorney who worked on the Meredith Emerson case with the GBI. Gunter brokered the deal with Hilton and Neil Smith, his Georgia attorney, that he would recommend that Hilton get a life sentence instead of the death penalty if he would tell the authorities where to find Emerson's body and give a full confession.

Hilton told investigators the location on Blood Mountain where he had hidden the body, but they could not find Emerson's head, so Hilton was taken to the site, where he led them to the correct location.

The defense then phoned Neil Smith, with the public defender's office, to testify that the statements Hilton made to the agents in the car en route to Blood Mountain were a part of his plea agreement. Suber contended that the bayonet would not have been found—except for Hilton's statement at that time—and said that it could not be connected to Hilton by blood evidence or fingerprints. It was only by those statements that were allegedly part of his plea agreement.

Hankinson ruled that Hilton's statement to GBI agent Clay Bridges leading to the finding of the bayonet could be admitted; the prosecution's contention was that it was the same bayonet used to slash the tire on Cheryl Dunlap's car.

 

The jury came back into the courtroom to view and hear descriptions of the mountain of evidence that was, at that time, piled in bags and boxes that filled the courtroom.

FDLE agent and crime analyst Amy George described all the items she had recovered from the van, which included paper towels, burned pieces of rolling papers, nicotine gum, a piece of palmetto leaf, and more, recovered from beneath the van's driver's seat. George also presented a seat belt, the visor from the driver's side of the van, the back of the passenger seat, and the trim from the side of the van that appeared to have bloodstains. Suber objected to each of the items George submitted, calling them “irrelevant,” and Hankinson promptly overruled her objections and admitted all the items.