The National Forest Serial Killer: Gary Hilton | Making A Serial Killer | Forensic Files

[ominous music] She said, no, let me go, put her hands up. I kept striking her and she lost consciousness.
And I kept striking her to ensure she was dead. He cut off their hands. He cut off both their heads.
He was a wicked, wicked person. It was too much to even comprehend how he could be that cruel, that evil,
and commit the horrific acts that he did. Makes me sick to my stomach. It's a very densely forested area,
very difficult area to search for things like blood or hair or fibers. You can't catch me.
I am here in it's vastness of the United States. And it is up to you to try to find me or stop me
because I'm going to keep doing this horrific act. It was nothing I've ever experienced before.
I mean, he's just pure evil. You can see it in his eyes. [theme music] EMMA DONALDSON: The Appalachian Trail is a collection
of national parks covering 2,000 miles across 14 eastern US states. Its vast, untamed landscape is a favorite
among hikers and hunters. The southern tip of this wilderness is in North Georgia.
Its very mountainous area. National forest land is abundant in north Georgia. We have lots of small towns in Georgia,
usually 20, 30 miles apart. But in between those cities, they're just remote, rugged mountains.
You can walk for literally days and not come across a road. If someone disposes of a body in the national forest,
you'll never find them. EMMA DONALDSON: Fulton County, Georgia, is where divorcee Gary Hilton spends his time away from work.
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 very fond of the outdoors and enjoyed taking his dog out
into the national forests where they would camp for maybe a week at a time. He had proved himself to be a reliable and valuable employee.
He was a smart individual. He was great with numbers. He could do rather complex mathematics
in his head and spit numbers out that most people couldn't do. It was a fine working arrangement.
He did his job, and that was pretty much it. He never got along that well with other people
and just seemed to prefer the company of his dog rather than other humans. He worked in that office, uneventfully, for a decade.
Construction companies in general, mine included, were hit hard where there was a dramatic drop in business.
So I shut the phone room down. And he was very concerned about that. He suggested that he do his own marketing on my behalf,
and then I could just pay him commissions based on his production. So Gary and I came to an agreement
where he would actually live in the office so he could keep an eye on things, since I really didn't have any need to go to that location.
So it seemed like a win-win situation. He wasn't being very productive. Based on his long history, I would
advance him money for his living expenses and whatnot with the understanding that eventually we would catch up.
I got frustrated at some point. It just became obvious that he had lost interest in actually working.
At some point, you have to put your foot down. And then suddenly, within a matter of a few weeks,
he became extremely distant and belligerent. And it got to the point where he demanded money.
It was shocking to me that he would actually do such a thing and take that position.
I realized at that point that this is a real problem. The situation just spiraled downward rapidly.
It didn't make any sense. EMMA DONALDSON: At this point, despite their long working
relationship, John knows very little about Hilton's past. He had a traumatic start to life.
As a child, his parents moved around a lot. And at age 13, he shot his stepfather.
When we look at a 13-year-old child who deliberately picks up a rifle and shoots his stepfather out of frustration,
out of rage, or whatever, that is a bright red warning sign-- [gunshot] --that this is somebody who, when they are angry enough,
is willing to do something like that. EMMA DONALDSON: His early childhood featured
another traumatic incident. At age nine, he suffered a brain injury. He had been hit in the frontal lobe with a Murphy bed,
had fallen on him when he was a young kid. It is a very serious injury. He has over 200 stitches.
And several people in the hospital report that he becomes very hyperactive while he's in the hospital, they have difficulty kind
of controlling him. And when we look at serial killers, it's interesting that about a quarter of them
have a history of head trauma at some point in their life, which can damage their frontal lobe.
It can lead to problems with judgment, decisionmaking, and all kinds of things. EMMA DONALDSON: At age 18, Gary enlisted in the US Army
as a paratrooper. But after three years, he had a schizophrenic episode and was discharged.
He drifts around during the '70s, during the 1980s. He has three failed marriages.
He kind of goes from job to job. He is somebody who is really living on the fringes of society.
Here's someone that's saying, my look is going to present that, my appearance. My whole genre of who I am is going to say, stay away from me,
I'm different from you. I don't want to be a part of this society. I had to satisfy my own curiosity as to what
was going on with this man. So I decided to stop by the office unannounced. So I pulled into the parking lot.
There were no lights on in the office. Parking area was dark. It was just dark everywhere.
The back door was wide open, which was also unusual. The whole situation was just creepy.
I just had this feeling of doom. Nothing seemed right. Everything seemed out of order.
I remember reaching to turn light switches on, but none of the lights would come on.
And then suddenly, he pops out of a doorway. So I immediately noticed that he was much
more disheveled than normal. And at that point, he smiled at me. And I noticed that several of his teeth were missing.
And I was pretty shocked by that. I just said, what happened to you? And he goes, oh, yeah, my teeth.
He goes, you know, he said, I pulled them out with this pair of pliers. OK? He said, yeah, he said he did it so it would frighten
people when they looked at him. Wow. I knew at that point I needed to get the hell out of there
as soon as I could. I just felt like something bad could happen at any moment. Around this period of time, we see this kind
of erratic aggression appear. And he seems to be getting some enjoyment out of that.
Several people reported being afraid of him at these national parks. He is enjoying being menacing.
And I think what that is reflecting is this increased agitation he's experiencing,
this increased anger, and this increased violence risk. He is ramping up. The more he does these kind of things,
the more he changes his appearance, the more he talks about liking the fact that he's scaring people.
I mean, those are things that really do tell us. They're like little red flags on this path to violence.
EMMA DONALDSON: With the goodwill of John Tabor now wearing thin, Gary Hilton makes
a stark demand for $3,000. I kind of laughed when he first made the demand. It was only after he followed up with that and said,
well, 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. EMMA DONALDSON: Gary Hilton has threatened to harm
the family of his former boss, John Tabor, unless he hands over $3,000. Terrified, John has moved his family away.
But that was my first move, get them out of the house. Someplace where he had no idea where they were.
I agreed to write this check for him. I told him I would put it by the front door of my house
and he would come get it. Hilton came out of the woods out of nowhere in exactly the same time as I was walking down the driveway.
So we literally were now facing each other. And all I can remember thinking at that point was,
wow, I wish I had a bulletproof vest and a firearm right now. I felt incredibly vulnerable.
I knew at that moment I needed to get inside that front door of my house as quickly as possible
because I had a Glock 9 millimeter positioned close to the front door. I dropped my belongings on the floor, got my firearm,
chambered the round, and came right back out the front door with the gun pointing in the direction he was in.
He was now maybe 100 feet away, and he was fleeing back off into the woods. I believe that one of us was going to end up dead.
EMMA DONALDSON: After this terrifying encounter, Gary Hilton stops living at John's office
and appears to vanish. Months later, police encounter him on private land on the Appalachian Trail.
His emotions kind of vastly all over the place. And in fact, he ends up at one point saying, hey, I love you.
Which, again, shows how this person is kind of losing control, I think not only of their thought
processes, but their emotions. He seems to have no awareness of how he's coming across to the other person.
And that also is a hallmark of deterioration when somebody loses the ability to self-reflect and realize
and change their behavior when they're saying things that are inappropriate or don't
make sense. [ominous music] The forest, as they are, are remote locations throughout the United States.
But they bring leisure to most people, but sadly, can be an opportunity for those
looking for horrific activities, criminal activities to take place. John and Irene Bryant were in their late 70s, early 80s.
They were experienced hikers. In fact, John Bryant was what is called a True Hiker of the Appalachian Trail.
That means he's traveled a complete distance of the trail from Georgia to Maine.
The Pisgah National Forest is extremely remote. It consists of several thousand acres of forest land.
They went into the forest and parked their car. And very soon, they were confronted by Gary Hilton.
Gary Hilton immediately killed Irene. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.
John Bryant was taken, held captive in the back of Hilton's van. He chained him around the neck and padlocked the chain.
And takes him to another park. And then he kills him. He uses his bank card and gets $300.
And that is what he gets in exchange for, you know, just a beautiful couple's life.
When the authorities began to search for John and Irene, they found the body of Irene, but no signs of John other
than the ATM activity. And it was later on that John's body was found in the Nantahala
National Forest. It was determined that he was murdered with a handgun, shot in the head, and left at a different location
within the national forest. A natural reaction is, wow, this was a horrific thing that I did.
But then I think there's a reality that sets in-- but I'm getting away with it. And if that urge pulls at me to do it again,
you certainly can see the logic to say, I can ease my tension by doing it again;
which allows for what we now see as serial killers taking place. [ominous music]
My name is Gloria Tucker. I live in Tallahassee, Florida. My cousin was Cheryl Dunlap, which I referred
to her as Sherri all the time. Oh, I loved her immensely. I loved Sherri to pieces.
She was such a kind person. She went for a day hike in the Apalachicola National Forest,
in an area called Leon Sinks. It's very much like any other national forest. There's hiking trails, creeks, and, you know, just
a very nice area to spend time. 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 she was kidnapped.
He tied her to a tree at first, and then he drove to Tallahassee to the bank. He had taped his face up.
I think it was two or three times he got money out of her account. He kept her there alive for two or three days.
He made her march over to a tree to tie herself up. And as she was going, he pulled the gun
and shot her in the head. I think money can be a factor involved, but control is another.
Taking someone's life is the ultimate control over someone. It tells us a lot about Gary Hilton in terms of how he views
his victims essentially as objects that he's got to now figure out how to, you know,
disguise and get rid of. He isn't necessarily seeing this person as a person at this point.
So it doesn't mean he's getting satisfaction, but it does mean that this is somebody who we're
thinking, where are the limits in terms of what this person would do. Some hunters in the forest saw some
buzzards circling in the area, and went over and found the remains of Cheryl. Her head had been removed, as well as her hands.
But they were able to identify her through some DNA. EMMA DONALDSON: With 400 miles between murders,
police in Florida and police in North Carolina are unaware they're dealing with a serial killer.
But Hilton's next victim would fight back. In our world, she's the hero in this case.
She kept fighting. She almost beat him. She almost got the best of him. [ominous music]
Meredith Emerson was the All-American girl-- very bright, very brave, had recently graduated
from the University of Georgia. She lived at the time in the northern suburb of Atlanta.
She was a very experienced hiker. She had hiked those mountains out in Colorado.
So, you know, these mountains out here really can't compare to those. The Blood Mountain is actually the highest peak in Georgia
that the Appalachian Trail crosses. There is a lot of hikers come to this area. Although there's not a heavy populated area here,
it's certainly a heavy traffic area during the daytime. So Gary Hilton was very bold to choose this spot.
All she's doing is a New Year's day, taking a hike with her dog. Gary sat up in the woods and surveyed the parking lot
and made the decision on who he was going to abduct. What you're looking at is upping the ante,
going toward someone who is more fit, more young, but almost meeting his match. Hilton basically saw her on the trail.
She had a dog, he had a dog. He knew that he could strike up a conversation about the dogs.
Eventually, she said, OK, I'll talk to you later, and just basically left him. She pretty much ran up the trail.
And she probably sensed that there was something wasn't good about it and left him behind.
So he concealed himself along the trail. Some people had actually seen him hiding,
crouching behind the rocks. That combination of isolation-- him being out in the woods, seeing himself
as a survivalist-- you really start getting a sense of this kind of dehumanization and complete lack
of any ability to care about anybody else. This is the area where Meredith Emerson initially
hiked up this to the trail. Gary laid in wait in this area right here for Meredith.
Gary Hilton waited on Meredith. As she was coming back down the trail, he attacked her.
She turns around, and she basically goes after him. She grabs his bayonet, which, it just stuns him.
And she absolutely puts up the fight of her life. Boy, does she put up a battle.
Meredith was trained in martial arts. She almost beat him up. And they rolled off the trail, down into the woods,
away from the trail. The ground was so disturbed in that area. You could tell it was a very violent fight that
had taken place right there. He finally got control of her by convincing her he had a gun.
EMMA DONALDSON: When Meredith Emerson doesn't return from walking her dog, her boyfriend reports her missing.
We blast out a picture of Meredith and her dog. The very first thing I did, I checked her phone
records and her bank records. The bank had reported to us that her bank account had
not been attempted to be used. [ominous music] I feel confident that in Meredith's mind,
she was doing that in hopes that we would be able to track her and be able to find her sooner.
The idea of not giving the full PIN number allows for more opportunities to get away from this situation.
EMMA DONALDSON: With police unaware that Meredith's card is being used, Hilton's abuse escalates.
His explanation for why he raped Meredith is because he says that she owed him that.
Because she gave him the runaround about the PIN number. She showed conniving instinct.
She was able to fight off him and be a little smarter than him. Sadly, the rape part of it was an added
penalty for how much she showed to fight off this horrible act. And so I think that's very interesting to think about that.
What does that mean? The fact that, you know, in his head, this is how he's justifying the rape.
So I don't think that sex was a primary motive for him. But I definitely think, you know,
he definitely has some issues in those respects. [ominous music] We set up a command post at the Vogel
State Park, which is right there at the base of the mountain. When we discovered her water bottles and her backpack
and some of her effects at the trail, we felt like something bad had happened. There was also a police baton found in the area
that was concerning for us. So a lot of what we were doing was making phone calls,
trying to identify anyone who may have seen anything. There were so many people that had contacted the tip line
and said, there's a strange guy that was on the trail that day. They all describe 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. EMMA DONALDSON: Police investigating the John and Irene
Bryant murders in North Carolina and the separate force investigating the Cheryl Dunlap murder in Florida
soon contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who are running the Meredith Emerson case.
When we learned of those cases, then we began to talk to both jurisdictions about the similarities, and there were several.
The US Marshal Service offered their assistance. We basically gave them all the information for Meredith,
all the information for Gary Hilton, and they ran them through their system. And they basically came back and said,
you know, her card was tried-- somebody attempted to use her 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.
The bank should have known that her PIN and her card was used, yet no money was taken out.
The photographs of the person walking up to the ATM was very, very similar. And then when we got our photographs from our ATMs,
there was no doubt that it was the same person. There was mention of a van in Florida
where Gary Hilton was actually confronted with a park ranger. 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.
I think he had been pretty self-assured up until now. I think he really did, in his mind,
convince himself that he was going to continue along the path. Nothing bad was-- you know, nothing bad was going to happen.
And I think this does start the beginning of the end for Gary Hilton. EMMA DONALDSON: Gary Hilton has been holding
Meredith hostage for two days, 60 miles south of Blood Mountain. Hilton's former boss, John Tabor,
hasn't heard from him in over seven months. I still remained armed with my pistol on my person
and my assault rifle in my vehicle. I would still have someone sweep the woods, if you will,
do a quick walkthrough, make sure he wasn't there before I drove home at night. I never felt completely comfortable, so that's why
I remained armed 24/7. My home gym is actually where I was when I first heard about it.
And I was working out and caught the top of the news where they broke to cover this case of the missing
girl of 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. That's what really made me stop in my tracks. And now I'm just staring at the television
going, oh, wait a minute. Did I just hear an expandable police baton? Because that's something that I knew
Hilton had with him all the time. So when I heard that, I just remember just going numb.
Thinking, wow, I knew it was something I had to do. So I called and I ended up getting,
this was a Union County Sheriff's Department on the phone. He says, I know who you're talking about.
His name is Gary Michael Hilton. I can give you the number, the tag number to the van,
because I bought it for him. People heard him yelling at the dog and said they thought he was saying Danny.
And he actually said, no. His dog's name is Dandy. So we knew we were probably talking about the right guy.
So we pull a driver's license photo of him and put it out onto the news media so it carries nationwide again.
Maybe six hours after I made that phone call, I was trying to wrap up some business before heading
to Colorado for vacation. And this is the part that still stuns me today. My phone rang.
I answered the phone like normal, and it was him. For seven months of absolutely no communication,
there he was on the phone with me. Out of nowhere like a ghost. If there was anything I was afraid of,
it was not being able to fight back. That was my fear. Fight to the death. Bring it on.
I'm ready. [ominous music] EMMA DONALDSON: Gary Hilton has been holding Meredith Emerson
hostage since New Year's day. She's refusing to give him her bank PIN number, and he's desperate for money.
So he's traveling to his former boss's house, where he hopes to pick up a check,
and calls him on the way. The last time the pair spoke, Gary Hilton threatened John's family.
I'm just sitting in my car in a state of disbelief. He immediately apologized for what had happened
and told me that he wanted to come back to work. But I played along. I acted as if I didn't know about anything.
And he said he needed some money to get started, you know, to get back to work and whatnot.
And I said, hey, that's no problem, how much do you need? We discussed an amount--
$700, $800, I forgot what it was. But I said, yeah, I'll be more than happy to give you the check.
I said, well, where are you? Because I was ready to get this over with one way or the other.
But then he explained, he just said, that's not possible. He could not meet me then under any circumstances.
But within the next couple of days, he would come get the check from the office, and that was it.
Once we learned that there was a possibility that Hilton would go to his former employer's office to pick up the check,
we got with the local jurisdiction, and they deployed their SWAT team. 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 would have Meredith with him.
But he didn't show up. [ominous music] After finding out everything that she did,
you know, how close we came to catching him on numerous occasions and she was still alive, to this day,
breaks my heart. [ominous music] I was very familiar with that area called Dawson Forest
Wildlife Management Area. He had taken her head off and moved it to another location about a mile away from her body.
EMMA DONALDSON: At this point, Gary Hilton decides to release Meredith Emerson's dog, Ella.
He seemed to have no trouble whatsoever murdering Meredith, but he cannot murder Ella.
And I think that's very, very significant. It just speaks to the lack of attachment
that Gary Hilton seems to have with anybody. 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. Video surveillance at the grocery store shows it walking around.
It almost looked like it was asking for help. We were able to pick up the dog and identify the dog as Ella
through an ID chip that she had in her. So we knew that Ella was in an area of 70 miles south
of the abduction site. We had another call to the tip line from a lady who had known Hilton in the past, who told us he just
called her asking for money. And she told us, she told Hilton, don't you know the world is looking for you?
And he hung up. She called immediately, and we were able to trace that phone number to a telephone at a gas station
just across from the grocery store where Ella had been found. So there was a lot of activity around that gas station.
The agents I sent down there found a dumpster in the parking lot, and they decided to look in the dumpster.
That's where we found the things that I had hoped that we wouldn't. We found a bloody clothing.
We found Meredith's driver's license and wallet. We found other clothing-- men's clothing-- with blood on them.
This was so much blood that you could wring it out. The blood was wet. It was fresh.
That was disturbing, you know. Because up to this point, you know, we were all holding out the hope that Meredith's alive.
We're going to capture the bad guy and recover her. Based on what we found in the dumpster, none of us
really thought that someone could survive and lose that much blood. He goes to another convenience store at that location,
or down near that location, and tries to clean more stuff out of his van. Basically, everything that had blood on it, or he thought
had blood on it, or anything that could tie him to Meredith. And it wasn't that long until the citizen called 911 and said,
I think I'm looking at the guy that you all have been looking for all week with the missing hiker.
And basically stayed on the phone watching him while officers were responding to take him into custody.
He was not talking. But we knew that there were answers to some of our questions in the van.
EMMA DONALDSON: With Hilton now in custody, police look for evidence that links him
to the murders of John and Irene Bryant, Cheryl Dunlap, and Meredith Emerson. We had DeKalb County transport him to our headquarters,
which is in DeKalb county, in a conference room in GBI headquarters. When I first walked into the conference room,
Gary was lying on the floor in a fetal position and kept saying that he had multiple sclerosis
and he needed immediate shot of folic acid, and just kind of talking crazy. Clay Bridges had actually laid down on the floor with him
and talked to him for a few minutes. He had a fingernail gouge into his nose. Pretty substantial.
It looked to be a defensive wound someone else had inflicted on him. His hand was obviously broken.
It was swollen. He just stayed quiet. I had learned some things about him. He had one dog in particular that he really cared
for that was named Ranger. And he had actually built a shrine to him where he had buried him at.
At one point, I told him that I was going to go move Ranger and see how he liked it.
He became angry. He became really angry. He, you know, cut his eyes up at me and showed me his broken teeth and said,
just put the needle in my arm [bleep]. There was so much in the van. So we got blood transfer pattern that matched
John Bryant, so that was huge. We had blood in the van that matched Meredith Emerson.
Cheryl Dunlap's car had a flat tire, and there was a bayonet that we recovered. And Florida forensics were able to match that
to the puncture in the tire. EMMA DONALDSON: Despite the extensive evidence linking
Hilton to the four murders, police haven't found Meredith Emerson's body. But with Hilton due to face the death penalty,
they propose a deal. They basically came back and said, he'll tell you if you take the death penalty off the table.
At that point, we knew we had John Bryant in that van. Some boots had Cheryl Dunlap's blood on it.
So we knew we had a couple of more bites at that of giving him the death penalty,
and agreed to take the death penalty off the table for Meredith and recover her body.
He started showing us on a map. He said, yeah, the head will be missing. When it came time to do the recovery of the body,
we started at night. We brought out temporary lighting to set up. We worked throughout the night, did the recovery.
Then we came back the next morning at sunrise and processed the scene over again in the daylight.
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.
Her head was about a mile from that site, lying near a log and get covered in leaves.
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, watching horror movies, any aspect.
It was undoubtedly one of the most devastating gut punches that I have taken. You know, she was thinking, well, if I can just keep him
at bay, you know, just a little bit longer, they're going to find me. They're going to find me.
And then to listen to all that and him describe how he took her life, once he was taken away,
it all flooded in on me and I just began to cry. It was nothing I've ever experienced before.
Nothing like anything I've ever been around. [ominous music] EMMA DONALDSON: At his first trial,
Gary Hilton is found guilty for the murder of Meredith Emerson. He's sentenced to 30 years in prison.
At a second trial for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap, Hilton is found guilty. He receives the death penalty.
At a third trial for the murders of John and Irene Bryant, Hilton is found guilty.
He receives a sentence of life imprisonment. [ominous music] I mean, he's just pure evil.
You can see it in his eyes. I've never met anybody that you could literally look in their eyes and see evil but him.
And he is, he's truly evil. I think when you look at Gary Hilton and you look at his background, I
think a lot of his not fitting in was more a reflection of his personality, his lack of coping skills,
and this trauma he experienced as a child. I do think once he crossed a line, once he murders Irene and John, I think there is no going back.
And I think he would have continued to kill until he was caught. It was too much to even comprehend
how he could be that cruel, that evil, and commit the horrific acts that he did.
It's sickening. It makes me sick today, 16 years later, just thinking about it. I'm sick to my stomach.
[somber music] [theme music]

A financial crash sends Gary Hilton’s life into a downward spiral that would culminate in him taking the lives of 4 innocent victims enjoying a day out in the mountains. Hilton would camp out in the North Georgia woods of the Appalachian Mountains, staking out his victims before attempting to steal their money and brutally ending their lives.

In this episode, one of Hilton’s former employers gives a powerful blow by blow account of Hilton’s descent into serial killing, while the investigators who tracked him down reveal what they learnt about his character and crimes.

=============== Like, comment and subscribe if you’re ready for more true crime. Your favorite shows like World’s Most Evil Killers, Meet Marry Murder, Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, Murdered At First Sight and Bloodline Detectives are all available to stream 24/7 for free via the FilmRise Streaming Network. You can access The FilmRise Streaming Network through most free App Platforms and Smart TV portals such as Amazon Fire TV, The Roku Channel, Android, iOS and many more.

Brief Summary

Gary Hilton's horrific murders of hikers and his capture are detailed in this chilling episode.

Key points

The Cruelty of Gary Hilton. Gary Hilton's horrific acts of violence reveal a deeply troubled individual.
The Appalachian Trail's Dark Side. The Appalachian Trail, while beautiful, can hide horrific activities.
Meredith Emerson's Fight for Survival. Meredith Emerson's bravery in fighting back against her attacker highlights her strength.
The Phone Call. After months of silence, a shocking phone call reveals a connection to the suspect.
Evidence Found. Disturbing evidence found in a dumpster shifts the investigation's direction.
The Trial Verdicts. Gary Hilton faces justice for his crimes with multiple guilty verdicts.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I mean, he's just pure evil.

1:17WatchJul 28, 2024

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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