i have any hope she can run those mountains. she is a strong person. if anybody can survive this, she can. the missing woman was deceptively strong, not just an experienced hiker but an accomplished martial arts enthusiast as well. a blue belt in aikido and a blue belt in judo. so take you on at your peril. absolutely. she would fight you. she would come home and tell me, i threw this 220-pound man. beat him up today in class. by now, with half of georgia looking for this gary hilton, authorities outside tallahassee, florida, to the south were wondering about his connections with the missing woman there. it was then that the detectives got solid information about another killing in a national forest. we were in our command post and a detective walked in and said that they had a case, took place in north carolina, involving a husband and wife, that the wife had been murdered
within hours of discovering irene bryant s body, detectives learned $300 had been withdrawn from the bryants accounts using an atm card in duckstown, tennessee. they had a picture from the machine. the man that had concealed his head and face that was able to successfully use the brients atm. whoever making the withdrawal, it it wasn t 79-year-old john bryant. but time and geography were working against the lawmen. we spent weeks everywhere in that it entire area. we did everything from vehicle patrol, atv patrolling, horseback, on foot, everywhere. john bryant had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. the fbi posted a $10,000 reward for information, but the bryant case went cold. until meredith emerson loomed on the lawmen s radar. our lead investigator began following that case, and immediately there were some
in the back of his vehicle and then proceeded to steal her bank cards. from beneath the front seat of her car. hilton drove off heading 12 miles north to an atm in blairsville, georgia. he told detectives meredith had given him her p.i.n. numbers back on blood mountain. did meredith suspect it would be all over for her if she gave him the correct numbers? in any case, she had given him bad information. and it done work? it didn t work. she s still telling me it s going to work. must be a problem with the bank. hilton next tried to use meredith s cards at a bank 50 miles south in gainesville, georgia. again, no dice. he made camp that night with his captive in a remote spot in the forest. the next morning, hilton attempted to use meredith s bank card still again at an atm in canton, georgia. nothing. they returned to his hidden campsite.
in an attempt to thwart investigators, he decapitated and poured bleach over the body. this is gruesome beyond belief. yes. for what reason? i don t know. hilton had confessed to killing meredith emerson. but what about those other cases in the national forest? a woman in florida, the elderly couple in north carolina. he would not talk about anybody to us other than meredith. because you have to wonder when the switch was thrown in this man. i know. how many decades does this maybe go back? i don t know. do people just wake up when they re 61 and start to do these kinds of crimes the way he did them? you know, i would think not. meredith emerson went missing new year s day 2008, less than a month later, gary michael hilton appeared in a georgia courtroom and pleaded guilty to her murder. meredith s parents were there. her mother susan addressed
similarities that we saw between the two cases. both of these incidents occurred on forest service land. we really felt like that the two were probably connected. we may go years without a homicide. this was very, very different. do we have a killer running around loose in the national forest? in georgia, the searchers looking for meredith emerson and her dog ella on blood mountain were hoping and praying that they weren t dealing with a homicide. do everything we can do to make sure that she if she s up there we get her out of there, get her out of there safely. if she s not up there do everything we can to eliminate that as a possibility and it continue the sfregs there. georgia authorities were compositing a profile of gary hilton who was started to look like a person of interest not only in the meredith emerson disappearance case but in it at least two unsolved murders in the national forest. their findings were deeply troubling.