another national forest homicide, this one in north carolina. so theb you ve got to be saying to your team of vectors, what do we have here? that s right. now we re wondering who we really have here and where is he? and, more importantly, where s meredith? do we have a killer running around loose in the national forest? concerned for meredith deepens, but her friends know something that man on the mountain couldn t. a blue belt in akeyed dough and a blue belt in judo. if anyone could survive, it was meredith. when dateline continues. hey, who are you? oh, hey jeff, i m a car thief. what?! i m here to steal your car because, well, that s my job. what? what?? what?! (laughing) what?? what?! what?! [crash] what?! haha, it happens. and if you ve got cut-rate car insurance, paying for this could feel like getting robbed twice. so get allstate.
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definitely wanted to rescue a doeg. finally found one loved her and brought her home. really it was the light of her life. julia the roommate didn t know meredith and ella were going 40 miles away to blood mountain. despite the creepy teen slasher movie name, blood mountain is a popular place to hike in the southeast. the famous appalachian trail to maine takes off from just south of here. back in buford, the roommate spent the day with friends and didn t notice meredith hadn t come back home since the next morning a back to work day. she would leave ella in my room and i would take care of her in the morning. i thought, ella isn t here. that was strange to me. i called her cell phone, it went straight to voice mail. i thought maybe she was at work. when did you become anxious? when i got to work, she worked with a good friend of ours. and she called me and said, meredith didn t show to work. mare tij always went to work. reliable meredith wasn t
together tell you a story at all, or suggest something ominous? yes. we found those items in an area where the ground had appeared to have been disturbed. we became concerned that possibly a struggle took place there. meredith s water bottles, ella s leash, and signs of a struggle. nothing about the scene looked good to the veteran lawman, especially that expandible police baton that was found. he called in help. we eventually partnered with over 18 or 19 police agencies to help in the search for meredith. had her friends were naturally besides themselves. you know, your heart just broke because you think something happened, somebody had a weapon, and her stuff was there. so you re thinking at the very least she abducted. right. it wasn t something we could talk about until we could prove that. the cops commandeered a park building as headquarters. we began getting information pretty quickly.
we all hoped she was alive. but, you know, the longer these things carry on, as time passes, you continue to hope but it diminishes after time. as the manhunt continued, there was a glimmer of hope. friday morning, four days after meredith vanished, the u.s. marshal s service traced activity on meredith s bank cards. the card was used at a local bank, 15 miles from the abduction site, and then again 50 miles south of the abduction site and then the next day 80 miles. these were attempts, where no money was taken. which suggests what? suggested that meredith wouldn t give him the right p.i.n. which also suggests maybe she s still alive. that s right. investigators had been able to trace the phone gary hilton used earlier to call his old boss john tabor to set that trap for him. that call was made from a