afraid. mid-december, two weeks after shierl disappeared, some hunters out training dogs in the national forest noticed a vulture circling in the sky above them. and they went to check it out and discovered the body. a female body missing its head and hands, a grisly fact not released at the time. you think this is someone trying to conceal the identity. very much. it took a dna sample from her toothbrush to identify the remains as those of sheryl dunlap. someone called and said, laura, they found a body. we pulled over on the side of the road and just that was it, huh? yeah p. the awareness was there. it was surreal, the thing you hear about in movies. it it was so close to home that in our small community that something like this could happen. now, with cops in florida looking hard at gary hilton in the dunlap murder, and counterparts in georgia convinced that he had taken meredith emerson, authorities
police were convinced the missing hiker meredith emerson was under the control of gary hilton somewhere in north georgia. the more they learned about the survivalist odds ball who was the person of interest in two murders in national forests elsewhere, the more they feared for her. a friend of meredith s family appealed directly to hilton. i hope that if he realized that this would be helpful, that his heart would be softened and turned to come forward with information. so, please, please have the courage to come forward. we need you. their next lead, the big one, came from an unlikely source, the suspect himself. three days into meredith s disappearance, gary hilton called his old boss tabor. i answered my cell phone, and i heard his voice. couldn t believe it. he pretended acted as if nothing was wrong.
there were different rulz in this it the penalty phase. unlike in the trial, prosecutors were now able to disclose to jurors that hilton murdered meredith emerson on blood mountain and state s attorney willie megs did just that, calling to the stand georgia bureau of investigation agents who had worked on the emerson case. you indicated it that ms. emerson s body was nude. did gary michael hilton tell you why it was nude? he did. he basically stated that he had removed the head and stripped the clothing for forensic purposes. megz was able to introduce portions of those chilling interviews that hilton gave the authorities in georgia. once you ve taken someone, you re either going to kill them or you re going to get caught. it s as simple as that. that s where you started getting the information about emerson that s the first time the georgia information was allowed in. correct. that s when you really start
hats. he s also a movie producer, not hollywood but more of the released direct to video school. his low-budget titles are more common seen in asian stalls than in your multiplex. this is his latest release. i can t do that! don t do it. shoot me! horror, gory? what s the genre? try not to make it gory, but at the end of the day a little blood, a little sex, a little violence can t hurt. as it turned out, cops on the meredith emerson case were particularly interested in rail s first movie, deadly run. he made it back in 1985 with the assistance of his scam artist clienlt gary hilton. the premise of the movie is we re going to take some women into the woods and then we re going to defend those women and the poof, they ll be hunted down and killed.
the cops commandeered a park building as headquarters. we began getting information pretty quickly. from people who had hiked the trails that it day. right. and remembered her? right. we got news of a strange looking individual with meredith who also had a dog. thumbnail description of this other person. what were you hearing? strange looking, just a wiry kind of guy. older guy. older guy. we even developed a vehicle description, light van. the lead on the van came from this photo taken on a hiker in the blood mountain parking lot the night before meredith emerson went missing. a be on the lookout advisory went out for the guy driving a white van accompanied by his reddish dog. it is going to be a white male between the ages of 50 and 60 years old, approximately 160 pounds. it was described as he has bad dental, he had a dark reddish colored retriever.