Gary Michael Hilton

What the record shows

Gary Michael Hilton is an American serial killer, often called the National Forest Serial Killer, who was convicted of four murders committed on or near public forest land in North Carolina, Florida and Georgia between October 2007 and January 2008. He pleaded guilty in Georgia in January 2008 to the murder of hiker Meredith Emerson and received life in prison; a Leon County, Florida jury convicted him in 2011 of murdering Cheryl Dunlap and he was sentenced to death; and in March 2012 he pleaded guilty in federal court in Asheville, North Carolina, to murdering John and Irene Bryant. He remains on Florida's death row.

The first known killings were of John and Irene Bryant, a couple in their 80s from western North Carolina who disappeared in October 2007 while hiking in Pisgah National Forest. According to the Wikipedia article, Irene Bryant's body was found near a trail in November 2007 and she had been beaten to death. Skeletal remains found by a hunter in Macon County in early February 2008 were identified as John Bryant on February 4, 2008, when Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney said he believed Hilton was responsible for both deaths, CBS News reported. In his later federal plea, Hilton admitted shooting John Bryant within the Nantahala National Forest in Macon County and killing Irene Bryant within the Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Cheryl Dunlap, 46, a nurse and Sunday school teacher from the Tallahassee area, was last seen alive on December 1, 2007, at Leon Sinks, according to the Florida Supreme Court. Her car was found on December 3 with a tire punctured by a bayonet, and a hunter found her body in the Apalachicola National Forest on December 15. The court recounted that her ATM card was used on December 2, 3 and 4 to withdraw $700, that witnesses placed Hilton near Leon Sinks and in the forest that month, that a bayonet recovered in Georgia was matched to the tire punctures, and that her DNA was found on items taken from his van.

On New Year's Day 2008, Meredith Emerson, 24, was hiking with her dog in the north Georgia mountains near Blood Mountain in Union County. The Associated Press reported that Hilton abducted her and spent three days trying to drain her bank accounts while she gave him incorrect PIN numbers, and that he killed her on January 4 by striking her in the head. He was arrested after authorities released his description and received numerous calls; the AP, citing the arrest warrant, said he was caught after trying to use her credit card. The Florida Supreme Court described a witness calling police after seeing him near a convenience store's dumpsters. Accounts differ on whether the arrest was made on January 4 or January 5.

Hilton, then 61, agreed through his lawyer to lead investigators to Emerson's body, which was found nearly 50 miles from where she disappeared, in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. On January 31, 2008, a specially called Dawson County grand jury indicted him and he pleaded guilty to murder the same day before Judge Bonnie Oliver of Dawson County Superior Court, who imposed life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years. The judge said she accepted the deal because Hilton would likely die before any execution could be carried out, the AP reported. In interviews later released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, he described Emerson resisting him throughout.

A Leon County grand jury indicted Hilton on February 28, 2008, for first-degree murder, kidnapping and two counts of grand theft in the Dunlap case, and he was driven from Georgia to Florida on June 6, 2008. His trial began on February 2, 2011. The jury unanimously recommended death on February 21, 2011, and the trial court sentenced him to death on April 21, 2011, finding six aggravating circumstances, including that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel and was cold, calculated and premeditated. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence on March 21, 2013, and in August 2021 rejected his postconviction claims of ineffective counsel, according to UPI and WCTV.

A federal grand jury returned a five-count indictment in June 2011 charging Hilton with the kidnapping, robbery and murder of the Bryants on national forest land. On March 27, 2012, he pleaded guilty to their murders and to related robbery, kidnapping and firearms offenses under an agreement providing for life in prison without parole. According to the Wikipedia article, Hilton was born on November 22, 1946, in Atlanta, and he has been examined as a possible suspect in several other deaths and disappearances in the Southeast, none of which has led to a charge.