Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

VERNON: Three different national forests,

three different cases, and they're all hikers.

- Investigators are looking for Gary Michael Hilton.

- We knew how dangerous he was.

- This witness felt so uneasy that they

decided to just take a picture in case something happened.

OPERATOR: Emergency, 911.

- We found metal chains.

- Everything I collected had some kind of blood on it.

JOHN: Hilton was not expecting Meredith

to fight back.

- I knew I was making a deal with the devil,

but it was a deal that needed to be done.

[elk calls]

NARRATOR: Secrets in the wild,

beautiful yet treacherous places.

These are the stories of the investigators

who solve crimes in the wilderness.

♪♪ ♪♪

SEARCHERS: Meredith!

Meredith! Meredith!

REPORTER: It's been four days since Meredith

has been missing, and police have found now...

KIMBERLY: The area that we are searching right now

is going to be 401 square miles.

If you put that down, that's going to be 253,496 acres.

That's a lot of area for us to be covering right now.

PERSON: Because people are still strongly looking,

we're still hopeful.

DAVE: We are thankful that Ella has been found,

but Meredith is still out there.

REPORTER: This person of interest, Gary Michael Hilton.

REPORTER: Gary Michael Hilton.

REPORTER: 61-year-old Gary Hilton...

REPORTER: This is the picture that we have for Mr. Hilton

at this time.

♪♪ ♪♪

PERSON: Same place, just another day.

OFFICER: What you doing out here?

GARY: Hunting.

PERSON: Life has been sweet.

[radio chatter]

- When we put out his name and his photo,

we knew that everybody was looking for him.

REPORTER: The police announced that they were looking

for a person of interest.

REPORTER: 61-year-old Gary Michael Hilton.

PERSON: Your instincts tell you,

get away from this person.

PERSON: We need him to come forward.

CLAY: I was at the command post on Blood Mountain.

At approximately 8:00 p.m., 911 calls began

to go into the DeKalb County 911 center.

OPERATOR: Emergency, 911.

What's the exact location of the emergency?

- Gary Hilton, he was seen at a Chevron gas station

off Ashford Dunwoody Road in North metro Atlanta.

OPERATOR: Please stay on the line, sir.

JOHN: The caller described seeing Gary Hilton

cleaning out his van.

[police siren wailing]

CLAY: It's literally probably within two minutes

that DeKalb County officers arrive

and take him into custody.

OFFICER: Police, show me your hands.

Get on the ground right now.

CLAY: Gary Hilton surrendered

as soon as they approached him.

♪♪ ♪♪

VERNON: I was with John Cagle when the DeKalb County

Police Department called.

We got your white van.

We got Gary Hilton.

[radio chatter]

But there's no Meredith Emerson here.

- No sign of a victim.

REPORTER: The search for Gary Michael Hilton

ended at this Chevron station at the corner

of Ashford Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry Road.

- We're hopeful that there might be a break in this case

that might lead us to the whereabouts of Miss Emerson,

but we don't know at this point.

REPORTER: They finally have in custody Gary Michael Hilton

of DeKalb County, who was named as a person

of interest in the disappearance

of 24-year-old Meredith Emerson.

- And any question that he can answer,

I mean, would be a positive step in the right direction.

REPORTER: But police will not confirm what

Hilton was doing, only that missing hiker

Emerson was not with him.

- So now we had Hilton.

REPORTER: Hilton was hauled off

to GBI headquarters for questioning.

JOHN: We're making progress, we felt like,

but we just hadn't found Meredith.

And there had been opportunities.

- We restarted that search this morning at 8:00.

I think that broke a lot of our hearts,

that she was not in the van.

At this time, Miss Peggy Bailey

from the family, who was the family's spokesperson,

would like to make a statement from the family.

- Good evening.

Once again, thank you for...

JOHN: Peggy and Doug Bailey

were very close friends of the Emersons.

- Dave is still actively searching the trails.

Susan's hoping that word comes soon.

JOHN: I don't think Peggy or the Emersons

ever gave up hope.

- Hope is pretty much what her family was holding to.

- Meredith's middle name is Hope,

and that's exactly what the Lord gives us for her.

So we are hoping that we're talking of Meredith

in the present tense.

♪♪ ♪♪

REPORTER: Cheryl Dunlap, a 46-year-old nurse

and Sunday school teacher, disappeared 7 miles from home,

her car found with a flat tire.

- Once we knew there was a Gary Michael Hilton in existence

as a result of Blood Mountain, we ran his license,

and he had been issued a citation by a forestry officer

right in the heart of the Apalachicola National Forest,

and the date was completely consistent

with Cheryl's disappearance.

We had an onslaught of tips and sightings.

One of the sightings was a campsite off Joe Thomas Road,

which is out off Highway 20.

One of our crime scene detectives

saw some pine straw that had covered what looked like there

maybe had been a fire or something,

and so he moved the straw, and he started

to find hard fragments.

And those fragments were 100% identified

as skull fragments.

- There were burned finger bones and skull bones.

There were also a plastic bead and an earring,

some burned clothing.

MIKE: Cheryl Dunlap's remains, couldn't get DNA

from them because they had been so, so burned

at high temperatures.

I mean, he burned her hands and her head

and beat it into pulp, so as to hide the things

that he was trying to hide.

AMY: As soon as I saw the bead at the fire pit,

I thought that they were very similar to the ones

that were in her vehicle.

Any time you come in contact with something,

you'll leave something behind,

and then you'll take something away.

It's like a triangle.

We're linking a victim, a suspect,

and a scene together.

And I found a clump of hair.

It was the same exact color of the pine straw that was there.

And in Cheryl Dunlap's car, I found a long hair,

and it was from a golden retriever.

MIKE: We really felt like we had our suspect.

We felt like Gary was our guy.

♪♪ ♪♪

HAROLD: After Hilton was arrested in Georgia,

several individuals advised they

saw Hilton in North Carolina.

We still don't know where John Bryant is.

The Sheriff's Department heard from an individual

that happened to be in one of the National Forest

picnic areas at Sycamore Flats in Brevard,

and that individual saw Gary Michael Hilton

in his white van with his dog unloading

the van at the picnic area.

This witness felt so uneasy that they decided to just take

a picture of it in case something happened,

and that picture places him without a doubt

in the area of the crime scene a couple of weeks

before the murder of Irene Bryant.

- We felt confident that he was our prime suspect,

but we had not yet developed a sufficient amount of evidence

to pursue it in court.

- Had that photo come sooner, we would have definitely

done something different.

He lived off the grid.

So he wasn't in the system.

DAVID: How do we go from proving he was here

at the right time to proving

he was specifically at that scene with the Bryants?

We shared these photographs with Georgia

so that we could really begin that relationship

to work this together.

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

JOHN: While Hilton was being transferred

to GBI headquarters, I had two teams

scouring for evidence that might

help us find the location of Meredith Emerson.

REPORTER: Investigators searched Gary Hilton's

white Astro van well into early Saturday

morning at this Chevron.

It's also where they found Hilton and his dog,

Dandy, Friday night.

- When I first opened the van, my impression was wow.

There's a lot of crap in here.

It was full of garbage bags and tote containers

and just all kinds of stuff.

Hilton was making trips from the van to the dumpster

at the Chevron.

There were a lot of things on the ground around the van.

He was in the process of cleaning it out.

So we started in the dumpster.

There were some critical pieces of evidence in there...

sleeping bags, a couple of duffel bags,

some pornography, camping gear, bedrolls.

Gary was trying to get rid of anything in the van

that he could see had visible blood,

because everything I collected had visible blood on it.

We tagged almost 700 pieces of evidence.

CLAY: Directly behind the driver's seat

and the passenger seat was a space

all the way across the van,

but everything from there on back was just packed.

JEFF: Then we go to the van and start

looking at the interior for hairs, fibers, blood stains.

What's going to tell us something that we don't know?

What's going to help us find where Meredith is?

I found a yellow rain jacket with a fluorescent stripe.

CLAY: There was some blood found on some paper towels.

There was some blood found on the driver's side seat.

JEFF: There was a transfer pattern on the back

of the driver's seat.

It looked like a hair pattern where blood had gotten

in contact with the hair.

I assumed it would be Meredith's or Gary's.

The scene at the Chevron probably took us four or five

hours to get processed.

We had the van towed.

I left there, and I went to GBI headquarters in Atlanta.

JOHN: Mitchell Posey had found some disturbing evidence

in a dumpster at the QuikTrip gas station.

So I drove down from Blood Mountain

to look at everything myself.

MITCHELL: When John Cagle arrived

at the crime scene lab, he asked me for a briefing.

He asked me to tell him what we had and what it meant.

We found metal chains with nylon rope attached to it.

That told me that Meredith had probably been tied up.

I told him about the black zip ties that had been cut.

We found bloody clothes.

We found hiking pants that had blood spatter on them,

and we found boots that had blood spatter on it as well.

JOHN: There was a fleece that had blood on it.

MITCHELL: The neckline was saturated in blood.

JOHN: This was heavy blood that you could wring out.

- My thoughts were battling each other.

I said, John, I don't think someone

would still be alive with this much blood on the neckline.

I could tell he did not want to hear that.

JOHN: I actually called our medical examiner,

and I said let me describe this to you.

Could someone survive after losing that much blood?

But I knew that they couldn't.

I knew I had to do one thing, and that's come talk

to the Emersons...

reminding myself I needed to tell them the truth.

REPORTER: Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman

John Bankhead was pressed about whether there's

any proof Emerson might still be alive.

- It does not look favorable for that to be the case.

- So we went back to the cabin where they were staying and had

to break the news to her both parents

that it doesn't appear that Meredith has survived this.

KIMBERLY: That was the worst part of being

the public information officer for this,

is knowing what we knew.

- I was able to report that we had arrested Gary Hilton.

I let them know what we had found,

and it was obviously not what they had hoped for.

MITCHELL: They held on to each other, cried.

KIMBERLY: That really broke my heart...

Because I knew that that positive part was done.

- We got the news yesterday, and that was devastating

for them to hear it change to recovery.

But they are holding strong for Meredith.

CLAY: John Cagle looked at me.

He said, go and find out where she's at.

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

REPORTER: GBI agents transferred Hilton

to the Union County Jail, where he was booked

on a charge of kidnapping with bodily injury

in connection with the disappearance

of 24-year-old hiker and Gwinnett County

resident Meredith Emerson.

CLAY: Before I even introduced myself to him,

I took pictures.

He had a visible fingernail mark

in the very point of his nose, like a defense wound.

He had a broken hand, and it was crushed.

And it looked like he was in a really good fight.

He was on the floor, laying on his side.

He says that he was having a multiple sclerosis attack,

and he said, I need my medicine.

I actually spoke with the doctor,

and she said that he doesn't have multiple sclerosis,

not even symptoms of it.

He would not talk to us.

I basically laid on the floor next to him

and introduced myself.

I said, hi, Mr. Hilton.

My name is Clay Bridges, and he cut me off.

He said, I'm making no statements.

I'm waiving no rights.

I want to have an attorney present with me

before any questioning.

My primary mission was finding Meredith's body

so that we could deliver her back to her family.

There was nothing that he could say at that point

that I could use against him in a court of law.

During the investigation, I had the opportunity

to talk to Hilton's ex-wife, Sue, who was a former

Stone Mountain police officer.

She told me about a dog that he used to have

back in the '90s named Ranger.

He loved that dog more than anything or anybody

in the whole world, ever.

She told me about a shrine that he had built

for the dog in Stone Mountain.

I didn't know where that place was,

but I told him that I did.

I said, listen, I know where Ranger is located now.

And I said, I want you to think about something.

I want you to think about this girl and her family

not knowing where she's laid to rest.

And he just stared through me.

I said, if you're not going to talk to me, I'm going to go,

and I'm going to dig Ranger up, and I'm going

to move him to where you'll never know where he's at.

He looked sharply at me and snarled

the most terrible snarl and said,

just put the needle in my arm, bitch.

JOHN: Once we collected the blood in the van, of course,

we submitted it to the crime lab.

We also submitted the bloody clothing

we found in the dumpster at the QuikTrip.

CLAY: Our director, Vernon Keenan, had dedicated

a DNA analyst to us for this case.

We worked her to death because there was so much DNA.

We were getting DNA from hundreds of samples of blood

from the van, hundreds of samples of blood

from both dumpsters.

So she's pretty overwhelmed at that point with one case.

JOHN: We determined that Meredith Emerson's blood

was both in the van and on the items

from the QuikTrip dumpster.

When I looked into his eyes, he's just evil.

He's dangerous.

But he knew where Meredith was.

He was the only hope that we could find her quickly.

I know I felt a lot of pressure.

[phone ringing]

The next morning, I get a call that he had been

appointed a lawyer, and I went directly

to the Union County Jail.

And I met with the lawyer, and I said I want to know

where Meredith Emerson is right now.

Go talk to him, and I will wait right here.

Finally, Hilton's lawyers came out and asked me

if I would call the local prosecutor

and ask him if he would consider taking

the death penalty off the table in exchange

for the whereabouts of Meredith.

VERNON: For him to be promised that the state would not

seek the death penalty for Meredith Emerson's murder

combined with the volume of evidence

that we had in the case that was against him,

that would be the best deal he was ever going to get.

Because in the state of Georgia,

you can convict somebody and not have the body.

JOHN: I think the Emersons understood

what we were trying to do.

CLAY: We wanted to provide them with that closure,

and we were willing to give up seeking the death

penalty in that situation because it's

the right thing to do.

JOHN: And so the prosecutor in Union County agreed,

told Hilton's lawyers that we would do that.

But they wanted him to sleep on it.

I had to keep my composure and keep this thing going.

I knew I was making a deal with the devil,

but it was a deal that needed to be done.

CLAY: It would have made me feel like I was making a deal

with the devil had I not known that I was looking

at a certain two more shots at the death penalty

with North Carolina and Florida.

We had two more bites of the apple.

REPORTER: Investigators from North Carolina's State Bureau

of Investigation rolled into Georgia

with boxes of case files, hoping the leads

and all of the bags of evidence

from the Meredith Emerson case could help crack theirs.

JOHN: Early on in our case, when we just

got organized up there on Blood Mountain,

we didn't know anything.

- First time it really resonated with me was actually

on the phone with you guys prior to this meeting,

the ATM photos y'all were sending us.

MIKE: And then the ATM thing

gave it a real criminal element,

but we struggled to identify a suspect of any kind

because bad people do bad things to each other.

You know, he was living off the grid.

- Those are your hardest criminals

to identify and capture.

They have no ties to the community.

They're just nomads.

- I mean, this guy lives in the forest.

You know, theft here, theft there.

And he just seemed somehow to survive.

We found maps of different National Forest locations

and campgrounds, both state and federal,

that he kept with him, and we could

trace some of his travels.

- He wasn't smart enough to take the evidence

out of his van as a statement to the fact

that he was so alone.

JOHN: We knew that his van was going to be extremely

important to the successful prosecution of Hilton

in all of these jurisdictions.

- If you look at the timelines, his hunger for killing

was increasing.

[phone ringing]

JOHN: On January 7th, I got a call from the prosecutor

who said that we had a deal.

So myself, Director Keenan, and Clay Bridges

traveled up to Union County.

As soon as we got there, they brought him into an office.

I said, I understand that you want

to tell us where Meredith is.

And when he said Dawson Forest,

of course I knew exactly what that was.

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

- My name's William Thacker.

I work for the Georgia Department

of Natural Resources.

JOHN: William Thacker, he was born

and raised in these mountains.

If there was ever anybody that I

would trust to find things in Dawson Forest,

it's William Thacker.

VERNON: Dawson Forest is a unique piece of property.

JOHN: It is thick forest, several thousand acres.

VERNON: Very desolate, heavily wooded,

and it had a surreal, eerie feeling,

even if you weren't looking for a body.

♪♪ ♪♪

JOHN: I asked Hilton if she was buried,

and he said no, that she was just

covered with leaves and brush.

He began to draw a map, and he began to tell

us details where she was.

You know, you walk 120 feet down Shoal Creek Road.

CLAY: It's basically a dirt road.

There's nothing... nothing there.

JOHN: I asked him if she was intact,

and he said the head would be missing.

I asked him where her head would be,

and he began to tell me, giving me

more directions which sounded like about a mile away.

We wanted to find all the remains that night,

but I was not convinced that we could find both crime scenes.

So we made the decision to carry him

with us down to Dawson Forest.

Clay Bridges traveled with him and his lawyer in a prison van

from the Sheriff's Office, and I went ahead of them.

♪♪ ♪♪

CLAY: When we're transporting Hilton to Dawson Forest,

I took the opportunity to have him take me through the crime

step by step.

It is standard practice for the GBI to record

all interviews with suspects.

He had identified Meredith walking on the trail

that January 1st.

She was alone.

She was hiking with a dog, which was good

because he had a dog, she had a dog.

It was a good way to meet up.

He struck up a conversation with her,

and they hiked along for a little bit.

Then all of a sudden, she just took off...

So he concealed himself in the woods.

Hilton was very physically fit,

working out all the time.

He felt confident that he could overpower a woman.

When he saw her coming back down the trail,

he jumped out from behind a tree,

and showed her the bayonet and said,

I just want your card and PIN number.

And then he said she grabbed the knife

and took it away from him.

Hilton was not expecting Meredith

to fight back like that.

I knew that Meredith studied martial arts.

She's not scared to fight.

He said he went to the baton,

and then she took that away from him.

She kept fighting and fighting.

Meredith almost got the best of him.

He showed her the gun.

He said, I'll kill you right here.

I'll put a bullet in you.

He got control of her finally and carried her off the trail.

He tied her around a tree and told her

that if she yelled out or screamed or anything,

he was going to kill her dog.

He had lost his baton.

He said she had lost several items there as well,

and when he got back to the fight scene,

he said there was somebody there

already picking the stuff up.

He kept thinking that the guy had found something,

was calling law enforcement,

so he had to get her out of there.

He waited for a little bit longer,

and then he moved her down the trail

to the parking area,

got in her car,

and she was telling him that her card was under the seat.

He got it, and he told her to get

in the van with her dog Ella, or he was going

to kill her and kill the dog.

♪♪ ♪♪

He kept Meredith chained to the back of the driver's seat.

He drove her to the ATM...

♪♪ ♪♪

And she gave him the wrong PIN number.

He said, she just kept giving me the wrong PIN number

and convincing me that I was doing something wrong,

and I believed her.

So he left there and went to Gainesville,

because she convinced him

that he needed to try a different PIN.

♪♪ ♪♪

The next day, he drives her to the Canton area,

where he attempts to utilize her ATM card again.

CLAY: He told her, look, I just want your PIN number.

I don't want to hurt you.

Just give me your PIN number.

She still gives him the wrong PIN number.

She's thinking that's going to get us to her, that it's going

to help get him captured.

CLAY: He says that once you've taken somebody,

you either kill them or you get caught.

But she's going to go out on her terms and not his.

Night of January the 2nd, he drives her to Dawson Forest.

They spend the entire day on January 3rd in Dawson Forest.

On January the 4th, they're camping in Dawson Forest.

Well, he leaves that campsite and is headed out,

and a DNR Ranger meets him in the road,

and Hilton throws his hand up and waves at him.

And he said he saw the guy hit his brakes.

She was right there in the van behind me.

It was that close.

And he says, they're going to find us.

So he panics and goes to a different location

in Dawson Forest.

He hangs out for a while at the van to make sure

that the cops aren't coming.

You know, once he realizes nobody's coming,

nobody's searching, he gets her out of the van.

He says, I'm going to let you go.

CLAY: And then he chained her to a tree.

And she says, no, no, no. Don't leave me.

He says, look, I'm going to go get your stuff.

- And then he takes her head off.

So he takes her head to a different location

within Dawson Forest for forensic purposes,

so that, you know, it's harder to identify her.

And he conceals it on top of the ground.

He says, leaving it exposed to the elements gets rid

of it faster.

JOHN: I think that he didn't do that to her

because of forensic concerns.

He did it because he liked it.

VERNON: They pull up in the van.

John Cagle was already there.

He had found her body but not her head.

Clay Bridges gets out of the vehicle,

and I had never seen a look of shock on somebody's face

that was on Clay Bridges'.

By now we're deep into the forest,

walked him down a little road.

He said, OK, stop here and walk up the bank,

and you'll find a dead tree on the ground.

He said at one end of the tree there would be more

clothes belonging to Meredith.

And at the other end would be her head.

I began on my hands and knees, spreading back

leaves and brush as I went, and I found what looked

to be a mound of leaves.

And I began to brush back those leaves,

and there she was.

- Just from the look on his face,

I knew it was there.

John asked me to secure that site

while they did a quick search of the rest of the area.

I sat down on the log, and I did

say a prayer for her family.

But...

- I said, stay with Meredith. We're not going to leave her.

WILLIAM: You can't forget something like that.

I can still see her right now.

I can still see the face right now.

That stuff don't go away.

CLAY: I walked down there, and she's

still got leaves and brush.

That's when everything came flooding in

because you get to know this person almost

as good as you know anybody,

as one of your friends or family.

Then you listen to this guy almost brag

about how efficient he is in capturing her

and raping her and killing her,

and I lost it.

I just... I...

I lost it.

I...

JOHN: I knew I had to call the Emersons.

And at that time, the Emersons were staying

with Doug and Peggy Bailey in Athens.

And so I call Peggy, and I ask Peggy

to let them know that we'd found her, and hung up.

But I realized I had not told them about the decapitation,

so I called back and told Peggy that Meredith

had been decapitated, but we had

recovered all of her remains.

There was silence on the phone, obviously.

And then she said she would, and she hung up,

and I just started to cry.

♪♪ ♪♪

We began to dismantle the command post

and the search teams...

All the support staff at Vogel,

the volunteers from the community

that were feeding everybody.

This was a big blow for our entire community.

- We would like to thank the untold number of friends

and volunteers and family who helped search

and support us all... and support all of us

at this tragic and troubling time.

JOHN: The family had a memorial service for Meredith

in Athens.

Huge numbers of people that didn't even know her came.

People were standing out front in the parking lot.

They just wanted to be there,

even though they couldn't get in.

♪♪ ♪♪

REPORTER: Deputies brought Gary Michael Hilton

to the Dawson County Jail.

JOHN: Once we discovered Meredith's body

in Dawson County, we knew that that would be

the venue where he would be charged with murder,

and it's a different prosecutor

and a different judicial circuit.

- On January 4, 2008, Gary Michael Hilton

did unlawfully and with malice and forethought

cause the death of another human being,

Meredith Hope Emerson,

by blunt force trauma to the head.

JOHN: We charged him in Dawson County

with one count of murder.

- I'm Lee Darragh.

I'm the district attorney for the Northeastern

Judicial Circuit of Georgia.

When the body was found, it became my case at that point.

There was a chance that his confession might be thrown out

because it was made under a promise

of a more lenient sentence.

And I decided that the best course to take

was simply to tell the defense attorney, fine,

I'll honor this case.

But he's got to accept the life sentence

for the murder of Meredith Emerson,

and he's got to do it quick.

I said, if you don't close it by January 31st,

that deal made was off the table.

- Gary Hilton was convicted in Superior Court of murder

on January 31st.

- The father of Meredith Hope Emerson is Mr. David Emerson.

He would like to address the court.

JOHN: The Emersons were given the opportunity

to make a statement during the sentencing hearing.

- Your Honor, we stand before you as brokenhearted parents,

having lost our beloved daughter to the vicious murder

committed by Mr. Hilton.

Our days are filled with tears,

blank stares,

and we constantly struggle through each day.

- Your Honor, Mrs. Susan Emerson, the mother

of Meredith.

- Your Honor, as far as I'm concerned, there is

no such thing as justice in this case.

Nothing will bring our daughter back.

I have no doubt that her goodness and light intimidated

the hell out of him.

The truth is she is stronger and brighter than ever

while he has been diminished.

JUDGE: Do you have any question?

- No, Your Honor.

CLAY: This case came and went so fast,

and that may be the reason that it's so hard to digest.

It's almost like being below a dam when it busts,

and you get washed away, and then it's over with.

CLAY: We knew at that point that he was a serial killer,

but we didn't know how vast his range was.

VERNON: Three different cases,

three different national forests,

and they're all hikers.

That's commonality,

and so we knew how dangerous he was.

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

CLAY: Did a background interview with him,

and we were doing that for Florida and North Carolina

to assist law enforcement with their investigations.

You go into an interrogation, and you have to convince

them that you feel the same way they do.

It's not easy to do, but it's something

you train yourself to do.

JOHN: Just like most serial killers,

Gary Hilton likes to brag.

He likes to talk in circles,

thought he was smarter than everybody.

- If Gary's talking and he feels like he's in control,

then he will talk about everything.

JOHN: The FBI profilers were watching the interview

in an adjoining room.

MARY: My name is Mary Ellen O'Toole.

I was in law enforcement for 4 1/2 years

before I joined the FBI in the behavioral analysis unit.

I specialize in psychopathy.

Psychopaths, that's the new term for sociopath,

these are people that have no conscience.

They have no remorse for what they do.

So we were working with GBI to really develop a better

understanding of Gary Hilton.

- One of the 20 traits of psychopathy is grandiosity.

And when you are grandiose, you have a tendency

to want to dominate and to want to talk.

MARY: My experience has been that the more you can

get them talking, the more likely it is that they'll say

something that is compromising.

- I know it. You know it.

JOHN: We're kind of hopeful that he might

slip up and mention some of these other killings

in North Carolina and Florida.

CLAY: Periodically, you'll see I'll leave

the room to get more coffee or ask him if he needs anything.

I'm actually going next door to ask them,

do you want me to ask him anything else?

- I heard a wildlife biologist...

MARY: We'd focus on him.

What's his history? What are his patterns?

So your goal is to get a timeline

and to see where he's been,

and then you compare that to cases

where people have been reported missing

or there have been unidentified bodies.

- Gary Hilton talked about his life growing up,

traveling around the country with his mother

and stepfather.

JOHN: He didn't appreciate the way his stepfather was

treating his mother, and his stepfather had just

made an offhand remark, and he said, well, just shoot me,

and so he just shot him.

Didn't kill him.

After that, he stayed a while in some kind of home

down there in Florida.

MARY: Well, you have to be careful because if you're

dealing with someone who is cunning and manipulative,

somebody that's a pathological liar,

you cannot take everything at face value.

JOHN: He talked about his experience

in the military overseas.

He was married several times and divorced.

He bragged about staying in good physical shape,

that he could run the trails.

The only emotional attachment he had was to dogs.

MARY: I'm not questioning that he didn't love dogs,

but they were a conduit to strike up a conversation

with potential victims.

CLAY: He murdered Meredith,

but he wouldn't harm Meredith's dog.

JOHN: He said he was killing for money, that he needed gas,

he needed food.

I think that might have been an initial motivation,

but once he took somebody, I think it shifted.

- The way that he treated his victims was unbelievably

violent and just a stunning lack of empathy

for a fellow human being.

MITCHELL: I think his ultimate goal was to take their life.

The power that he felt, the thrill that he

felt from taking their life.

CLAY: It's extremely hard to sit within a short distance

from him without putting your hands around his throat.

It was about control.

That's what a psychopath is about...

controlling somebody.

CLAY: You do not become a psychopath at 61 years old.

You become that in your late teens, early 20s.

JOHN: And I don't think you just wake up

and start doing that.

Nobody believes that.

We got calls from all over the United States

that had missing hikers or missing people

near the National Forest,

and that's why it was so important for us to try

to backtrack on Hilton's movements.

- He picks his locations carefully.

He could drive around in his van to any location

really in the U.S., victimizing people,

and no one would ever know.

HAROLD: He spent years traveling

around the Southeastern United States.

Just how many more victims are out there?

Where is John Bryant?

It's just a huge unknown.

♪♪ ♪♪