Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

KEENAN: When you go out to visit with nature,

you don't expect to encounter a monster...

not just a killer, I mean a monster.

CAPPLEMAN: It's a very unique type of killer

that is gonna actually hunt humans as prey.

O'TOOLE: I don't think somebody wakes up at 61

and now they're a serial killer.

It's scary to think how much

Gary could have gotten away with.

- How many more victims are out there,

and where are they?

That's in the back of my head every day with this case.

♪♪ ♪♪

- Hilton was a monster.

- And he even sang as he was taking her dead body.

HILTON: ♪♪ My little dog ♪♪

We're doing it, boy.

- He deserves to die.

A life for a life.

- Mr. Hilton, if you would rise, please.

♪♪ ♪♪

NARRATOR: Secrets in the wild,

beautiful yet treacherous places.

These are the stories of the investigators

who solve crimes in the wilderness.

♪♪ ♪♪

WALDROOP: We're in the mountainous region

of North Carolina.

[birds cawing]

The woods in the mountains here are so big...

and dark.

♪♪ ♪♪

Honestly, every time I go into the woods,

the thought of that day crosses my mind.

♪♪ ♪♪

I was looking off down in this hollow,

and I noticed something below the road that...

it looked like a human skull.

♪♪ ♪♪

I was nervous.

And once I got closer to it...

♪♪ ♪♪

I knew it was a human skull.

♪♪ ♪♪

So...

And at that point, I contacted sheriff's department.

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: February 2, 2008,

I was contacted in reference

to a human skull that had been found

on Nantahala National Forest.

Nantahala National Forest, it's a huge,

huge, huge national forest.

Once you get into the Forest Service land,

it's remote.

There's just no traffic.

Where the call came in at, if you've not been there,

you're not gonna know anything about it.

♪♪ ♪♪

- When we found out that a body had been discovered

in the Nantahala National Forest,

we were anxious to find out who this was.

We knew there were other missing persons cases

in that area.

♪♪ ♪♪

And of course, John Bryant was still missing.

- Since this was on U.S. Forest Service land,

Junior Young was the special agent

assigned to the area as the investigator

for the Forest Service.

- I immediately get in my patrol car,

blast out to the area.

[siren wailing]

We go out there.

We look off a bank, very rugged little area.

And I could see the skull, part of the rib cage,

the spine.

[bird cawing]

When we walked down to the crime scene,

I noticed inside the rib cage was a pacemaker.

♪♪ ♪♪

I knew John Bryant had a pacemaker.

I contacted his cardiologist and was able to confirm

that the serial number on the pacemaker

was, in fact, placed inside John Bryant

in a medical procedure.

♪♪ ♪♪

My heart sank.

It was really sad.

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: The family was holding out hope

that we would be able to find Mr. Bryant alive,

and then, unfortunately, he was no longer with us.

♪♪ ♪♪

YOUNG: The remains were collected

and sent to a medical examiner

for an autopsy.

♪♪ ♪♪

Based on the autopsy,

John had been killed with a firearm.

♪♪ ♪♪

[bird cawing]

LEOPARD: Now you have the investigation going forward.

John Bryant's abduction, kidnapping, and now his death.

MAHONEY: I think it very safe to say that Gary Hilton

was our prime suspect.

But investigators from our agency

attempted to interview him regarding the Bryants,

and he was just arrogant and told us

he had nothing to say to us.

- Hilton loved to talk,

but he would not get into the Bryant case.

He just would not talk.

So we have to rely on the evidence.

♪♪ ♪♪

Everything was in high gear

to link the evidence found in the van

to the Bryant murders.

I'm going through all the inventory items

that the GBI had taken out and cataloged.

- Mr. Bryant had a yellow rain jacket

with a fluorescent stripe,

and Hilton had tried to use their ATM card

wearing that jacket.

Well, when searching the vehicle,

I found a yellow rain jacket with a fluorescent stripe

which the Bryants later identified

as that belonged to their parents.

YOUNG: Also, the GBI found blood in a van

that matched the DNA profile of John Bryant.

- This would be the back of the driver's seat.

That's a blood transfer pattern.

His hair came in contact with the back of the seat,

left a transfer pattern...

so another piece of evidence that helped tie

Gary Hilton to the Bryant case.

♪♪ ♪♪

- That moment, it's like, OK, it's done.

We know who did it.

♪♪ ♪♪

- Since this was U.S. Forest Service land,

the FBI got involved,

because if an individual is committing crimes

in multiple jurisdictions,

federal charges would be stronger

than state local charges.

♪♪ ♪♪

YOUNG: At that point, I finished all of my reports,

and all of that was turned over to the FBI.

♪♪ ♪♪

In February of 2008,

Hilton was indicted in Florida

for the death of Cheryl Dunlap.

- Florida was chomping at the bit

to go ahead and come get the evidence.

You know, they're ready

to prosecute him right then.

- Florida Department of Law Enforcement

came in a tractor trailer

and actually drove the van

up inside of a tractor trailer

along with all of the evidence,

and it all went to Florida.

CAGLE: Hilton didn't want to be extradited to Florida

because he knew that it was very likely

that he would be found guilty and given the death penalty.

REPORTER: The judge is ruling against Hilton's effort

to fight the extradition, clearing the way

for Florida authorities to pick him up.

BAXTER: The time comes for us to go pick up Hilton

and bring him to Leon County for his prosecution.

♪♪ ♪♪

When you're riding in a car with somebody

that you know has killed four people,

you have a sense of caution.

We had body chains on him.

We had lead vehicles, we had trail vehicles,

we had SWAT team members,

because you never know what could happen.

This was a several-hundred-mile trip.

We were taking no risks whatsoever.

♪♪ ♪♪

When we got him to the jail, you do kind of have that...

[sighs] We've got him now.

He's in our custody.

[birds chirping]

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

CAPPLEMAN: My name is Georgia Cappleman.

I'm the chief assistant state attorney here in Leon County.

Hilton was charged with first-degree murder

and kidnapping.

At the time, he was already doing life

from the Meredith Emerson case,

and we were not giving Gary Hilton a freebie

for murdering one of our citizens.

And we were gonna be seeking the death penalty.

It's very rare for the death penalty

to be recommended here in Leon County.

Gary Hilton is the worst of the worst.

He's pure evil.

Everyone that encountered him had

sort of a universal experience where the hairs

on the back of their neck stood up

just being in his presence,

and I was no exception.

It's a very unique type of killer

that is gonna actually go out and hunt humans as prey,

and that's what we have here.

It's the stuff of nightmares.

[birds chirping]

♪♪ ♪♪

Cheryl Dunlap was minding her own business,

reading a book at the sinks,

shortly before her disappearance.

Hilton probably had already identified her as a target.

She probably made it back to her car

and encountered Gary Hilton.

There was some kind of struggle where she

was taken from her vehicle and put into his van.

He drove around with her for a couple days,

and I think that's probably his MO.

I think he wanted to keep them alive as long as he could

for his own purposes, which were probably

sexual in nature, but also to drain their bank accounts

before ending their lives.

It's particularly cold-blooded.

♪♪ ♪♪

What that is, Gary. Like, what is that?

It's not normal to take two years to investigate

the evidence in a crime.

But when the evidence is so prolific...

we had a semitrailer full of stuff.

We've got the van chock-full of all kinds of evidence,

all those campsites.

So there were a lot of crime scenes.

We needed to try to connect those to Gary Hilton.

And it was really important to find DNA evidence

that linked her directly to him.

♪♪ ♪♪

- I examined Cheryl Dunlap's car at the laboratory,

and one of the things that was in there was plastic beads.

This is a picture of the driver's-side rear floorboard,

and there are two beads in the center of the picture.

- The plastic beads were from a piece of jewelry

Cheryl Dunlap wore that her grandchild

had made her.

Those beads, obviously, were broken in the struggle

and, at some point, ended up in her vehicle.

♪♪ ♪♪

- This is where the burn pit was located

in Joe Thomas Road,

and there's all the yellow markers

where evidence was found.

In the upper right-hand corner,

there was a very small burned cigarette butt

that had Hilton's DNA on it,

which then put him at the Joe Thomas Road scene

where the hand and skull bones were found.

Beads like this were also found at the burn pit.

I knew that she was a grandmother,

so having those beads in her car would not be unusual.

But it was unusual to find those beads

at Joe Thomas Road.

CAPPLEMAN: Those beads linked him to both that campsite

and to her vehicle, which was

important in linking him to her murder.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: We found a pair of Gary Hilton's boots

in the dumpster that had blood on the laces

that belonged to Cheryl.

That was a critical piece of evidence.

♪♪ ♪♪

- The FDLE was able to analyze

items taken from Gary Hilton's van,

including sleeping bags,

a duffel bag which contained Cheryl Dunlap's DNA,

as well as one of those beads

consistent with the plastic beads that were found

both in the fire pit at Gary Hilton's campsite

and in Cheryl Dunlap's vehicle.

The DNA evidence from the van linked Cheryl Dunlap

directly to Gary Michael Hilton in the form of her blood.

There is absolutely no reason that her blood

could be in his van if he was not the one that murdered her.

♪♪ ♪♪

The jury was out less than four hours

deliberating during the guilt phase,

and they returned a verdict of guilty as charged.

♪♪ ♪♪

Once the jury found Mr. Hilton guilty,

we went into the penalty phase

for the jury to make a determination

as to whether to recommend the death penalty.

♪♪ ♪♪

- We're hearing State of Florida

versus Gary Michael Hilton.

♪♪ ♪♪

FUENTES: My name is Betty Fuentes.

I am a mitigation and sentencing specialist,

and I became the mitigation specialist

for the case of Gary Michael Hilton

out of Leon County, Florida.

As a mitigation specialist with the defense team,

we have to do everything possible to keep that person

not getting the death penalty.

I do record collection

for everything that has happened to him

in his whole entire life,

and the defense then brings in the mitigation in the trial.

♪♪ ♪♪

- The defense presented mitigating factors.

And those were, first, a Murphy bed

falling on Gary's head when he was a young boy.

FUENTES: He had dozens of stitches put in his head.

It hit the frontal lobe of his brain,

which affects the way that you treat people.

That's the importance of the head injury.

- The bed falling on Gary's head

certainly could have caused a concussion

and all sorts of other problems,

but what we're looking at with these kinds of cases

is predatory violence.

Hunting human beings,

it is not caused by a blow to the head.

♪♪ ♪♪

The second mitigating factor was the Ritalin

that he was taking, supposedly for his MS.

FUENTES: There was a doctor in Atlanta

that prescribed Ritalin.

He wrote scripts, gave Hilton several of them,

and then Hilton self-medicated by constantly having them.

You have to look at the drug history,

because the drug history could be a sign of a mental illness.

O'TOOLE: There are many people who take Ritalin,

many people who take much more debilitating drugs,

that don't become serial sexual killers.

In my assessment, those factors would not

be the explanation for the kind of violence

that Gary engaged in.

♪♪ ♪♪

- At the end of the penalty phase,

Georgia Cappleman played a couple of videos

that she had been saving.

When we caught Hilton, there was a video camera in his van.

Gary Hilton thought that he had deleted those videos.

But FDLE was able to recover the video and audio,

and Ms. Cappleman played those for the jury.

♪♪ ♪♪

- The date stamp was December 3, 2007,

two days after he had abducted Cheryl Dunlap.

On a couple of the clips, it seemed

Gary Hilton didn't realize the cameras were recording.

He's either talking to himself or his dog, and it was vulgar.

- It's absolutely terrible.

There's a little bit of visual consistent with him

being near the area

where Cheryl Dunlap's body was found.

He's talking about murder.

He's talking about hiding things.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAPPLEMAN: There was a visceral reaction

to some of that information.

TUCKER: When he said that, "I killed those bitches,"

it was awful.

He said some horrible things.

- That led us to believe that that recording

could have been made around the time that he was

hiding Cheryl Dunlap's body.

- And he even sang as he was taking her dead body.

- He was a monster. - Yeah.

- Hilton was a definite monster.

- Yeah.

CAGLE: Those videos gave the jury a clear idea

of who Gary Hilton really was.

And after that, the state rested,

and the jury would have to decide whether to give

Gary Hilton life or death.

- Mr. Hilton, if you would rise, please.

The court now finds beyond a reasonable doubt

that you, Gary Michael Hilton,

be sentenced to death for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap,

as provided by law.

May God have mercy on your soul.

[somber music]

BRIDGES: They voted to put him to death unanimously,

and I'm 100% in agreement with that.

♪♪ ♪♪

I would handle it for them if they would let me.

♪♪ ♪♪

- He deserves to die.

A life for a life.

I firmly believe that.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAPPLEMAN: I was very pleased

with the jury's recommendation.

It was an emotional case for everyone involved,

including those jurors who listened to all that evidence.

♪♪ ♪♪

TUCKER: It's been very hard for our family,

our whole family.

♪♪ ♪♪

It was very hard.

♪♪ ♪♪

Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: After his conviction in Florida,

there were still the cases of John

and Irene Bryant in North Carolina.

[siren wailing]

YOUNG: The case was going along really well.

All of the evidence was in,

and about a week before the trial

was scheduled for the murders of John and Irene Bryant,

Hilton entered a guilty plea for murder

in exchange for no death penalty.

CAGLE: I went to Asheville to his sentencing hearing.

The Bryant family was there.

He did, in fact, admit that he had

killed John and Irene Bryant.

Hilton received four consecutive life sentences

without the possibility of parole.

And then as he was being led out of the courtroom,

he looked over at me

and just kind of smiled.

♪♪ ♪♪

YOUNG: I feel saddened for the Bryant family.

That never goes away for them, I'm sure,

but it doesn't for me either.

And by that time, I had decided it was time for me to retire.

[bird caws]

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

But I think there's still a lot of unanswered questions.

♪♪ ♪♪

Are there more victims?

And if so, where are they?

That's in the back of my head every day with this case.

♪♪ ♪♪

- I believe Gary Hilton committed more murders

than the ones he's charged for.

♪♪ ♪♪

O'TOOLE: I don't think somebody wakes up at 61

and now they're a serial killer.

I have never, ever seen that.

It's a progressive evolution of behavior.

It doesn't just start at 61.

It's scary to think how much Gary

could have gotten away with.

O'TOOLE: He was very mobile, so he could

have a lifestyle that involved

victimizing people, and no one would ever know.

♪♪ ♪♪

- How many more victims are out there?

♪♪ ♪♪

POSEY: We definitely consider Gary Hilton

a suspect in other unsolved cases

that we have, especially Levi Frady,

since he also was found in Dawson Forest.

♪♪ ♪♪

Levi was 11 years old.

He was riding his bicycle home one day, and he disappeared.

♪♪ ♪♪

The next day, he was found in Dawson Forest,

and he had been murdered.

And that case, to this day, is unsolved.

And until that case is solved, I find it difficult to rest.

♪♪ ♪♪

THACKER: I was down there that morning.

Yeah, I was involved in securing the scene

until the investigation could be done.

♪♪ ♪♪

I mean, you can't forget something like that.

And I know there's somebody out there

that would have some information.

♪♪ ♪♪

You know, it needs to be solved.

♪♪ ♪♪

POSEY: I've never eliminated Gary Michael Hilton

from being responsible for Levi's case.

You never eliminate anyone until you know

exactly who it is.

O'TOOLE: Would Gary have been tempted and capable of killing

a young boy like Levi Frady?

Absolutely he would have been.

Absolutely.

Gary was a human predator.

He likes thrill and excitement,

which are traits of psychopathy.

A psychopath is also impulsive and will incorporate risk

into his crimes because it makes the crime

more exciting for them.

Psychopaths will cross over gender lines,

and they can cross over age lines

when picking their victims.

So there could be other victims out there

that don't fit the profile

that law enforcement have in mind,

like Levi Frady.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: I remember Gary Hilton

talking in one of his interviews

about hair salons

and the fact that he would stop often at those

and go in and just ask for money.

- They would generally give him money just to scurry him away

so that they could finish their lunch

before the next customer would arrive.

And of course, Gary knew this

and exploited hair salons for money

by going at lunchtime.

- It's very interesting to me because of Patrice Endres,

an unsolved homicide case.

POSEY: Patrice Endres is a hairdresser

from Forsyth County

that was kidnapped from her shop in 2004.

Patrice vanished in the middle of the day at work.

[birds chirping]

♪♪ ♪♪

ENDRES: I'm Rob Endres.

Patrice Endres was my wife.

She was caring and loving

and gentle and patient.

Patrice had a two-chair salon

north of the city of Cumming.

♪♪ ♪♪

On the 15th of October, 2004,

in the morning, we kissed goodbye and said,

I'll see you later.

And never heard from Patrice again.

♪♪ ♪♪

It was probably about 3:00 or so.

I got a call from a captain

from Forsyth County Sheriff's Office,

and he said...

Patrice had gone missing.

♪♪ ♪♪

[phone ringing]

POSEY: Patrice was reported missing

by a customer.

We have a 13-minute window in which Patrice talked

to someone on the phone,

and then 13 minutes later, another person called.

Patrice did not answer the phone,

which is very unusual.

We believe, within that 13 minutes,

the events that cost Patrice her life occurred.

♪♪ ♪♪

You wouldn't walk into her shop and immediately think,

this is a crime scene.

Her cash register drawer was open,

and there was no money in it.

The money was missing.

Her purse was there.

There was money in her purse.

Nothing else was disturbed about her shop.

It's as though she just walked away.

But of course, we do not believe that's what happened.

♪♪ ♪♪

We have two independent witnesses

that saw a blue car there.

We're still looking for the people who came

to Patrice's shop that day in the blue car.

♪♪ ♪♪

[birds chirping]

♪♪ ♪♪

ENDRES: 600 days later,

her skeleton was discovered in Dawsonville.

[clearing throat]

♪♪ ♪♪

[exhales shakily]

♪♪ ♪♪

Sorry.

♪♪ ♪♪

This was my wife.

♪♪ ♪♪

Patrice, Patrice.

♪♪ ♪♪

She was the woman that I loved.

♪♪ ♪♪

POSEY: Patrice was found in a wooded area

behind a church.

CAGLE: Just outside the Dawson Forest Management Area,

in an area that Hilton would know,

very near where Levi Frady was found in 1997...

♪♪ ♪♪

and near where we found Meredith Emerson.

♪♪ ♪♪

- Gary Hilton very well could have kidnapped Patrice.

There's a huge match there if you let yourself consider it.

♪♪ ♪♪

It's been an open case for 19 years.

Still don't know what happened to her.

♪♪ ♪♪

And she's not the only cold case out there.

♪♪ ♪♪

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: Bryson City, North Carolina,

it's the far western part of North Carolina.

It's the doorway

to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: Rossana's last known sighting

was December 7, 2005.

She had contacted her father that morning

and told him that she was planning

on staying in the area for a little while

and hiking the Appalachian Trail.

♪♪ ♪♪

Detectives then started with the missing persons

investigation, and it was learned

that she had obtained a storage unit

from a gentleman named Donald Clough.

She had some personal stuff that she needed stored.

He owned a storage unit, so he picked her up,

got her set up there, and brought her back to town.

♪♪ ♪♪

After that, she just vanished.

♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: During the investigation,

Mr. Clough agreed

to take a polygraph examination,

and it was noted that there was no deception.

♪♪ ♪♪

Mr. Clough had been cleared as being a suspect

in her disappearance.

♪♪ ♪♪

At that point in time, it became a cold case.

♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: Steve was retired law enforcement from this area.

He was well liked.

He was known as a good investigator, very thorough.

♪♪ ♪♪

Once he got involved in the investigation,

Steve had reached out to one of the local newspapers here

and asked them to write an article

about her disappearance

to try to generate some new information.

♪♪ ♪♪

After that article was run,

an employee of a local thrift store

had contacted Steve and said that she had some information

about the disappearance.

LEOPARD: She said it looked like he was wearing a wig

to disguise himself.

LEOPARD: She said that she had seen a picture of Gary Hilton

on the news and that she believed

that the person that she saw with the wig was Gary Hilton

and the female was Rossana.

They had been together in her store.

♪♪ ♪♪

Once Steve had this information,

he contacted a sketch artist trained by the FBI

and requested him to have a sketch drawn

and to put it out in the public

to see if it helped generate any information.

♪♪ ♪♪

- Gary's booking photo, you can see that, of course,

he has a receding hairline, the rounding of the chin.

He has some very distinct things with the lips,

the features of the bridge of the nose.

There's some similarities that make you think

that there was a very good chance that that was

Gary Hilton that came into the thrift store that day.

♪♪ ♪♪

Once Steve has the sketch done,

he provides it to law enforcement.

It's released to the media.

We're hoping that that sketch

is gonna generate some new leads,

but it... it really didn't.

No one came forward to say that...

that they had seen her.

♪♪ ♪♪

And unfortunately, in 2021,

Steve passed away due to COVID.

♪♪ ♪♪

So at that point in time,

the case was given to me as a cold case.

You have a female that's alone.

You have remote areas.

You have national forest.

There's too many similarities not to consider

Gary Michael Hilton as a suspect.

♪♪ ♪♪

So we traveled to Florida State Prison.

They brought Hilton in.

And we were gonna take a chance.

You know, maybe we can... can get some information

on Rossana's disappearance.

HILTON: Uh-huh.

♪♪ ♪♪

LEOPARD: Gary Hilton did not admit to being in this area

during the time frame of 2005.

I did not believe him one single bit.

DETECTIVE: OK. HILTON: Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪

- The polygraph was noted with no deception.

The only thing with that is,

if somebody that is a psychopath

believes what they're saying,

so they could pass the polygraph

and still be lying.

I'm still not convinced that Gary Hilton

did not have something to do with Rossana's disappearance.

I personally believe that there are cases out there

that has Gary Hilton's name on it

that just have not been solved yet,

and this is one of them.

♪♪ ♪♪

[dramatic music]

♪♪ ♪♪

- The totality of all of these states,

all of these crimes,

all of these jurisdictions,

everything came down to Gary Michael Hilton.

This is the person responsible for creating harm

to all of these families.

[water burbling]

KEENAN: When you go out to visit with nature,

you don't expect it to be dangerous.

You don't expect

to encounter a monster on a hiking trail...

♪♪ ♪♪

Not just a killer, I mean a monster.

♪♪ ♪♪

GANEY: He's an animal.

Wherever he went, if he seen an opportunity,

he was just like a jackal.

You know, he's gonna take the opportunity.

He's a psychopath.

That's what they do.

They just like killing people.

No remorse.

Just the devil incarnate.

♪♪ ♪♪

O'TOOLE: I think his motivations

were multiple in nature.

These crimes are so complicated.

There's never one motive.

They're sexually motivated.

There's motivations that include things

like wanting power and control over the victim.

Looking at Gary's history,

I would think that he started to act out...

and not necessarily in a homicidal way initially...

in his mid-teen years.

And that could have included sexual crimes,

attempted rapes.

But at a certain point, it evolves

and it becomes even more violent.

Typically early to mid-20s

is when the extreme violence

would have started to manifest itself.

He's a serial sexual killer.

He took extreme risks when he committed the crime.

He had no accountability, which is why

we probably don't know the full extent of what he did.

The amount of violence is significant,

the amount of cruelty even more significant.

And how these people were treated

both before death and after death

is... is really stunning.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: First time we've been back, William.

THACKER: Yep.

And it don't bring back good memories.

CAGLE: No. No, it doesn't.

♪♪ ♪♪

THACKER: I can't understand how anybody

could do something like that.

But I've never saw that kind of evil before.

♪♪ ♪♪

Rough.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: Yeah.

THACKER: I saw him right here that night,

and I wanted to know.

CAGLE: Yeah.

That was a sad day.

♪♪ ♪♪

Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪

- Well, there's no way to make any sense of it.

♪♪ ♪♪

- The Meredith Emerson case was the last case I worked at GBI.

♪♪ ♪♪

I think it changed all of us.

♪♪ ♪♪

The motto that I tried to live by all of my career

was, never get too close.

Never let it get personal.

♪♪ ♪♪

And I let it get personal.

I let it get to me.

And I just can't seem to get over that.

♪♪ ♪♪

BRIDGES: John was destroyed by this case,

the same way I was.

We're supposed to be, you know,

10 foot tall and bulletproof.

This doesn't affect us.

But this case certainly did.

- This case was different for us

because normally we arrive to find a victim,

and then we work hard to seek justice for them.

In this case,

we were proactively working to save a life

as Meredith very intelligently

manipulated Gary to stay alive

just to give us another minute, another hour

to get to her.

♪♪ ♪♪

- Um...

yeah, give me a second.

♪♪ ♪♪

You know, I keep thinking, um, you know,

what if we found her?

♪♪ ♪♪

I mean, man, we were so close.

Just couldn't make it happen.

♪♪ ♪♪

- It was difficult knowing we didn't get there

before she ran out of time.

- And that is devastating to think about.

It's just... it's something that is

beyond what you can deal with.

♪♪ ♪♪

Gary Hilton would still be killing people today,

in my opinion, had Meredith Emerson not

fought him and continued to fight him

for the rest of her life.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: She's the hero.

She's the one that solved her own murder

and solved the murders of Cheryl Dunlap

and John and Irene Bryant.

- God may choose to forgive him.

However, he is not worth the time and energy

it would take me to do so.

My focus will remain on all the good Meredith stood for

and still does.

DAVE EMERSON: Meredith touched so many people

in a positive way

both in life and death.

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: Meredith saved a lot of lives,

because Hilton admitted that he would

never have stopped killing had we not captured him.

♪♪ ♪♪

BRIDGES: I believe that people are put on Earth for a reason.

I think hers was to stop Gary Hilton.

♪♪ ♪♪

[birds chirping]

♪♪ ♪♪

CAGLE: I think national forests are safe.

They're good places to go

to get away,

to forget about troubles you may have,

or just relax.

And, you know, danger lurks at good places.

You just have to be aware, and you have to understand

that people are watching you.

And there's probably more Gary Hiltons out there...

♪♪ ♪♪

Just waiting on somebody to come along

when they're alone.

♪♪ ♪♪

So take a friend.

♪♪ ♪♪