Crime

By Greg Bluestein, AP Writer
ATLANTA (AP) ― The man accused of kidnapping and decapitating a 24-year-old hiker in the Georgia woods and a suspect in a Florida death was a drifter known to spend his time in parks.

To some hikers and joggers who Gary Michael Hilton met, he was talkative, lively and even rather engaging, if strange. To others he knew, he was a loner who seemed to have a dangerous dark side.

"He could be very friendly, and he could be very unfriendly," said his former boss, John Tabor. "It just depended on what day it was."

Little is known about the wiry 61-year-old charged with the murder of Meredith Emerson, who was bludgeoned to death three days after she disappeared during a New Year's Day hike. Florida authorities also say he is a prime suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found last month in a national forest there.

Emerson was originally from Longmont, Colo.

Hilton had no fixed address and lived most recently in a white van that roamed north Georgia. A few details about the man are emerging from court hearings, government records and park visitors who saw him regularly.

According to records, Hilton was married -- and divorced -- twice between 1977 and 1979. The AP was not able to reach either of the ex-wives for comment. Court documents also show he has a criminal record that includes drug and theft charges and spans the metropolitan Atlanta area.

Around 1997 he answered a help wanted ad for Insulated Wall Systems, said Tabor, the company's owner. For the next 10 years Hilton worked "on and off" to help the siding company market its services.

"He didn't have any contact with customers," added Tabor. "He kind of worked by himself."

His last listed address was a midtown Atlanta apartment building in 1999. Since then, he appears to have drifted from place to place.

One of his known hangouts was Murphy Candler Park, a 135-acre tract 15 miles north of Atlanta, where residents regularly saw him walking his dog. One resident, Karen Whitehead, told reporters she saw him with a hunting knife in his right hand. When she asked him about it, he told her he was protecting his pet from wild dogs in the area.

He had a minor run-in with police officers in October 2007, when a deputy evicted Hilton after finding him squatting on a private hunting reserve in north Georgia's Cherokee County.

The law officer's car-mounted video camera captured a rambling 20-minute conversation in which Hilton claimed he was a paratrooper doing "perpetual field maneuvers" and told the deputy he had an expandable baton -- and not to get nervous. "Hey, I love ya," Hilton told the officer as he drove away.

Two months later, Hilton had apparently made his way to northwest Florida. Police there say that citizen witnesses and the account of a forestry officer place Hilton in the Apalachicola National Forest in early December.

This week, after Georgia authorities arrested Hilton, Florida authorities named him the "prime suspect" in the killing of Cheryl Hodges Dunlap. Her body was found on Dec. 19 in the Apalachicola National Forest, southwest of Tallahassee.

Not long after Emerson went missing, he was named a "person of interest" in her disappearance. He was charged with her kidnapping on Saturday, and murder charges were added after authorities said he led them to her body two days later.

One of the last people to see Hilton before he was arrested was Amanda Peacock, a restaurant waitress in Marble Hill, Ga., who let the man use the restaurant's phone on Thursday. She remembers him as being fidgety, loud and "suspicious."

She said he told her, "I just got my job back," as he left, thanking her repeatedly for her help.

Tabor, Hilton's former boss, said he's the person that Hilton called. He would not discuss the details of his conversation, but hours later authorities arrived at the restaurant looking for Hilton.

Peacock said she is still haunted that she came so close to the suspected killer without knowing it.

"I'm glad he was finally caught, I just wish we would have known before it was too late. It just makes me feel real small -- none of us knew anything about it," she said.

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