Hiker never gave up fight, Hilton said
By RHONDA COOK, CHRISTIAN BOONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/23/08
Gary Michael Hilton acknowledged that the petite woman nearly overpowered him when he first accosted her. As they struggled near the Appalachian Trail, Meredith Emerson disarmed her attacker of a knife and baton.
Hilton eventually subdued Emerson, kidnapped her and later killed her. She did not make it easy for him, according to interviews Hilton gave to investigators that were obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Speaking to Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Clay Bridges only days after killing the young woman, Hilton said: “I think it was you probably, or one of the GBIs, said ‘That little 120-pound-girl about probably came close to whipping your ass.’ She about did.”
Her life in danger, Emerson fought back using her strength, her wits and a large measure of courage and determination. In the four days after she disappeared on a Blood Mountain hiking trail in Union County, investigators said, Emerson never gave up.
Bridges said he talked with the South Florida-born vagrant as authorities drove him from the Union County Jail to the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area, where Hilton killed Emerson. Hilton made a deal with prosecutors that he would lead investigators to her remains, if they would not seek the death penalty.
As they descended the winding North Georgia mountain roads, the Army veteran casually detailed the abduction and slaying of the 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate.
Bridges said Hilton clearly relished the attention, and authorities described his account as “self-serving.”
Still, Emerson’s tenacity and smarts are evident throughout, and, despite Hilton’s best attempts, her actions overwhelm the one-sided narrative.
“She was doing everything she could to stay alive,” GBI Director Vernon Keenan said. “It’s not something you can train for. Instinct kicks in. … She nearly got the best of him. … She’s very much a hero.”
Meredith Emerson was described as “feisty” by her roommate and close friend. Her Judo teacher said at 5 feet 4 inches and 120 pounds, she “trained with us like she lived every day — hard and with everything she had.”
Hilton, 61, told investigators he abducted her because she was a woman.
Easy prey, he figured.
‘Wouldn’t stop fighting’
Both were with their dogs when they met near the Appalachian Trail in Union County on New Year’s Day. For a time they walked together, but, as Hilton later admitted, he couldn’t keep up with her and fell behind. He intercepted her on her way down, producing a military-style knife and demanding her ATM card.
Without pause, Emerson fought back.
“The bayonet is probably still up there,” Hilton told Bridges. “I lost control, and … she fought. And as I read in the paper, she’s a martial artist.”
Emerson, who held a green belt and a blue belt in two different martial arts, grabbed the blade.
He countered with a baton. She grabbed it, too. They stepped off the trail and fell down a slope, leaving the weapons behind.
“I had to hand-fight her,” Hilton said. “She wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop fighting,” he said. “And yelling at the same time. … So I needed to both control her and silence her.”
He kept punching her, so hard it left both her eyes black and may have fractured her nose. Hilton said his hand was broken by the blows. He figured she had worn down, and they moved farther off the trail.
Then Emerson started fighting again. He finally got her to stop by telling her all he wanted was her credit card and PIN. He then restrained her hands with a zip tie.
Then, Hilton told Bridges, “I had to go back and clean the crime scene.”
But he couldn’t find any of his weapons. He said he spotted three hikers nearby and assumed they had found the knife and baton.
It was one of several close calls that continue to haunt Hilton’s captors. On at least three other occasions before he killed Emerson, Hilton crossed paths or was in the vicinity of law-enforcement officials.
On the day he abducted her, he was worried police officers might be waiting for him in the parking lot as he led Emerson back down the mountain, staying off the established trails. He assumed whoever retrieved his baton and knives had called police, or perhaps they had heard Emerson’s cries for help.
Apparently no one did.
Without incident, Hilton placed Emerson and her dog, Ella, in his van and secured his victim with a padlocked chain.
Chained or bound
In the following hours and days, Emerson kept Hilton off-balance by repeatedly giving him the wrong PIN for her ATM card but assuring each time that this time the numbers were correct.
She bought time with that ploy. Three days.
“That’s one thing that broke my heart in this case,” Bridges said. “She was doing everything she was supposed to do to stay alive, and we didn’t get there in time.”
In recounting conversations with Emerson, Hilton revealed himself as a killer without shame or remorse — and unwittingly provided testament to her resolve.
Hilton said he and Emerson camped all three nights during a spell of bitter cold.
To keep her from running away, he usually kept a chain or nylon rope around her neck and she was often tethered to a tree or inside the van. When they slept, Emerson was tied to him so he would know if she tried to escape.
Hilton claimed he tried to make Emerson comfortable, at one point saying he gave her the warmer sleeping bag because temperatures had dropped to 4 degrees. He offered her aspirin for a lingering headache that followed their fight the first day.
“I was solicitous of her … comfort and everything else,” said Hilton, seemingly oblivious to the contradiction.
Perhaps one of the most chilling details followed, as Hilton nonchalantly told Bridges, he raped Emerson that first night. He was angry she’d made him drive around from bank to bank and still had nothing to show for it.
Their second day together, Hilton set up camp in Dawson Forest, where they hiked for several hours. He insisted she was free, but he also said he told her he would shoot her and anyone around if she tried to get away.
“We took both dogs and went hiking along Shoal Creek,” Hilton said. He said she was not bound while they hiked.
If she appeared to be going along with her abductor, as Hilton described, Keenan said it was only to survive. “She struggled to live,” the GBI director said.
Hilton knew he was a wanted man, telling investigators he had followed the AJC’s coverage of Emerson’s abduction. On the day she died, Jan. 4, he was pictured on the newspaper’s front page alongside a story in which police named him a “person of interest” in the Buford hiker’s disappearance.
That day, Hilton said that he told Emerson “she was going home.”
“I said, ‘I’m giving you all your stuff back.’ I had all her stuff bagged up together. I made a point of showing her.”
They drove to the spot where he would kill her. On the way, they passed a law-enforcement officer.
“I waved at him,” Hilton said. “It was that close.”
Though a police bulletin had been issued for Hilton’s van with a DeKalb County license plate, by then he had switched that tag for a stolen North Carolina tag.
“I walked her into the woods,” Hilton said. He carried two sleeping bags, an air mattress “for her to sit on,” two bags and a chain.
“Secured her to a tree. Walked back to the van. Kinda got myself together. Made some coffee.”
Killing was difficult
When he came back to her, Hilton said with a little laugh, Emerson told him, ” ‘I was afraid you weren’t coming back.’ ”
He gave her a book to read, “Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures” by Marvin Harris, walked behind her as if he were going to remove the chains holding her to the tree and hit her several times with the handle from a tire jack.
Hilton both killed and decapitated Emerson in a vain effort to destroy evidence that might incriminate him.
Hilton was worried about another piece of evidence that might link him to the slaying — Emerson’s dog. She had told him the Lab-mix carried a microchip identifying it as her pet.
“If I wanted to ensure that no one would associate the dog with her, I would’ve killed the dog,” Hilton said. “But there’s no way I could do that.”
He had no such reservations about killing Emerson.
“Was it difficult for you at all?” GBI agent Bridges asked after Hilton finished his account of the murder.
“It was like an out-of-body experience. It was surreal. … You look back on it, and you say ‘That wasn’t even real.’ You might say it was an altered state. …
“It was hard,” Hilton continued. “You gotta remember we had spent several good days together.”
