Missing Georgia hiker--Meredith Emerson, 24 #4

Can anyone offer a location to discuss GMH other than the Tal Democrat forums for Cheryl Dunlap?
 
This is a good place to discuss GMH...tons of info here if you look through this forum....there is one for Cheryl Dunlap, too.....
 
Can anyone offer a location to discuss GMH other than the Tal Democrat forums for Cheryl Dunlap?

Welcome Slugger, i'm sure you'll like it here at Websleuths, the information is organized well here :)
 
Over Two Years Later, yet her Memory lives on in the Hearts of Many:

http://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.as...=5789716784050



Meredith Emerson Legacy Guest Book

Recent Entries March 23, 2010
'Right To Hike':

'In Memory of Meredith Hope Emerson'

"An Evening of Hope"

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1D7ygV25YE[/ame]
~ Glenn Adams, Dawsonville, Georgia March 22, 2010

You were a beautiful young woman Meredith, may you rest in peace.
~ Andrea Miller, Springfield, Missouri March 19, 2010

Dear Meredith,
I just read your story and I wanted to let you know that your life and tragedy touched me. I hope that your family and friends find a measure of peace in the wake of your loss. You were a beautiful gal.
~ Erica, San Diego, California
 
http://www.prod.myajc.com/news/news/after-5-years-notorious-crime-still-haunts/nTyq3/


After 5 years, notorious crime still haunts
Witness, authorities left asking, 'What if?'
Posted: 10:40 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013



Meredith Emerson's tragic tale ignited national concern.
The fate of her killer, however, is in the hands of Florida judicial system. Gary Michael Hilton is appealing a death sentence for the murder of a nurse in the state.
By Bill Torpy

Eerie and disturbing is how Seth Blankenship recalls the scene he encountered on Blood Mountain on the afternoon of New Year’s Day 2008.
The hiking trail before him was torn up like there had been a fight. Water bottles, a leather dog leash, sun glasses, a police baton and a women’s hair barrette littered the ground.

Blankenship did not know exactly what had just transpired or the horror that was about to unfold. At this moment, he was what an excruciating number of others would soon become — one step behind serial killer Gary Hilton.

Minutes earlier, Blankenship saw a weathered, toothless man with a sheathed police baton walking near a pretty young woman carrying that leash. He thought they might be a father and daughter. But Blankenship, a former cop, got a gut feeling something was wrong after finding the odd assortment of gear. He started asking others if they had seen anything strange.

Bill Clawson, another hiker, had. Minutes earlier, Clawson, who was with his son and then-fiancé, spotted a scruffy man skulking in the woods as his family enjoyed a scenic moment. The man seemed impatient, as if waiting for the family to leave. Clawson and Blankenship walked back to where the stranger lurked.

Clawson left and turned in the items found on the trail to a nearby store. Blankenship readied the pistol in his pack and kept searching.

Blankenship found nothing, so he left as dusk approached. But despite his concern, his searching and questioning others at the scene, he failed to do something that still haunts him: “I didn’t call the police,” he said recently. “It’s horrible, but I didn’t call. If I had done things different, she could be alive today.”

“She” was Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old woman who vanished from the busy trail that day. Six days later, police found her headless body in another forest 40 miles away. She had survived for nearly 72 hours after being kidnapped by Hilton, held captive in his van as he drove town to town unsuccessfully trying to withdraw money from her bank account before returning to the forest to hide out.

The intense manhunt for Emerson became national news, with scores of searchers hitting the trails and hundreds of tips flowing into police. The search grabbed the public. It was every parent’s nightmare. The young woman fought a violent battle on the trail against a vicious and evil tormentor and kept herself alive for three days by refusing to give up her ATM code.

The case has faded in the five years since. But not for witnesses such as Blankenship, Emerson’s friends and family and investigators close to the case. For them, it is still filled with heartbreaking what-ifs and couldabeens that haunt them to this day.

The tragedy was compounded by the fact that the troubled inklings several hikers had Jan. 1 were not weaved together until a full day after Emerson was reported missing and two days after her abduction. The search never fully widened from the trails until the last few hours of the young woman’s life.

“There were so many close calls,” said John Cagle, the former GBI agent who headed the search. “I don’t want to go as far as saying missed opportunities. I guess I’d say close encounters or near misses.”

Interviews and an exhaustive reading of the voluminous case file shows Hilton repeatedly was on the edge of being detected any number of times during the last 72 hours of Emerson’s life.

(READ MORE/MUCH MORE)
 
http://www.citizen-times.com/article...isgah-slayings

Serial killer Hilton gets life in Pisgah slayings

ASHEVILLE-NC — Holly Bryant would have preferred a death sentence for the serial killer who took the lives of her parents, but she takes solace in knowing he won’t kill again.

Gary Michael Hilton, who faces the death penalty in Florida, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole for kidnapping, robbing and murdering John and Irene Bryant while they were out for a hike in Pisgah National Forest in 2007.

“He will spend the rest of his life and die in a cage or at the hands of a Florida executioner,” Holly Bryant said after the hearing in U.S. District Court in Asheville.
“But the main thing is he will never get out to harm anyone again.”
 
"What info, other than other unknown victims, did GMH have to bargain with for the Bryant murders"? Did he have associates. How many unknown victims?
Serial Killer Gary Hilton, offered FL Prosecutors the identities of 32 unknown victims enroute to Florida from Jackson Prison, GA. FL prosecutors refused to negotiate, although GMH will never live to see the death penalty carried out, imo. GMH would have also held back other unknown victims for negotiating with the Feds in the NC trial, imo.
 
http://www.dawsonnews.com/section/5/article/12486/

Cable series profiles Emerson murder
By Michele Hester Staff Writer
mhester@dawsonnews.com
POSTED: July 10, 2013 4:00 a.m.
A crime series on the cable channel Investigation Discovery will profile serial killer Gary Michael Hilton, the drifter who admitted to killing a young Buford woman in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area in January 2008.

Dawson County Sheriff's Lt. Col. John Cagle, a former special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who led the investigation into Emerson's disappearance, will be featured in the Fatal Encounters documentary "Blood Mountain Murder" that first airs at 9 p.m. tomorrow.

"I did this with certain conditions about her final hours that they agreed to and they respected my request," he said.

Five and a half years after the murder, the veteran lawman said the grizzly discovery that missing hiker Meredith Emerson had been killed in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area is one of the few cases that continues to haunt him.

"We caught the guy and prevented more murders, but we didn't save Meredith and that is something that I seem unable to recover from," Cagle said.
read more-
 
http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Gary-M-Hilton-Receives-Four-Life-Sentences-204839261.html

Gary Michael Hilton to be Evaluated for Competency
Updated: Tue 6:33 PM, Mar 18, 2014

psychological evaluation.

During a hearing Tuesday morning, Judge James Hankinson said attorneys have 45 days to have Hilton evaluated for competency.

Hilton was convicted of killing four people in three states. That includes the kidnapping and beheading of Crawfordville Sunday School Teacher Cheryl Dunlap in 2007.

Dunlap's cousin, Gloria Tucker, says, "I think the process is long and it's hard and it's extremely frustrating. I think every criminal, especially those on death row, can just continue to bring up everything imaginable to keep from the death penalty happening for them."

She adds, "Justice is defined in the dictionary as administering punishment or reward. There is no justice when a criminal can continue to put off his penalty. It's a long, hard process and it's not an enjoyable one."

The next hearing is set for May 2nd <sniped - read more - Video>
 
Ten years later, hiker’s murder still haunts those closest to case

http://www.myajc.com/news/crime--law/ten-years-later-hiker-murder-still-haunts-those-closest-case/CSgydKXZNfG738F34UdWYN/

It was a case that resonated with just about everyone who followed it. Parents with daughters. Boyfriends and husbands. Outdoor enthusiasts. Women.

On New Year’s Day 2008, Meredith Emerson set out for a vigorous hike up Union County’s Blood Mountain with her black Labrador retriever mix, Ella. There she encountered a grizzled, toothless drifter searching for his next victim. Using his golden retriever, Dandy, to win her trust, 61-year-old Gary Michael Hilton kidnapped the 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate, holding her captive in his van for nearly three days before finally killing her. Hilton would eventually lead police to her headless body in Dawson Forest some 40 miles away.

Today he sits on Death Row in Florida, where he was convicted of murdering a nurse a few weeks before killing Emerson. Although 10 years have passed, memories of the case still haunt those who worked on it.

For retired GBI agent John Cagle, a series of near misses that allowed Hilton to elude law enforcement until it was too late still gnaws at his soul.

“I think about Meredith every day. Every single day,” said Cagle, who led the search for Emerson and her abductor. “I think I got to know her well after her death simply by learning about her from her friends and family. She was an all-American girl. Nobody deserves to have something like this happen to her. But especially (not) her. She had a bright future.”
 
An ABC News Studios four-part docuseries, "Wild Crime: Blood Mountain," explores Emerson's case, telling the story from the perspective of the investigators and key players who raced to solve the mystery of Emerson’s disappearance.
PHOTO: Meredith Emerson and her dog Ella seen in an undated photo.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agents John Cagle and Clay Bridges said that Emerson's disappearance was strange to her friends and family because she was an experienced hiker who had hiked Blood Mountain’s trails in the past.

After word got out about Emerson's disappearance, Cagle and Bridges said they received a number of tips from witnesses who saw Emerson and her dog on the trail. Several witnesses said they saw a mysterious man hiking directly behind her.

"The guy he described was a man in his 50s or 60s. He was wearing high-end hiking gear, he had a police-style baton and he had a bayonet knife on his belt," Bridges said. "What [one witness] couldn't shake was the fact that he had duct tape on his shoes. Somebody is a very experienced hiker; why would you have duct tape on your shoes?"

 
Doesn't Blood Mountain run along the Appalachian Trial? Curious if there was any searching done in the AT area? It's vast though people will talk, and there are people hiding too, supposedly. moo
 

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