TitleTown Publishing, LLC
Tracy C. Ertl, Publisher
(920)-737-8051
Tracy.Ertl@titletownpublishing.com
MSNBC "Live" (Date to be announced)
9/7/2011 - "True Murder"
9/6/2011 - "Culture Shocks"
9/3/2011 - "True Crime Uncensored"
9/2/2011 - "Mancow Muller Show"
8/26/2011 - NBC Dateline
8/26/2011 - Inside Edition
True Crime Book Review
Excerpt from Chapter 4
Hilton took his time. He knew the girl would have to double back eventually and head down the narrow trail back to the car. A short time later, he got his chance. The girl was coming down around a switchback, up ahead. She smiled. They chatted, and he decided to reverse direction and walk down with her.
Going down, they were in loose contact on the narrow trail. She was ahead of him a good bit because there was no room to walk abreast. Sometimes they came close to each other, but didn't share any conversation. Hilton was getting ready to do it and had to concentrate on that. He had the blade and the comforting closeness of the baton on his belt.
At the midway trail point, Hilton came up on Emerson.
"Give me your credit cards and pin numbers," he said commandingly, pulling out a sharpened bayonet and pointing it toward her.
He thought she’d crumble in fear. He was wrong. She did the last thing he would have expected. The girl dropped her fanny pack to the ground, then moved in to grab for the bayonet, which she seemed to miss. She followed with a kick that knocked the bayonet out of his hand. He reached for his baton and she kicked it out of his hand as well.
"I had to hand fight her,” he said later. “I couldn’t get control of her. She would feint or pretend that I was in control and then start fighting again.”
Emerson kept delivering kicks to his slim frame. Fearless, she got in close and started pummeling his sides with her fists. They grabbed each other and tussled, falling to the ground and rolling down a hill. Hilton got to his feet first and set himself. When Emerson got back up, his fists shot out with a sharp left jab to her right eye and a right cross to her left eye. The blows rocked her head and wobbled her knees. He threw another hard right at her nose, breaking it.
And still, Meredith Emerson refused to give up.
"She wouldn’t stop fighting and yelling at the same time.”
Like a boxer, Emerson was still standing, conscious though dazed from the fight. Then she stopped and fell to her knees.
“Get up,” he said. “Don’t try anything. All I want is your credit cards and pin numbers.”
Meredith Emerson was too weak to answer him.
“Move!” he commanded.
Hilton knew of a rarely used side trail that ran to the parking lot. Pushing Emerson along, they walked on the trail with the two dogs. No one saw them. Halfway down to the parking lot, he stopped them. He had just realized that his bayonet and baton were still at the scene of the fight, along with the girl’s fanny pack and Dandy's leash and some dog biscuits. He had to head back to get them. That was all evidence that could be used against him.
Hilton was prepared. From his jacket he took out a stout nylon cord and zip tied Emerson to a tree and gagged her. She didn't struggle. He left her there with Ella and Dandy and headed back up the trail. Just before he got to the scene of the fight, he heard brush moving. Quickly he hid behind a nearby rock, lying down so he was flat in the grass.
Meet The Killer
Possessed of a genius IQ, Gary Hilton cut a murderous swath through the Deep South from September 2007 to January 2008 before being captured. When he was, for the January 2008 murder and beheading of beautiful 24 year old blonde blue eyed Meredith Emerson in Dawson Forest, Georgia, investigators soon discovered that he had murdered, beheaded and be-handed 46 year old Sunday School teacher Cheryl Dunlap in northern Florida's Apalachicola National Forest in December 2007. And then evidence emerged that Hilton had committed still two more murders in a NC national forest in October 2007.
Author and reporter Fred Rosen has spent three years investigating Hilton and his crimes. During February 2011, he attended Hilton's dramatic capital murder trial in Tallahassee for murdering Dunlap. Rosen went even further going into Hilton's background to discover his troubled relationship with his mother and stepfather; his adolescence in the warm sun of Hialeah; his participation during the Vietnam War in the Davy Crockett Platoon, soldiers who deployed handheld nuclear missiles throughout Europe (yes, a future serial killer has his finger on the button); and his career as a con artist.
Married and divorced three times, Hilton created the story for "Deadly Run," a 1995 direct to video movie about women let loose in the Georgia woods and the man who hunted them. In the next Millennium, Hilton made reality imitate art.
Already sentenced to life with parole in GA for showing detectives Emerson's body and head, the Florida jury gave him death for killing Dunlap. During the trial, Rosen discovered a witness who the prosecution never called, who saw Dunlap the day she disappeared and contradicted the prosecution's official version of the crime. It's all in the book.
Contact: Michael Wright 818-784-4600 gwprmike@sbcglobal.net
