By all accounts, Meredith Emerson was loved by all. She was an enthusiastic hiker with her dog Ella, which made it all the more concerning to friends and family when she hit the trails on a Georgia state forest and was never heard from again.
Blood Mountain is part of Georgia’s Vogel State Park and a popular destination for many hikers. It is also the prime focus of the Hulu true crime documentary, Wild Crime: Blood Mountain. With an elevation of 4,458 feet, Blood Mountain is the highest peak of the Georgia part of the Appalachian Trail. Emerson was not the only one to hike these trails and regrettably, she also wasn’t the only individual to cross paths with a predator.
What happened to Meredith Emerson?
By the time Emerson had disappeared, authorities were already tracking the cases of two other missing hikers. Married couple Jack and Irene Bryant disappeared in Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina while Cheryl Dunlap went missing around Tallahassee, Florida. As it turned out, all three cases were the work of a prolific serial killer, Gary Michael Hilton. Branded as a psychopath in Wild Crime: Blood Mountain, Hilton had made a career out of picking victims on hiking trails to rob and eventually kill without a second thought.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigations had all but zeroed in on Hilton at the time of Emerson’s disappearance but were too late to rescue her. After he was arrested, Hilton agreed to tell authorities what happened to Emerson in exchange for a lighter sentence. While hiking on the Appalachian Trail, the 61-year-old targeted Emerson to get her ATM card. Hilton had a dog of his own, and the two bonded over their pets while hiking on New Year’s Day, 2008. NBC News reported that on that day, he held the young woman at knife point and demanded she give him her card. What he didn’t expect was how much she would fight back. Emerson had martial arts training and immediately tried to grab the knife from him.
Hilton then took Emerson hostage for four days, trying to get her money from the ATM. In hopes that she could stall long enough for authorities to arrive, Emerson kept giving him the wrong PIN and telling him it was the right one. They would travel from ATM to ATM, with even Hilton convinced he was putting in the wrong numbers. Hilton didn’t have the heart to kill Emerson’s dog, Ella, but did not hold the same value for the brave young woman’s life. After tying her to a tree in the woods, he killed her. Authorities were disheartened that they were too late to rescue her, but Bureau of Investigations Director Vernon Keenan told NBC News the strength Emerson had to fight back.
“She was doing everything she could to stay alive. It’s not something you can train for. Instinct kicks in … She nearly got the best of him. She’s very much a hero.”
After negotiating with Hilton, he agreed to direct law enforcement to Emerson’s body. Her family was able to achieve the closure they could and held a funeral for her, to which mourners showed up in droves. In addition to the crime of murdering Emerson, Hilton also received life sentences for the murders of the Bryants and Dunlap. He is currently on death row in Florida.
