The children whom Dunlap taught in Sunday and Bible school referred to her fondly as “Ms. Cheryl.” It was surprising when Dunlap didn’t appear on Saturday at the public library in Medart, where she usually went. Although a registered nurse with a good salary, Dunlap lived modestly and didn’t have an Internet connection at her apartment. Surprise elevated to a mood of shock for the congregation at the River of Life Church when Dunlap didn’t show up to teach her Bible studies class on Sunday morning. This type of behavior was totally out of character for her. She would never miss a class without making arrangements for a substitute and letting people know ahead of time. On Monday morning Dunlap didn’t show up for work at Thagard Student Health Center.
Dunlap’s friends and family began to worry when she missed Sunday-school class and were downright frightened when no one heard from her on Monday morning. Laura Walker, one of Dunlap’s closest friends, didn’t stand idly by. She drove past Dunlap’s house on Monday morning and saw that her friend’s Chihuahua was in the apartment. Alarm bells went off in her head: Cheryl never goes anywhere without her dog. She certainly wouldn’t leave it alone for so long.
Walker considered going into the apartment, but she was afraid she might disturb evidence if the police were needed. Instead, she called the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Department and advised them of the situation. “We talk pretty much every day,” Walker told the police. “Even when she was away from her cell or home phone, she still called once a day to tell me she would be out and that she wouldn’t have a phone for several hours.”
Walker told Deputy Tim Ganey, of the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO), that Dunlap had told her that someone broke into her apartment about a year ago. Walker said that the intruder stole Dunlap’s underwear from the dresser drawers and “messed up” the bedsheets. Dunlap didn’t report the incident, according to Walker.
Ganey talked with Dunlap’s supervisor at Thagard and was told that it was unusual for Dunlap to miss work or not let anyone know where she was. “She calls if she’s going to be a minute late,” Ganey was told. The deputy issued a BOLO for Dunlap as her friends mobilized, telephoning anyone they could think of to alert them that Dunlap might be missing. They came up dry. The BOLO read:
Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, 46, of Crawfordville is described as 5'4", brown eyes, and brown hair.
Ms. Dunlap is a Sunday school teacher and did not show up for her bible class, which is very unusual. She is also a state employee and didn’t show up for work this morning.
Just minutes after the BOLO went out, Dunlap’s 2006 white Toyota was found abandoned in Leon County, just north of the Leon/Wakulla County boundary line. Highway 319, where the car was found, was a dark, isolated, two-lane road through a wild, forested area. There was no sign that a struggle had taken place where the car was found. Dunlap’s purse was still in the car, but her wallet, which contained cash, identification, and credit cards, was missing. CSI taped off the crime scene and looked over the car, inside and out, checking for DNA, fibers, and anything else that might give them a clue as to what had happened. Dunlap was nowhere to be found.
The right rear tire was flat, with a puncture on the belt line about an inch and a half wide. CSI saw no indication that the car had been out of control when it pulled off the road. The way it was abandoned, closer to the forest than to the road’s shoulder, was suspicious. There were no skid marks. One theory was that Dunlap had a flat tire, pulled over, and was abducted when she got out to fix it or to seek help. Major Morris Langston said police weren’t sure: Dunlap could have been abducted elsewhere, and her car driven away and abandoned afterward.
The sheriff’s office added an upgrade to its BOLO: Authorities are processing the vehicle and Ms. Dunlap is considered a missing person. Within an hour Dunlap’s face was listed on dozens of “Missing Person” sites on the Internet, along with her description and where she was last seen. Diverse groups, such as the Texas Equusearch, were on the lookout, as were police officers throughout the nation.
In Wakulla and Leon Counties, scores of people mobilized, many from nearby cities, and began the same type of intensive search procedures that were being conducted in Pisgah Forest in North Carolina and in Georgia’s Dawson Forest. Trey Morrison, Pat Smith, and Anthony Curles, members of the WCSO dive team, used underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore the murky waters of dozens of lakes and ponds in Florida as they looked for evidence. In addition to the “Video Rays,” as the ROVs are called, the deputies also donned diving gear and searched. The small town of Crawfordville could talk about little else except—as one of her former Bible-school students put it—“Who in the world would want to hurt Ms. Cheryl?”
“I have been racking my brain to try to think of anything that was out of kilter for her,” Laura Walker told Wakulla County deputies. “I talked to her Friday. She was sweet, generous, and had no enemies. I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt her.”
Dogs trained to find both the living and the dead searched hundreds of acres, and Leon County deputies and firefighters joined their counterparts in Wakulla County to comb the area. Even the Wakulla County Commission members, bank presidents, and the clerk of court joined in the search. They found no blood, no body, and not even field testing showed fingerprints on Dunlap’s abandoned car. Air searches with spotters and infrared sensors found no sign of the missing nurse and missionary.
Members of the River of Life turned to God in prayer meetings; the fact that no body had been found kept them optimistic. Judy Brown noted that everyone was hoping and believed that Dunlap would be found alive. That hope suffered a severe setback when, on the fourth day of the search, deputies discovered that Dunlap’s ATM card had been used at the Hancock Bank on West Tennessee Street on three consecutive days, starting on December 2. The bank’s surveillance camera showed a man in a bizarre mask that appeared to be homemade, wearing a knit cap and thick goggles, making the withdrawals. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and gloves. Every square inch of his body was covered during the times he used the ATM card.
“The video isn’t very telling,” said Major Mike Wood, of the Leon County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO). “The person that used it went to great lengths to disguise himself.”
Hoping the man might return to the ATM again, the police established a weeklong stakeout to watch for him, starting the next week, but the man never returned. From the time Dunlap was reported missing, tips from people began to flood the Wakulla County and Leon County Sheriff’s Offices.
Sandy Goff told deputies that she and her teenage daughter met a man who fit Gary Hilton’s description in a Laundromat at Crawfordville the first or second week in December 2007. The man drove a white Astro van, which she said was “junky” on the inside “because it had a lot of stuff in it.” Goff reported seeing a rolled-up sleeping bag and yellow rope in the van. Accompanying the man was a large red dog. She thought it was odd that he didn’t bring all of his laundry in at once, but rather carried in armloads at a time. He waited inside his van until the laundry needed tending.
“When he looked at you, it was a strange look,” she told a Leon County deputy. “He just stared. He just wasn’t acting like a normal person. It was just a weird vibe. He was giving me the creeps.”
Hilton sometimes referred to himself as a parson, as well as a survivalist, Vietnam War veteran (he wasn’t), and often attended church services while on his “maneuvers.” In late November 2007, Delbert Redditt, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Madison, Florida, saw a stranger enter the sanctuary during services. The man was balding, with a fringe of gray hair, and looked disheveled. Redditt thought the man acted “kind of weird.” Following the service, a member of the congregation prepared a meal for the man from food left over from the church’s Saturday dinner. Redditt and several members of the congregation later identified the man as Gary Hilton.
There’s no doubt that Hilton was in Leon County for several weeks in late November 2007 until sometime in mid to late December. On November 17, Mary King, a federal