“Gary, I’m going to write a check and give you the money,” she said. “But the only reason I’m doing it is because I’m afraid. You’re acting really weird, Gary. I’m afraid of you and I don’t want to talk with you again after I give you this money.”
Brenda gave Hilton four hundred dollars, believing that he needed it to pay a fine after having been arrested for possession of marijuana.
“I never saw him take any other drugs, but I always knew he was a pothead,” Brenda said. “He’s been a pothead since I’ve known him.”
In spite of his promise not to contact her again, Hilton had pushed his way back into her life, asking for more money. Brenda didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to tell her husband about the telephone call because he had had a belly full of Gary Hilton.
About three months earlier, he was scheduled to leave his office and go on a short business trip, but he returned home a few hours later to get something he had forgotten. There was a familiar red Irish setter chained to a stake in the yard.
“Where’s the owner of that dog?” he asked.
“I’m just keeping it for a friend,” Brenda said.
“I know whose dog that is,” Mack said. “He damn well better be gone when I get back.”
Brenda saw no way out of the mess she was in now. She was afraid of Hilton and worried about her husband’s reaction when he learned she had loaned Hilton four hundred dollars.
Hilton’s current call could endanger her marriage. Mack had told Hilton to “leave my wife alone” four months ago. Brenda couldn’t stop thinking about the situation all day. Brenda thought of Hilton possibly hiding in the dark woods at her house and trembled. She felt dazed by the danger she had placed her marriage in—all because she was too terrified of Gary Hilton.
When he came home from work, Brenda took a deep breath and told her husband about the telephone call.
“You’ve got to call the police,” he said. “He’s a wanted man now. You can’t fool around.”
“I know. I’m scared.”
“Make the call. You might save that girl’s life.”
Brenda wrote down the number she had saved from Hilton’s call and telephoned the GBI. Special Agent Clay Bridges answered the telephone.
“I know exactly who you’re looking for,” she said. “Gary Hilton. In fact, I just got through talking with him on the telephone.”
“Do you know where he is?” Bridges almost jumped out of his chair.
“No, but I saved the telephone number.”
Bridges had the number traced and discovered it designated a coin-operated telephone in Cumming.
“We have a patrol in that area,” he told Brenda. “We’re dispatching them now. Please stay on the line.”
Two GBI agents received the assignment and started racing in silent mode toward the convenience store from where Hilton’s call had originated. Less than half an hour later, they arrived at the telephone. No one was using the telephone, and there was no white van in the parking lot. They described Hilton and asked the clerk if he had been there.
“He was,” the clerk said. “You just missed him. He left about fifteen minutes ago.”
It was frustrating to have come so close to catching Hilton and to miss. The police didn’t know if Meredith Emerson was still alive at this point, but everyone hoped and prayed that she was. There was no time to mull it over as the search for Emerson switched into the highest gear possible. At the command center, Bridges had also received telephone calls from three others who knew Hilton: a former wife, a former employer, and a former friend.
It was just January 3 and Bridges had established the GBI’s LMS that morning. Police officers, however, had begun gathering information since Emerson was reported missing on January 2. As searches go, things were moving along at lightning speed.
“As soon as we established a tip line with the media, the calls started to pour in from people who were on Blood Mountain on New Year’s Day,” Bridges said. “A lot of calls started coming in about a strange individual named Gary Hilton. They said they had seen him hanging around the parking lot, with a red Irish setter named Dandy, and that he might be driving a white van. As soon as we released this information and named him as a person of interest, it was a train wreck.”
Special Agent John Cagle, who was nearing retirement from the GBI, worked around the clock, as did Special Agent Bridges and most of the law enforcement officers. They felt they were drawing the noose tighter around Hilton’s neck. Their main worry was about Emerson. The chances of finding her alive and unharmed faded with each passing minute. The police believed that Hilton might try to get back in touch again with Brenda and received permission to establish stakeouts at her home and workplace.
Meanwhile, Special Agent Matthew L. Howard interviewed Brenda at her home with her husband present. Matt Howard was careful to be delicate when asking about the sexual aspect of Brenda’s past relationship with Hilton. The GBI needed all of the information it could get to help catch Hilton, and his sexual preferences could illuminate his personality and help anticipate his reactions.
“It would be hard for me to talk if I was in your shoes,” Howard said. “You’re embarrassed. We deal with this kind of thing all of the time, and there’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about. It’s very important that we know everything about him—when all this started, what made him tick, did something happen that triggered this behavior? Did he ever want to do something weird?”
“Why? Is he saying that?”
“No. We’re just trying to find out everything we can about him. Do you know anything about his family?”
“Only that he had a mother he didn’t like. He never mentioned her name. I think he must have had a tough childhood, but he never really talked about it.”
“Did he ever try to pursue a physical relationship with you? Like boyfriend, girlfriend?” Howard asked.
Brenda hesitated and Mack voluntarily left the room. Howard resumed the interview. “I’m not trying to embarrass you. These are important questions.”
Brenda said she was just a kid at the time.
“Obviously, there was an age difference,” Howard said. “Was he pursuing younger women at the time?”
Brenda said she didn’t know. She said that her physical relationship with Hilton began when she was fifteen or sixteen.
Howard asked: “How did he pursue that? What were his actions toward you?”
Brenda hesitated a long moment.
“This is totally confidential,” Howard reassured her. “When we find out what he’s all about, maybe we can even solve other crimes he may have been involved in—to try and get the families some closure.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Was it something that he forced on you, or was it consensual?” Howard asked. “How long did it last? Did he say he was interested? Did he come on to you?”
There was a long pause. “I guess it was consensual.”
“If it was forced, we need to know that.”
“I was a kid and I was curious.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Howard said gently. “There are things that happen in college and high school that we’re not proud of. We all make mistakes. That doesn’t make anybody a bad person.”
Brenda said, “I look at it like I was taken advantage of.”
“Did