Murder on Blood Mountain

The police subsequently served a search warrant to cover the search of Hilton’s 2001 Chevrolet Astro van and a Dumpster outside the convenience store where he was taken into custody.  They found three bloodstained fleece tops and a bloodstained car seatbelt inside the Dumpster, and noted that a rear seatbelt was missing from Hilton’s van.  It was obvious that he had attempted to vacuum and wash down areas of the vehicle’s interior.

Although the police hadn’t yet revealed what, if anything, Hilton had told them, the next day Meredith’s dog, Ella, was found wandering around outside a grocery store some 40 miles from where Meredith’s car had been discovered three days earlier.  The dog was identified as Meredith’s from a microchip implant that she’d had her dog’s veterinarian embed when Ella was still a puppy.

Only hours after being charged with kidnapping with intent to cause bodily injury or harm and having his bail request denied Hilton, in a surprise move, told the police the location where Meredith’s body would be found.  He led the cops to a wooded area where investigators found Meredith’s decapitated body, miles from where she had last been seen on the hiking trail, ending a nearly one-week search for the missing woman.

In an unusually fast confession after reaching an agreement with prosecutors to not seek the death penalty in his case, Hilton said that even though he knew from the outset that he would eventually kill her he had initially kidnapped her to obtain her credit cards and personal identification numbers (PIN) so that he could obtain cash.  However, Meredith had given him incorrect PIN numbers and he eventually, apparently in frustration, beat her to death with a tire iron.  He said that he had cut off her head to make it more difficult for investigators to identify her remains.

On Thursday, January 31, 2008, exactly thirty days after Meredith disappeared, Hilton pleaded guilty to the young woman’s murder in what was described as a frustrated robbery attempt.  The judge immediately sentenced Hilton to life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving 30 years, citing his age and the fact that he would most assuredly die in prison.

Although swift justice was attained in the bizarre murder case of Meredith Emerson, Hilton is now being investigated to determine if a link exists between him and the case of John Bryant and his wife, Irene, both in their 80s, who failed to return from an October 2007 hiking trip in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Read more cases at the BIZZARE CRIME OF THE WEEK BLOG.