Page 125 - Meredith News Today

>> why was it important to you that somebody get those papers? >> because i wanted it to be a surprise. a surprise to michelle means so much more than anything. >> so brown knew november 3rd, he called his sister-in-law, meredith, from the car to ask if shed go to the house and get the ebay papers. >> friday, november 3rd. >> he left meredith a voicemail. >> do me a huge favor, go over there, see if you can find this e-mail on the computer. >> then he headed to his mothers place in the mountains...

Officer in the nation carrying these things. >> did those artifacts, the water bottle, baton, found together tell you a story at all, or suggest something ominous? >> yes. we found those items in an area where the ground had appeared to have been disturbed. we became concerned that possibly a struggle took place there. >> merediths water bottles, ellas leash, and signs of a struggle. nothing about the scene looked good to the veteran lawman, especially that expandible police baton that was found...

And she called me and said, meredith didnt show to work. mare tij always went to work. >> reliable meredith wasnt where she was supposed to be. she called the sheriffs office and then she and other meredith friends assembled a search party. maybe she got hurt. do you know where eye im going hiking" would be? >> we had a few ideas. we had books she had, places she highlighted and kind of just started driving. >> the friends split up, looking for merediths car at trailhea s shed marked in her hiki...

Likes to hike, i have a sister who could have been meredith easily. and they just volunteer their time. >> but the search in the national forest had become something more ominous than a lost hiker incident. meredith had been last seen in the company of an unsavory looking stranger, and law enforcement was about to identify him. the tip came from john tabor, an atlanta businessman. he was watching the continuing news coverage of missing meredith during his morning workout. >> when they started gi...

>> he would not talk about anybody to us other than meredith. >> because you have to wonder when the switch was thrown in this man. >> i know. how many decades does this maybe go back? >> i dont know. do people just wake up when theyre 61 and start to do these kinds of crimes the way he did them? you know, i would think not. coming up -- how a terrifying movie fantasy meredith emerson went missing new years day. less than a month later, gary michael hilton appeared in a georgia courtroom and...

Police were convinced the missing hiker meredith emerson was under the control of gary hilton somewhere in north georgia. the more they learned about the survivalist odds ball who was the person of interest in two murders in national forests elsewhere, the more they feared for her. a friend of merediths family appealed directly to hilton. >> i hope that if he realized that this would be helpful, that his heart would be softened and turned to come forward with information. so, please, please have...

>> this case was a little bit different because not only me but the other investigators recognized the fact early on that we have to embrace this family and tell them everything, even though what we were telling them was not good news. >> hilton, meredith, her lab ella. the tip line kept ringing with leads good and bad. then four days in, a friday afternoon, a shopper called to say that shed found a black lab mix wandering around a supermarket parking lot. >> surprised to see any dog running loo...

>> the friends raced up the blood mountain feeder path to the appalachian trail, but no trace of meredith or ella. so by night itfall the search became all the more urgent as a cold front moved in and temperatures on the mountain plunged below zero. at daybreak, thursday now, the friends were joined by deputies from the local sheriffs office. john kegel, just shy of retirement, was the agent in charge for the georgia bureau of investigation, the states top cops. >> we received a request from a l...

>> in your decades of law enforcement, have you ever had a session of interviews like it this one. >> no. no. he was very straightforward and was very nonchalant about the whole thing. >> so you get down to the point where -- >> after his initial confession, gary hilton, the man of stony silence, became a chatter box, spilling out a story that sickened detectives who thought theyd heard everything. he began with merediths abduction here on a hiking trail on blood mountainment he said that he amb...

Boss john tabor to set that trap for him. that call was made from a restaurant 50 miles from blood mountain. hilton it seemed was moving south toward atlanta. metro pd s.w.a.t. concealed themselves in and near tabors building, the old drop point where tabor had promised him $800. >> youre staking out the location? >> he didnt show. >> no-show. >> were still look gt and woeshing, where could this guy be? now we have this guy 50 miles from blood mountain. >> the veteran detective was talking const...