Florida to seek death penalty against Hilton

Convicted murderer Gary Michael Hilton has scribbled complaints about his jail treatment on a legal pad but filed no papers that would block his extradition to Florida, where prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against him.

Hilton, the prime suspect in the murders in Pisgah National Forest last fall of Irene and Jack Bryant of Horse Shoe, has been charged in North Florida with killing Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, a nurse whose body was found in Apalachicola National Forest on Dec. 15.

“According to our calculations, Mr. Hilton’s 20 days are up Wednesday,” Leon County State Attorney William Meggs said Tuesday. “Once he was served with extradition papers he had 20 days to file a petition to contest the extradition and nothing has been filed.”

Meggs said his office will seek the death penalty against Hilton for the murder of Dunlap.

“We just have to prove we have a valid warrant and prove it was him,” Meggs said.

Butts County District Attorney Richard Milam said that Hilton, 61, has filed something, but not the correct paperwork.

“Mr. Hilton has filed two pieces of yellow notebook paper complaining about his treatment and he has said he does not want to go back to Florida,” Milam said.

Milam said that he plans a hearing for Hilton on May 2 and plans to extradite him to Florida soon after that hearing.

“All this is Mr. Hilton trying to delay things,” Milam said. “He is bargaining for his life and one more day here is one more day tacked on to the end of his life. We are planning on moving forward.”

Hilton reportedly has asked for a court appointed attorney but Milam said Georgia does not appoint attorneys for a civil proceeding like extradition.

Hilton is currently being held without bond in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Butts County.

Hilton was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to the beating death and decapitation of Meredith Emerson, 24. Emerson was kidnapped on New Year’s Day in the north Georgia mountains. Her body was found on Jan. 7.

Transylvania County authorities say Hilton is likely responsible for the murders of the Bryants, avid hikers who went missing last October on a hike near the Pink Beds in the national forest.

The body of Mrs. Bryant was found in the Pisgah National Forest on Nov. 9. Mr. Bryant’s body was found Feb. 3 in an illegal dump in the Nantahala National Forest in Macon County. Witnesses have said they saw Hilton in Ducktown, Tenn., where the Bryants’ bank card was used. The van he drove had a tag stolen from Brevard.

Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney did not immediately return calls about the Bryant investigation.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has since taken over the investigation and has said little about charges.

“The Hilton case is an ongoing investigation,” Suellen Pierce, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Tuesday.