At the Hands of a Stranger (31 page)

“We wouldn't have known where to look for it if Hilton hadn't told us,” Bridges said.

During the second interview Hilton had with Bridges—a voluntary debriefing that lasted around four and a half hours and was videotaped—Hilton talked about a wide range of subjects: hiking, equipment, his childhood, his time in the army, the end of the world, the San Andreas Fault, Meredith Emerson's murder, and more. He talked about chains and padlocks, and how he chained Meredith in his van. He initially denied raping her, but he later said she “owed it” to him. Hilton also said on the videotape, “I'm the one who killed her.”

However, he then attempted to place the blame for her death on his former employer John Tabor, saying, “The reason she's dead is that when I called him, she was alive, in the van.” Hilton had phoned Tabor asking for money because he hadn't gotten as much as he wanted from Meredith. “I lost money on that deal,” he said, referring to the money he spent on gas, driving around from one ATM to another, trying to get the PIN numbers, which Meredith gave him, to work.

Tabor refused to give him any money, Hilton said. “If he hadn't been … If he hadn't said … Instead of trying to trap me, on the second or third day before she was killed … These people are such
women.
”

Hilton then repeated, over and over, his theory on taking prisoners: “Once you've taken someone, you either kill them, or get caught. You either kill them, or get caught. If you're already caught, there's no reason to kill them. You either kill them, or get caught.”

Hilton said he had forty dollars and several days' worth of food: “So I had to kill someone.”

On the videotape Hilton described killing someone and the methods for finding a victim: “It's dreadful. Nothing sexual, so fucking dreadful that all you can do is do your duty and go on. One reason I chose to kill for money was partly sociopath rage against society. When you go out to kill someone, if you're seen by one single person on the trail, that day is screwed. Blood Mountain is a good place to hunt because it's the most used day-hiking trail in the state of Georgia. It's a good place because there's a huge selection [of victims], but it's bad because of so many people. The way you do it is to lurk with binoculars.”

Hilton told the officers about his fight with Meredith Emerson, which he said he almost lost: “It was not my finest hour. I'm better than that. I had to fight her twice, then secure her to a tree. I went back and the stuff I dropped (the dog leash and water bottle) was already gone.”

He said there came a point [when taking a victim] that “they fight, then submit.”

He told the officers, “A martial artist stays calm and has confidence in his proficiency—you must have. I've been there a million times.”

Hilton said it took planning, training, and equipment to take a victim successfully. He told that he tried to reach out and make himself a person to his victims, not an inhuman monster, and he said that he had started hunting in September 2007.

When the video ended, the prosecution had no further questions for Special Agent Bridges. Hilton had answered them all—in his own words.

 

The cross-examination took the defense only a short time. Robert Friedman asked Special Agent Bridges if he had a list of the medications Hilton had been on at the time of the Georgia guilty plea. Bridges said he did not have such a list.

Since Bridges had been the only prosecution witness, Friedman began introducing evidence prior to calling witnesses. He submitted a reprimand received by Hilton's doctor, Dr. Delcher, a well-known endocrinologist connected with Emory University, from Georgia's Composite State Board of Medical Examiners, in May 2009. Friedman had a court reader read the letter of reprimand into the record for the jury. Following Meredith Emerson's murder, the board had publicly reprimanded the doctor for continuing to give Hilton prescriptions for more than the FDA-recommended dose of Ritalin. Delcher had noticed what he called Hilton's “manic spells” and “rapid speech” and took no action, despite his patient's obviously deteriorating condition. He was suspended from practicing psychiatry and had to take a class in medical ethics. Friedman also entered into evidence two prescription bottles from October 2007 found in his van, one for Effexor and one for Ritalin, with some pills remaining in each of the bottles. Also entered into evidence were honorable discharge papers from his two tours of duty with the U.S. Army.

 

The first witness to be called for the defense was Dr. Joseph Wu, a medical doctor at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine. His testimony was delayed for a few minutes because he planned to deliver a PowerPoint presentation on Hilton's brain scans. There was a problem, however, with the audio in the courtroom, and a loud buzzing noise filled the room.

“I don't know about y'all,” said Judge Hankinson, “but that's going to drive me crazy.”

The problem was remedied when a laptop power cord was moved from some wires it overlapped, and testimony began.

Dr. Wu was a specialist in brain imaging and said he had been paid $6,448 for his testimony. He had conducted a positron emission tomography (PET) scan on Hilton several months earlier.

Wu blamed Hilton's problems largely on damage he claimed to have found on the right side of Hilton's brain and his frontal lobe, which Wu said had been injured in 1956. He showed the PET scans of Hilton's brain, which he had made, pointing out the areas he said showed damage. If not for the injury caused by being hit in the head by a falling Murphy bed, when he was ten years old, “his life trajectory would have been entirely different.”

Wu said of Hilton, “This is someone very bright who is crazy. It started in the military, and he was never able to do much more than be a telemarketer—never able to make much of himself. He became addicted to drugs, alcohol, and quaaludes, and had an impaired ability to control his impulses.

“He became homeless at around age fifty and became depressed, with episodes of extreme fatigue. Dr. Delcher tried to help him have more energy, and started him on a low dose of Ritalin in 2005—from twenty milligrams up to eighty milligrams.”

This, Wu said, caused an extreme increase in some of Hilton's symptoms, and he became manic, hyperaggressive, energetic, with clouded and impaired judgment. Delcher had noticed pressurized speech and flight of ideas, but the physician did nothing.

John Tabor had stated that he noticed more and more bizarre behavior in Hilton, worsened by his Ritalin dosage being increased.

“I think this was horrible clinical malpractice,” Wu said. “Delcher was practicing gross mismanagement.” Otherwise, he said, “I don't think any of these things would have occurred.”

When manic depression goes untreated, Wu said, it gets worse. “Delcher continued to pour Ritalin into this guy,” he said, leaving Hilton's mania to accelerate.

Wu said that Hilton's brain damage, emotional abuse, and Ritalin abuse created what he called “a perfect storm. Mr. Hilton had not engaged in violence until he had Ritalin poured on top of him, year after year, while his mania was uncontrolled.”

The defense witness told of some incidents from Hilton's early life that he believed had contributed to his problems. The tension between Hilton and his stepfather, Nilo Dabag, had escalated to the point that at age fourteen Hilton shot him and was consequently admitted to a psychiatric hospital, then placed in foster care. Gary was arrested for vagrancy at age sixteen, and then claimed to have been sexually abused by the attorney who represented him on that charge.

Wu said that Hilton had three strikes against him: the head trauma, the emotional abuse he suffered during his childhood, and the mismanagement of his Ritalin use.

 

When Willie Meggs cross-examined the doctor, he pointed out to him that Gary Hilton was aggressive prior to his Ritalin use. Dr. Wu replied that Gary shot his stepfather and started fires before being prescribed Ritalin, but he wasn't killing people at that time.

“Does Ritalin make people kill?” Meggs asked.

Wu replied, “No.”

Four jurors had questions for Wu, and had sent them to the judge, who asked Wu if, in his opinion, Hilton knew right from wrong.

The doctor answered, “In the extreme state of behavior, it's not clear if Mr. Hilton would know right from wrong, but he was aware of his actions.”

Meggs asked Wu then, if a person didn't know right from wrong, would the doctor expect that person to try and cover his tracks so he wouldn't get caught by law enforcement? Wu said he wasn't sure, and really didn't know.

 

The next witness for the defense was Dr. Charles Josh Golden, a neurophysiologist who had given Hilton a number of tests to determine both his IQ and his personality profile. Golden reported that Hilton's verbal scale test scored 120, which put him in the upper 10 percent of the population. His nonverbal reasoning test was 105, considered an average score.

On his working memory and ability to repeat, Hilton landed in the upper 2 percent of the population with a score of 131, which indicated that he had an excellent memory. His verbal memory test score was 117 through 129, in the top 10 percent of the population.

The category test posed no problem for Hilton; Golden reported the test, which determines the ability to figure out puzzles, was not at all difficult for Hilton.

Then came the patterns test, which Hilton grew very frustrated with while taking. In that computer test, which is designed to never let the person being tested figure out the pattern, Hilton became frustrated because he thought he should be able to do it.

Hilton also did very poorly on the cognitive performance test (CPT), which measured attention and impulse control, but his greatest downfall came with the Rorschach inkblot test.

“Mr. Hilton had tremendous problems with the test,” Golden said. “He was trying to impress us with his ability and intelligence, but [the test showed] he couldn't control his emotions. He has very poor interpersonal relationships. He prefers isolation, and his interactions tend to be fantasy-based. He gave poor-quality answers, more typical of an eight-or ten-year-old, not an intelligent adult.”

In his opinion, Golden said, Hilton's diagnosis required both symptoms and history. In Hilton's case, he said, he believed his problem was schizoaffective disorder, including depression. Hilton was self-diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but there was no medical evidence that he had it. His symptoms were those of severe depression and manic depression, Golden told the jury. Hilton, he said, was hypermanic, had delusions, hated his stepfather, and did not do well in school, despite his intelligence.

Golden also told the jury that Hilton, in his opinion, had antisocial personality disorder, which can't be caused by a brain disorder. He said that Hilton had a hypofunctioning frontal lobe, which he believed had led to his personality problems, or an organic personality disorder. He told the jury that the frontal lobe of the brain allowed a person to be able to control his emotions. He said that Hilton hid his brain defect well because of his abilities in other areas and by self-medicating and avoiding other people. The Ritalin that Hilton took made him irrational, hyperaggressive, suspicious, and sleep-deprived. It caused him not to understand why he did the things he did, Golden said.

“We clearly have a brain injury that led to the personality problems,” but Hilton “knew right from wrong, no question.” He was under the influence of an “extreme emotional disturbance” and was experiencing a lack of emotional control.

Following the defense's questioning of Dr. Golden, Judge Hankinson called for a short break.

Friedman walked back over to the defense table. “Am I doing okay, Gary?” he asked the defendant.

Hilton replied, “You're doing great. Thanks a lot.”

When court was called back into session following the break, it was the prosecution's turn to question Dr. Golden. State Attorney William Meggs asked him again about the results of Gary Hilton's IQ test, and Golden repeated that Hilton's overall IQ was 120, which put him in the top 10 percent of the population.

Meggs asked if Hilton had been tested for malingering, or deliberately trying to look bad “when you know you're normal.” Golden denied that Hilton had been malingering during his testing. He said that Hilton did not have insight into his problems. Hilton had psychopathic tendencies, and Dr. Golden stressed that any amount of Ritalin would be too much for someone with Hilton's problems.

When asked if Hilton was capable of love, Golden said, “There is no question in my mind, he loves his dog.”

Golden said he had been paid $14,000 for one hundred hours of work on the case.

 

The final defense witness of the day was Dr. Abbey Strauss, a psychiatrist whose specialty was the treatment of disorders. Strauss said he met two times with Hilton for psychiatric evaluation, once in February 2009 and again in December 2010. He also said he had been provided with a “tremendous amount of material” to read in connection with Hilton's evaluation.

Strauss tended to lay much of the blame for Hilton's mental and emotional condition on Gary's deceased mother, saying Hilton had a “horrible” childhood, and never bonded with his mother. Strauss said that the women in Hilton's life were not loving or caring to him, and his mother rejected him when he was five or six years old. Hilton told him that his mother talked to him about her sexual activities with her boyfriend.

When Gary was fourteen, he went into foster care following an incident when he shot his stepfather. He told Strauss that he felt like a “nonbeing.” Strauss said that, in his opinion, Hilton had an Oedipus complex because of the rejection Gary experienced from his mother, not sexual in nature, but caused by his unmet need to feel safe and loved.

Strauss said he believed that Hilton's killings started when he was in his sixties, and he blamed the Ritalin for that.

 

On the second day of the penalty phase of Gary Michael Hilton's trial, the defense continued to call witnesses in hopes of convincing the jury to recommend life in prison instead of the death penalty. First to take the witness stand was Dr. William Alexander Morton Jr., Professor Emeritus of Pharmacy, at the University of South Carolina, in Charleston. Dr. Morton specialized and served as a consultant in psychopharmacology.

Morton told the jury that he had met with Hilton the previous year, observed his behavior in Hilton's home videos, and had reviewed his prescription and medical records. He had prepared a PowerPoint presentation, which he had titled, “Approach to Evaluating Gary Hilton's Medications and Behavior.”

Morton restated several points that had been made by the defense witnesses the previous day: the public reprimand of Dr. Delcher, and John Tabor's description of Hilton's increasingly bizarre behavior and speech. Morton pointed out that on the GBI's taped interview of Tabor, he had mentioned Hilton's becoming harder to deal with, more excitable than usual, threatening, demanding money, hostile behavior, and becoming more and more bizarre during a period of three months in 2007, when Hilton's Ritalin use reached more than one hundred milligrams per day.

In Hilton's home videos, made when he was abusing Ritalin, he exhibited rapid, rambling speech and was seen singing and posing for the camera, saying he would be “buzzing soon.” He also stated, “I'm fucking wrecked,” and “I'm tripping,” and “I'm tripped out.”

During their interview Hilton told Morton that Ritalin made him feel great. He could talk forever on it, and he felt “bulletproof.” Morton said Ritalin abuse could cause a person to experience symptoms of hypersexuality, impulsiveness, feel no need for sleep, experience feelings of paranoia, irritability, hostility, violence, racing thoughts, hypervigilance, and manic symptoms.

At the time of Cheryl Dunlap's death, Morton said, Hilton was taking both Ritalin for fatigue and Effexor for depression, as well as adding six to eight cups of coffee to the mix each day. Both the drugs could have very serious side effects, he said, and Hilton should have been monitored carefully by Dr. Delcher, “but he didn't do a thing about it.

“In my professional opinion,” Morton said, “Mr. Hilton's drug combination would produce both profound and psychotic side effects.”

Morton then echoed the words of the earlier defense witnesses, saying that when Ritalin and Effexor were combined in a person with Hilton's other conditions: “You're adding gasoline to the fire.”

 

After a short break Dr. Morton was cross-examined by Willie Meggs, who asked him how much he was being paid for his testimony. Morton said his rate was two hundred dollars per hour, and he didn't know yet what his total amount of hours would be: probably twenty or thirty.

Morton said he asked Hilton if he was using cocaine, and Hilton denied it, but Meggs said, “Don't you know he used practically every street drug in his earlier life? We don't know if he was taking Ritalin at the time of the murders.”

Morton said Hilton's dosage of Ritalin had been increased up to eighty milligrams within one month of getting his initial prescription, and sixty milligrams was the FDA's recommended maximum dosage. Hilton wanted more, Morton said, so Gary knew he was abusing it. He took it depending on how he felt, Morton said; when he didn't have much money, he took less.

There were no further questions for Dr. Morton, and the court was dismissed for a lunch break.

 

After lunch the jury remained out while the defense set up for review by the judge and the prosecution a slide presentation by its next witness, Chris Ellrich, an investigator with the public defender's office.

The prosecution made many objections when the slide presentation—“The Life History of Gary Michael Hilton”—began to play.

On a large screen the first slide was a photo of Hilton's mother and father at the time they were married, followed by a photo of their marriage license, then Hilton's birth certificate. The next photo—Gary as an adorable ten-week-old baby—brought an immediate objection by the prosecution, which was sustained. A subsequent photo of Gary at five months of age was allowed, but the next four slides—Gary at six, nine, and fourteen months, and at two and a half years old—were objected to. The objections were all sustained.

“I want to hear the relevance of these photos,” Judge Hankinson said. When the defense answered that they were intended to show that Hilton had grown up in alleged poverty, Hankinson said, “They show him all happy and smiling. Objection sustained.”

Childhood photos of Hilton continued to be shown, and the objections to them continued to be sustained. In many of the photos designed to show Hilton's early poverty, his surroundings did not reflect poverty, and his demeanor, indeed, was that of a happy, normal child. Other photos showed one of Hilton's report cards, another was of him playing drums in a band he was with in high school, and other photos showed him with his dogs. Other photos showed him in the army, and living in a storage building with his dog Ranger.

After he viewed the presentation, Judge Hankinson ruled that the jury would only be allowed to see photos without sustained objections, and he said the jury would not be allowed to see any of the photos with sustained objections: “It has no relevance whether he was a cute baby or not. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with what the jury is deciding.”

Since the judge had ruled that the jurors would not be allowed to see most of the photos, there were not many left; so the defense decided not to show their slide presentation, after all. Instead, they began with the first of several videotaped testimonies: Victorine Rowe had lived next door to Gary and his mother in Tampa in the early 1950s, when Gary was a child. She said that one morning she had heard Hilton's mother screaming, “My son! My son!” Several neighbors had come running, only to find that a Murphy bed had fallen and hit Hilton on the head, gashing it badly.

“The whole neighborhood was upset. It was horrible,” she said. “There were bloody towels everywhere. It was a terrible morning. The little boy was crying, and his mother was frantic.” One of the neighbors took Hilton and his mother in his car to the hospital; and when they returned, “his whole head was bandaged up, like a cap.”

Rowe said she had never even known their names. “I think they left the apartments right away. They were only there a couple of days.”

On cross-examination the representative for the prosecution asked Rowe if she knew why she was being questioned about the accident and what Hilton was charged with.

“I knew he was in some kind of trouble,” she said. When she was told about the murder charges, she said, “Oh no!”

 

The next videotaped testimony was from Thomas Perchoux, of Hialeah, who had allowed Hilton to stay at his home after the shooting incident with Nilo, Gary's stepfather. Hilton's mother, Cleo Hilton Dabag, and Perchoux's wife worked together, and Cleo had come to Perchoux and his wife to ask if Gary could stay with them for a while. Perchoux, who was a Boy Scout, Cub Scout, and Girl Scout leader, and was very experienced with young people, agreed.

“He and his stepfather didn't hit it off—could have been jealousy. I don't know,” Perchoux said. The time Hilton had spent in their home had been without problems, he said, and he and Hilton went fishing. Hilton rode along with him sometimes on his job, and he got along very well with his wife, and played with their baby son.

“Normal teenage behavior,” Perchoux said, describing Hilton. “No worse than anybody else's kids. He hadn't reached an age where he was getting an attitude.” Gary always respected him, he said; but Perchoux added that while Gary was staying there, Cleo and Nilo never came to visit the boy, and Gary didn't go to visit them, either.

 

Following Thomas Perchoux's videotape, the defense told the judge that they planned to play a long interview that had been recorded with Hilton's mother prior to her death of cancer. It was made by GBI agents during the investigation of Meredith Emerson's murder. The jury would return from lunch and hear a detailed description of Hilton's life from childhood through his adult years, as told by Cleo Hilton Dabag.