At the Hands of a Stranger (6 page)

Dunlap's friends and family began to worry when she missed Sunday-school class and were downright frightened when no one heard from her on Monday morning. Laura Walker, one of Dunlap's closest friends, didn't stand idly by. She drove past Dunlap's house on Monday morning and saw that her friend's Chihuahua was in the apartment. Alarm bells went off in her head:
Cheryl never goes anywhere without her dog. She certainly wouldn't leave it alone for so long.

Walker considered going into the apartment, but she was afraid she might disturb evidence if the police were needed. Instead, she called the Wakulla County Sheriff's Department and advised them of the situation. “We talk pretty much every day,” Walker told the police. “Even when she was away from her cell or home phone, she still called once a day to tell me she would be out and that she wouldn't have a phone for several hours.”

Walker told Deputy Tim Ganey, of the Wakulla County Sheriff's Office (WCSO), that Dunlap had told her that someone broke into her apartment about a year ago. Walker said that the intruder stole Dunlap's underwear from the dresser drawers and “messed up” the bedsheets. Dunlap didn't report the incident, according to Walker.

Ganey talked with Dunlap's supervisor at Thagard and was told that it was unusual for Dunlap to miss work or not let anyone know where she was. “She calls if she's going to be a minute late,” Ganey was told. The deputy issued a BOLO for Dunlap as her friends mobilized, telephoning anyone they could think of to alert them that Dunlap might be missing. They came up dry. The BOLO read:

Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, 46, of Crawfordville is described as 5'4", brown eyes, and brown hair.

Ms. Dunlap is a Sunday school teacher and did not show up for her bible class, which is very unusual. She is also a state employee and didn't show up for work this morning.

Just minutes after the BOLO went out, Dunlap's 2006 white Toyota was found abandoned in Leon County, just north of the Leon/Wakulla County boundary line. Highway 319, where the car was found, was a dark, isolated, two-lane road through a wild, forested area. There was no sign that a struggle had taken place where the car was found. Dunlap's purse was still in the car, but her wallet, which contained cash, identification, and credit cards, was missing. CSI taped off the crime scene and looked over the car, inside and out, checking for DNA, fibers, and anything else that might give them a clue as to what had happened. Dunlap was nowhere to be found.

The right rear tire was flat, with a puncture on the belt line about an inch and a half wide. CSI saw no indication that the car had been out of control when it pulled off the road. The way it was abandoned, closer to the forest than to the road's shoulder, was suspicious. There were no skid marks. One theory was that Dunlap had a flat tire, pulled over, and was abducted when she got out to fix it or to seek help. Major Morris Langston said police weren't sure: Dunlap could have been abducted elsewhere, and her car driven away and abandoned afterward.

The sheriff's office added an upgrade to its BOLO:
Authorities are processing the vehicle and Ms. Dunlap is considered a missing person
. Within an hour Dunlap's face was listed on dozens of “Missing Person” sites on the Internet, along with her description and where she was last seen. Diverse groups, such as the Texas Equusearch, were on the lookout, as were police officers throughout the nation.

In Wakulla and Leon Counties, scores of people mobilized, many from nearby cities, and began the same type of intensive search procedures that were being conducted in Pisgah Forest in North Carolina and in Georgia's Dawson Forest. Trey Morrison, Pat Smith, and Anthony Curles, members of the WCSO dive team, used underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore the murky waters of dozens of lakes and ponds in Florida as they looked for evidence. In addition to the “Video Rays,” as the ROVs are called, the deputies also donned diving gear and searched. The small town of Crawfordville could talk about little else except—as one of her former Bible-school students put it—“Who in the world would want to hurt Ms. Cheryl?”

“I have been racking my brain to try to think of anything that was out of kilter for her,” Laura Walker told Wakulla County deputies. “I talked to her Friday. She was sweet, generous, and had no enemies. I can't think of anyone who would want to hurt her.”

Dogs trained to find both the living and the dead searched hundreds of acres, and Leon County deputies and firefighters joined their counterparts in Wakulla County to comb the area. Even the Wakulla County Commission members, bank presidents, and the clerk of court joined in the search. They found no blood, no body, and not even field testing showed fingerprints on Dunlap's abandoned car. Air searches with spotters and infrared sensors found no sign of the missing nurse and missionary.

Members of the River of Life turned to God in prayer meetings; the fact that no body had been found kept them optimistic. Judy Brown noted that everyone was hoping and believed that Dunlap would be found alive. That hope suffered a severe setback when, on the fourth day of the search, deputies discovered that Dunlap's ATM card had been used at the Hancock Bank on West Tennessee Street on three consecutive days, starting on December 2. The bank's surveillance camera showed a man in a bizarre mask that appeared to be homemade, wearing a knit cap and thick goggles, making the withdrawals. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and gloves. Every square inch of his body was covered during the times he used the ATM card.

“The video isn't very telling,” said Major Mike Wood, of the Leon County Sheriff's Office (LCSO). “The person that used it went to great lengths to disguise himself.”

Hoping the man might return to the ATM again, the police established a weeklong stakeout to watch for him, starting the next week, but the man never returned. From the time Dunlap was reported missing, tips from people began to flood the Wakulla County and Leon County Sheriff's Offices.

Sandy Goff told deputies that she and her teenage daughter met a man who fit Gary Hilton's description in a Laundromat at Crawfordville the first or second week in December 2007. The man drove a white Astro van, which she said was “junky” on the inside “because it had a lot of stuff in it.” Goff reported seeing a rolled-up sleeping bag and yellow rope in the van. Accompanying the man was a large red dog. She thought it was odd that he didn't bring all of his laundry in at once, but rather carried in armloads at a time. He waited inside his van until the laundry needed tending.

“When he looked at you, it was a strange look,” she told a Leon County deputy. “He just stared. He just wasn't acting like a normal person. It was just a weird vibe. He was giving me the creeps.”

Hilton sometimes referred to himself as a parson, as well as a survivalist, Vietnam War veteran (he wasn't), and often attended church services while on his “maneuvers.” In late November 2007, Delbert Redditt, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Madison, Florida, saw a stranger enter the sanctuary during services. The man was balding, with a fringe of gray hair, and looked disheveled. Redditt thought the man acted “kind of weird.” Following the service, a member of the congregation prepared a meal for the man from food left over from the church's Saturday dinner. Redditt and several members of the congregation later identified the man as Gary Hilton.

There's no doubt that Hilton was in Leon County for several weeks in late November 2007 until sometime in mid to late December. On November 17, Mary King, a federal law enforcement officer, noticed a dirty white Chevrolet Astro parked not far from Moore Lake, in the Apalachicola National Forest. There was no one present. King ran a check on the van's license plate—Georgia AFQ1310—and discovered that the vehicle was registered to Gary Hilton, and its tag had expired five days earlier.

King found expired warrants issued by a Miami judge on Hilton for receiving stolen goods in 1972, as well as arson. She made marginal notes regarding warrants against Hilton in Miami for driving under the influence (DUI), and also cited:
arson, pistol without license, battery.
The warrants had been dismissed as part of a routine cleansing of old files. The report also showed that Hilton had a chauffeur's license revoked.

Hilton arrived after King had checked his record. She told him that she was just checking to make sure things were okay. Since there were no outstanding warrants on Hilton, King let him go after warning him not to violate the preserve's fourteen-day camping limit.

Two other forest rangers saw Hilton in the area, but the heavily redacted statements released by the police obscure the date. From the contents of the statements, it appears they saw him within days after his encounter with King. Ranger John Smathers reported that he saw a man fitting Hilton's description in the Apalachicola National Forest near a DUI checkpoint he had set up at the intersection of Dog Lake Tower and Silver Lake Road.

Smathers wrote that it was almost sunset, when he saw a man in a blue jogging suit with leg warmers on the outside of the lower pants. The man wore a cap pushed back on his head, so Smathers could tell he was bald. His body was thin and wiry, and he seemed to be approximately fifty-five to sixty years of age. The man was using poles to help propel him along the trail. He seemed to be speed walking. An unleashed dog, which seemed to be a reddish brown retriever mix, trotted with him. As the man drew closer to Smathers, the hiker leashed the dog. Smathers noticed that the man was also wearing a large black backpack. When the hiker was just twenty feet in front of Smathers, the officer asked him how he was doing. The man quickly explained that he had just been checked by a female officer before he left his campsite. Smathers asked if he just liked to walk. “I do this every day like a military hike,” the man told him. Smathers said good-bye and told him to be careful because people were driving fast. The speed walker assured him that he would take care.

Ranger James D. Ellis saw Hilton as well—this time in the Osceola District of the Apalachicola Wildlife Preserve. Ellis found him in a remote part of the forest, west of Forest Service Road 212 and south of the Forest Service work center. Hilton had driven down a closed road and set up camp in an unauthorized area.

Hilton was surprised when the ranger approached. “How did you find me in this location?” he asked.

“I followed your tire signs.”

“I like long-distance hiking,” Hilton said, “but if you come to a WMA, you're going to get patted down.” (WMA was shorthand for a Wildlife Management Area.)

The comment made no sense to Ellis and he asked Hilton what he meant.

“You can drive around town all day long but if you come to a WMA, you are going to get patted down.”

Ellis told Hilton that he could only camp in designated areas and that he couldn't drive on roads that weren't designated by signs. Then he asked to see Hilton's driver's license. Hilton fumbled through his wallet, having trouble finding it; but when Ellis offered to help, he found the license right away. (The ranger's report has a heavily blacked-out redaction.) Hilton's driver's license had expired, and he had been cited for driving on closed roads and camping in unauthorized places. Ellis told Hilton he had to go back to Georgia and get his license renewed.

“I'm going to be driving back this way, and if I see you, I will issue you a one-hundred-seventy-five-dollar citation for your expired license and another one-hundred-seventy-five-dollar citation for driving with an expired license tag,” Ellis told him.

Hilton continued talking and asked about various areas of Apalachicola Forest in Florida.

“You don't need to go to any national forest areas,” Ellis told him. “You need to go back to Georgia and take care of your driver's license.”

 

On December 15, William Kemp and Donald Trussell, employed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, were on patrol in the Apalachicola Forest, when Kemp received a call from the area command center. A group of hunters had found a dead body in the forest; Kemp and Trussell were directed to go there.

It was about eleven in the morning when the two wildlife officials met the hunters at Forest Road 381 and 381E. The hunters said the body was in the woods.

“Do you want us to show you where it is?” one hunter asked.

The officials followed the hunters as they drove a short distance into the woods and stopped. The hunters led the wildlife employees along the side of the road until they came to a pile of palmetto branches and leaves. That's when Kemp saw the body.

Approaching the scene, I observed,
(HEAVILY INKED OUT)
was also vegetation type debris that appeared to be piled on top of the body,
Kemp wrote.

He and Trussell returned to Forest Road 381 to escort Sergeant Steve Norville and Deputy Alan Shepard, with the LCSO to the body, and then left. The crime scene was actually about a mile from where other responding units had stopped. The CSI from the LCSO taped off the crime scene; and with the help of CSI forensic experts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), they began the tedious and time-consuming task of testing for even the most minute shred of evidence.

It didn't take an expert to tell that the woman was dead, but it was not so easy to identify her. Somebody had cut off her head.

Rumors, fueled by fear and horror, began to speed around Leon and Wakulla Counties. Some said that there was at least one serial killer, perhaps two, in the area on a murderous rampage, killing and dismembering women. Hundreds of women signed up and completed safety courses sponsored by LCSO. Compared to the previous six months, applications to carry concealed firearms increased by about one hundred.

Larry Campbell, the Leon County sheriff, held a press conference to dispel some of the rumors. It wasn't true that there were several killers on the loose. The police were following up on every lead, he said, and people should be cautious, but not frightened.