During the past year, I’ve had sources come to me who knew Gary Hilton well.  This is not information contained in Trails of Death, but new stuff uncovered since the book was published August 2011.  I cannot reveal sources of course.  What I can say is their information has supported several unanswered questions.  Here’s one of them.

In September 2007, John Tabor, Hilton’s former employer, made a complaint with the Fulton County, GA police of “harassing communication.”  Hilton was allegedly trying to extort money from Tabor.  Hilton  felt it was money he was owed.  The complaint would have called for police following up with Hilton, not the least of which would be questioning him.  Had that been done, and there is no record it was, then Hilton may not have been able to leave town.

What would have happened if Hilton had been charged by the Fulton County police with “harassing communication?” He would have been arrested, arraigned and asked to post bail. If that had occurred, might all of his victims be alive?

Hilton’s MO with John Bryant in shooting him, is different from his other three victims.  What happened to the gun and why didn’t he use one on the other victims?  More importantly, Hilton was the subject of a Fulton County GA criminal complaint in early Sept. 2007 charging him with harassing communication.  He was allegedly trying to extort money from his former employer.  Why, then, did the police not act upon the complaint and charge him?  The Bryants were killed in October 2007, Cheryl Dunlap December 2007 and Meredith Emerson January 2008.

If they had charged him, would he have been behind bars?  It certainly would have thrown a crimp in his plans. Four people might be alive today if police and prosecutors followed through on the complaint.

Gary Hilton had his finger on the nuclear trigger, went schizophrenic and targeted women.

This not about politics, it’s about what kind of background brings out this kind of behavior and what we can do to stop it. If the French cops had trailed this guy, seven people are alive.  And the same goes for Gary Hilton.

If the Army had mediated for him early, he doesn’t kill either.  Some kinds of serial killing can clearly be stopped if people just do their job.

Fred Rosen - Crime Author

Be sure to check out me out on television:

“ON THE CASE WITH PAULA ZAHN”
Investigation Discovery (ID) Channel
Saturday, January 14, 2012  – 1:00 AM EST

In this episode, Paula investigates Father Gerald Robinson, the only priest in American history ever convicted of killing a nun.

I’m along for the whole ride as the crime expert.  My book on the case, “When Satan Wore A Cross” chronicled the murder and allegations of Satanic abuse that have been leveled against Father Robinson.

The defense is trying to make a deal.  They will not consider anything less than taking the death penalty off the table for both murders, in return for guilty pleas and life in prison.  Hilton is already on Florida’s Death Row.

Link: NC trial off again for suspect in hiker killings

Link: Trails of Death

Also today, Illinois’s ousted governor Rod Blagojevich’s 14 year sentence for trying among other things to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat, obscures the real true crime story happening there with former governor George Ryan, the man Rod replaced.  Before leaving office in 2005, former governor Ryan commuted the death sentence of every person on Illinois’s death row, 150 people.

“I’m going to sleep well tonight knowing that I made the right decision,” said Governor Ryan at the time. “Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious – and therefore immoral – I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,” he said at the time. After leaving office, Ryan was convicted on Federal corruption and racketeering charges, e.g. steering state contracts to people who paid him off.  He’s been in prison ever since, about five years,

Okay, I have a question.  At what point does the good that someone does in their life mitigate the bad they do in that same life?  My barometer is Pres. Andrew Johnson. In 1868, he commuted the life sentence of Dr. Samuel Mudd, for knowingly treating John Wilkes Booth, Pres. Lincoln’s cowardly assassin. The reason he commuted the sentence was that Mudd assisted “heroically” during a Yellow Fever epidemic that swept the prison he was in, the Dry Tortugas off Florida’s west coast.

Cut to the present. Rod joins George in Federal prison. But should George Ryan still be there?  Maybe he didn’t help out in a yellow fever epidemic like Mudd, but he sure took a spirited and unpopular stand as a Republican in a state that uses the death penalty.  That was total political suicide.  Yet if George Ryan was right, he has saved at least one or more lives.

Ryan has now served double Mudd’s three years, for knowingly aiding the assassin of the President of the United States.

#   #   #

Already a convicted serial killer in Florida and Georgia, Hilton is scheduled to be tried January 4, 2012 in North Carolina for the murders of John and Irene Bryant.  Hiking in Pisgah National Forest in 2007, the senior citizen hikers were allegedly ambushed by Hilton who kidnapped and killed them.  Hilton was convicted in February 2011 for the murder, beheading and be-handing of Cheryl Dunlap.  He was on Florida’s Death Row at Stark when the Feds came calling.

While Dunlap had also been murdered in a  Federal forest outside Tallahassee, Florida State’s Attorney Willie Meggs asserted jurisdiction.  The Federal forest in North Carolina where Hilton is alleged to have murdered the Bryants is in Transylvania County.  In this part of the case, the state lost jurisdiction to the U.S. Attorney for Western North Carolina, who is asking for death.

At first glance, it looks like the Feds are grandstanding.  After all, how many times can you execute a guy already sentenced to death?  Or, maybe it’s about giving closure to the Bryants family.  But they could have that tomorrow if the Feds were willing to accept a “guilty” plea from Hilton in return for life, just like he got in Georgia for killing and beheading Meredith Emerson.  They’re not.

The reason the U.S. Attorney asserted jurisdiction and is asking for death is to make sure that in the rare instance where a Florida appellate court overturned Hilton’s death penalty conviction, or for some reason his death sentence is commuted  to life, there’s always the Federal back-up.  Never mind the fact that the Feds rarely use the death penalty, only three 3 times in the last 23 years.

One of those 3 was Timothy McVeigh, The Oklahoma City Bomber.  Gary Hilton is traveling in some pretty notorious company.

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Inside Edition features Fred Rosen's "Trails of Death" book.

An upcoming episode of Inside Edition features Fred Rosen’s “Trails of Death.” The television feature focuses on the fact that serial killer Gary Hilton once had access to nuclear weapons.

INSIDE EDITION > Serial Killer Once Had Finger on Nuclear Trigger

Learn more about the strange and disturbing story in the book “Trails of Death: The True Story of National Forest Serial Killer Gary Hilton” from Titletown Publishing, LLC; (August 26, 2011).