Gary Michael Hilton, who admitted murdering and decapitating a young woman in north Georgia on New Year's Day, left the state Friday.

Florida authorities picked him up at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison outside of Jackson, where he was serving a sentence of life, and took him to Tallahassee where he could face the death penalty if he is convicted of killing and also decapitating a woman there.

Leon County, Fla., prosecutor Willie Meggs said Hilton most likely will have his first court appearance, via video, Saturday. First hearings are used to read charges and to discuss bond; Meggs said Hilton would not get bond because he is already sentenced to life in Georgia and he is facing a capital charge in Florida.

"Sometime in the next year or so, we'll go to trial," Meggs said.

Hilton pleaded guilty to murder in Dawson County, north of Atlanta, in January in the killing of Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old Buford woman. Prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty against him if he would show them where he had left Emerson's body. Hilton kidnapped Emerson on a Blood Mountain trail New Year's Day. He beat her to death and then cut off her head Jan. 4, leaving her body in the federal Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area.

At that time, Leon County, Fla., authorities were investigating the December murder and beheading of Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, a 46-year-old nurse and Sunday school teacher whose body was found Dec. 15 in Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee. They indicted Hilton in late February in that case.

Also, North Carolina authorities suspect Hilton murdered an elderly couple in October. John and Irene Bryant were last seen hiking in North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest. Irene Bryant, 84, was found, beaten to death, three weeks later just a few yards from the parking lot where the couple left their car. John Bryant, 79, was found in early February off a road connecting Ducktown, N.C., with Pisgah; he had been shot in the chest.

No charges have been filed in the Bryants' death because the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte is still investigating.

Though Hilton quickly pleaded guilty in Georgia, he fought going to Florida, where prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

Hilton challenged the extradition agreement between the Georgia and Florida governors and then delayed his extradition another month by claiming he would appeal a judge's order to send him to Florida.

Hilton never filed that appeal.

"That was just a delay," Meggs said.

About 10 a.m. Friday, three cars from Florida pulled off Ga. 36 in Butts County and headed south on I-75 with Hilton in the middle one, Meggs said.

"We told them to take back roads in case Georgia changed its mind," Meggs said. "We're just making sure we get him here."