He fancied himself a soldier "on perpetual field maneuvers." He recently lived and camped out of his minivan, purposely subjecting himself to hardship. He used to carry a gun because, he said, there's "a lot of crazy things going on in the world."

He was a petty criminal, a transient workman who pulled his own teeth, someone who made people uncomfortable with his odd mannerisms.

POUYA DIANAT/Staff

Gary Hilton was officially charged with the murder of hiker Meredith Emerson in Dawson County court on Wednesday. He is a suspect in several similar killings. In each case the victims were found in state or national parks and their ATM cards were used after their deaths. Previous charges in other years included arson, hit and run and marijuana possession.

Ben Gray/Staff

Gary Michael Hilton, accused of murdering Meredith Emerson, is a longtime petty criminal.

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And Gary Michael Hilton, the 61-year-old man accused of killing Buford hiker Meredith Emerson and a suspect in the beating deaths of two other females, generally did not like women, his onetime landlord said.

"He was a weird character," said Chris C. Johnson, who rented a room to Hilton for several months in 1995 in the Marietta area. "I remember him referring to women very negatively. He kind of had a real bad, negative attitude against everyone. He really didn't like anyone ... women specifically."

John Tabor, who recently gave Hilton a place to stay and hired him to do odd jobs, said Hilton in September threatened to kill him if he didn't give him $10,000. Hilton needed the money because his mental and physical health had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't work, said Jana Tabor, John's wife.

It was the Tabors who first tipped authorities to Hilton's identification after they saw an artist's sketch of him on CNN. They spoke about him on Saturday, the first time they've discussed details about the man they knew peripherally for about 10 years.

The Emerson case put Hilton at the center of a disturbing crime that has captured widespread attention and reignited murder investigations in Florida and North Carolina. The crime against a vibrant young woman in a public place has resonated across the nation as people consider the randomness of the brutal slaying — and reconsider their own safety.

Hilton's nomadic ways make him somewhat of a mystery. Unlike the gregarious Emerson, Hilton, who is being held without bond at the Dawson County jail, does not have a cadre of friends to explain his behavior or speculate on the events leading to his arrest. Police have provided little insight.

Not recalled kindly

Johnson is fairly typical of those who crossed paths with Hilton as he bounced around North Georgia for the past 30 years, from Clayton County to an intown apartment to the woods of Cherokee County to the mountains of North Georgia. Most had fleeting encounters with the man. Few remember him kindly.

In his travels, he was charged with beating up a housemate, flimflamming people with a bogus charity and accused of roughing up a girlfriend's young son.

Johnson remembered Hilton often carried an expandable baton — the kind of weapon found in the Emerson investigation — and went for hikes on Kennesaw Mountain with his dog, a golden retriever, which he had strictly trained.

"He would put food down in front of the dog and the dog wouldn't eat until he told him to do it," Johnson recalled. "He would go to the store and come back and the dog still wouldn't eat until he told it to."

Johnson recalled a violent incident between Hilton and another boarder in 1995.

"I was having trouble with the roommate and Gary asked me, 'You want me to throw him out?' and I said yes, thinking he wasn't serious," Johnson said. "But they got in a fight and he threw him out."

Cobb County police arrested Hilton and charged him with simple battery. He spent two months in the county jail before being shipped to DeKalb County to face other charges.

Months before his recent arrest in the Emerson case, a Cherokee County sheriff's camera recorded a 30-minute exchange Hilton had with a deputy. Someone called Cherokee authorities on Oct. 26, complaining Hilton was trespassing on private property. The deputy responding to the call found Hilton parked in some woods on the side of the road with camping gear sprawled out on the grass.

On the video, Hilton is animated and chatty. He said he got lost while traveling from Lawrenceville to Cohutta, which is near the Tennessee border. Hilton tells Deputy Will Ballard he served as an Army paratrooper in the 1960s and that camping comes naturally to him.

"Typical training would be a 20-kilometer land navigation problem ... carrying a heavy load, move as rapidly as possible," he said of his Army training. "We would run that stuff over and over. I got it in my blood. What I am doing is I am on perpetual field maneuvers."

Hilton also tells Ballard that he has suffered from multiple sclerosis for years.

"I carry a doctor's written diagnosis right in with my license because sometimes it will make me stagger somewhat," he said. "It will affect my posture and my gait. What I call this is camping therapy. And I do it just like the Army, subjecting yourself to hardship."

As the two go to retrieve identification from Hilton's van, Hilton warns the deputy that he has an expandable baton among his belongings.

"Don't get nervous," Hilton tells Ballard. "I won't get out of the truck without it, man."

Ballard ultimately lets Hilton go after determining there are no outstanding arrest warrants for him. As the two part, Hilton warmly tells Ballard: "Hey, I love ya."

Links to other murders

In the two months since that encounter, he's been charged in the bludgeoning death and subsequent decapitation of Emerson, and has been identified as a suspect in several similar killings.

Leon County, Fla., authorities say they will charge Hilton in the slaying of Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, 46, of Crawfordville, Fla. She went missing Dec. 1 and was found dead in Apalachicola National Forest on Dec. 15.

Also, North Carolina officials have named Hilton as a suspect in the slaying in October of an elderly couple.

Avid hikers John, 79, and Irene Bryant, 84, were last seen alive on Oct. 20 in the Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina. Her body was found bludgeoned three weeks later while John Bryant remains missing and is believed dead.

In each case, officials have placed Hilton in the vicinity. Further, each of the victims' ATM cards were used, and the bodies were recovered in state or national forests.

Hilton also had encounters with police that didn't land him in jail.

Pam Burnett, who often walks her dogs at Murphey Candler Park in DeKalb, said Hilton often hung out there, acting strangely, carrying an expandable baton and sometimes yelling at her to keep her dogs away from him. Burnett said Hilton once threatened her and her dogs with a stick in 2004. She said she called 911 and DeKalb County police responded by questioning him at the park.

"He really frightened me," said Burnett, an engineering consultant who lives in north DeKalb. "Creepy, creepy guy. Certainly, you felt like he was about to snap ... Very fragile. Unstable, I would say."

That same year, someone called police from Skyland Park in DeKalb, saying a man was beating a dog. A police report identified the man as Hilton.

Hilton piled up a record of charges in DeKalb County before those encounters. Jail records show Hilton had been charged with theft, stealing a shopping cart, possession of marijuana, hit and run and arson between 1979 and 1995. His record dates to 1972, when he was charged in Miami with dealing in stolen property.

Court records show he pleaded no contest in DeKalb County to seeking donations for the Georgia Youth Sports Project, a fictitious group that was throwing a celebration for a child who set a new athletic record.

Previous relationships

Hilton wasn't always a loner. He was married at least once, then divorced his wife, Sue, in 1969 in DeKalb County, records show. She declined to comment. After his divorce, Hilton moved into an apartment in Clarkston, where he dated the late Cynthia Nassar, said her son, Clint Roszelle, who was about 10 years old at the time.

"I didn't like the way he acted. He seemed creepy to me, even as a child," Roszelle said. "I remember he was baby-sitting my youngest brother at one time and I caught him spanking him with a hairbrush, bare bottom."

Beyond the personal relationships, he made customers uncomfortable as he worked for Tabor, who owned Insulated Wall Systems. The first time Robyn McKinney met Hilton, he made her uneasy.

"He was a crazy man," said McKinney, who, along with her husband, hired Tabor's company to do some work on their Snellville home in 2004. "He had rotted teeth. He acted and talked really strange."

Tabor said Saturday that his relationship with Hilton was almost exclusively over the phone, though Tabor let Hilton live at a building he owned on Clairmont Road in Chamblee. Tabor kicked him out in September after Hilton threatened to kill Tabor.

Jana Tabor said Hilton's behavior had become erratic, and she attributed it to his medication.

"He had self-diagnosed himself as having M.S., and he was going to this quack doctor and he was taking an incredible amount of Ritalin," Jana Tabor said. "He already had one of those upbeat energetic personalities, and that just make it warp speed, made him crazy."

Jana Tabor disputes that Hilton's teeth were rotten.

"They weren't rotten," she said. "He pulled them out himself."

Despite their falling out, the Tabors were stunned that Hilton could be accused of such heinous killings.

"We were not harboring somebody who was a monster," she said. "My god, it's just unspeakable what he has done."

Well before the Tabors met him, in 1983, Hilton was convicted in Clayton County of carrying a pistol without a license in a trial that also saw him convicted of a drug charge. Asked in court why he carried a gun, he pointed out he didn't need one, but that he had one "for protection."

"There is a lot of crime," he said, "and a lot of crazy things going on in the world."

— Staff writers Yolanda Rodriguez, Kathy Jefcoats, Christian Boone and Tim Eberly, and staff researcher Alice Wertheim contributed to this report.