The man who killed a Georgia hiker three years ago was convicted Tuesday of murdering a Florida woman in a similar manner.
The jury deliberated for three hours and 40 minutes before convicting 64-year-old Gary Michael Hilton, who did not take the stand. Hilton could get the death penalty for killing and decapitating Cheryl Dunlap, a 46-year-old nurse and Sunday school teacher, in December 2007. He was also convicted of stealing Dunlap's ATM card.
Hilton already is serving life in prison in Georgia after pleading guilty to the January 2008 slaying of Buford hiker Meredith Emerson. Hilton led investigators to the body of 24-year-old Emerson and avoided a death penalty sentence. Hilton admitted he kidnapped Emerson and her dog from a trail at Blood Mountain, in north Georgia, on New Year's Day.
In the Emerson and Dunlap murders, both women were found in a wooded area and both had been decapitated.
Hilton also is suspected in the disappearance of an elderly North Carolina couple in 2007, but he has not been charged in that case.
Jurors in Florida are expected to return Thursday to hear testimony about whether to recommend death or life in prison for Dunlap's murder. Circuit Judge James Hankinson will not be bound by the recommendation, but must consider it before sentencing Hilton.
In her closing argument, Florida Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman asserted that Hilton, balding and wearing a coat and tie as he sat hunched over at the defense table, looked and acted differently when Dunlap disappeared on Dec. 1, 2007. She said he was "a woodsman, a survivalist and proficient bayonet fighter" when he allegedly killed Dunlap after she'd gone to a park area in the Apalachicola National Forest southwest of Tallahassee.
No one witnessed Hilton abducting Dunlap and the evidence in the case was circumstantial, Hilton's lawyer said.
Assistant public defender Ines Suber said no fingerprint evidence connected Hilton to the crime and that a medical examiner was unable to verify that skull and hand bones found in a fire pit at a campsite he allegedly used belonged to the victim.
"We have absolutely no evidence, no direct evidence, that Mr. Hilton committed murder in this case," Suber said.
In rebuttal, Cappleman said the charred bones could not be identified nor could Dunlap's fingerprints be obtained "because of the defendant's own handiwork." The victim's hands had been chopped off.
Cappleman also said jurors should listen to Hilton's own words, captured in digital videos and overheard by a jail officer.
In videos, which technicians were able to extract from his camera although they'd been erased, made in the days following Dunlap's disappearance. Hilton can be heard using crude language to say he was going to get some good sex someday and then adding "She was no good. She was nasty."
He also talked about hiding "stuff" and said "Yeah, I killed those ..." using a vulgar term for women.
Cappleman also quoted testimony by a Leon County Jail officer who said he overhead Hilton tell another inmate that if the state would give him life that he'd tell authorities where to find Dunlap's head.
--The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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