On New Year’s Day 2008, 24-year-old Meredith Hope Emerson began a hike up Blood Mountain in northern Georgia with her black Labrador, Ella. She was last seen on the trail with an older man. When Emerson failed to return, friends searched and police located her car on January 3 with her water bottle, a dog leash, and a police baton inside.

Ella was found the next day in a grocery store parking lot about 60 miles away, shifting the case from a missing-hiker search to a suspected abduction. The man last seen with Emerson was identified as 61-year-old drifter Gary Michael Hilton. Officers stopped Hilton after a witness reported him cleaning out his van; police found blood in the van that later matched Emerson’s DNA.

Hilton was arrested on murder charges. He led investigators to Emerson’s remains in a wooded area of Dawson Forest and said he had held her captive for four days while trying to obtain her ATM card and PIN. The autopsy determined Emerson died of blunt force trauma to the head and was decapitated after death. Hilton pleaded guilty to her murder and received life with parole possible after 30 years.

If anyone knew Meredith, her movements that day, or saw Ella before she was found, please share information.