Deadly Run

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/13/hilton.movie/index.html

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- When attorney-turned-movie producer Samuel Rael decided he wanted to make a film about a serial killer in 1995, it was former legal client Gary Michael Hilton who he says came up with the plot.

Rael's adviser was the same Gary Hilton who confessed in January to killing 24-year-old Meredith Emerson in the North Georgia mountains and is the prime suspect in the killings of a Florida woman and a North Carolina couple.

Rael claims Hilton thought it would be a good idea to have the killer be out in the woods.

"Go ahead and let some beautiful women out in the woods, and then they could be hunted down like prey," Rael says Hilton told him. Video Watch Rael tell his disturbing account » Rael was shocked when he discovered that Hilton had been arrested and had confessed to Emerson's murder. Quickly, investigators hinted that Hilton might be a serial killer, linking him to three murders in two other states.

In all three, the bodies were dumped in the woods.

"He was a criminal," Rael said. "And he'd be the first to admit it. He might have been a sociopath, but he was a happy one and an animated one. One who, quite frankly, I never would have thought in a million years. ... Well, he had criminal instincts, but he was not a violent person. I was wrong about that." The movie Rael and Hilton worked on was released straight to video. It was called "Deadly Run."