Free At the Hands of a Stranger by Lee Butcher

in this location?” he asked.
    â€œI followed your tire signs.”
    â€œI like long-distance hiking,” Hilton said, “but if you come to a WMA, you’re going to get patted down.” (WMA was shorthand for a Wildlife Management Area.)
    The comment made no sense to Ellis and he asked Hilton what he meant.
    â€œYou can drive around town all day long but if you come to a WMA, you are going to get patted down.”
    Ellis told Hilton that he could only camp in designated areas and that he couldn’t drive on roads that weren’t designated by signs. Then he asked to see Hilton’s driver’s license. Hilton fumbled through his wallet, having trouble finding it; but when Ellis offered to help, he found the license right away. (The ranger’s report has a heavily blacked-out redaction.) Hilton’s driver’s license had expired, and he had been cited for driving on closed roads and camping in unauthorized places. Ellis told Hilton he had to go back to Georgia and get his license renewed.
    â€œI’m going to be driving back this way, and if I see you, I will issue you a one-hundred-seventy-five-dollar citation for your expired license and another one-hundred-seventy-five-dollar citation for driving with an expired license tag,” Ellis told him.
    Hilton continued talking and asked about various areas of Apalachicola Forest in Florida.
    â€œYou don’t need to go to any national forest areas,” Ellis told him. “You need to go back to Georgia and take care of your driver’s license.”
    Â 
    On December 15, William Kemp and Donald Trussell, employed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, were on patrol in the Apalachicola Forest, when Kemp received a call from the area command center. A group of hunters had found a dead body in the forest; Kemp and Trussell were directed to go there.
    It was about eleven in the morning when the two wildlife officials met the hunters at Forest Road 381 and 381E. The hunters said the body was in the woods.
    â€œDo you want us to show you where it is?” one hunter asked.
    The officials followed the hunters as they drove a short distance into the woods and stopped. The hunters led the wildlife employees along the side of the road until they came to a pile of palmetto branches and leaves. That’s when Kemp saw the body.
    Approaching the scene, I observed, (HEAVILY INKED OUT) was also vegetation type debris that appeared to be piled on top of the body, Kemp wrote.
    He and Trussell returned to Forest Road 381 to escort Sergeant Steve Norville and Deputy Alan Shepard, with the LCSO to the body, and then left. The crime scene was actually about a mile from where other responding units had stopped. The CSI from the LCSO taped off the crime scene; and with the help of CSI forensic experts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), they began the tedious and time-consuming task of testing for even the most minute shred of evidence.
    It didn’t take an expert to tell that the woman was dead, but it was not so easy to identify her. Somebody had cut off her head.
    Rumors, fueled by fear and horror, began to speed around Leon and Wakulla Counties. Some said that there was at least one serial killer, perhaps two, in the area on a murderous rampage, killing and dismembering women. Hundreds of women signed up and completed safety courses sponsored by LCSO. Compared to the previous six months, applications to carry concealed firearms increased by about one hundred.
    Larry Campbell, the Leon County sheriff, held a press conference to dispel some of the rumors. It wasn’t true that there were several killers on the loose. The police were following up on every lead, he said, and people should be cautious, but not frightened.
    It was true that the police had no idea who had killed the woman believed to be Cheryl Dunlap.
    The small communities were gripped by terror.

Chapter 5
    Special Agent Clay