by Jon Ostendorff
published January 22, 2008 12:15 am
published January 22, 2008 12:15 am
BREVARD – Irene Bryant died from multiple blows to her head and may have tried to defend herself from her attacker, according to an autopsy report. In addition to a fractured skull, she had a broken left hand and forearm, according to the report.
Investigators believe someone killed Bryant, 84, on Oct. 21 while she was hiking in the Pink Beds area of Pisgah National Forest. Her husband, John, 80, is missing and presumed dead.
Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney said last week that investigators have a “positive link” between Bryant and Gary Michael Hilton, the Georgia drifter suspected in two other killings and at least two disappearances.
Mahoney could not be reached Monday.
Searchers found Bryant’s partially decomposed body Nov. 9. The autopsy showed she had a fracture on the left side of her head that measured about 2 inches. She had three smaller fractures on the back of her head.
On the right side of her head, Bryant had multiple fractures covering and area of about 4 by 5 inches.
Her right forearm had been severed below the elbow. The autopsy report doesn’t say how her arm was removed. It does say animals had gotten to her body and may have dragged it as much as five feet from where she was killed.
The bones in her left hand below her fingers and in her left forearm were broken. Some of her clothing — a long-sleeve shirt and a shoe — was found 30 feet from her body.
Autopsy reports are public record in North Carolina but generally take weeks to complete.
Holly Bryant, the couple’s daughter, said her family had hoped that her mother died quickly and had not suffered.
“We worry that my father might have suffered greatly,” she said.
Hilton, 61, is a suspect in the New Year’s Day slaying and decapitation of Georgia hiker Meredith Emerson and the death of a Florida woman whose body was found in the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee, Fla.
A license plate police found on Hilton’s van at the time he was taken into custody in Georgia had been stolen from a car in Brevard.
Investigators also are looking into whether he is connected to two missing people. One is a Clemson University student last seen in 1998 at Table Rock State Park, S.C., and the other is a woman who was last seen in 2005 in Bryson City.
Rossana Miliani, 26, had told her family she was going on a hike.
The N.C. State Bureau of Investigation is trying to determine whether a man she was with that day in Bryson City was Hilton.
Holly Bryant said her family hopes that as more people see Hilton’s picture and read about the investigation, someone might come forward with information the locations he frequented. She’s hoping that will lead to her father’s body.
“I would sure like to find my father’s remains,” she said. “It just seems obscene that (Hilton) was the last person with my dad.”
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