At the Hands of a Stranger (22 page)

Howard: Coldly?

Hilton: Yeah, and the coldly rational scientist. The scientist—if it can't be demonstrated, it doesn't exist. It's only a theory, you know. You got to show me the facts in science, okay? So those two are the coldly rational ones. The artist and the philosopher are interested more in the textures, and the why and wherefores behind it, you see.

Howard: So you're having to balance the two?

Hilton: I have all those there, and it's not as complex as it sounds. If you're aware that I'm a soldier, a scientist, an artist, and a philosopher—if you're aware of that—then I'm a very simple person.

Bridges: What's your artistic side? What do you mean by “artist”?

Hilton: By “artist,” I mean truly in the sense of being an artist in that you see everything in terms of not the linear, but the impression of it, and so forth. People ask me, “What's your medium? Are you a sculptor or …?” No, my artist … my art is my life, and my art is weird. My art is my life. My art is weird. (Hilton exploded in laughter.) My art is my life, and my art is weird.

Bridges: I'm actually buying into this.

Hilton: Of course. It's true. It's all true. This is true. It's real. Everything I've told you is true. Everything I'm telling you is real. It exists. It's true.

Bridges: What I'm saying is that you say your life is your medium.

Hilton: Just for an audience of one. The rest of the world, they can't really understand. I delight in representing a fantastic spectacle to people in terms of my technicality. You know, I'm all tech'ed out. I'm strapped with every kind of layer of equipment and I present this fantastical spectacle to people, but I understand. They can't understand it because it's so fantastical. It's kind of like the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger will come galloping into town. There will be all the same townspeople, right? And here the Lone Ranger will be wearing this mask, a skintight outfit, a really elaborate two-gun rig with chrome pistols, and it's just a theatrical outfit. He'd be mounted on this beautiful palomino. He'd have this trippy Indian named Tonto with him, and if the Lone Ranger would ride out again, what would they always say about the Lone Ranger? You don't remember this. They would always say—

Bridges: “Who was that masked man?”

Hilton: “Who was that masked man?” Okay, that's what I do to society. They can't get their minds around it even. That's why they remember me. That's why I can't go anywhere without a hundred people calling in. I'll bet there are people who have called in that met me one time over ten years ago for five minutes.

Bridges: You're absolutely right. Which brings up something interesting that you're talking about and why. One thing I'm curious about.

Hilton: What?

Bridges: You bumped into a Cherokee County deputy up on some private hunting property back in October. It was highly publicized after we caught up with another one, and you threw it out there to him that you were a paratrooper on perpetual maneuvers.

Hilton: I thought he realized what I was doing. You know, I'm doing this day after day, and I finally realized—

Howard: Combat patrols, where you got to stay alert all the time?

Hilton: Yeah, the combat patrols and land navigation. That's exactly it. Every time I go out to walk my dog, I'm like a police officer. I understand that there's a significant chance that before I come home, I'll be fighting for my life. Every time I walk my dog anywhere. You know why? All it takes is one gate left open, one door left open. I got a Rottweiler this big. One time I had run a route for over ten years, and I never knew the dog was there, and I passed by a house and I hear a guy yelling, “Bad dog, bad dog, bad dog!” And I look, and that was this dog's name. It was a big-ass Rottweiler coming for me. He had gotten loose out of the house, and that was the dog's name, Bad Dog.
That's the way it is, man. You know, it's like police work. I mean, ninety minutes of boredom and ten minutes of utter pucker-up shit. It's happened so much that I fought, and again I say fighting, I shape the situation rather than kick ass. 'Cause when you kick ass, it's going to ruin your day, regardless. Even if you're right, it may not go your way. You don't have a badge. About 1995 or so, I realized that that's what I'm doing.

Hilton: You know, I'd get in the truck with the dog, move, get out, get my shit together, run a patrol, come back, eat. You know, sleep, move, get out, get the shit together, run a patrol. And[I] finally realized that I was just on perpetual field maneuvers, and I said, “Well, it ain't much of a life, but, hell, it's a life.”

Bridges: When you throw stuff out like that, I'm just trying to figure out. You know, you call it “artistry” or whatever.

Hilton: You might call it “insanity”?

Bridges: No, I'm not saying that.

Hilton: No, you're not.

Bridges: I don't think you're insane, by no stretch of the imagination. What I'm getting at is it is almost like a little acting on your behalf to—I don't know—kind of steer this law enforcement officer away from you?

Hilton: Oh, with him? No, I was being perfectly candid with him. I steered him away from me.

Bridges: Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to figure out what—

Hilton: Here's the thing. Police officers are individuals, so, of course, they're going to run across a whole spectrum of human behavior, but there's—there's a large number of police officers that are highly experienced. And that they are pros, and they recognize a pro when they see a pro. And I'm a pro. So I'm not some bum out there sleeping in my van. I'm a pro.

Bridges: Right.

Hilton: He saw my map collection because I was showing him maps, man. These are just maps I carry. I've got a Rubbermaid—twenty-six-gallon Rubbermaid container full of maps. Area maps, topo (topographical) maps, every kind of map.

Howard: You're not just playing around. You're training.

Hilton: I got a map collection that is so exotic. I mean, it's wild. It's got every kind of area map. Everywhere from Shining Rock Wilderness to all the way down to Ocala National Forest in Florida. I can pull out any map, and I got topo … maps of much of the North Georgia area. Every kind of map. I got Cherokee National Forest, Nantahala National, every national forest.

Bridges: In the interest of time, let's—if you don't care—let's go back to … where did we get up to? The early '80s? Right after the divorce. You were still in Atlanta at that time and you were …?

Hilton: Yeah, and when I got busted I had to go straight for six months. I got a job.

Bridges: What did you get arrested for?

Hilton: Fraudulent phone solicitation. It was a misdemeanor thing, though. Now it's a felony.

Bridges: What type of telephone fraud were you doing at that point?

Hilton: The usual.
Georgia Veteran's Journal, Georgia Inspector's Journal,
Southeast Regional Council, Georgia Youth Sports Project. You had a list of about a hundred charities.

Bridges: What year did you get arrested for that?

Hilton: Seventy-nine. Yeah, probably about November.

Bridges: November?

Hilton: So I played that out, and I went and got a job. They took everything, and they did a search warrant on the house, too. So I got a job for about six months. Got a job, Fourth of July, and by then I was long divorced.

Bridges: What kind of job?

Hilton: Industrial chemicals, long distance, on a watch line. Got that job, kept that.

Bridges: Name for that place?

Hilton: It's no longer in existence. KEM Manufacturing.

Howard: That was like what? Right after you got out, so '81-ish? Beginning of '81 or …?

Hilton: I kept that until July 1980.

Howard: Okay.

Bridges: Then what did you do?

Hilton: Oh, went back to my old habits. Yeah, I actually got time in DeKalb County Jail. It was in '79. I was in there on that bust. Guy was telling me his life story, and it was just, you know, a tragedy. So I asked him, “Why do you keep doing this? Why?” You know, why? He said, “Because I can't get up and go to work,” and you know, that describes most criminals.
You could say a criminal is someone that breaks the law and gets away with it, and keeps doing it until he gets caught. That's a good definition, but another good definition is one that can't get up and go to work in the morning. That's the artist. Don't you understand? That's the artist in me. Artists don't get up and go to work in the morning. So okay, once I started doing that, and I kept doing it through the '80s. I took a bust in '87. My computer printout has “theft by taking,” but the actual charge was “theft by deception.” Misdemeanor again. The woman lured me over there, right in the heart of Dunwoody. A fucking yuppie woman lured me over there to pick up a twenty-five-dollar check and then kept me waiting for the check. She was really good. She was pretending she was on the phone, and she would come and let me see her on the phone. Kept me waiting there for thirty minutes. When I told my criminal friends about it, they said I should have never sat there waiting for thirty minutes. Taught me a lesson. DeKalb County North again. They showed up, arrested me. They got the check and they got the woman complaining. They found my car. Okay? The car I was driving was a stolen car.

Bridges: Really?

Hilton: It had been stolen from a rental company that I had been renting from, and—

Bridges: What kind of car was it?

Hilton: It was a Chevy something—Eurosport—and I had been renting cars from them. Fourteen [dollars] a day. Unlimited mileage. Killer, man. I could just rent the thing once a week and go put two hundred miles on it for seven cents a mile. The receipt was not only proof of ownership, but it was also proof of insurance. They'd check if you had purchased insurance. So I just wrote on that slip. Had dealer drive-out tags on it, and at that time, the drive-out tags were not the issued. One time a cop in High Falls State Park in Tennessee … I was up there with a stolen car in the park. The police officer followed me and followed me and followed me. I was going to the office to pick up a map there, so I pulled in and parked, and I got out. He pulled in and got out and was walking in. He asked to see the slip and says, “Is that what y'all have in Georgia there?” I said, “Yeah, that's what they use.” He said, “Well, it's no good for police work.” I'm thinking, “Little does he know.”

Bridges: When was that?

Hilton: Eighty-seven or '88. I drove it for years.

Howard: Wait a minute. When did you rent it?

Hilton: You mean stole it?

Howard: Yeah.

Hilton: Eighty-six.

Howard: Oh, okay.

Hilton: Drove it until '89. I just took it, and would keep it washed. You're not going to charge me with this, are you?

Bridges: No, no, no, no, no.

Hilton: I shouldn't have told that story. Anyway, I kept it stashed. And, anyway, I broke my arm running. I was running along a block wall, about nine feet over a parking lot, and one of the rocks was loose, and I fell off it and fell all the way down to the pavement and broke my arm really bad right here. Then, the next year I broke it by falling off a mountain bike, same place. A displaced fracture. I had this old '77 Ford. Power steering was broken, so I couldn't drive it with one hand, and that's the reason I had been renting them, anyway, because my car was so decrepit, you know. Anyway, so I'm—

Howard: What kind of car was it?

Hilton: Seventy-seven Ford LTD. Big ol' monster.

Howard: Like a cop car?

Hilton: Yeah.

Howard: Wasn't blue, was it?

Hilton: No. The paint was all scaled. It was horrible-looking. But, anyway, the very first day I drive it to work in, you know, I was out picking up my fraudulent money, and I'm on McGinnis Ferry Road. State patrol, highway patrol, had a road check there. Came along, and right where you cross the Chattahoochee River, on the east side of the river, they had a road check set up, and you really couldn't see it because they were kind of in dead space or something. You know, that's where they have it, of course, where you can't see it two miles away. I drove into it before I knew it.
This was before computerized insurance, so you had to have proof of insurance. He said, “Proof of insurance, driver's license.” So I was flipping my orange contract, which you couldn't read, anyway. It was called a copy. The date was illegible, but the legible part was that I had insurance and my name and address on it. I reckon I half-ass erased the date. It was horrible, anyway, but looked real. It's just like a third carbon or something. But you could see it was my name and address and that I purchased insurance because that box was checked, proof of insurance, and so I handed that with my driver's license. He didn't even look at it. He just sent it back to me return mail, and I drove that car three more years until I bought the truck. I bought a Mazda.

Howard: When did you get the Mazda?

Hilton: Eighty-nine.

Howard: So you got it in '86 and drive that one …

Hilton: I started driving it. I had it stored for several months until I broke my arm and then I just started driving it, and once I went through that road check it was okay, and it did have the drive-out tag on it. Celebrity Eurosport. The trunk was just a box. You could take a bike and take the front wheel off and put a bicycle right in the trunk. I mean, it was just a box with four doors. Just beautiful, useable space.

Bridges: Did you have any roommates back around that time, or anything?

Hilton: Twice. A guy named John Moss, back in '82. I lived with him for about six months, and Chris Johnson, who called in twelve years later to lash me. Called me a misfit with a mean streak.

Bridges: Since '97?

Hilton: Yeah. Ninety-seven, I started there, and in '98, I lived there—started living there. And in 2001 I had a six-month break I was away from it.

Howard: What did you do for that?

Hilton: Worked for another company. The guy was stealing from me the whole time, and it was a real shame. Even guys like myself who are just totally sociopathic, we still need some human to trust. Even if we're not close to them, to trust them, even if it's a business associate, and I chose to trust him ….

Howard: John Tabor?

Hilton: Yeah, and that's why he got away with it, you see, because when you choose to trust someone, it's kind of a dimming of awareness. It's like with your spouse. You're in love with your spouse, so you dress them up in your love, and you make them, quite often, into something that they really weren't.

Howard: Put them on a pedestal almost.

Hilton: That's what I mean. Dress up … Cyndi Lauper put out a song, “Gonna Dress Him Up in My Love,” and I thought that's a good line. Quite often people find that their spouses really weren't who they made them out to be.
(Editor's note: The artist was actually Madonna, and the song was “Dress You Up (in My Love)” from her
Like a Virgin
album.)

Bridges: Right.

Hilton: They find that their spouses were looking them in the eye for the whole ten years and saying, “Honey, I love you. There will never be another one.” And sleeping with them, and being intimate with them, and the whole time sharing their body and their lives and their emotions with some other woman or some other man. It's an all-too-common story. It's psychopathic behavior, but everyone does it, so it's one of my favorite observations that I come to learn through my philosophical insight. Personal integrity is so hard to judge because everyone—

Bridges: So the '90s was pretty much the same deal? You were staying in an apartment up until …

Hilton: No, no, no. I went homeless in early '90s. The reason I went homeless is I was being investigated, again, by the police.

Bridges: For the same thing, telephone fraud?

Hilton: Yeah, and I knew what went down. I was hiring people to go out and collect. But I had the mind-set that this was a warrant or a subpoena, and I was a cop, and you know, and I looked like a cop, you know, because I was well-built and I carried myself like a cop. I'd drive up in this plainclothes police car, get out like I owned the damn place. I got my court order in my hand, and I go in there, and I pick up my five dollars. I'd risk my life. I got a gauntlet of guys hanging around in front of the liquor store. Had to walk right through them, okay. That's what you call occupying your space. That's what you call officer presence. Okay? I had it. I had a guy one time I got out of that car, and he was in the front of the liquor store, he put his hands up. He said, “Okay, you got me.” I said, “I don't want you.” He thought I was there for him.

Bridges: Did you carry any weapons with you? I'd have had a gun if that was me. So you went homeless?

Hilton: In 1990. I started living in storage buildings. And I would stay about seventy-five days a year in a Motel 6, free local phone, seventy-five, [or a] hundred days a year. Free local phone, and Motel 6 has been for seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty dollars a day.

Bridges: Do you remember what storage facility you stayed in? Eight and a half years, I'm sure you remember it.

Hilton: It went through several incarnations. It was Pack and Stack. Now it's a Sure Guard Storage in Gwinnett.

Bridges: And that was probably all the way up through '98?

Hilton: Yeah.

Bridges: Is that when you got on with John (Tabor)?

Hilton: I moved in at John's house.

Bridges: Moved in?

Hilton: I'd been working with John since '97. John lived there before he got married in late '97. He wouldn't let me go in for a while, but he needed me too bad. I left him in early '97 and stayed away several months, and he needed me real bad—so he let me move in. By the way, you can tell John Tabor that I'm the one that killed the girl. Okay? I'm the one who killed her, but the reason she is dead … I want you to tell Tabor this … the reason she's dead. Now, I killed her. Okay? But the reason she is dead is that when I called him on Thursday or whenever—

Bridges: Thursday.

Hilton: When I called him, that girl was alive. She was in my van. She was in the parking lot at the Huddle House, and it's just like … I gave the girl's body up when I realized that I had been caught, fair and square.