State investigators are looking into whether Georgia drifter Gary Michael Hilton may have been involved in a woman’s disappearance two years ago in Swain County, authorities said Monday.

Rossana Miliani was last seen on Dec. 7, 2005, in Bryson City. The 26-year-old had told her family she was going hiking.

Little else was known until a store clerk called a private investigator handling the case after reading about Miliani on the second anniversary of her disappearance.

Private investigator Steve Siske said the clerk told him Miliani came into her store that day with a white man she thought was about 60 years old. They bought a backpack, and Miliani seemed nervous, Siske said the clerk told him on Dec. 13.

When Hilton was arrested, Siske said he noticed similarities between Miliani’s case and that of slain Georgia hiker Meredith Emerson.

Hilton has been charged with murder in the 24-year-old’s death.

He also is suspected in the killing of Irene Bryant and disappearance and presumed death of her husband.

John Bryant, 80, and Irene Bryant, 84, disappeared Oct. 21 after leaving for a hike in the Pink Beds area of Pisgah National Forest.

Siske said he briefed officials with the Swain County Sheriff’s Office and the Bryson City Police Department on Miliani’s case Monday.

Officers there said they are now helping the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation.

SBI agents are “considering the possibility of a connection,” agency spokeswoman Noelle Talley said. She declined to discuss any details.

The Bryson City store clerk declined to comment Monday, saying she is waiting to talk to police first.

Anibal Miliani, the missing woman’s father, said he hopes the Hilton case will bring new information, even if it means the worst.

“It has been an ordeal,” he said. “It would be some type of closure.”

Rossana Miliani had traveled to Western North Carolina from her home in south Florida to go hiking, her father said.

Miliani said his daughter called him from the Ramada Inn on the Cherokee Indian Reservation on Dec. 7. He reported her missing on Dec. 20 to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. He also filed a report with the Asheville Police Department.

The last transaction on her bank account was Dec. 7 at the IGA Reservation Foodliner in Cherokee. The day before she paid for a cab in Asheville with a bank card and made a purchase at the Red Barn in Waynesville.

Private investigator Siske said he has asked the Byrson City store clerk not to talk to anyone about the case or look at Hilton’s picture before she views a photo lineup to try to determine if the man she saw that day was Hilton.

He said the clerk remembers the man bought a used suit and said something that also appears connected to the allegations against Hilton.

“He tells her ‘I am a traveling preacher. I go from campground to campground,’” Siske said.

Hilton, a 61-year-old drifter, is a suspect in three killings involving park and forest areas.

Authorities have said he led them to Emerson’s decapitated body Jan. 7 in the Dawson Forest Management Area in northern Georgia, about 2 1/2 hours from Bryson City.

Florida officials also have enough evidence to charge Hilton in the killing of Cheryl Hodges Dunlap, 46, whose body was found Dec. 19 in a Florida’s Apalachicola National Forest, state Attorney Willie Meggs said.

Authorities say a masked person suspected in Dunlap’s death used her ATM card three times after her disappearance.

Someone used the Bryants’ bank card to withdraw $300 in Ducktown, Tenn., shortly after their disappearance.

Police in Ormond Beach, Fla., also said Hilton is a person of interest in a killing and dismemberment of a 27-year-old man found Dec. 6 near Tomoka State Park.

Police in February 2006 found Miliani’s luggage in a storage unit. She had paid for one month but never returned.

Still missing are a camera, mobile phone and sleeping bag she bought in Asheville.

She is bipolar. Her family is offering a $5,000 reward.

Siske said similarities — the hiking and forest elements, the backpack purchased in Bryson City, the man’s comment to the store clerk about traveling from campground to campground, and the relatively close distance between the crime scenes — might add up to nothing.

“Is it Gary Michael Hilton? I don’t know,” he said. “But this is just too circumstantial. If it is not Gary Michael Hilton, we need to be looking for who this person is.”
Do you have information?

Contact local law enforcement if you have information about the disappearance of Rossana Miliani on Dec. 7, 2005, in Bryson City or call her father Anibal Miliani at 305-301-0280.