Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advice. Gary is in the no, he
is in the And I said, what.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for some murder?
Speaker 2: Is that a yes?
Speaker 1: I can't hear you speak? Up Here we go. On
July fifth, twenty eighteen, in Cherokee County, Georgia, a family
goes looking for their missing dad. The addresses twenty five
to fifty five per cll Lane, a dead end gravel
road off a two lane highway north of Atlanta, but
a long way from the city. The expansive house sits
on ten fenced an acres back from the road, past
pasture and trees, the kind of semi rural property that
could be a small farm, or just a place to
be left alone. Out here, it would be easier to
disappear into your own routine, into something worse. The faire's
property isn't a commercial operation so much as it is
a hobby farm with a pasture, a pond, a barn, apartment,
and a small collection of animals a few horses, a
few little milk goats, and some chickens. Essentially, this is
Melody's dream life. The kind of charmed Southern life she
had always envisioned for herself, the kind they sell in magazines,
lots of kids, animals in an outdoor space. Her husband,
Gary Ferris, is a prominent attorney in the Atlanta area,
a partner level lawyer whose practice and income are centered
in the city, not on the land. By this time,
their children have all married, some divorced, and grandchildren often
come to stay. Known to the grandchildren as Big Daddy.
Fifty eight year old Gary Ferris hasn't answered calls or
texts for at least a day, and no one knows
his whereabouts. His truck is still in the driveway. His
seapap machine, the one who uses religiously every night, is
still inside. His wallet and other personal things are in
the house. Nothing about it, says, I left on my own.
Gary's four children are grown, including his son Scott, But
Scott just happens to live on the property, working as
a farm head. When his mother Melody asks him, have
you seen your daddy? In her southern drawl, the answer
is no. This wasn't entirely unusual. The property is huge,
and Gary tends to mind his own business. Besides, Scott
has mostly been away for the previous few days, but
his son Scott, goes out to the property with Melody
to look for The kids are half playing outside, half looking.
Melody and Scott separate. They check the house, the barn,
the pasture. They call his name. Just as soon as
he releases aloud, Dad, he hears his own name. It's
his mother, urging him to come back and check out
the burn pile. Scott walks to the back of the
property to a spot where his dad sometimes burns trash
and brush. It's obvious Gary has been out here. Scott
sees a large burn pile there and for a few seconds,
the smoke burns his eyes. The burn pile is blackened,
still warm, with chunks of debris fused into the ash.
It's early July in Georgia. The air is thick and damp,
and the heat radiates off the ground. Melody and Scott
both stand at the perimeter of the large pile, and
Melody points out something odd to her son.
Speaker 3: Hi, when the goats on there for something? You know,
maybe one died, you know, because we have.
Speaker 4: Several of them. I said, you saw a.
Speaker 5: Goat on there or something?
Speaker 6: Because it was just something.
Speaker 7: That just looked.
Speaker 3: It was like, wouldn't be ball of just you know
in all I said, you saw a goat on there
or something?
Speaker 8: And he went over there.
Speaker 9: And looked, and you didn't.
Speaker 3: He said, well no, but that didn't mean daddy, you
know it didn't.
Speaker 6: Then he really looked.
Speaker 1: Scott stepped closer and looked down. At first, it was
just shapes in the ash, charred would metal, bone colored fragments.
Then his brain caught up to what he was seeing.
One of those shapes wasn't just bone colored, it was bone.
He realized he was looking at what appeared to be
a human skull. He backed away and yelled for the
others to get the kids out of there. Whatever this was,
they didn't need to see it. Melody still wondered out
loud if maybe it was an animal, a dead goat
or something, but Scott was sure it was the skull
of a human being. They called nine one one, and
I will say he.
Speaker 3: Actually took a stick and picked up he could.
Speaker 4: Do over the business.
Speaker 10: It was a you know that, you.
Speaker 11: Say that thought, you love it.
Speaker 12: And as he tell me that that's a goat or
a coat or an aising, I mean, you know, yeah,
he took off an calumn, not only one.
Speaker 1: Now the skull Scott uncovered was human, and when he
poked at it, the remains of a face stared up
at him.
Speaker 2: This was no goat kind of that one the pace
of emergency.
Speaker 13: Here one uh here one fa pap or so boyant uh.
My father has come up missing. And we just searched
the properties a small farm and I just sails something
near a phone that doesn't it was he was burning
brush and I was just stall from the ball that.
Speaker 2: It could be him.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but if anyone would know whether this
was a human or animal, it would be Scott Ferris.
Speaker 13: Now I'm calling you to say that I just I've
we been walking around looking for him, and I went
with the fires still smaller. I max the military. I
was deployed to Iraq as and what burned the body
looked like and this looks like big body.
Speaker 2: Okay, said your father?
Speaker 13: Yes, said I.
Speaker 2: He just n uh me.
Speaker 1: Gary wasn't without health problems, even though most would consider
fifty eight to be relatively young. He'd been having what
his wife called spells, but was refusing to follow through
with his doctor visits.
Speaker 5: He's had these spells for years, and he talks, he
is a very slurred speech.
Speaker 11: His motor coordin issue gets very off these stumbles.
Speaker 10: He his dad had Parkinson's, and I.
Speaker 11: Had kind of wondered is maybe he had Parkinson's as
they did. I never did personally talk to the cardiologists,
but I did talk to his physicians assistant, and because
Amanda and I went with Amanda to go look at
a wedding venue and so we lived before the actual
cardiologist came in.
Speaker 14: But they found that he had a leaking a worry
about and a leaking tra.
Speaker 11: Cusband about, and they wanted him to go back to
the cardiologist on Friday. He got out of late Wednesday,
and wanted him to go back to the cardiologist on
Friday to.
Speaker 15: Be hooked up to a heart monitor.
Speaker 11: Or length for time to see you know, what all
was going on wrong with.
Speaker 6: His heart, and he.
Speaker 16: Refused to go.
Speaker 1: Of course, this beg the question did Scott have a spell,
stumble and fall into the fire pit? According to Melody,
Gary loved burning fires, but she did not and for
good reason.
Speaker 4: Well, Tuesday.
Speaker 15: He started to be burned.
Speaker 11: Late Tuesday started to be burned this week, yes, and gosh,
where all the time about him.
Speaker 10: He had set the house on fire two years ago,
the end.
Speaker 6: Of the end of the August.
Speaker 11: And I got so scared of the fire after that
he had shot it in his office.
Speaker 4: We think what he did.
Speaker 6: Wasn't get a nice training. May I don't know, you
know that's what started starting nice guy.
Speaker 12: We're here.
Speaker 10: Ind so much damage and so since then, I think
it's so just scared of fire around here. Just ways
Gary that he is all the time he has the thing.
Speaker 6: It was starting fires.
Speaker 10: He set one in my other house in the woods
behind my house.
Speaker 6: We would do the sub division.
Speaker 11: We had called from the neighbor when the morning it
so o'clock in the morning and our.
Speaker 6: Department was there. He had started it like the week before,
and it.
Speaker 5: Had been smoldered and had gotten out of control.
Speaker 1: Sounds like Gary might have been a little bit of
a pyromaniac, not saying he actually was. I mean, that's
a real mental disorder, and it's not the same thing
as being an arsonist. Pyromania is an impulse controlled disorder.
A person feels drawn to setting fires, fascinated by them,
and sometimes even relieved by them, like a coping mechanism.
A vice the way some people reach for alcohol or cigarettes.
It's man and honestly, Gary had reasons to need advice.
It was a high powered attorney with health issues and
a big family. You didn't get out much, wasn't a
partier and mostly kept to himself. His family described him
as a social introvert, and he didn't really drink so
pyromaniac maybe, or maybe Melody's fire incidents were just isolated moments,
nothing more either way. His real daily habit wasn't liquor.
It was a twelve pack of mountain dew. Yeah, twelve.
He drank twelve mountain dews daily. That's got to be
worse than alcohol.
Speaker 9: Right, So he you know, and.
Speaker 10: Maybe six months or so since your mind it before.
Speaker 4: The spurn ball here, Yeah.
Speaker 10: Means it has been saying it had.
Speaker 5: We had pulled up when we did the fire put
down here, We had an excavator here, and then he
pulled up the minch tree stops and that kind of
stuff and put on the burn pile.
Speaker 10: So I had a lot of fixing and.
Speaker 5: Stuff on him, and he said something not long ago.
Speaker 6: But burns, please do not burn it.
Speaker 5: It's too dry, it's too undius to you know, we
always go in.
Speaker 6: These keys don't burn well.
Speaker 7: Scott came home.
Speaker 15: I don't know what time it was when he got hit.
Speaker 11: Because I called him and I I was chasing horses.
Speaker 1: Gary had started the burn pile on Tuesday, the evening
of July third. He forgot to close the gate and
the horses got out. Melody remembered chasing the horses and
calling for her son, Scott to help. She was worried
about the fire getting out of control because it was
going to burn for a long time. The next day,
she says, Scott came up to the house for a
credit card and remarked that the fire was still going.
Right before Melody left the property, she saw Gary gathering
up even more wood to put on the fire. She
begged him not to make it any bigger, but he
didn't listen. Not only was Melody worried about the fire
and the property, she was also worried about his mental health.
According to her, he had tried to commit suicide twice
before they were married. Keep in mind they had been
married for thirty eight years, but still he had a
family history of all kinds of mental and physical problems.
Melody didn't just say. Gary was struggling. She told investigators
his whole family tree was steeped in mental and physical problems,
his sister with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, in and
out of psych hospitals, his mother on antidepressants and antipsychotic meds,
eventually being placed in a memory care facility with what
she calls really bad Alzheimer sir dementia, and his father,
who had mental illnesses of his own, later dying from
Parkinson's disease. Melody claimed Gary would say things like I
think I'm getting like my parents, yet they shrugged as
a couple through the good and bad times.
Speaker 6: And then somebody asked me, said, why do you say.
Speaker 1: Unless in her mind she wasn't the unhappy wife looking
for a way out. She was the one holding the
line while everything around them got harder to manage. The
more Melody spoke to officers, the more what she had
to say seemed like low key versions of Yellowstone, not
with the shootouts and land wars, but in the way
she painted the whole family as locked in constant drama.
Everything revolved around Big Daddy in the farm, growing kids,
coming and going, relying on handouts from a weary patriarch.
Then there was the constant tug of war between who's helping,
who's taking, and who's just tired of the whole thing.
You might have had some conversations in your family that
sound pretty similar.
Speaker 12: I told one of the.
Speaker 10: Other debuties that was here.
Speaker 5: I said, we've been having trouble with him taking.
Speaker 12: Money, read over nine hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 6: He's got to check in to him routing them.
Speaker 10: And I said, Gary refuses to talk to him, refuses
to I said, he sends emails and text messages and
that's all he does.
Speaker 1: She went on to allege that her oldest son, Chris,
was unkind, bordering on abusive to his kids, who often
stayed at the farm.
Speaker 3: And I agree, is I'm going to stop you from
taking money in some way, somehow, some mean.
Speaker 17: You've got to get help.
Speaker 10: You cannot treat them two girls like this, You cannot
treat in the inna.
Speaker 4: And you know, I said, I they you know, get help.
Speaker 1: Melody talked about all the expensive trips her son planned
a bachelor party in Panama, a trip out west because
friend's dad died, and he had another leisure trip he
was planning before all this happened, but Chris wasn't the
only one taking advantage of Gary. According to Melody, Gary
was just like, you know.
Speaker 5: It's not like I can't you know he can say, well,
I can't afford to do and said Gary does not
at the point, I mean this spot that lives witheth,
I larn.
Speaker 12: He hasn't marked since he came back from Iraq for
a very short time.
Speaker 10: And I can't make it Mark, I can't make it
an Gary in the yearly thirty.
Speaker 5: Five Saturday, and as Garry he needs to work.
Speaker 3: He said, well you don't work, Gary.
Speaker 4: We imagine this place is a whole time job, full
time job.
Speaker 18: I mean it is.
Speaker 6: You know, it's Scott. I mean adult in Scott is
good hail. But I mean like this last week.
Speaker 5: I mean he's played golf three days, He's gone to
the lake stone on the.
Speaker 10: He is just like, come home, man.
Speaker 19: This is.
Speaker 6: So he's just enjoying life. He's enjoying life to.
Speaker 1: The bullst Melody gave details of a family under strain,
a big property, lots of animals and not enough help.
But she said she was working son up to sundown
while her son Scott drifted in and out instead of
helping consistently, and Gary's health was getting worse. All of
the grown children were mooching off their generous dad, and
Melody was trying to rein it all in and hold
it all together while Gary was trying to keep the peace.
In a setup like that, it isn't hard to imagine
his heart finally giving out, or him having one of
his spells at the wrong time near an open fire.
And for a little while, that's exactly what this looked like.
A tragic accident on a hobby farm with a burned
body where a husband and father used to be. But
when what's left of Gary was finally boxed up and
sent to the medical examiner, detectives started digging into the
burn itself and the digital trail it left behind. What
they found in the ashes and in the timeline didn't
fit the idea that this was just an accident. Soon
the family would dissolve into bickering and finger pointing and
blaming each other for Big Daddy's death. In Cherokee County, Georgia,
Melody and Gary Ferris have spent the last five years
of their lives on a ten acre hobby farm. Melody's dreamscape.
Gary worked hard as an attorney, and Melody worked on
the farm and managed the family four grown children with
children of their own, including Scott, who lived on the property.
The last time Melody saw her husband was on Tuesday
evening July third, after he'd set a bonfire or burn pile.
Melody said he came upstairs that evening asked if she
was making dinner, and she pointed him to the food
in the fridge. After that, he went back down to
the basement bedroom, where he slept alone with a seapap
on July fourth. Both Melody and Scott said they never
laid eyes on Gary, and Melody told investigators this wasn't unusual.
He kept to himself even on July fourth. It wasn't
until the next morning on fifth, that two of his
grandkids wanted to ride the RTV with Big Daddy, but
couldn't find them. Their daughter Amanda was already there. Their
oldest son, Chris, showed up soon after, and the adults
started searching the house and the property. Scott walked down
to the burn pile, looked into the ashes and saw
a part of Dad's skull, so he called nine one
one while detectives and medical examiners were sifting through the bones,
and the days that followed, detectives continued processing the situation
with the family. This is Chris.
Speaker 20: What I want to think is he just had one
of his spells and something happened, had a heart attack
and fell in there.
Speaker 6: Just I don't know, man, something seems something seems weird.
Speaker 18: Well, I will tell you what we do is we
handle try to handle it as if it's the worst
possible scenario, because.
Speaker 21: Obviously, if you approach it like that, then when it
turns out to me that he had a heart attack
in film the fire, you've done everything you could.
Speaker 18: Yes, what we do is we investigate something like this.
We followed the evidence, and we gather evidence and we
try to get to.
Speaker 21: The evidence is going to lead us to some sort
of complaire in terms of what happened. So you know,
he will go your father's remains will go to an autopsy.
Speaker 18: So that is you know, essentially the next step we're
going to you know, be documenting outside the inside of
the house. That's why it's secured because because this is
the house, it's not far from the house. You have
to you know, look at everything and make sure we're
not missing anything, and do a good job of documenting
so that nobody can come and say, you know, if
it does turn out that he did fall in the fire,
nobody can and he just had a heart attack, nobody
can say we didn't do a good job and we
missed the fact.
Speaker 21: That someone did something bad to him. I just want
to know what happened to what we're gonna look at.
Speaker 6: I hope to God that it's just an accident.
Speaker 18: I just I understand, but we'll do everything we can
to get all meats or something, because you know, we
all loved him very.
Speaker 1: Much, but someone obviously did not love Gary very much,
because what the autopsy revealed after putting all of Gary's
burned pieces back together was a bullet lodged in his
rib cage. Unless it was suicide. But if that were
the case, then why would you be hearing this story
on Sword and Scale. Once the medical examiner confirmed he'd
been shot, detectives took that news back to the family.
One of the first calls was to their son Chris.
Speaker 19: Well, I'm gonna tell you something, and I just want
to make sure you're ready, and then I'm at I
just want you to tell me what to think when
I say it, Okay, okay, the evidence we have obtained
and on the scene.
Speaker 21: Suggest to us that your father was shot.
Speaker 10: Wow.
Speaker 22: Wow, that's a lot oh man for shure, and.
Speaker 21: There are some other people that are aware.
Speaker 22: I can't believe it, man, I know what I.
Speaker 9: Told you.
Speaker 23: I suspect you, but I just wanted not to.
Speaker 20: Be everything in my soul's.
Speaker 21: Not right with it.
Speaker 9: That would be accurate.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: When the medical examiner opens the bags from the burn pit,
there's no body in the usual sense. Gary has been
reduced to charred pieces of bone and scraps of tissue,
divided into almost fifty bags labeled by quadrant. Gary was
six foot five inches and more than three hundred pounds.
The bones are blackened, brittle, and cracked from heat, with
fragments of pelvis, leg bones, and skull mixed in with
the ash. The soft tissue left is moldy and wet
after sitting in its own liquid collected in the bottom
of the backs. The only way to be sure it's
Gary is by matching the teeth to all his dental records,
and there's no guarantee that this bullet killed him. Investigators
quickly rule out an intruder. There's no broken glass, no
kicked in door, no drawers pulled out or valuables missing.
This isn't a burglary gone bad. It's a dead man
on his own land at a house that sits by
itself at the end of a gravel road. Whoever did
this was extremely close to Gary.
Speaker 19: So like the night of the third and the day
of the fourth, you were just never even in Cherokee County, Okay.
Can you if I asked you if there's anyone who
would want to hurt your dad, what would you say?
Speaker 23: Would Scott ever want to hurt your dad? Did they
get along pretty well?
Speaker 17: Yeah?
Speaker 20: I mean, you know they lived in the same place
and they bickered back.
Speaker 9: And forth on the time, of course. But you know,
let's be honest, like Scott has a pretty good life.
Speaker 23: He's got his apartment, he's got I mean, my dad
does a lot for him. And who would stand to
gain it? Who would stand to gain anything of something happened.
Speaker 2: To your dad?
Speaker 9: Honestly, I mean.
Speaker 15: As far as.
Speaker 23: Money goes, far as anything, probably money wise, I don't know.
Speaker 1: While the kids are still clinging to the hope that
this might somehow be a horrible accident. Investigators sent Melody
back down and tell her what the medical examiner has
actually found.
Speaker 15: They've been sifted through the remains in the axes, and
they have found a projectile in some bones.
Speaker 6: Does not occur to be self inflicted, okay.
Speaker 24: Some of them, I mean.
Speaker 17: What kind or what?
Speaker 1: The circle was already pretty small Gary, his wife, and
his grown kids who came and went, but it was
growing even smaller. You know how it all comes down
to motive and opportunity. The motive seems simple money there
you go. Once you rule out a stranger, what you're
left with is the ugliest kind of murder. Someone inside
the family did it, and the rest of them were
trying to decide how much they really want to say
out loud. The only two family members who were at
or around the property at the time of Gary's murder
were Melody and Scott. Once detectives found the projectile in
Gary's remains, the search was on for the gun that
fired it. On ten acre farms and rural Georgia, guns
are pretty much part of the landscape. There are long guns,
but twenty two and according to Scott, about two weeks
before Gary's death, he saw a small pistol in the
basement close to where Gary slept when he was looking
for a remote because AT and T was there at
the house trying to repair the internet.
Speaker 9: That's what when I found on that thirty eight special.
That's not where the hell did that come from? And
the only reason why I didn't continue.
Speaker 22: To, you know, to ask him about it and everything
was I have to at and T and I didn't
want to pull the nuncker out and you know, start
the crap out of him.
Speaker 9: I shut the drawer back and I was like, you
playing on asking My mom and dad were coming from it.
Speaker 22: It just slipped my mind, and it was sitting right
there in Yeah, it was like this level leather, crappy
looking pulster and you know, I just you know, I
saw it and just kind of pulled it out and
he told it's just a thirty eight special.
Speaker 9: Small. Did it look I don't know how to.
Speaker 17: Say this.
Speaker 9: Old her black more modern revolver? It did did not
look brand new. It looked like an age on it.
Speaker 1: Now there's a pattern investigators can't ignore. Two weeks before
Gary's death, Scott sees a thirty eight in a drawer
in a basement bedroom. After Gary disappears, that gun is
gone in the basement room. They later find a second
bullet on the floor. When the lab compares that round
to the one taken from Gary's ribs, they say both
bullets were fired from the same gun. One shot in
the house, one shot that ends up lodged in Gary's bones,
and the gun that ties them both together used to
sit in a drawer beside his bed and it's not
there anymore.
Speaker 13: Huh.
Speaker 1: At this point, detectives know two things for sure. Gary
was shot and whoever pulled the trigger was close enough
to know. They're way around the house. The pool of
suspects is basically just the people who live on that
land and move through that basement, So they don't just
look for bullets and phones. They listen to how the
family talks about each other, and when they ask Melody
about Scott, she doesn't describe a calm, steady son.
Speaker 15: Does he have any PTSD or anything from.
Speaker 14: He's always been very hot headed, ever since he was
a little boy.
Speaker 6: I mean, you look going that, I.
Speaker 14: Mean anyway nine to one when he was born, and
he was just handful.
Speaker 15: You're not protecting in of your sons that you know of,
and we're not gonna find any evidence to prove otherwise.
Speaker 6: Can you shed any light on any of this? Yeah,
I mean I would like to. I don't know. I
don't know. I mean, like I said, Scott is very
hot tempered. I mean, and he and Gary I.
Speaker 24: Have seen them get into the point that I was
just like, okay, y'all just.
Speaker 4: Take it down a notch.
Speaker 15: I mean, I'd really like to believe that it's Scott
shot on your property or inside your house, and then
the body was the stones.
Speaker 2: Over in your firepit.
Speaker 15: You wouldn't probably know about it or find some evidence
of it yourself or help clean up or Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, like I said, I wouldn't know.
Speaker 1: You were there.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I was, but I left and I
just saw it smoldering.
Speaker 4: The thing is in Okay, it's not blazing, it's not whatever.
Speaker 6: We're good, you know, don't they?
Speaker 18: You know.
Speaker 9: That.
Speaker 14: I kept thinking last night, why did's God coming here
and get so angry.
Speaker 6: Last night?
Speaker 10: But that's not all that unusual either for him to
just blow.
Speaker 1: Up s God insists he's not a hot head. He
admits he gets angry like anyone, and he admits loud
bangs still make him jump, but he pushes bat on
the idea that he's some kind of ticking bomb.
Speaker 22: My version of PTSD is if I hear allow bang
or something, then I'm just not prepared for my Drilline
just goes through the roof my heart about pounding it
at my chest, and I've learned to start taking deep
breaths and calms me down. But gunfire doesn't bother me.
I can still be around that, and nightmares have ended,
and they ended a long time ago. Other than that, no,
I don't get violent with anybody.
Speaker 9: I'm just like my dad, who you know, I make
friends everywhere I go.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, Scott and his dad were really likable
guys who made friends everywhere they went, and they got
along well together. When his dad wasn't able to keep
up with the farm anymore, Scott was a huge help.
It was more Gary and Melody who didn't get along
so well. And Melody had her own habit of making
friends wherever she went. If you didn't know what I mean,
what I mean is that Melody didn't just collect friends.
She collected other women's partners, starting with a guy named
Ted who'd spent more than twenty years as the boyfriend
of Gary's sister. So yeah, Melody's brother in law. Melody
was fucking her brother in law. The truth is that
Melody and Scott had been together for decades until something
pulled them apart, and that's something the family would later
say was melody. This was Chris's take on it.
Speaker 20: You know, my parents don't get along, they don't honestly
don't really like each other, and so the communication with clog.
Speaker 21: They do not like each other. This has been going,
It's nothing new.
Speaker 20: My grandmother about series of three months, my grandmother had
open heart surgery that went really wrong. She survived, but
it put her intability. At around a month or two
after that, my ex wife told me she was leaving me. Then,
through that whole situation, my mother had to be in
Alabama because my mom's my grandmother's house because she could
no longer function on her own, so my mom had
to go up there and get her house, deal with
the affairs.
Speaker 1: This was a bit of a double entent. Melanie had
to deal with the affairs of grandma and her house,
but also had her own affairs.
Speaker 6: So during that period my mom started.
Speaker 20: The affairs affairs started withdrawing a lot of money out
of my father's account. I remember him calling me and say,
your mother just took fifty thousand dollars out of my
account that I had set aside to pay taxes with.
Speaker 6: So I'm scrambling with that. What I'm gonna do? She
spent a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Everybody was spending oh, big Daddy's hard earned money, and
nobody seemed to be bringing in any of their own.
According to Melody, Scott was constantly taking the debit card
for cash, but Scott would say his dad knew about
every penny and it was considered compensation for helping on
the farm. Melody would say that Chris was abusive to
his kids and constantly took vacations at the expense of
Gary big Daddy, but Chris would answer that his dad
didn't have a problem with it.
Speaker 2: In fact, he was going to go with.
Speaker 1: Chris on vacation shortly before he died, and Melody wasn't
happy about it.
Speaker 5: The last thing that Chris had done was booked a
vacation to the beach that they're supposed to be leaving
saturday this Saturday, and Gary had said, I'm going to.
Speaker 4: Go with you instad just taking the money like what.
Speaker 2: He usually does.
Speaker 25: I will go with him.
Speaker 4: And he said, are you going to go?
Speaker 3: And I said, no, I'm not going this very few
keys taking. I mean this serious money.
Speaker 17: I mean it's like.
Speaker 10: Serious money.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I said, it's anywhere.
Speaker 5: From eight nine hundred dollars worth, plus the girls.
Speaker 1: Airline tickets to hear Melody tell it, even plane tickets
for her granddaughters were one more example of everyone spending
Gary's money. But the truth was that trips with the
kids weren't exactly what had nearly blown this marriage up
years earlier.
Speaker 6: I mean I told him he needed to find somebody else,
you know, because.
Speaker 20: She talks so bad about him to everyone to make
him out to be such an offer person. And now,
granted she does that to a lot of people too,
my mother has issues. Basically, he's in a tough situation.
He didn't want to break the whole family up. You're
a very conservative, traditional person, you know, and I don't
know the ins and Allison, when you're a kid, you
don't want to hear that kind of stuff about your parents,
no matter how old you are. But there was definitely
a lot of a lot of problems, A lot of issues.
Speaker 6: And a lot of problems.
Speaker 21: Okay, have you ever known there to be any domestic
violence or anything?
Speaker 18: Is there any substance abuse going on, any anything other
than her cheating and money issues.
Speaker 21: Do you know any names of anyone she had an
affair with or you just know she had.
Speaker 20: Fed and then some guy named Rusty. I think it's
nice names Barton, and I don't know that that was
an affair that actually happened. That's just something we suspected
because she would tell my daughters things, big day is
just said and down. Then she would have badmouth then,
but she'd be on the she would have like always
on her phone, always talking to somebody, ends up getting
a tattooed right here that says XO. And my daughter said,
well that's who when she calls people, that's it's his
XO XO on her phone and the and like my brother,
so many days he's like, yeah, she's had a whole
nother cellphone.
Speaker 1: According to Chris, Gary tried his best to avoid divorce
for a while. They even moved away and tried to
hit the reset button. When that didn't work, Gary bought
Melody's dream phone, where he ultimately died.
Speaker 20: He thought buying this would to fix everything. He did
for a while, and then things started happening again. So
it's been an on and off thing.
Speaker 21: And then has anybody ever actually filed for a divorce?
Speaker 6: You know, I think my dad filed me.
Speaker 20: He withdrew it, okay, because I remember him calling me
and telling him he was gonna take her back, and
I told him, you know, I mean, I told him.
Speaker 2: Not to buy this place because it's not going to
fix it.
Speaker 6: I mean, I told him he needed to find somebody else.
Speaker 1: Scott backed up chris statements about his parents' marriage in
a separate interview.
Speaker 9: Why do you think they'd reconcile when the never divorced?
Why don't you think your dad it's all too My
dad loved her.
Speaker 22: He didn't like conflict, he didn't like to argue. He
you know, he always tried to find the easiest way
out of.
Speaker 6: Any kind of conflict.
Speaker 9: And that's part why need I knew he loved loved her.
He was the one. I mean, I think at one
point he said something to either Chris or somebody. I
just heard that he tried to get her to go
to the marriage counseling, and she wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: By the time detectives were done listening to everyone, Melody,
the two sons, and the two daughters, Emily and Amanda,
they'd heard every angle on this family, the affairs, the money,
the move, the dream farm get bought to try to
hold it all together. Emily and Chris were pretty clear
they think their mother is capable of this. Amanda, the youngest,
was still defending Melody while planning her wedding with her.
Scott also thought his mother might be capable of it,
but he was a person of interest too. He was
the son who lived on the farm and stood to
game the property if Gary were to be gone. None
of this told them who actually pulled the trigger. Though
on paper it looked bad for Melody, but Scott, with
his temper, his time on the farm, and his proximity
to the missing gun, still seemed like the most dangerous
wild card. So detectives stopped asking about feelings and went
back to the three days that mattered most July, third, fourth,
and fifth, to see what evidence said about who was
there when Gary died. At first, the family wanted to
believe this was an accident. Gary had one of his
dizzy spells, maybe a heart attack, and fell into the fire.
Poof burned quickly and gone just like that. But finding
the bullet immediately rules that out. And the body burning
quickly in the fire, well, that's just not how it works.
Speaker 2: Kids.
Speaker 18: Bodies don't burn like that. You don't burn on bodies.
He's just don't throw them on a burn pile. That's unusual.
Speaker 4: The amount of effort needed to burn a body of significant.
Speaker 3: I mean that was just I know that he burned one.
Speaker 18: Okay, I'm telling you, bodies just don't burn and fires
or they just don't go away. Water incinerators are designed
to burn for a very long time in an exceedingly
high heat that has not reached a regular bonfire.
Speaker 4: That's not reaching a brushfire, it's barely reaching. It's not
even really reaching.
Speaker 2: A house fire.
Speaker 18: House fires were houses collapse on people. We still find
more of those people than we did of your husband.
Speaker 5: Okay, then how did you.
Speaker 4: Learn it was outside your duderom window.
Speaker 2: I was hoping maybe you get said.
Speaker 26: Somewhere on that Yeah, all I saw this of you know,
I'd never went down there, but someone did, because someone
would have needed to make sure the body itself kept
burning until the job was done, and Melody was on
the property all day long.
Speaker 1: On July fourth, the fifth is when they all went
searching for Gary and found what Melody claimed to be
a goat.
Speaker 14: I mean when we were all down there the other day,
I mean everybody, Me and Man and Scott and Chris,
even you know, Patison and Camera and I think we
were all circling around Scott actually when when we were
discussing that by the goade, I said, do we have
a goat to die?
Speaker 6: Did you put one on the burn?
Speaker 17: How?
Speaker 6: And you did your daddy put one on? You know whatever?
Speaker 5: Because all I saw was two legs what I thought
was two legs digging up.
Speaker 1: Melody wasn't just playing along, so that fire it.
Speaker 4: Had to be tendency for a while.
Speaker 10: I just told you, I see, you got to keep
in all.
Speaker 2: Someone had to go back.
Speaker 21: Repeatedly and do what did keep it burning?
Speaker 15: I did not do it.
Speaker 17: I did not do that.
Speaker 14: I mean when not changing that fire was massive. It
was massive, and he had a bunch of Like I said,
there was fencing and boards and.
Speaker 18: All kinds of wolfully insufficient for the type of heat
and the amount of the burn and everything else about it.
Speaker 1: Woefully insufficient, woefully insufficient. It sounds like feedback on a
failed science project. But what he's really saying is her
version wouldn't come close to doing this. A fire like
the one she describes doesn't erase a three hundred pound man.
Someone had to stay with it and continue feeding the fire.
Speaker 4: That's all on it.
Speaker 19: That is all on it.
Speaker 6: That's all I know that was on it.
Speaker 4: An here, she can't tell me about the blood in that.
Speaker 17: Well?
Speaker 4: Can you tell me about the blood he found?
Speaker 10: I don't.
Speaker 6: I didn't know that it was any I mean, how
much lore we go?
Speaker 4: We found blood? Do you know anything about the blood?
I didn't know anything about the blood.
Speaker 18: Nothing, And the entire time you were there because this
is where and see if this makes sense to you,
and I'll let you try to explain how this could happen.
Speaker 4: Something happened to him?
Speaker 2: How did he die?
Speaker 6: I didn't move.
Speaker 4: You were told, you were told how he died. Weren't
you what happened?
Speaker 3: Well, we just assumed when Scott said this, this is
human remains on this fire.
Speaker 1: But you know what they say about assumptions, right, it's
an old Benny hill joke.
Speaker 21: Have you been told how he how he died?
Speaker 2: What we found?
Speaker 5: He told me that there was a.
Speaker 10: Shot or whatever slow in the rim?
Speaker 4: Okay, so what does that indicate to you?
Speaker 19: The gunshot?
Speaker 2: Woand okay?
Speaker 3: I mean it's like I mean, I told Amanda lest
I mean, we told Colon last night here.
Speaker 5: And that's when I found out that it was when
we came here.
Speaker 6: And it was like, how do you hear of your
hand around this? I mean, I'm thinking he just got.
Speaker 9: Caught of the fire.
Speaker 4: That's what we have is gunshot wound.
Speaker 21: Turned on body.
Speaker 4: On which took a long period of time. And you
were the only person in the house. So that's why
I was hoping.
Speaker 18: I know, you keep saying you didn't you don't know
anything and you didn't do it, and you keep saying that,
But the problem is is there's almost no way in
this world that you didn't see something, hear something, or
know something, and someone is shot.
Speaker 25: Moved and burned and burned and burned and burned thirty
feet from your bedroom window.
Speaker 1: Of course, Melody knew how he died. It was absurd
for her to sit there and claim she didn't or
she forgot or whatever. But this wasn't the detective's first
radio in Cherokee County, Georgia, and Melody's role in Gary's
death was becoming more and more suspicious or sus as
the kids say.
Speaker 4: These days, I don't know anything. Does not make sense.
It doesn't jib, it doesn't match the evidence, and it
just doesn't work.
Speaker 3: I don't know the count I mean, I know who
not sel you.
Speaker 4: You realize though this makes no sense?
Speaker 18: I did you realize that I have had hundreds of
conversations with people that have lost loved ones, people who
have had loved ones shot and we didn't know who
did it, people that have had loved ones who they
have done something bad to. I have had these conversations
with people on both ends of both sides of the spectrum.
Speaker 4: I've had the countless ones. People tend to act certain ways,
whether they want to or not.
Speaker 10: But honestly, hearing you don't know.
Speaker 7: And the problem is is that just doesn't fit. It's
absolutely impossible that you don't know. I'm not saying I'm
saying it is averity evidence we have. It is absolutely impossible.
Speaker 1: By now, detectives had made it clear her I don't
know act doesn't match what they're seeing. A body burned
to fragments, bullets in the bones, blood inside the house,
a fire that, in their words, would be woefully insufficient
unless somebody kept coming back to feed it. They've pointed
these things out to Melody, but she doesn't know yet
that they've tret Gary's cell phone moving back and forth
between the house and the burn pile on the very
day Melody said she never saw him. To add to this,
Scott says he searched for his dad's wallet the day
they found the body. He always kept it on him
or in his room, never in the car. Scott searched
the car twice over and found nothing. Yet later that
day it was in Melody's hands. When he asked her
where she found it. She said the car detectives were
onto melodies lies, so they changed tact. At this point,
if she won't talk about the night he died, maybe
she'll say more than she means to about how she
really felt about him.
Speaker 4: Didn't anybody know I like him?
Speaker 17: I like him.
Speaker 2: I loved him really like.
Speaker 14: I mean, That's what I've always said.
Speaker 1: I love him.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about him?
Speaker 17: Oh?
Speaker 9: I love him?
Speaker 14: Today?
Speaker 10: I don't NeSSI really liked you.
Speaker 11: I did not like the person that he had to come.
Speaker 1: Did you catch at she said she loved him to death?
Huh figure a speech. During the investigation, Chris and Scott
both found themselves going back over the little things they'd
brushed off at the time, The meals she made for Gary,
the way he'd get sick afterwards, the spells everyone talked
about and nobody really named. They started to ask themselves
not did she really love him to death? But was
death the version of him that she preferred.
Speaker 6: My daughter when she landed, called my mother and asked,
can we have that?
Speaker 20: Remember the sleepover? Can we have a sleepover? They wanted
to do it the third and she said tonight would
not be a good night. That's what I know for
a fact. Other than that, other facts, I'll tell you
what else I know, And I don't know. When I
was in when my dad was in the hospital was April.
I came in there, you know, I walk in and
I was like, what's the deal with my dad? He's like, oh,
I'm okay, I'm okay.
Speaker 17: I'm like, no, you're not okay.
Speaker 2: What's the deal?
Speaker 6: He said, Well, you know, I'll just keep having these spells,
and I was like, well, what's going on?
Speaker 20: He said, well, your mama says my blood sugar because
she has this test kit blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: And I was like, okay. I go to the doctor
and I say, what's up with this blood sugar?
Speaker 20: She tells me she's like I reme mar thumbs and
your dad is better blood sugar than I do, so
don't say anything.
Speaker 6: Let me finish. So I was like, oh, okay, and
now she could this like number one, can you like
this whole blood sugar thing? Where did that come from?
Speaker 17: You know?
Speaker 6: And why does Melodie Ferris have a blood sugar test kit?
Speaker 3: And how can she?
Speaker 6: And then I asked the doctor that she tells me that.
Speaker 20: So then my dad, I'm sitting there and she goes,
He goes, well, about a week ago, I was sitting
in the theater and your mother comes down and hands
me a tray of freshly.
Speaker 6: Big cookies and he said, I ate them, And he said.
Speaker 20: I probably shouldn't have it because she doesn't even have
the time to even talk to me, and when she
does talk to me, she's yelling at me and screaming
at me.
Speaker 6: But I was like, well, they look good.
Speaker 20: So I ate him and he said, they started burning
my mouth and burning in my throat. And he said,
then I started feeling bad after them. So I called
my sister and I called my best friend and I
told him that, and so I said, and he was
just like, oh, I think she's trying to poison me
or something.
Speaker 6: And just laughing it off.
Speaker 20: And I thought, oh my god, you know, like nah,
I mean, come on, you know, maybe, But he said, well,
then a few weeks before that, she brought home a
pasta dish and the same thing happened.
Speaker 6: I said, So I just went to the doctor and
I said, look, I said, they have a farm.
Speaker 20: They have a lot of stuff going on out there
with pesticides and Everything's like, maybe y'all should have run
a talk psychology thing on him.
Speaker 6: That might not be a bad idea. Just try not
to be like, holy shit, he just told me that
he thinks my mom might trying to poison him.
Speaker 18: You know, I didn't.
Speaker 20: You don't want to just tell the doctor that and
set off something that doesn't need to be set off.
But now thinking back on it, I wish I would
have said something.
Speaker 2: A little bit more.
Speaker 1: One of Melody's final acts of hospitality towards Gary was
caught on tape. It appeared Gary knew that he was
being poisoned, but maybe nobody believed him. This is the
voice of Gary after he's discovered a shattered plate right
outside his bedroom just hours before his disappearance.
Speaker 2: That's what happens when you leave a plate forget to
take it upstairs. A minor temper tantrum. Of course, I
hadn't supper tonight and it was sixed for me, so
I'm sure I'll be feeling poorly here in minutes, but
we'll see.
Speaker 1: When the two brothers were interviewed together for hours, their
memories became clearer and clearer.
Speaker 24: Well within this past year, the fighting between the two
of them just got, you know, worse and worse. And
the comments my mother. My dad never talked said anything
negative to me about my mother except for just like
her going out and spending so much money.
Speaker 2: On stuff like that and all.
Speaker 24: But he never, you know, you know, said anything other than.
Speaker 2: That negative way. But my mother, on the other hand, man.
Speaker 24: I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say,
I can't wait till today.
Speaker 9: I don't have to live with him.
Speaker 2: I wish he would just have a.
Speaker 9: Heart attack and die.
Speaker 6: And yeah, she would definitely.
Speaker 24: Try to turn all of us only to each other.
She has said stuff about him, she has said stuff
about Emily. She's just trying to, you know, basically stir
the pot up with us. She's been doing that ever
since all this happened. She's been trying to get me
to turn against him and my sister Emily. And I
guess she's been, you know, vice versa with Amanda. I mean,
trying to get Amanda turned on all of us. And
and that's not really mean, that's that's kind of crap
my mother would do. I mean, yeah, she loved drawing.
Speaker 20: So it's been always really were and my mom would
treat like strangers and people she recently.
Speaker 6: Knew, or or even like her heads a lot better
than her family.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that Melody couldn't show emotion. It's that every
emotion began and ended with her, And the only thing
she ever seemed to feel for Gary was resentment. Resentment
that he'd seen through her hedonistic version of marriage. She
didn't just want to have her cake and eat it too,
She wanted to eat hers, take his and still complain
that there wasn't enough frosting family.
Speaker 9: Members of you know passed away. She did more upset.
But when I, you know, when I discovered.
Speaker 22: His body, his remains and even with paramedic so she
has those are human remains.
Speaker 9: She had zero emotion, no, no, probably nothing, but yeah,
when Rebel the horse put a couple months after you
find hill, she followed.
Speaker 1: The more the brothers spoke about their mother, the more
they realized they just may have been raised by a sociopath.
On July fifth, twenty eighteen, on the Farris family's ten
acre farm off Purcell Lane in Cherokee County, Georgia, Gary Ferris,
a fifty eight year old Atlanta attorney, is missing. His
truck is there, and his seapop and personal items are inside.
Also inside her blood droplets leading from the kitchen to
Gary's basement room. His wallet ends up in the hands
of Melody, who says she's founded in Gary's car, the
same car Scott had already checked twice. The timeline matters.
Gary's last confirmed day is July third, when he's been
working around a burn pile behind the house. Melody claims
she last saw him that night and never checked on
him the next day. That next day is July fourth,
and Scott isn't on the property, but Melody is, and
by the morning of July fifth, the family searches until
Scott is called to the burn pile and recognizes human remains.
He calls nine one one. At first it looks like
a terrible accident. Then the autopsy destroys that Gary was
shot with a bullet lodged in his remains. Investigators say
a burn pile would have been woefully insufficient to destroy
a body of that size unless someone kept tending it.
Gary's cell phone pings from the house to the burn
pile and back to the house, But investigators know that
Gary has already been shot and set a blaze, So
the case collapses to the people with access and time,
and the spotlight lands where it's been sitting all along
the house, the burn pile, and Melody. Only a few
missing pieces were left in this puzzle. One of these
was the missing pistol that Scott had seen in the
basement before Gary's death. Another one was the question of
how Gary's body was moved from the house to the
burn pile.
Speaker 18: I didn't we found other things in the basement. Things
in the basement that are significant. We know how long
it took to We know lengths of time things took.
Speaker 22: We know that.
Speaker 18: Moving somebody that's three hundred pounds and six four that's
bigger than I am.
Speaker 4: And that is a significant feat.
Speaker 18: We are putting layer on pund layer pun layer on
layer on this picture. And right now, the only thing
you're saying, Compare with me for a second. The only
thing you were saying.
Speaker 4: Is that you don't know anything about anything about anything
that does not And you know what.
Speaker 18: That I will tell you that does not make sense
to me from a very just simply based on the
information that I know.
Speaker 4: That does just simply not make logical sense in any way.
Speaker 1: Shape or form, regardless of how the body was moved
or where the pistol was. This case was prosecutable. Melody
was arrested on June eighteenth, twenty nineteen, nearly one year
after Gary's death. During this time, she continued to have
her affair with Rusty, remember ted the first guy she
had an affair with, the guy who had been her
sister in law's lover for twenty years. Well, Rusty followed
a similar pattern. Melody liked to keep it in the family.
I guess Rusty was the stepson of Melody's cousin, Martha Jane.
Speaker 9: Gross.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this rusty guy, he just came in the picture
when Martha Jane.
Speaker 19: He knew.
Speaker 6: I had some suspicions about it before my sister's.
Speaker 20: Playing, because Emily called me a few months before and said,
Melody shown up in Nashville, this rusty guy driving Daddy's
Mercedes or Daddy's whatever car I don't.
Speaker 6: Remember what car ahead of the time, and just you know,
acting really funny.
Speaker 27: And then she invited him to my sister's wedding in Franklin, Tennessee,
and was dancing with him and acting extremely too friendly.
Speaker 1: Rusty took a while to come forward with crucial information,
but fortunately he had a conscience. What Melody told him
left no doubt and would be used in the trial.
Speaker 2: Also, I wanted to let you know what I told you, Laryer, that.
Speaker 18: I'm putting my name online too, because that's how confident
I am and you and about what you're going to
tell us.
Speaker 4: Okay, that would be an interest us, not the time.
Speaker 2: Or anything about what I think. There was only one conversation,
that is what you're looking forward, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: It was the last conversation, okay, And it would be
safe to say it wasn't much talking after that.
Speaker 2: No, that was the end of the conversation.
Speaker 4: And said, the last time you fucking with her?
Speaker 6: No, no, talk to her.
Speaker 28: I talked to her every still, I talk to her
every day. But again, every day was just every day.
Speaker 2: So when that, let's talk about that conversation.
Speaker 28: That that probably the last minute of the last conversation.
She said, Gary is in the burn pile. No, she said,
he is in the burn pile. And I said what
And she said, he's in the burn pile. And I said,
do not say another word, and do not tell me anything.
Speaker 2: I do not need to know, okay. And that is everything.
If I'm going to give an ounce I'm going to
give a pain. That was all of it. That was
everything that she said that had anything to do with
what happened. That's pretty I mean.
Speaker 4: And I don't you got again, Yeah, I don't know
when happened. And here's the thing. At the time that
that segment was made, you got to remember he wasn't
even reported his missing.
Speaker 1: By the time the trial took place in October of
twenty twenty four, Melody's defense tried to shove the spotlight
back onto Scott. The sun on the property the hothead
with supposed PTSD, the one they argued had access and opportunity.
More importantly, they pulled a statement of Chris saying he
preferred thirty eight caliber ammunition, which they located on his premises.
But that narrative contradicted the very finding that changed everything.
Scott had never owned a thirty eight caliber pistol or revolver.
He had only seen one in the basement. In a twist,
a woman came forward to say her gun matching the
murder weapon, had come up missing in the weeks prior
to Gary's murder. It was Melody's cousin, the stepmother of
Melody's lover, Rusty, and turned out Melody had spent a
few weeks at her house helping to take care of her.
One last question lingered in the minds of the jury.
How did tiny Melody move big Daddy's body. The answer
was a tractor, a tractor with a big bucket attached.
Melody knew how to drive the tractor, and Scott knew
this because he had taught her The tractor was moved
on Tuesday night, and the RTV was moved in the
middle of the night.
Speaker 22: Because the reason why I remember that tractor being theressed
because there was a cat that soon before him was
sitting right there on the on that implement on the
back of the tractor.
Speaker 9: And that's when I walked out and saw the cat
or whatever his house.
Speaker 22: Around, you know, So I knew the tractor was all
the third after that, at.
Speaker 9: Don't until the fifth when you fishedly walked down there
and saw it. Yam where I mean to even to look.
Speaker 22: So the only way I knew that it was down
here because I went leaking for my dad and saw
it was parked there, and that's when I walked down
there and put my hand on the decade.
Speaker 9: It was so worn.
Speaker 1: When detectives cornered Melody on this, all she had were
flimsy excuses in a panicked voice.
Speaker 18: And on that property when you were there, something that
did not happen in the blink of an eye, something
that took time, something that took people, something that took
them moving.
Speaker 4: The tractor was moved from Tuesday night and Gary could
not have done it. The r TV was moved in
the middle of the night, and Gary could not have
done it. Things were done, Things happened. You said you
parked it in one spot and worked up in Now was.
Speaker 10: During the day.
Speaker 4: That was, and that was the next But the the
tractor wasn't. And here's the thing. Even at the end
of the day, we're out too. I just assumed that
Scott can come up.
Speaker 18: And I'm telling you that we can't find evidence to
prove that that is not how it went down, and
that is.
Speaker 4: Not what happened. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 10: I mean I was with a man in jail and.
Speaker 16: Garon okay, but the night of the third the only
person there until eleven thirty, Yes, and then after that you.
Speaker 4: Were still there.
Speaker 18: His body was burned in that fire pit was unquestionable.
You saw it with garon two eyes eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: That fire is still.
Speaker 4: Going, yeah, I mean that time frame. You don't have
came through the woods and was sitting there tending to
this fire for the time that Scott was on that property.
Speaker 3: At that point, at.
Speaker 1: Scott found his father in the burn pile and called
nine one one. Melody watched that and later tried to
make him out to be a murderer. It's one thing
to lie to the police, and it's quite another thing
entirely to hand your own child to the wolves and
call it self defense.
Speaker 2: What a bitch.
Speaker 22: I was like, gloves are off, I mean you threw
your You try to throw your own child over to
the bus. IM straight up blocks in the police and
I fronted her about it. So she's like, I never
said that might is in.
Speaker 9: The place report.
Speaker 1: By the time Melody Ferris's trial wrapped up in late
twenty twenty four, the prosecution had presented a eighteen day case,
calling dozens of witnesses and more than a thousand pieces
of physical, digital, and forensic evidence. On November fourth, twenty
twenty four, a Cherokee County jury found her guilty on
all five charges malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault with
a deadly weapon, concealing the death of another, and making
false statements. The verdict came after several days of deliberation.
Following closing arguments at her sentencing hearing. The next day,
the Superior Court judge sentenced Ferris to life in prison
with the possibility of parole after thirty years. For the
murder conviction and an additional five year term for related
charges to run concurrently. The judge also barred from contact
with certain family members as part of the court order.
The prosecutor read a letter from Gary's daughter Emily as
part of the victim impact statement. She said that since
Gary was taken, their family was living inside a unbearable void.
Not sometimes every day they'd lost the laughter, the warmth,
the steady presence that held them all together, and now
even the happy moments felt contaminated because he wasn't there
to share them. But the worst part wasn't only that
he was gone, but it was who did it.
Speaker 2: The betrayal of.
Speaker 1: Realizing the suffering came from the person who should have
cared for them the most, their own mother. And as
the prosecutor read her words, Chris sat in the background,
breaking down openly, sobbing, wiping tears from his face. Scott
conveyed an expression of hurt so deep it was impossible
to ignore, while Melody just sat there, resolved to finish
what she started one way or another. In the moments
that preceded her statement, she spoke to the judge in
a calm and steady voice, but the second she began reading,
she suddenly and dramatically, uncontrollably became tearful.
Speaker 10: And she wasn't.
Speaker 17: Eighteen six years, five months go to day again. The
worst nightmare that I could have ever imagined. Not only
my world, but my family's world was absolutely destroyed at
the hands of one person.
Speaker 8: I've had six bless years of being told not to talk,
don't say that, take legal advice.
Speaker 5: I could walk out of this courtroom today.
Speaker 4: And drop over dead.
Speaker 8: I want to make sure that my children, my grandchildren,
and Gary's family, and to be honest, at this point
in time, the entire world who his beauty is. I
have waited for years to make this statement to everyone.
Speaker 4: I want the world to know who did this.
Speaker 8: I have always heard that the courtroom is the last
place you're going to get the truth, and has that
ever been proven.
Speaker 4: To be the truth in this case?
Speaker 17: Not only.
Speaker 7: Who did.
Speaker 4: I know Scott killed his father?
Speaker 1: Melody's sentencing statement wasn't the defense. It was a mirror
reflecting exactly who she was all along. Melody wanted her
dream life, the farm, the family, the image, oh and
you know, all the lovers. But it was all powered
by Gary. How inconvenient for her, and the moment that
he stopped fitting the role she needed, she treated him
like an obstacle, just like all narcissists do when confronted
with the consequences. She never once showed empathy, accountability, or
concern for what her children had already lost. She minimized, argued, lied,
and blamed when the case threatened her. She didn't protect
her family. She used them first as cover, then as
human shields. A normal person hearing her daughter's grief and
seeing her son sobbing like this would stop the charade.
They'd realize all the hurt they'd caused, all the people
around them that loved them, that they supposedly loved. It
would be an awakening, ah moment that would define their lives,
suddenly realizing what they had done and accepting the responsibility
and asking for forgiveness. Melody didn't do that put it
that way. Even in the end, with nothing left to win,
She chose the move that hurt her family the most
because protecting herself mattered way more than taking responsibility for
her own actions. Well, hope you enjoyed that. I'd tell
you to go on over to our website or download
our app to get more, but then some asshole will
say I'm begging, So just do whatever the fuck you want.
I really really don't care. Stay safe,