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