Episode 352

Sort and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences Listener discretion is advised Geary is in the warm-paw No, he is in the warm-paw And I said what? Are you ready for some murder? Is that a yes? I can't hear you speak up Here we go You On July 5th 2018 in Cherokee County, Georgia a Family goes looking for their missing dad The address is 2555 per cell 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 10 fenced-in 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 or into something worse The Ferris 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 and 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 is big daddy 58-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 CPAP machine The one he 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 draw 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 him 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 allowed dad And here's 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 I said, "Did you suddenly want to go to somewhere or something?" And maybe when dad, you know, because we have several of them And said, "Did you just want to go down there or something?" Because it was just something that just looked like a big ball of just, you know And all I said, "Did you just want to go down there or something?" And he went over there and looked, and I didn't, he said, "Well, no, but that didn't mean that he, you know, didn't want that, he really looked." Scott stepped closer and looked down At first it was just shapes in the ash Chard wood, 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 He called 9-1-1 The skull Scott uncovered was human And when he poked at it, the remains of a face stared up at him This was no goat There was a huge button brush and now there's something to find out that It could be him, I don't know But if anyone would know whether this was a human or animal, it would be Scott Ferris Now I'm calling you to say that I've just, I've read that it looks walking around looking for him And I went with it, the fire still snowed around and I'm next military I was before Jean Rack asked him what found the body for life, and this looks like the body Okay You said your father? Yes sir, I did We just turned three Gary wasn't without health problems, even though most would consider 58 to be relatively young He'd been having what his wife called spells But was refusing to follow through with his doctor visits He's had these spells for years, and he talks He gets very slurred speech, his mental coordination gets very off He stumbles, his dad had Parkinson's and now he kind of wondered if maybe he had Parkinson's I think I did, I never did partially talk to the cardiologist but I did talk to his physician's assistant And because Amanda and I went with Amanda to get a look at a wedding venue And so we live before the actual cardiologist came here, but Then he found that he had a leaking, a worry valve, and a leaking trot husband valve And then wanted him to go back to the cardiologist on Friday That he got out on late Wednesday And went to him to go back to the cardiologist on Friday To be hooked up to a heart monitor Call him Or a length of time to see, you know, what always going wrong with his heart And he refused to go 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 In two years ago, it was on the end of the clock, in the office And I got so scared of the fire After that, he started in his office We think what he did was encourage a nurse to train a nurse up now You know, that's what started a sudden as Scott were here And, you know, we could do it so much damage. And so since then, I think so just to get a fire right in here. Just, please, Gary, that he is all the time, just, he has the thing with starting fires. He said, when in my other house, in the woods, I, in my house, we were going to do the celebration I had called from the neighbor when we were in it, or five in the morning. Our apartment was there. He had started there, like the week before in the hip and shoulder. 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. Pyromaniac 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 weird, man. And honestly, Gary had reasons to need a vice. He was a high-powered attorney with health issues and a big family. He 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, this real daily habit wasn't liquor. It was a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. Yeah, 12. He drank 12 Mountain Dews daily. That's got to be worse in alcohol, right? So, you know, he ran, I don't know, maybe six months or so since he ran it before. This bone ball here? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it had reason. It had fixing it. And we could fold up when we did the fire pit down here. We could have, though. And it excavated here and then he pulled up a bunch of tree stalks. That kind of stuff. But on the bone pile. So, I had a lot of fixing and stuff on it. And he said something not long ago that front is pleased. Do not burn it. It's too dry, it's too roomy. It's too, you know, we always give it excuse. Don't burn it. Now, Scott came home. I don't know what to talk about, but he got here because I called him here in the number three. I was chasing horses. Gary had started the burn pile on Tuesday, the evening of July 3rd. 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 38 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 anti-psychotic meds, eventually being placed in a memory care facility with what she calls really bad Alzheimer's or 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. And as somebody asked me, "Why do you say it?" And I said, "I took it all in." 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. "I told one of the other daddy's that was here, so we're going to have a trouble with him taking money. We owe her $900 a month. He's got to check and he can't rob him. And as he goes, refuses to talk to him. Refuses to say he sends emails and text messages. And it's all what he does." She went on to a ledge that her oldest son, Chris, was unkind, bordering on abusive to his kids, who often stayed at the farm. "Has it, Chris? I'm going to stop and you can take money in some ways, somehow, you've got to get help. You can not treat them to girls like this. You can not treat them again. And I said, "I beg you, you know, get help." Melody talked about all the expensive trips her son planned. A bachelor party in Panama, a trip out west because friends 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. "The Gary was just like, you know, it's not like I can't, you know, he can say, "I can afford to do it." And I said, "Gary does not point. I mean, there's like a spot that lives where I run. He hasn't worked since he came back from my act. He said, "For a very short time. And I can't make him work. I can't make him in a cigarette." I mean, he'd like 35 Saturday and a cigarette. He needs to work. He said, "Well, you don't work. Gary." No, we imagine this place is a full-time job. A full-time job. Take care of you. I mean, it is. You know, it's got, I mean, it's got his good health. But, I mean, like this last week, I mean, he's played golf three days. He's gone to the late. He's gone, and he and he's just like, "Oh, man. This is Scott, the stoneless." So, he's just enjoying life with him. He's enjoying life to the fullest. Melody gave details of a family under strain. A big property, lots of animals, and not enough help. But, she said she was working sun-up to sun-down 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 in sense of 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 daddies, death. In Cherokee County, Georgia, Melody and Gary Ferris have spent the last five years of their lives on a 10-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 3rd, 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 CPAP. On July 4th, both Melody and Scott said they'd never laid eyes on Gary, and Melody told investigators this wasn't unusual. He kept to himself even on July 4th. It wasn't until the next morning July 5th. Fifth, that two of his grandkids wanted to ride the RTV with Big Daddy. But couldn't find him. 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 911. 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. What I want to think is he just had one of his spells, and something happened, had a heart attack and fell in there. Just, I don't know, man, something seems weird to me. Well, I will tell you what we do, is we handle, cry to handle it, as if it's the worst possible scenario, because obviously if you approach it like that, then when it turns out to be that he had a heart attack and fell on the fire, you've done everything you could. That's what we do, is we investigate something like this. We follow the evidence, and we gather evidence, and we try to get to, the evidence is going to lead us to some sort of clues, in terms of what happened. So you know, your father's remains will go to an autopsy. So that is essentially the next step we're going to be documenting outside, the inside of the house. That's why it's secure, because it's not far from the house, we have to 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, if it does turn out that he could fall on the fire, nobody can, and he just had a heart attack, nobody can say, we did do a good job and we missed the fact that someone did something bad, and I just want to know what happened to him. I hope to God that it's just an accident, I just don't understand, but, and we'll do everything we can to get all of you to something like this, because we all look at it very 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 ribcage, unless it was suicide. But if that were the case, then why would you be hearing this story on sword and scale? What's 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. Well, I'm going to tell you something, and I just want to make sure you're ready and then I'm at it. I just want you to tell me what you think when I say it, okay? The evidence we have obtained on the scene suggests us that your father was shot. Well, that's a lot. There are some other people that are aware. I can't believe it, man, I know well, fuck you, Gary, I was just like, I close you, I suspect you. But I just want it, I could be, but everything in my soul is different, I'm not right with this. Whatever you need for me, let me know. 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 50 bags labeled by quadrant. Gary was six foot five inches and more than 300 pounds. The bones are blackened, brittle and cracked from heat, with fragments of pelvis, leg bones and skull mixed in with the ash. This off tissue left is moldy and wet after sitting in its own liquid collected in the bottom of the bags. 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. There's 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. 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 was anyone who would want to hurt your dad, what would you say, would Scott ever want to hurt your dad? No. Did they get along pretty well? Yeah, I mean, they lived in the same place and they'd bickered back and forth all the time. Of course, but you know, let's be honest, like Scott has a pretty good life. He's got his apartment, he's got, I mean, my dad does a lot for him and he loves my dad. Who would stand to gain it? Who would stand to gain anything if something happened to your dad? Honestly, I mean, as far as money goes, as far as anything, probably, probably money wise. I don't know. While the kids are still clinging to the hope that this might somehow be a horrible accident, investigators sit melody back down and tell her what the medical examiner has actually found. 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 around the property at the time of Gary's murder were Melody and Scott. Once detectives found the projectile and Gary's remains. The search was on for the gun that fired it. On 10 acre farms in rural Georgia, guns are pretty much part of the landscape. There are long guns, a 22, 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&T was there at the house trying to repair the internet. When I found that 38 special, I said, "Where in the hell did that come from?" The other reason why I didn't continue to ask them about it and everything, I had AT&T out there. I didn't want to pull the sucker out and stare at the crap out of hell and I shut the drawer bag and all that. That was sitting right there, sitting in a holster. It was like this level leather crappy-looking holster and I just saw it and just pulled it out and you'd tell it's just a 38 special, small dead look, I don't know how I say this. Old, like a more modern revolver. Now there's a pattern, investigators can't ignore. Two weeks before Gary's death, Scott sees a 38 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 and 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. Huh, at this point, detectives know two things for sure. They were 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. But they listen to how the family talks about each other and when they ask melody of about Scott, she doesn't describe a calm, steady sun. Can you shed any light on any of this? No. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like I said, Scott is very hot-tempered. I mean, he and Gary, I have seen them get into the point that I was just like, okay, and he'll just take it down with us. I really like to believe that if Scott shot Gary on your property or inside your house, and then the body was supposed to open your fire pit that you would probably know about it or find some evidence of it yourself, or help clean up or. Yeah. No, like I said, I wouldn't know. You were there. Well, I mean, it was, but I left. I mean, I just saw it smoldering. Okay, it's not blazing, it's not whatever we're doing. I can't think in the last night. Why did Scott come in here and get so angry the last night? But that's not all that unusual either for him to just blow up. Scott insists he's not a hothead. He admits he gets angry, like anyone, and he admits loud bang still makes him jump. But he pushes back on the idea that he's some kind of ticking bomb. My version of PTSD is if I hear a loud bang or something, that I'm just not prepared for my drill and just guessing the roof in the heart not counting that on my chest, and I've learned to start taking deep breaths and call this me down. But gunfire doesn't bother me. I can still be around that. You know, nightmares have been there and there's a long time ago. I mean, I don't get violent with anybody. I'm just like my dad, you know. I make friends everywhere I go. While accounts Scott and his dad were really likeable 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 20 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' take on. You know, my parents don't get along. They don't honestly don't really like each other. And so the communication between them- How long have they not liked each other? This has been going on. This has nothing new. My grandmother, in about a series of three months, my grandmother had open heart surgery. They went really wrong. She survived, but it put her debilitating. At the around a month or two after that, my ex-wife told me she was leaving. Then, through that whole situation, my mother had to be in Alabama. Because my mom's a grandmother's house. Because she had no longer function on her own. So my mom had to go up there and get her house deal with the affairs. This was a bit of a double-on-tundra. Melody had to deal with the affairs of grandma and her house, but also had her own affairs. So during that period, my mom started the affairs. Affairs started withdrawing a lot of money out of my father's account. I remember him calling me and saying, "Your mother just took $50,000 out of my account that I had set aside to pay taxes with. So I'm scrambling to find out what I'm going to do." She spent a lot of money. Everybody was spending whole 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. In fact, he was going to go with Chris on vacation shortly before he died. And Melody wasn't happy about it. The last thing that Chris had done was book a vacation to the beach that they're supposed to be living Saturday. I think it's Saturday. And Gary had said, "I'm going to go with him instead of him just taking the money." Melody usually does, "I'm going to go with him." And he said, "Are you going to go?" And I said, "No, I'm not going." And Gary keeps taking, I mean, his serious money, and I mean, it's not like he's serious, but I mean, I can say it. It's anywhere from $800 or $100 and what. Plus, the girl's airline tickets. To hear Melody tell it, even plain 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. I mean, I told him he needed to find somebody else. You know, because she talks so bad about him to everyone, to make him have to be such an awful 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. He got a very conservative, traditional person. And I don't know all the ins and outs, and 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 problems, a lot of issues, and a lot of problems. Okay, have you ever known there to be any domestic violence or anything? No, no. Is there any substance abuse going on? Anything other than her cheating and money issues? Do you know any names of anyone she had in the fair with? Or do you just know she had it? Ted Wiley. And then some guy named Rusty. I think it's not seems Barton. And I don't know that that was on a fair that actually happened, that's just something we suspect. Because she would tell my daughter's things. You know, a big day, this is that man, and she was like, "Oh, bad mouth." Yeah, bad mouth him, but she'd be on the, she would have like, always on her phone, always talking to somebody. He ends up getting a tattoo right here that says, "X-O-X-O." And my daughter said, "Well, that's who when she calls people, it says, "X-O-X-O," and her phone. And the, like my brother told me today, he's like, "Yeah, she's got a whole 'nother cell phone." 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 form, where he ultimately died. He thought buying this would fix everything. He did for a while, and then things started happening again. So it's been an on and off thing. Because anybody ever actually filed for divorce? I think my dad filed, but he was true. Okay. Because I remember him calling me and telling him he was going to take her back. And I told him, you know, I mean, I told him not to buy this place because it's not going to fix it. Scott backed up Chris' statements about his parents' marriage in a separate interview. Do you know what do you think they'd reconcile a never divorced? Why don't you take your dad and talk to him with him? Well, my dad loved her. He didn't like Tofflin. He didn't like to argue. He always tried to find the easiest way out of any kind of conflict. That's part of why he had to be loved and wanted. He was the one that I think had one point. He said something to the Chris or somebody. I just heard that he tried to get her to get the marriage counseling, and she wouldn't do it. 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 getting married, Gary 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 gain 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, to lie 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! Burn quickly and gone, just like that. But finding the bullet immediately rules that out, and the body, burning quickly in a fire? Well, that's just now how it works, kids. "Foddies don't burn like that. You don't burn on bodies. You just don't throw them on a burn pile. That's unusual." The amount of effort needed to burn a body is significant. "I know that he burned one." "Okay, I'm telling you, bodies just don't burn in fires. They just don't go away." "We're all watering. You can't burn water." Playing incinerators are designed to burn for a very long time, and an exceedingly high heat. It is not a region of regular bonfire. It's not a region of brush fires. It's barely a region. It's like a really region of house fire. House fires were houses that collapse on people. We still find more of those people than we did of your husband. "Okay, then how did you work?" It was outside your bedroom window. It was hoping that you'd get you to some way on it. "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. Melody was on the property all day long on July 4. The fifth is when they all went searching for Gary and found what Melody claimed to be at go. "I mean, when we were all down there the other day, I mean everybody, me and men that Scott and Chris, even Madison and Cameron, I think we were all circling around. Scott actually, when we were discussing that about the goat, I said, "Do we have a goat to die? Did you put one in the wormhole?" "Did your daddy put one on?" "You know, whatever. Because all I saw was two legs. What I thought was two legs, didn't I?" Melody wasn't just playing along. "So that fire had to be tended to you for a while?" "I just told you that you'd got to keep an eye on them." "Someone had to go back repeatedly." "And you were here." "Keep it burning." "I did not give it. I did not give it." "I mean, when I changed my fire with a massive, it was massive. If he had a bed like I said, there was fencing and boards and all kinds of--" "Wolfully insufficient for the type of heat and the amount of the burn and everything else about it. Wolfully 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 300-pound man. Someone had to stay with it and continue feeding the fire. "That's all I know. That's all I know. That's all I know that was on it. I know that--" "You can't tell me about the blood and that. What can you tell me about the blood you found?" "I don't--I didn't know that there was any blood. I mean, how much blood are we talking about?" "We found blood, you know, anything about the blood." "I didn't know that anything about the blood. 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. Something happened to him. How did he lie?" "I can--" "You were told. You were told how he died, weren't you? What happened?" "Well, we can assume that when Scott said, this is human remains of his fire." But you know what they say about assumptions, right? It's an old, Benny Hill joke. "Have you been told how we--how we die, what we found?" "He told me that there was a shot or whatever, a slow--in the rear." "Okay, so what does that indicate to you?" "The gun shot." "Okay." "I mean, it's like--I mean, I told the man to less--I mean, we told her less, not here." And that's when I found out that it was a weak game here. And it was like, "How do you ever enter in this?" "I mean, I'm thinking you just get out of that fire." "Cause what we have is--" "Gun shot wound." "Turned on coffee. All of which took a wrong period of time." "And you were the only person at the house." So that's why I was hoping. 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, moved, and burned, and burned, and burned, and burned 30 feet from your bedroom window. 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 detectives 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 these days. "I don't know anything does not make sense. It doesn't jive. It doesn't match the evidence. And it just doesn't work." "But I don't know the time break. I mean, I know who that's all you." "You realize, though, this makes no sense, right?" "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 too. I have had these conversations with people on both sides of the spectrum. I've had countless ones. People tend to act certain ways whether they want to or not." "In the problem is that it just doesn't fit. It's absolutely impossible that you don't know. I'm not saying I'm saying it is the evidence we have. It is absolutely impossible." 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, and 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 tread 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 on to Melody's 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. Did you catch that? 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? So was it April? I came in there, you know, I walk in and I was like, "What's the deal?" So my dad, he's like, "Oh, I'm okay, I'm okay." Like, "No, you're not okay, what's the deal?" He said, "Well, you know, I just keep having these spells." And I was like, "Oh, what's going on?" He said, "Well, your mom says, my blood sugar, because she has this test kit, blah, blah, blah." And I was like, "Okay, I go to the doctor and I say, "What's up with this blood sugar?" She tells me she's like, "I want marathons, and your dad is better blood sugar than I do." So, don't say anything. 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? You know, and why did this melody fairest have a blood sugar test kit, and then how can she. And then I asked the doctor that, and she tells me that. 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 baked cookies." And he said, "I ate them." And he said, "I probably shouldn't have, because she doesn't even have the time to even talk to me, and we just talked to me. She's yelling at me and screaming at me." But I was like, "Well, they look good. It's I ate them." And he said, "They started burning my mouth and burning my throat." And he said, "Then, I started feeling bad after that." 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, and just laughing it off, and I thought, "Oh, my God." You know, like, "No, 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." And I said, "So, I just went to the doctor, and I said, "Look." I said, "They have a farm. They have a lot of stuff going on out there with pesticides." And I said, "Maybe y'all should run a toxicology thing on him. That might not be a bad idea." Just trying not to be like, "Holy shit, he just told me that he thinks I'm not trying to poison him." You know, I didn't, you don't want to just tell the doctor that and set off something that doesn't need to be set off. But now I think I'm back on it. I wish I would have said something a little bit more. 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. So what happens when you leave a plate, forget to take it upstairs, a minor temper tantrum? I had it separate tonight and it was six for me, so I'm sure I'll be feeling poorly here within minutes, but we'll see. When the two brothers were interviewed together for hours, their memories became clearer and clearer. Within this past year, the fighting between the two of them just got worse and worse. And the comments, my mother, my dad never talked, said anything negative to me about my mother except for her going out and spending so much money on stuff like that. And all that he never said anything other than that negative way. But on my mother, on my other hand, I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, "I can't wait until the day I don't have to live with him. I wish you would just have a heart attack and die." And yeah, she definitely tried to turn all of us to each other. She has said stuff about him. She has said stuff about Emily. I mean, she's just trying to basically start a pod 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, trying to get Amanda turned on all of us. And that's not really me, that's kind of how my mother would do. I mean, she really loved her. She loved drawing. It's been always really weird. My mom would treat her like strangers and people she recently knew or even like her pets a lot better than her family. 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 members have, you know, passed away. She didn't want to upset. When I discovered his body, his remains and even the terror met it. Since yes, as her human remains, she had zero emotion. No, the crime and nothing. But yeah, when Rebel, the worst gets put down. A couple months after we found him, she'd balled her nose out. The more the brothers spoke about their mother, the more they realized. They just may have been raised by a sociopath. On July 5, 2018, on the Ferris family's 10-acre farm off Purcell Lane and Cherokee County, Georgia, Gary Ferris, a 58-year-old Atlanta attorney, is missing. His truck is there, and his CPAP 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 found it and Gary's car. The same car Scott had already checked twice. The timeline matters. Gary's last confirmed day is July 3, 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 4, and Scott isn't on the property, but Melody is. And by the morning of July 5, the family searches until Scott is called to the burn pile and recognizes human remains. He calls 911. 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 ablaze. 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. We found other things in the basement. Other things in the basement that were significant. We know how long it took. We know like some time things took. We know that moving somebody that's 300 pounds and 64, that's bigger than I am. That is a significant feat. We are putting a layer, a pond layer, a pond layer on this picture. And right now the only thing you're saying, you're with me for a second. The only thing you're saying is that you don't know anything about anything about anything. That does not, and you know what? That I will tell you that does not make sense. To me, from a very just simply based on the information that I know. That does just simply not make logical sense in any way, shape or form. Regardless of how the burn pile was moved. The body was moved or where the pistol was. This case was prosecutable. Melody was arrested on June 18th, 2019, 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 in affair with? The guy who had been her sister in law's lover for 20 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, Gross. Yeah, this Rusty guy, he just came in the picture when Martha Jane had happened. I know. I had some reservations about it before my sister's wedding, because Emily called me a few months before and said, Melody's showing up in Nashville with this Rusty guy driving Daddy's Mercedes or Daddy's whatever car, I don't remember what car he had at the time, just, you know, acting really well-funny, and then she invited him to my sister's wedding in Franklin, Tennessee and was dancing with him and acting extremely, too friendly. 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. I'm also, I want to let you know what I told you earlier that I'm putting my name in line too because that's how confident I am and you and about what you're gonna tell us, okay. That would be an interest us, not the time or anything about what. And I think there was only one conversation that is what you're looking for. Okay. Okay. It was the last conversation. Okay. It would be fair, say to say, get what much talking after that. No. No, that was the end of the conversation. Okay. And it's at the last time you've spoken with her. No, no. No, I've talked to her. I've talked to her every day. But again, every day was just every day. So when that conversation, let's talk about that conversation that filled us up. And 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. 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 all of it. That was everything that she said that had anything to do with whatever happened. That's pretty, I mean, and I don't know when happened. And here's the thing. At the time that that statement was made, you got to remember he wouldn't even report it as missing. By the time the trial took place in October of 2024, 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 38 caliber ammunition, which they located on his premises. But that narrative contradicted the very finding that changed everything. Scott had never owned a 38 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 week's 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. The reason why I remember that tractor being there is because there was a cat that I've never seen before, and I'm sitting right there on that implement on the back of the tractor. When detectives cornered Melody on this, all she had were flimsy excuses and a panicked voice, 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 moving, the tractor was moved from Tuesday night and Gary could not have done it. RTV was moved in the middle of the night and Gary could not have done it. Things were done. Things happen. The tractor was moved in the middle of the night and that was during the day. That was, and that was the next, but the tractor wasn't, and here's the thing, even at the end of the day, I just assumed that Scott came to me and I'm telling you that we can't find evidence to prove that that is not how it went down, and that is not how it happened down. I don't know. But the night of the third, the only person there, until 1130, was me? Yes. And then after that, you were still there. His body was burned in that fire pit, just unquestionable you saw when you were in two fires, 1130 that fire was still going. Yeah. That time frame, you don't have, no, nobody's not came through the wood and was sitting there tending to this fire for time. Scott found his father in the burn pile in called 9-1-1, 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 itself defense. What a bitch. I was like, gloves are off. Maybe you threw your, you try to throw your own child over the bus straight up onto the police, and I front-end her about it. So she said I never said that, but it is in the place you're for. By the time Melody Ferris' trial wrapped up in late 2024, the prosecution had presented a 18-day case calling dozens of witnesses and more than 1,000 pieces of physical, digital and forensic evidence. On November 4, 2024, a Cherokee County jury found her guilty on all five charges. Dallas 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 30 years for the murder conviction and an additional five-year term for related charges to run concurrently. The judge also bartered 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. The betrayal of 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. "I've had six flesh years of being told not to talk, don't say that, take legal advice. I couldn't welcome this courtroom today." "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 has viewed this, I have waited for years to make this statement to everyone. I want the world to know who did this. I have always heard that the courtroom is the last place you're going to get the truth, and has that ever been proven to be the truth in this case. Not only did I not do this, but every day I know Scott killed his father." Melody's set and sing statement wasn't a defense, it was a mirror, reflecting exactly who she was all along. Melody wanted her dream life, the farm, the family, the image, and all the lovers. But it was all powered by Gary, how inconvenient for her. In 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, or 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 is 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 caused, all the people around them that loved them, that they supposedly loved. It would be an awakening, a moment that would define their lives, suddenly realizing what they had done, and accepting the responsibility and asking for forgiveness. Reality 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. [Music] 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. [Music]