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Murders don't happen every day in Cherokee County. The type of murder that happened in this
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case doesn't happen a lot. But if it were to happen, it would be in this family.
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Was the Farris family a happy family? No. This family was not like every other family. There was a lot of love there,
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but there was also a lot of family drama. Constant infighting, animosity among siblings for money, for their their
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father's money. And I think that that's where the drama always came back to, was who was going
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to get dad's money. The Farris family is made up of Gary Farris, the patriarch, Melody Farris,
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the mother, and then there were four children. The oldest being Chris Farris, then there was Scott Farris, and then
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you have Emily, and then Amanda. Gary Farris was a brilliant commercial real estate attorney. He was very smart.
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He loved his kids. Melody is a very straightforward person who for the last 35 years had been a
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stay-at-home mom. I'm the mother who took care of everything, took care of everybody.
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I was the one that my children called when they needed help. I was always there for them. I never
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told them no. The Farrises lived on the east end of the county. Their property was around 10 acres, very
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nice piece of property. It was obvious that these people were likely affluent. Had a house, a barn.
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We had four horses. We had I don't know how many goats. They lived a life though odd to a lot of
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us. It was normal to them. It has been called the Ferris wheel. And it was, but it was our Ferris wheel.
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It was our life. On 4th of July of 2018, everything changed for this family. It was brought to my attention by my
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sister and my mother that my father was missing. He wasn't the healthiest man. He had
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high blood pressure. He smoked a lot. We were all thinking he might have had a heart attack.
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We decided to start searching the property. I started checking all the pastures.
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We had been out looking for quite some time. We had been over every square inch of that property.
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We couldn't find him. Something's really off here. Scott and I were standing there by the
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burn pile just looking. With this being a working farm, they would pile tree stumps and and rotten
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firewood just kind of like a trash pile and every now and again they'd burn it. My dad did talk about that he was going
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to burn that stuff on that pile. I looked down and immediately I could start seeing bones.
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I squatted down and I'm like, "Those are human remains. I'm calling 911 right now."
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We heard the radio call that those are remains that had just been found in a fire.
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The first thing that stuck out to me was the amount of fire damage done to the body. This guy's been in this fire
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burning for for quite some time. During the excavation of the bones, there's a bullet found lodged in a rib bone.
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This is not an accident. It's a murder. They go through the family members and they're going to look at who had the
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opportunity and anyone who lived on that property would have been in that box. How did he get on the burn pile?
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Who shot him? With what gun? Where? We don't have a single clue. I called it a a soap opera because of
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the old TV show Dallas. You had money. You then you had the who shot J.R. Except it was who shot Gary Ferris?