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Tonight on Dateline. My father was larger than life. He was the rock of the family.
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My sister called and said, Daddy's missing. We started searching for him. It clicked in my mind that he was going to burn that burn pile.
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He said he fell in a fire and burned up. I said, there's no way. Melody said that he has what she called spells where he would feel faint.
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They found a bullet lodged in my dad's rib bone. Obviously, the direction of the case changed very quickly.
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Gary had close ties with all the family members relating to money. Chris has taken money. He came in and took checks.
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Gary was a workaholic, and she liked to spend the money. Scott's been making threats against her, saying that he's taking over the estate.
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It's almost like an Agatha Christie story. You've got a confined space, and all those people are warring amongst themselves.
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That's exactly right. I have waited for years to make this statement. I want the world to know who did this.
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A patriarch's body found in a fire, and the smoldering family secrets left behind.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with A Little Patch of Perfect.
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It was the July 4th holiday when the confusion started. The who's where and when's he coming back kind of confusion.
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They had plans, after all. Here at this place, this idyllic symbol of their success.
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A 10-acre estate near Alpharetta, Georgia. a little patch of perfect on the northernmost edge of Atlanta's suburban sprawl.
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This was their lifetime dream come true. And if they had heard that ancient advice,
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that fodder for so many tragedies, would they have listened or plowed on to the fate that waited for them?
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Careful what you wish for. Their name was Ferris, and they hated it when strangers, implying dysfunction,
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called them the Ferris wheel. Still, like spokes on a wheel, they stayed ever connected to this sweet place,
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this hub. The farm is what they called it. That's Chris, the oldest of the four Ferris children,
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and they are his parents, Gary and Melody. Chris's brother Scott, an Iraq war vet, lived in an apartment above the barn,
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and he helped run the place. I would run the farm, and I would take care of the property through the week and all.
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Chris and his two sisters, Emily and Amanda, were like near planets in the farm's orbit,
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and they gathered often for three-generation family dinners, family parties, grandkids coming and going as they pleased,
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running amok among the goats and horses and chickens. Watched by their tiny grandmother, Melody,
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for whom Gary bought the place, really. An old-fashioned family when it came to money.
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Gary was a prominent Atlanta attorney, gregarious, friendly, and big, 6'5", 300 pounds.
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Big Daddy, the family called him. Everybody loved Big Daddy. On July 3rd, 2018, just before things happened, Chris took his daughter Addison to the farm, said hello to Big Daddy and Melody.
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We went up to the barn to look at the animals. The barn is about 300 yards away from the main house.
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And Addison and my mother walked down to the pond to see the new baby ducks. and that was that the next day the fourth Chris was back with Addison dropped her off for a farm
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sleepover with a cousin and the two girls went looking for Big Daddy couldn't find him nor could
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Melody she said she hadn't seen him all that day I mean it was a large property and he would you
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know work on projects and things like that and it wasn't uncommon for my parents to not know where
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they where each other were at certain times but he was still gone the next morning july 5th
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wasn't answering his phone either chris found out from his worried sister amanda who'd arrived at
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the farm that morning and she said you know daddy's missing i mean was that terribly unusual
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that he wouldn't be around no sir um my thoughts were maybe he went to the office but then when i
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found out his car was still there, it raised my worry quite drastically. Chris got in his car, drove to the farm, anxiety building with each passing mile.
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So on the way up, I was frantic. I was calling my other sister, Emily. I was talking with Amanda, just trying to help in the search for him.
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Chris's brother, Scott, was already looking, of course. At that time, I was thinking he had a heart attack somewhere.
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Scott checked the trail camera for signs of Big Daddy. Nothing, he said, but images of a few critters.
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The mood was becoming more and more frantic as Chris arrived. I jumped on that ATV and I drove up to the barn and I searched the barn On the way back I looped back around the house and saw my brother and my mother walking down towards where that burn pile was
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and it clicked in my mind that he had told me on July the 3rd that he was going to burn that burn pile on the 4th of July.
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The burn pile, a common thing on farms like the Ferris's, a place to burn branches and shrubs and whatever.
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in a controlled, contained place, or sort of contained. Gary loved his burn piles. The bigger, the better.
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By the time Scott got to the pile, it had about run its course. It had been intense, you could see. It burned everything.
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Or rather, not quite everything. It didn't look like a rock or anything like that.
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So I grabbed a very, very small piece of it and lifted it up enough to where I saw teeth in the eye socket.
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A human skull. I'll never forget it. I knew immediately at that time this was a very, very bad situation.
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Chris saw it too, and they both knew it was their father's body, the little that was left.
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That image of seeing that is something that... I don't think I'll ever get over.
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I mean, it's one thing to see something that horrific on TV or in a movie, but to see your own father like that,
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it's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. By then, the law was on its way
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to look and poke around and ask awkward questions. How did Gary Ferris end up in his own burn pile?
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And why, of course. I thought that's the missing piece to this puzzle. There's an old expression.
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No secrets in a murder investigation. Not for long anyway. See, this is where I'm torn.
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I want to tell you what I know. I want to tell you what I think. Not in this family.
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About to implode. Gary started getting suspicious. And he would put trackers on the car.
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Crazy scary thing secrets. Aren't they? This is called a Perry Mason moment. Late in the trial, a surprise witness.
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I don't know that I'll ever experience that again in my career. It wasn't easy to be a Ferris that 5th of July.
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Imagine, finding your father's charred skull in a pile of ashes. I pretty much blacked out and went into shock at that time.
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The authorities arrived very, very soon after all this. It was hot. It was, you know, July the 5th. It was so hot outside.
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This is Sergeant Daniel Hayes of the Sheriff's Department. So we thought a guy was probably cleaning up his yard, burning some things, burning some debris, got hot, passed out, fell into the fire.
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And when they saw the place, well, yes, freak accidents happen to rich people, too.
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I think everyone that arrived on that property probably looked around and thought, man, I'd love to have this.
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Job to do, though. First, know your victim. Detective Hayes asked the family about Big Daddy.
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Would you say he was larger than life in every way? Correct. As a big man. Big man. Very big man.
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A big man with a big brain, said his brother John. He was always smart. You know, growing up, he kind of set a precedent for our family.
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The oldest son. Gary John and their two sisters were raised in a middle-class home in Alabama.
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And so we were very close. We had a lot of fun roaming the neighborhoods. He was always a loving brother.
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Sister Sherry was seven years younger than her gentle giant of a brother. I remember he would come in and he would grab me up and he would put me on his shoulders.
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So smart, playful, and very ambitious. He decided early on that he wanted to become an attorney and made it happen.
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A lot of obstacles he had overcome. And he was so very driven. He had to be driven because life threw Gary Ferris a little curveball
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in the form of a pretty young thing named Melody. Still teenagers when they met.
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They got married very young. Very young, yeah. And he was a sophomore in college, had a child right away.
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Melody stayed home to raise their son, Chris. Gary worked nights to support his family and put himself through law school.
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And the kids kept coming after Chris, Scott, Emily, Amanda. While Gary rose fast in the legal world.
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My dad worked a lot. We didn't get to go on all these extravagant vacations. I've never been to Disney World.
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We went down to either Gulf Shores or Destin because my dad had to do a law seminar.
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That was our vacations. Even though he was an attorney and had a very important position in his firm,
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he still made time to coach my baseball teams. He still made time to be at all my school events.
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He was always there. And my mother was too. So growing up, I would say it was a happy family.
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We had, to me, a normal childhood. Gary's firm asked him to open an Atlanta office,
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and then made him managing partner. So, in 2013, he could afford to buy that farm
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Melody had always wanted, out near Alpharetta. And now just like that he was gone When John and his sister Sherry got the news they felt compelled to get in the car and drive from Alabama to Georgia
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Because we thought we need to be there. I think it was Emily that was texting us.
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She goes, there's nowhere to go. You can't come here. They won't even let us on the property.
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And I'm like, why? I did not realize that it was this huge police investigation going on.
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The lead investigator, still trying to find out more about Gary, talked to Melody, his wife of 39 years.
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She was crying when I first walked up, and when I took her down and sat down, she pretty quickly gathered herself, and we started having a conversation.
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They sat on the patio, Melody and Detective Hayes. He was in the hospital in April, but he's been having these spells,
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and they get more and more and more frequent. She said that he has what she called spells, where he would feel faint,
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and he would be down and out, basically in bed for a couple of days during these spells.
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And, you know, nobody knew what was wrong with him. One thing Melody did know was that her workaholic husband was not taking care of himself.
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He takes his blood pressure medicine with a Mountain Dew and he said, and he takes his own cigarettes.
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She pointed out he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and, you know, probably drank a 12-pack or more of Mountain Dew.
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I mean, he was very overweight. He was a smoker, right? Yes, sir. He did not live the ultimate healthy lifestyle.
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He ate what he wanted to eat. He did not exercise. Made sense then. Some sort of health incident made him fall down into the fire.
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Except the ash heap itself had a story to tell too. Almost his whole body was consumed in the fire.
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Ashley Pope was another sheriff's detective at the time. We have had accidental fires where that situation was similar
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where people have fell in the fire. It's usually not, the body's not consumed that much.
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So investigators thought maybe someone had thrown Gary right into the middle of the fire.
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And then, just as they were mulling that over, another startling discovery. A bullet was found lodged in some meaty flesh on a rib bone.
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A fragment of a bullet in the rib cage. It was a whole bullet. You could see the back of the bullet.
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A bullet lodged in Gary's rib cage. Well, that did not seem accidental. How did that change the course of your investigating at that point?
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So we for sure knew at that point we were investigating a homicide. It was no longer, this may be an accident.
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It was, this is a homicide. Gary Ferris had been murdered. It wasn't the smoking or the mountain dews or the lack of exercise.
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Something else had caught up with Gary. Or someone else. But the list of potential suspects like the crime scene itself was sprawling because investigators would learn that even those closest to Gary might have had a motive to want him dead.
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In some shape or form, Gary had close ties or disagreements with all the family members related to money.
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Gary Ferris was a man who lived large, from his marbles to his mountain dew to the money he made,
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money which he loved to give away. The Big Daddy nickname covered not just his height and girth,
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but also his deep-pocketed generosity, spreading green to every leaf on the family tree.
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If someone needed a loan or more likely a gift to get them through a rough patch,
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Gary was there with a check or a swipe from a credit card. Now this family Santa Claus was dead, shot to death,
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and then cremated on a funeral pyre he himself had built. It was obvious that the body had been burning, in my opinion, for some time.
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And you've got to figure out what happened here. What is that like? What's that feeling?
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And especially on an estate like that. It's a lot of pressure. There are a lot of people there, a lot of things to figure out.
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And they're all looking at you. They're all staring at you, wondering what you're going to say.
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Yep. As soon as the supervisor says, Hayes, your lead, everybody's looking at me.
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Murder. That word changed everything. Detective Hayes asked Melody to join him at the sheriff's office.
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He would break the news to her there. They've been sifting through the remains in the ashes, and they have found a projectile and some bones.
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So you were the last one to see Gary alive on Tuesday night. Right. Did you hear any gunshots?
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No, but there was a ton of, I mean, like fireworks and firecrackers and all kinds of stuff going off.
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Melody said she and Gary had gotten to a stage in their affluent lives in which the two of them slept not just in separate rooms, but on separate floors.
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She had the upstairs. Well, Gary turned the basement into a sprawling man cave, which had a bedroom, a bathroom, office, even a home theater.
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It was a refuge where Gary could go to ground and get lost in his work or a movie,
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undisturbed by all the clatter of life happening above. The only thing he really has to go upstairs for is the kitchen, you know, food.
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You know, otherwise he's in the basement. But if Gary's subterranean lair was cozy, contained, the crime scene itself was vast.
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Gary could have been shot anywhere on their spread. Lots of wide open space for a killer to slip in and out undetected.
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Well, now we need to know where people were over these last couple of days. It's the last time Gary Ferris was seen alive and until the day we got there.
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You know, who was on the property? Who could have done this? Who would want to do this prompting Detective Hayes to ask Melody this question Any feuds with the boys lately The boys being sons Chris who lived and worked in nearby Atlanta and Scott who ran the
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farm and lived there in a converted barn. And truth be told, said Melody, Gary had been having
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problems with both of their sons. Scott, he and Scott would get into it pretty heavily. I mean,
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And they'd come to blows. I mean, Scott's hot. I mean, he's hot-tempered. There is no doubt.
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He's very hot-tempered. And Chris? Melody said he'd been caught stealing from Gary.
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Chris has taken money. He broke in. I mean, he came in and took checks and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
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And it wasn't just their own sons who were a problem. Daughter Emily's husband was a thief too, said Melody.
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Her husband's been in and out of jail for it. It's daily. It appeared that Gary's relationship with everyone was a source of income for all of the kids.
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So in some shape or form, Gary had close ties or disagreements with all the family members relating to money.
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Melody said daughter Amanda was the only one who wasn't out for Gary's money. She and I are a lot alike.
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And she said, why do they all hate us? I said, well, you're the only one who didn't steal from it.
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It's hard to put into words the level of family dysfunction detectives were hearing about.
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Seemed almost like that movie Knives Out, where after the death of a family patriarch,
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all the heirs turned out to have a motive for murder. So, like the characters in the movie, nearly every Ferris would have to be considered a potential suspect.
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Oh, and Detective Hayes also had to consider the possibility that money was not the motive.
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That, well, maybe it was love. Which meant he had to ask Melody, who just lost her husband of 39 years, a very uncomfortable question.
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Had she been sleeping around? Are you currently in an affair with anyone? No. Is anyone pursuing you?
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No. There's no jealous boyfriends? No. It was by now obvious to Melody that Detective Hayes was looking at her as something other than a grieving widow.
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I mean, do I need to get an attorney? That's up to you. Is this one of your rights?
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I mean, I would never, ever hurt you. Never. The unfortunate thing is that somebody did, and we don't know who did, and it's our job to determine that.
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You know, you're the spouse. We have to do everything in our power to rule you out or to rule you in, you know.
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Melody felt it was time to set Detective Hayes straight, that she was the last person who would benefit from Gary's death.
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He had no life insurance, and none of the assets were in her name, she said. With Big Daddy gone, she didn't know what was to become of her.
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And then, a few hours after this interview, Detective Hayes' investigation took a turn
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when a fellow detective happened to notice something, and it was nowhere near the burn pile.
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And Detective Cochendall looks down and sees something kind of shiny. Upon closer inspection, he discovers a bullet, a spent projectile.
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The Establishing the time of death in a homicide investigation is tricky business.
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Even more so in the case of Gary Ferris. By the time investigators started sifting through that burn pile,
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Gary's remains were nothing more than ash and bone, fragments of which were sent to a crime lab to be positively identified.
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identified. There was no way of telling how long he'd been dead. Hours? Days? No one could say.
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So investigators tried to narrow down the time of death by talking to the pool of potential
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suspects. Gary's son, Scott, told Detective Hayes in a recorded interview he saw his dead on Tuesday,
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July 3rd at the Cherokee Ranch restaurant. Must have been around 1 or 1.30, said Scott.
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That's the last time I ever saw my father. Gary's other son, Chris, said he saw his dad a few hours later
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when he, Chris, dropped by the farm with one of his daughters for a quick visit.
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It was Tuesday, approximately 4.45 p.m. here at the farm. He was outside. When we pulled up, he said he was getting stuff ready.
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Either he was burning things or was about to burn things. Did you smell any smoke in the air or anything?
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Nope. So he was collecting stuff for the fire? Yes. And that's what he explained to you?
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Yes. When you left, to your knowledge, what was your dad going to go do? He'd keep collecting stuff to probably put on that pile to burn.
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Chris said he left the farm around 5.30 that evening. Melody, speaking to Detective Hayes, picked up the timeline from there.
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Had you spoken to Gary after Chris left? Yes. Okay, so Chris left, Gary was still...
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Yeah, he was still here. So he went down and started the fire, and you said it was, you don't know exactly what time, but it was still daylight, though?
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I think, on about 6 o'clock. Okay. Something like that. Melanie said they had dinner about an hour or two later, and then they went their separate ways for the night.
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The last time you talked to him Tuesday was around dinner time? Yeah. You'd estimate 8, 8.30?
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It was not that late that night, because he had been here all day and stuff. but I told him, I said, you are not going to bed
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and leaving that fire. How big was the fire when he lit it? Massive. I mean, it was massive.
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Melody said she figured Gary had gone back to check on the burn pile before heading off to bed.
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Scott said when he got home about three hours later, the fire was still going, but his dad was nowhere in sight.
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Scott said he went to bed that night around midnight, then left early the following morning, Wednesday the 4th, to go golfing, and didn't get back to the farm until late that evening.
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It had to have been somewhere around 8.30 because it wasn't quite dark yet. On the morning of Thursday the 5th, he said, he was heading off to get his hair cut when his mom stopped him and asked,
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Have you talked to your dad or seen your dad? I'm like, no. She's like, well, you know, we can't find him.
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So based on Scott's and Chris's and Melody's accounts, Gary's whereabouts were unknown between the night of July 3rd
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and the afternoon of July 5th, when his remains were discovered in the burn pile.
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Except... Except that while searching Gary's basement dwelling, an investigator came across this CPAP machine,
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a life-saving device that helps people who suffer from apnea breathe normally while sleeping.
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Gary never went to bed without it. And like many electronic devices we now have in our homes,
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this CPAP machine is programmed to collect user data. And it showed that Gary was usually putting that CPAP on between 11 and 1 a.m.
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There was no data for the night of the third or past. That led us to believe that Gary was killed before his normal bedtime of between 11 and 1 a.m.
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and sometime after melody said she saw him around 8 or 8 30 p.m so gary must have met his death
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sometime between 8 30 p.m and 1 a.m on the night of wednesday july 3rd the only people home then
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as far as police knew were melody and scott and now a csi team was finding evidence gary had been
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killed in his home there were drops of blood on the carpet on the stairs the carpeted stairs
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leading down to the basement. And at the base of the stairs, something shiny caught the eye of a fellow detective.
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At the edge of a rug in the basement on the wooden floor, the hardwood floor, upon closer inspection,
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he discovers a bullet, a spent projectile, in the basement floor. Detective Hayes said a blood-illuminating chemical
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revealed even more evidence. There was some blood on the wall near the front door.
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There was some blood droplets that appeared to have been cleaned up. They appeared a bit in a smear pattern in the kitchen near the basement door.
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Based on the blood drops, Hayes developed a theory that Gary was shot in the kitchen,
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then fired at again as he ran down the stairs into the basement, where the blood trail continued across the floor and out a sliding door to a patio where it ended.
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So, two gunshots inside the house. But Melody had told Detective Hayes she didn't hear a thing.
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So Hayes asked her once again. Did you hear any gunshots that night? No, but like I said, I mean, there's no gunshots, but there was tons of fireworks going off.
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Melody said that was it. That's all she knew. But Gary's sons, Scott and Chris, they said they knew a lot and had a story to tell.
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When I came home, I saw the fire going in the woods. Question was, how much of their story could be believed?
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For one thing, as the detectives freely admitted, they were not used to this sort of thing.
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Murder was a rare business around here on the posh, low-crime side of Cherokee County, Georgia.
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But though the Ferris estate was idyllic, the family most certainly was not. So when they interviewed the brothers, they carefully and repeatedly went over their timeline.
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I'm going to ask you a couple questions. What time did you leave on July 3rd? July 3rd.
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It was probably, I don't know, 4.30-ish. That was eldest son, Chris. The younger son, Scott, seemed a trickier case.
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Scott lived right on the property in his apartment over the barn. He said he'd been gone all day with friends out of the lake.
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And I was up there at the lake house until I didn't leave until about 1030 at night, roughly, and came back home.
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And that's when, you know, when I came home, I saw the fire going in the woods and, you know, didn't think of anything out there.
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So police knew two people were at home that night, Melody and later in the evening, Scott.
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Detectives figured Melody was too small to lug her 300-pound husband to the burn pit.
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But Scott was big enough and strong enough to do exactly that. Plus, his behavior seemed curious.
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Scott told detectives that weeks before the murder, he came across a pistol in the basement.
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But when he looked for it after the murder, the gun was gone. Useful to know. The only problem was, Scott started searching for the pistol after his father's remains were found.
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But before anyone knew he had been shot with a gun. Did it seem strange to you that Scott would be going around the house looking for whether a gun was there or not?
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It was odd So that started putting the suspicion in our minds that okay maybe that kind of weird maybe something up A feeling that only grew when they found ammunition in Scott apartment The same caliber of bullet found in Gary body
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There was loose .38 ammo in Scott's dresser drawer. So we found that kind of odd.
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Yeah, no kidding. Later we'd ask Scott, you know, why are we finding all this? And Scott tells us, well, I have friends come over.
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We go shoot at the back corner of the property and they sometimes leave stuff behind.
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They also wondered about something Scott did after his father disappeared. His mom had asked him to check the trail camera.
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I went down there and checked the trail cam, and there's just a couple squirrels and a couple raccoons,
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and that was it. I deleted everything. Everything? I asked my brother, I said, why would you do that?
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He said, well, at the time I didn't know anything was going on. When I checked my trail camera,
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if there's nothing on there of any significance, I delete the pictures because I'm there.
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No, they had to wonder if he deleted evidence. I did ask my brother some very hard questions because I knew he was going to be asked some very hard questions.
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You know, like what was going on with you and our dad. You know, because they asked me questions about my brother, too.
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You know, Scott was very much a suspect. We all were. Especially after detectives learned about the family disputes over money.
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Melody's friend, David Thomas. She felt that a couple of her kids were abusing her husband financially.
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She was upset with both of her sons because it just seemed that it was a financial drain.
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That was a constant thing over and over. Little Sister Amanda told police she was worried about Scott and Chris
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and how they were behaving toward their mother. Scott's been making threats against her, saying that he's going to burn the house down
00:31:52
and that we can't stop them from taking over the estate. Because essentially at this point, I mean, I just feel like they're after money.
00:32:02
I'm just fearing for my safety at this point, and I'm fearing for my mother's safety.
00:32:07
David Thomas said Melody was increasingly afraid of her sons. She got to a point where she felt like, you know, if she was not on the planet,
00:32:16
then whatever was left with the estate, the money would go to the kids. And so they would have a motive to do some harm to her.
00:32:25
Exactly. She thought that was a possibility? She thought it was a real possibility.
00:32:31
If Scott and Chris were, in fact, suspects, detectives kept that to themselves. Let me ask you a question.
00:32:39
Mm-hmm. What do you guys think happened? See, this is where I'm torn. I want to tell you what I know.
00:32:47
I want to tell you what I think. Actually, Chris and Scott Ferris told police exactly what they thought.
00:32:55
And what they thought was, detectives should be taking a long, hard look at Mommy Dearest.
00:33:03
I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, I can't wait till today. I don't have to live with him.
00:33:08
I wish she would just have a heart attack and die. The End That never said anything negative to me about my mother,
00:33:46
except for just her going out and spending so much money on stuff like that. But my mother, on the other hand,
00:33:53
I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, I can't wait till the day I don't have to live with him.
00:33:58
I wish she would just have a heart attack and die. Scott said his mother was difficult sometimes, certainly dramatic.
00:34:07
She always watched Days of Our Lives, and she always wanted to have her life like a soap opera.
00:34:12
Mm-hmm. So that's what she did. Here's how Chris put it. I was afraid of my mother growing up.
00:34:19
There's no way around that statement. A walking on eggshells kind of existence? Yes.
00:34:24
Did not want to upset her at all. I think the best way to describe it is when she had four children.
00:34:30
And if one child caused a problem, then we all got the wrath. I don't know if my mom did this or not.
00:34:38
I don't know. But all the s*** she's done for the last 10 years has really added up to, like, I mean, what else are we going to look at?
00:34:54
Well, what about dredging up a bit of family history, prompted by the detective's simple question about that missing handgun?
00:35:03
There's a firearm missing from the house. So we need a list of everything of a pistol caliber that anybody has ever seen.
00:35:12
I'll tell you what I know. That is when Chris mentioned a family friend named Ted Wiley.
00:35:18
That son of a bitch kept a freaking, what's the smallest pistol you could find on your ankle?
00:35:24
It could be 25. So who was Ted? Why, a long-kept family secret, it turned out. More like a soap opera on steroids.
00:35:36
co-starring Gary's sister, Sherry. Ted. We had been together, I guess we were together about a little over 20 years.
00:35:45
Ted and Sherry were together until something pulled them apart. Someone, to be clear.
00:35:54
Someone whose name was Melody Ferris This one guy came up to me at work and said hey I saw Ted and Melody out at a restaurant during lunch
00:36:05
And I confronted Melody. I said, what's going on? People are saying that you and Ted's got something going on.
00:36:11
She just laughed. She said, no. She said, Ted? She said, there's no way. But when Gary heard about it, he felt sure she was cheating on him.
00:36:21
And Gary started getting suspicious. and he would put trackers on the car. Melody actually left Gary and though she denied it,
00:36:31
family members believed she was staying at Ted's farm. It was a matter of months when she basically refused to come back to Atlanta
00:36:38
and shortly after he filed for divorce is when she came back and my father called me to tell me I needed to accept my mother back,
00:36:47
which I told him that would be a hard thing to do. All she had to do was come back to him.
00:36:51
He must have still been in love with her. Was he? He was in love with my mother until the day he died.
00:36:59
And that's how they ended up with the farm in Cherokee County in 2013, five years before Gary's death.
00:37:06
He decided to buy the property, the farm, to try to save the marriage because, you know, that's something that she wanted.
00:37:17
But Gary was a smart guy. Maybe he loved Melody, but he sure didn't trust her. Not anymore.
00:37:24
Big deal was made of that, that he was somehow controlling the amount of money she was able to spend
00:37:29
because he could see it when she spent it come out of the bank account. Right. Why did he do that?
00:37:34
Well, he had communicated to me that he did not want her spending his money on another man.
00:37:41
But it was a way for him to keep track of her. And that brings us back to that toxic family situation in which Gary's children seemed to have ready access to his money.
00:37:54
But Melody was on an allowance and under surveillance. Gary would get mad at her or suspect her of having an affair and cut the credit card or the debit card off or whatever,
00:38:05
or cut her phone off so she couldn't make phone calls and things like that. There was one other thing police couldn't ignore, something they heard time and again.
00:38:13
They knew about Gary's unhealthy lifestyle, his appetite for cigarettes and sodas and food.
00:38:20
But people close to Gary were wondering about those spells of his. My father had become very lethargic and could not function properly.
00:38:30
He was very dizzy, just wasn't feeling very well. One such spell put Gary in the hospital three months before his death.
00:38:39
Chris was there, so was Melody. But when she left the room, his dad told him this so-called spell started that day back at home.
00:38:49
She had spent the day very angry at him, the way he put it, screaming at him. And all of a sudden she comes walking in with a cast iron skillet full of chocolate chip cookies.
00:39:03
I made these for you. Which he couldn't resist, of course. No, apparently not. He said he ate the cookies, his throat began to burn, and that's when he began feeling bad.
00:39:20
Gary believed something terrible was happening to him, something unthinkable. He said, Chris, I think your mother's trying to poison me.
00:39:30
So Gary believed that when Melody prepared his food, she was poisoning it, and that's why he had the spells that he had.
00:39:37
Could you prove that he was being poisoned, though? Unfortunately not. The condition of the body, you know, there wasn't much to test for toxicology.
00:39:49
Without proof, it could just be an outrageous old accusation from an angry husband.
00:39:56
Melody insisted she would never hurt Gary. And she absolutely was not cheating on him.
00:40:02
And yet, well, there just might be evidence to the contrary. In Melody's wallet, we found a credit card with a man's name on it that none of us recognized.
00:40:14
So, who was this new guy? And why was his credit card in Melody's wallet? Melody Ferris was as adamant as a woman could be.
00:40:38
No matter the complexities of her long marriage to Big Daddy, she did not, would not, could not ever damage so much as a hair on his lovely big head.
00:40:50
I will tell you, honestly, you know, I did not do it. I don't know who did it, but I did not do it.
00:41:00
I would have never taken my children's daddy right. Even though Gary gave in to the demands of those children way too often,
00:41:08
while making her beg for the money she very much needed. So your statement is you didn't do anything to harm Gary?
00:41:15
No. Detectives reviewed what they had. A dead man shot and burned beyond recognition.
00:41:22
A marriage that was, well, not exactly joyous. But also children who may or may not have had a motive to murder.
00:41:30
And they had those drops of blood. And that spent projectile. So, their theory went, Gary was shot in his own house and then moved, somehow, to the fire.
00:41:42
Oh, and they also had this. A mysterious credit card in Melody's wallet. on which was imprinted the name Roy Barton.
00:41:54
So that was the topic of our interview One of our interviews was who is this Roy Barton A lover perhaps They danced around the question during Melody interview
00:42:07
You have not had a sexual relationship with anybody in four years. We're not going to find any evidence of it.
00:42:12
When we test your bed sheets, we're not going to find any male DNA in any way, shape, or form.
00:42:15
When we test your vehicle, then we swap the seats and we swap the back seat. Then, they dropped it on her.
00:42:24
The name on the credit card. What about Roy? Roy. Last name he gets, Bart? Barton.
00:42:34
Who's Roy? Well, Roy is my cousin's dead husband. How long ago did he pass away?
00:42:43
Four years ago. Melody told them Roy's widow, Martha Jane Barton, gave her the credit card.
00:42:49
I had been taking care of her, and so it just got put in my head. I didn't realize I still had it.
00:42:56
Okay, so you're not using it. So when we look at the financial records, it hasn't been used in over four years.
00:43:01
No. And it's going to come back to somebody that's deceased. Right. That apparently established, they moved on.
00:43:08
Have you ever had a physical relationship with anyone other than Gary since y'all been married?
00:43:13
No. Of course she'd have that affair with Ted. but she wasn't admitting it. No one that we're going to find in the history of y'all's marriage.
00:43:25
I'm talking the whole entire thing. I'm not talking the last five years, ten years, or since I went Rocky.
00:43:31
I'm talking forever. Long pause. And then, Melody spilled. But not about Ted. Yeah.
00:43:41
Who and when? Um, Rusty Barton. Roy was his dad. So Rusty is his son. Where's Rusty?
00:43:51
He's in Tullahoma, Tennessee. When was the last time you interacted with Rusty? Oh, it's been months and months and months ago.
00:43:59
Okay, but in the last year. So was that physical relationship then in the last year?
00:44:03
Oh, no. When was that? I mean, I ended that a good while ago. Ended it a year ago, she said,
00:44:11
though she still talked to him on the phone. And when we go get Rusty's DNA, where are we going to find it?
00:44:17
Nowhere in my car. Anywhere in your house? No. Where did y'all have your relationship a year ago?
00:44:23
Up in Tennessee, when I would go up there. Hard to tell how much of that was true.
00:44:29
Or how much of this. Do you have a tattoo? I do. XOXO? Uh-huh. It's just this XO.
00:44:37
What is that in reference to? It's just mine and Gary's symbol. Just XO. What did he have to say about it?
00:44:44
Oh, he loved it. I mean, that's why I got it. How long ago did you get it? Four years ago, I guess.
00:44:50
I got it about the time that we moved into that house. That was our start, our fresh start.
00:44:58
Well, seemed more like a false start to the detectives. More likely, they figured the tattoo led back to Rusty, just like that credit card, the one owned by Roy Barton.
00:45:12
Because, they learned, Rusty's real name was Roy, just like his late father. So it was Rusty's credit card in Melody's wallet.
00:45:24
Rusty had known about Gary and how controlling Gary was over Melody and the money.
00:45:29
And so she eventually said that she had gotten the credit card from him in case she needed money in case of emergencies, basically.
00:45:35
The credit card wasn't the only thing Rusty gave Melody. As the detectives discovered, he also got her a cell phone, one that allowed them to talk privately.
00:45:48
So, of course, they got the records for that phone. And that's when we started discovering the extent of her relationship with Rusty Barton and how often they were talking from the moment they woke up all throughout the day, calling and texting until the moment they went to sleep.
00:46:04
So we decided it's time to go talk to Rusty. Two days later, detectives were on the road, heading north to Tullahoma and Rusty Barton.
00:46:28
Chase a lie about love and sex, and who knows what greater sins it might expose.
00:46:36
Cherokee County detectives believed that Rusty Barton was key to their murder investigation.
00:46:42
He knows more than everyone's let on. We know this relationship's a lot deeper than Melody told us.
00:46:47
Detectives wondered what exactly Rusty knew about Gary's death. Maybe he'd even helped Melody move that big body.
00:46:55
But when they questioned Rusty with his attorney in Tullahoma, Tennessee, they didn't get much, not at first.
00:47:03
They came at him hard. and he came right back at them. I don't know what happened or who did it or nothing.
00:47:12
If I did, first of all, I'd have tried to stop it before it ever happened because that's the way I was brought up.
00:47:19
Second of all, if I knew it after the fact, I'd be telling somebody already. I'm sorry.
00:47:25
You're fine. I'm sorry. You're fine. Here's the thing. If we don't do our job by pushing this, then that...
00:47:31
Y'all are doing what you're supposed to do. No, hey, hey, hey. I'm not just knowing what I'm supposed to do.
00:47:35
I'm giving you an opportunity that I ain't got to give you. Sir, I don't know anything.
00:47:42
I didn't help anybody. She has not confided in me. Detective Ashley Polk told Rusty flat out he didn't believe him.
00:47:52
After all, Rusty gave Melody that phone so they could have private conversations.
00:47:58
Y'all are talking on the phone everywhere. It seems that a single day you wake up, Melody, Melody and coffee, you go to bed, Melody, she has talked to you beforehand and since then.
00:48:08
No, sir. Don't let me find out. I do not believe that. I'm telling you. Not been a single communication since Thursday morning.
00:48:16
Thursday, July the 5th, that is, the day the Ferris has started looking for Gary, the day Scott called 911.
00:48:23
The detectives warned Rusty again that if he knew anything about what happened to Gary, now was the time to tell them, or possibly face charges himself.
00:48:35
So somebody is going to spend the rest of their damn life in prison for this, and whoever helped them, if they don't get on the front end of it, they're going to do the same damn thing.
00:48:44
You follow me? That ain't speculation, brother. That's a fact. By the end of that interview, Rusty explained to us that he wanted to do anything he could to assist us because he had no part of this homicide.
00:48:57
He also gave us information to verify his alibi. They did. It checked out. But then they looked at his cell phone records and discovered he fiddled with his phone after Gary's death.
00:49:12
took Melody's name out of his contacts, at one point, substituting two letters. X-O, the symbol of a beverage they enjoyed together.
00:49:24
Huh, whatever. Obviously that was the real reason for Melody's tattoo. It had nothing to do with Gary.
00:49:31
We also find out that he is searching things like how to delete your text messages,
00:49:36
what can cops find in text messages. That phone was a revelation. As time goes on, Rusty had told us that he had not talked to her on the night of July 3rd.
00:49:48
Well, the cell phone data reflected inconsistencies in that, and it also reflected that he had lied to us.
00:49:55
So that led to Detective Hayes and I going back up there again to conduct an interview with Rusty to challenge him on these lying statements.
00:50:05
Back in Tullahoma, back at the table. But then Rusty and his lawyer stepped out of the room.
00:50:12
Rusty's attorney came back into the room during this time and said, he's got something I think y'all want to hear.
00:50:17
They did want to hear it. And how? Because it was huge. Something Rusty said Melody told him in a call just hours after the presumed time of death.
00:50:29
Probably the last minute of the last conversation, she said, Gary is in the burn pile.
00:50:36
No, she said, he is in the burn pile. And I said, what? And she said, he's in the burn pile.
00:50:46
And I said, do not say another word and do not tell me anything. I do not need to know.
00:50:54
If this statement was true, it is very important because Gary had not been reported missing and had not been located at the burn pile.
00:51:03
The 911 call did not occur until July 5th at 1247 p.m. So that's a full day and a half before anybody knew the nature of this crime.
00:51:18
The detectives knew they had struck gold, but they wanted corroboration. So they asked Rusty to record his conversations with Melody without telling her.
00:51:30
He agreed they were elated. And it didn't last. We feel like Rusty's going to record the phone conversations and not notify Melody.
00:51:40
But we later learned that he, in fact, did tell her. Maybe Rusty wasn't being so cooperative after all.
00:51:46
What were they left with? Well, motive. No will was ever located. So who would benefit from Gary's untimely death?
00:51:57
Hmm. Who else? in Georgia. If a husband and wife and one of them is killed or dies, the wife is the immediate
00:52:04
heir to the estate. Melody gets everything. So Scott kills Gary and Scott's money's gone.
00:52:13
He knows Melody's not going to give him anything. Same with Chris. So why would Chris kill Gary?
00:52:20
Same for the girls. Despite what Melody told detectives, Emily and her husband said they
00:52:26
never stole from Gary. And neither Emily nor Amanda stood to gain from their dad's death.
00:52:33
The only person that benefited immediately from Gary dying was Melody Ferris. Gary's brother
00:52:38
was sure from the beginning it was Melody. You just started adding things up. Was that something that you began to think
00:52:46
before you heard it from any official source? You know, I hate to say it, but yeah.
00:52:52
It took almost a year to get official confirmation of something the detectives were already convinced of, that the bones in the
00:53:00
burn pile were indeed Gary's. And days later, the Cherokee County authorities issued a warrant for
00:53:07
Melody's arrest. As it happened, she was in Tennessee at the time visiting Rusty. He drove
00:53:14
her to a local police station to surrender. And the Ferris family exhaled. It was like, oh my gosh,
00:53:23
something's happening. Yeah. Because we did all these interviews with the detectives and, you know,
00:53:29
not, we didn't hear anything for quite a while. Quite a while indeed. It was October, 2024.
00:53:38
When Melody Ferris finally went on trial for murder. The trial in which jurors would hear a tangled tale as much about the Ferris
00:53:49
children as about their mother. my first impression of that case was this is going to be a tricky trial
00:54:12
when they finally put melody ferris in front of a jury assistant da megan frankish confronted a few
00:54:19
challenges. I mean, it's like almost like an Agatha Christie story. You've got a confined space.
00:54:27
There's this ranch. There are a few people who are attached to it. And all those people are kind
00:54:32
of in some way warring amongst themselves. And the man who controls the money is suddenly dead.
00:54:38
That's exactly right. What we know is that he ended up on the burn pile. We know he was at least shot twice.
00:54:45
But the rest of that theory just leads us to Melody being the only person that could have done that.
00:54:52
But you had no murder weapon. Well, what could you do about that? That was part of what made this prosecution challenging.
00:55:00
Not to mention the long delay getting to court. Six years. What with legal delays and COVID.
00:55:06
before Melody cast a baleful eye on Assistant DA Jeffrey Fogas as he addressed the jury.
00:55:14
I am representing a voice that has been snuffed out and taken away. Gary's younger brother, John, would be a constant presence at the trial,
00:55:23
sitting with his wife, Nancy, two rows behind the prosecutor's table. You went to that trial every day, right?
00:55:29
Yeah, I don't think I missed a day. It's not an easy experience, is it? There was a lot of things that came out in the trial that we didn't know.
00:55:35
I wanted to hear that. I wanted to experience it firsthand in the courtroom. But outside the
00:55:41
courtroom, he'd find himself coming face to face with Melody. She'd been free on bond for years,
00:55:49
and she took the regular breaks like everyone, passing her late husband's brother in the hallways.
00:55:55
How'd you feel about that? I didn't like it. You must have carried around a lot of anger about that
00:55:59
woman. I don't know that I'm an angry person. It's probably more frustration and the lack of closure.
00:56:05
The prosecutors argue that cell phone data and call records told the story of what happened that night.
00:56:12
Gary left a farm earlier that evening, returning around 9.30 p.m., and that's when Melody, the only other person on the farm, shot and killed him.
00:56:21
He never again sent a text or made a call or checked an email, and he never turned on that CPAP machine.
00:56:29
Melody, meanwhile, was a busy bunny that night and the next morning, talking to Rusty, moving around the property.
00:56:37
When he was killed and when his body was moved, when things were going on, the only person that's going to be at that house,
00:56:44
the only person is her. The defendant. Murdered. And desecrated her own husband.
00:56:55
But how was Melody able to move Gary's heavy body? Well, investigators developed a theory.
00:57:01
after noticing a tractor on the farm and what appeared to be matching tracks near the burn pit.
00:57:09
Brothers Scott and Chris said it seemed out of place at the time. I just found it very, very odd for that tractor to be parked down there.
00:57:17
I know my dad wouldn't have just left it there. The only time he would have left that tractor there is if it was stuck.
00:57:22
How well does your mother operate that tractor? She asked me to teach her how to use it.
00:57:27
Honestly, that tractor was so easy to operate, I could teach my 13-year-old niece.
00:57:32
So maybe Melody used the tractor to move the body? However she did it, prosecutors said,
00:57:38
Melody figured out a way to get Gary in the fire before Scott came home. And, they said, Melody all but confessed to it
00:57:46
when she told her lover, Rusty Barton, that Gary was dead long before anyone discovered his body.
00:57:53
To stress this point, they called Rusty as a hostile witness. She said that Gary was on the burn pile.
00:58:00
So that puts her right there with knowledge about what happened to his body. And it's definitely an admission that we needed the jury to hear.
00:58:09
The whole reason Melody wanted Gary dead, said the prosecutors, was so she could tap into his resources without any restriction.
00:58:17
There was only one person who had the motive, means, and opportunity to commit this crime.
00:58:22
Then prosecutors told jurors about Gary's suspicions that Melody tampered with his food,
00:58:28
something he confided to his legal assistant, Angela Phillips. He said that he thought she was poison on him.
00:58:35
I said, you need to go be tested for poison on him. And he said, well, you'll know what to tell Dateline if I die mysteriously.
00:58:45
One by one, each of the Ferris children testified. three of the four against their own mother.
00:58:53
Can you please introduce yourself to the jury? I'm Emily Ferris Payne. How was your parents' relationship when you were younger?
00:59:01
I mean, it was good from my perspective. Do you know what caused that change? Yes.
00:59:08
Basically, my mother began having an affair. I think with Emily, the jury got to see a little bit of Gary.
00:59:17
Emily seemed like the closest one to him, and she knew a lot of information from her relationship with her father.
00:59:26
I just think that he lost trust that was once there. Gary entrusted her with a lot of information about the family and about his financial position with Melody.
00:59:41
Including how he didn't want his wife spending his money on other men. She no longer was on the bank accounts
00:59:50
So she couldn't, you know She didn have access the way that she did before And Melody wasn just preoccupied with Gary withholding funds from her said the prosecutors She was jealous of the money her husband gave their adult children Just days
01:00:07
before Gary was killed, Emily told jurors she received a text from her mother, who seemed to
01:00:13
be at a breaking point. Can you read that, please? Chris continues to charge his cable, phone, and
01:00:19
airline tickets to Gary's checking account. I have had it. I'm taking measures to stop this insanity.
01:00:25
State calls Chris Ferris. You could please raise your right hand. Which is one of the reasons prosecutors called Chris Ferris to the stand.
01:00:33
We needed him to address his financial issues and his relationship with his father and if those
01:00:39
issues led to any conflicts between him and his father, which it did to an extent.
01:00:44
Would you and your dad ever get in arguments about money? I wouldn't really consider it an argument.
01:00:52
I mean, he'd get mad at me for spending money or asking him for money. But Chris denied stealing from his father.
01:01:01
Did he send you a text saying, you know, you've got to pay your own way or I'm going to cut you off?
01:01:06
I think he said, I'm going to change my account information. And then three weeks later, he's dead.
01:01:13
Sure. Yeah, I guess that's a good way to try to create reasonable doubt and create a motive for somebody else.
01:01:22
But taking myself out of it, it's kind of like, well, why would anybody do that to somebody who's helping them that much?
01:01:31
They were grasping at straws. The jury also heard from Chris's younger brother, Scott.
01:01:36
Was it a risk to put him on the stand to be a kind of a pin cushion for the defense?
01:01:41
Go after. We had to put him on the stand. He had a significant role in the investigation.
01:01:47
He also had a front row seat to see his parents fighting every single day, and he witnessed his mother threaten Gary as well.
01:01:53
She came out of my dad's office doors and screaming and cussing, and she threw a plate up against the wall of the house.
01:02:04
and she screamed, I can't wait to the day he f***ing dies. I can't wait to the day I don't have to live with him anymore.
01:02:12
Did you look out at her right there in the courtroom? Small courtroom. Right there, sitting in front of you.
01:02:18
I looked at her when I was asked to look at her and describe what she was wearing.
01:02:24
And she's not my mother anymore. Oh, but Melody's attorneys were not finished with Scott.
01:02:32
not by a long shot. Maybe it was he who belonged in the dock, facing life behind bars.
01:02:41
You were a mooch. No, I wasn't. And your father saw you as the exact same way mooching off of him.
01:02:47
The state has introduced a case to you, and it is so full of holes. The defense of Melody Ferris was certainly robust and nothing if not dramatic.
01:03:12
You're getting on the Ferris wheel. Those investigators all but rigged the case against an innocent woman, said defense attorney Michael Ray.
01:03:21
From day one, everything was tailored specifically to attempt to convict Melody of the death of Gary Ferris.
01:03:31
It was a highly circumstantial case. There was no direct evidence to tie Melody, you know, to shooting Gary.
01:03:38
There was no gun found in the house. Melody had no accelerants on her hands. There was none of that directly tied back to Melody.
01:03:45
It seemed, however, that, you know, if you ask the age-old question, who benefits?
01:03:49
Well, Melody benefits. He controls the money. He's dead. She gets the money. You've got to have Gary alive to make the money because it didn't necessarily come out at trial.
01:03:58
They weren't really cash rich. If Gary wasn't working, then there is no money. No motive, said the defense, and no actual evidence Gary had even been killed in the house, certainly not by Melody.
01:04:11
The blood leading down the stairs, for instance. They never tested any of the drops on the stairs.
01:04:16
He had two drops on the basement floor that the crime lab determined that was Gary Ferris' blood.
01:04:21
And that blood, said the defense, didn't even come from a gunshot wound. The weekend before, Gary Ferris had been bit by the dog, and he was bleeding when he went down the stairs from his ankle.
01:04:33
As for the bullet found in the basement. There is no blood found around the bullet.
01:04:39
No impact mark from the bullet on the floor. It is literally like the bullet was dropped and placed on the floor.
01:04:48
And the last person who was in the basement prior to law enforcement arriving was Scott.
01:04:57
Oh, yes, Scott. The defense was getting to him. Like when they repeatedly told the jury,
01:05:03
Melody wasn't big enough or strong enough to move all that dead weight after Gary was killed.
01:05:09
In fact, they took jurors to the farm, where they could see for themselves how hard it would be.
01:05:17
Here's defense co-counsel John Luke Weaver. How could a 120-pound woman move a 300-pound man down to a burn pile,
01:05:26
roughly 50 yards below the house, in the woods, on a relatively treacherous terrain.
01:05:31
There is one person that could have done that, and that would have been Scott Ferris.
01:05:36
Also, the time of death? No way to know, exactly. But the defense argued Gary died later than prosecutors said, when Scott was already home.
01:05:47
And no one had more motive, the defense said, than freeloading, greedy Scott, who taken advantage of his parents for years She thought you were a mooch I guess in her eyes yeah Right Because you were a mooch No I wasn And your father saw you as the exact same way
01:06:05
and he kept a very tight rein over you and your mooching off of him. What about Scott? What was your strategy for going after him on the stand?
01:06:14
When it came to Scott, I think it was important to show that if his mother is framed with murder,
01:06:20
then he always saw that estate as his. Yes, sir. And one more Ferris offspring waited in the wings.
01:06:30
Amanda, the youngest, supported her mother and told the jury Scott had an unusual fixation
01:06:38
with his parents' country estate. He would claim things as his that were not his.
01:06:43
That's fair to say. They belonged to my mother and my father. He would say, this is my property.
01:06:48
I mean, he claimed ownership to it. That's for sure. Well, and what would Scott say about that?
01:06:56
We asked him, of course. I never once said, oh, this is going to be my farm one day.
01:07:01
If I would have said something like that, it would have been more of the lines of, you know, well, I hope this farm stays in the family.
01:07:08
He also said he never threatened to burn the house down and never once stole anything from his dad.
01:07:14
In fact, he told us Amanda's testimony was yet another example of their mother's manipulation.
01:07:22
That's all because of Melody's brainwashing. She brainwashed Amanda. And it's fair to say that you're biased in favor of your mom.
01:07:31
I wouldn't say how I'm biased in favor. I believe that somebody is innocent until they're proven guilty.
01:07:37
But the defense attorneys still had to tackle their most daunting challenge. that incriminating statement from Melody's lover, Rusty Barton,
01:07:46
saying she told him Gary was dead before his body was found. When we first learned about the phone call with Rusty Barton,
01:07:54
that was, you know, the biggest, most damning piece of evidence. The defense argued Rusty's claim wasn't a big deal
01:08:02
because after the interview with police, he called back to say he had the dates all wrong.
01:08:10
Melody only told him Gary was dead after his body was discovered. So I need you to explain those words to that jury right there.
01:08:18
She said those words to me. But then you tried to explain later that, yes, she told you about that,
01:08:24
but that was after Gary was already found, right? Yes. From his testimony, he was under duress and he had to, quote, give them something.
01:08:34
He later recanted that statement and said that she told him he was on the burn pile.
01:08:38
much later after Gary's remains had already been found. There was an audience for all this, in the courtroom, of course,
01:08:46
but also an audience of one glued to a live stream way off in Tennessee. Someone who knew Rusty and Melody very well,
01:08:57
and she had something she desperately needed to share. So she picked up the phone and called the sheriff right in the middle of the trial.
01:09:07
You could tell something big had happened. And it got us excited, you know, it's like, what is this going to be?
01:09:24
The case against Melody Ferris was well underway when it happened. It was a call from out of the blue to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department
01:09:33
from a woman who said she needed to get something off her chest. Judge, as you know, the state was made aware of some newly discovered evidence.
01:09:43
Assistant DAs Megan Frankish and Jeffrey Fokus were busy arguing their case when the call came in.
01:09:50
And I leaned over to my co-counsel and I said, we need to take a break after this witness.
01:09:55
In the gallery, Gary Ferris' brother John noticed a sudden flurry of activity. You could tell something big had happened, and it got us excited.
01:10:04
It's like, what is this going to be? So Martha Jane Barton had called the sheriff's office.
01:10:10
Martha Jane Barton, Rusty Barton's stepmom and Melody's cousin. She had watched Rusty's testimony.
01:10:18
You didn't have any missing guns that you couldn't account for, right? No, sir. And she heard Rusty testify about the guns that his dad owned.
01:10:28
And that's when Martha Jane remembered. A .38 caliber, Rusty's late father had given her more than 40 years earlier.
01:10:37
He had given me this .38. It's no special. I think it was .79 for Christmas. But after Melody's arrest, Martha Jane said she realized something was wrong.
01:10:51
I looked and my gun was missing. I thought, Melody has taken my gun. After all, Melody had a key to her elderly relative's house.
01:11:02
At first, Martha Jane kept quiet about her misgivings. But while watching the trial, she got worried about what Melody might have done with her gun.
01:11:11
And she called the police. And I just said, I have a heavy heart, and I want to tell you something.
01:11:18
And then I told about my gun being missing. Investigator Daniel Hayes. I thought that's the missing piece to this puzzle.
01:11:27
That's where that gun that Scott Ferris saw in that basement came from. Melody took it from Martha's house without Martha knowing.
01:11:35
So you brought her in to testify? We did. How were you feeling when you called that number?
01:11:43
I still love Melody. She was family. It just kills me. And then it was out there for the whole world to know.
01:11:53
Martha Jane's suspicion that Melody had taken the 38 and used to kill Gary. This is called a Perry Mason moment. Late in the trial, suddenly a call,
01:12:06
and you call a new witness, a surprise witness, and look at what that witness has to say.
01:12:12
I don't know that I'll ever experience that again in my career. How much did you tear your house up and things in the house looking for?
01:12:18
I looked everywhere. Closets, dressers, chest. Defense attorneys Michael Ray and John Luke Weaver tried to dismiss Martha Jane's claims.
01:12:29
saying the devoutly Christian woman only came forward once she learned about her stepson Rusty's affair with Melody.
01:12:36
That was what she was most concerned about, that she couldn't show her face in town anymore.
01:12:41
So she felt like she needed to say something. They did try to blame it on that. No, my motive was because my gun was gone.
01:12:50
And she was the only person that had access to it. That was my only motive. Still, the defense argued there was no proof the .38 in question was the gun used in the murder,
01:13:05
or that Melody ever took anything from Martha Jane's house. Who else has keys other than, I assume the cleaning lady?
01:13:13
Does she have a key? Oh, she may have a key. So Melody's got a key, cleaning lady may have a key.
01:13:22
Well, Rusty. Rusty's got a key. Uh-huh. So at least five people. And then the defense put on a little show-and-tell.
01:13:35
A play, as it were, to show that it would have been impossible for Melody to get Big Daddy's body out of the house
01:13:44
and way off to that burn pile. Whose idea was it to drag those bags of rock salt
01:13:54
or whatever the heck that was out onto the courtroom floor. Well, that was my idea.
01:13:58
I was constantly trying to think of what could I use for that demonstration. I think it starts to become clear why I'm doing this.
01:14:11
Why am I dropping these bags? These bags are 40 pounds a piece. When I would drop one of the bags, you could feel the floor shake.
01:14:19
And I wanted that to happen because I wanted the jury specifically to know how heavy this was.
01:14:27
This is 320 pounds. I am 185 pounds. And that's all I have. The whole trial, we were noting that he was 300 pounds.
01:14:43
She was 120 pounds. It was impossible that she could have moved him But there was a person on the property who could And that Scott Ferris You were literally pointed at by the defense attorney in court
01:14:57
What did it feel like? I mean, it's, that was awkward. I wouldn't, never, ever once, I ever remotely thought I were even harming my father.
01:15:10
A point the prosecutor drove home in her closing argument. I just kept bringing the jury back to the evidence that was presented at trial.
01:15:19
And there was just no evidence that Scott had anything to do with this crime. This case is about Gary Wayne Ferris.
01:15:26
And you're here because Melody Ferris shot him, concealed his death by putting him on a burn pile on their property like he was trash.
01:15:40
And then it was in the hands of the jurors. We got very emotional in the jury room. I was in tears. It was hard. It was really hard.
01:16:13
It might have been easier if that fire hadn't consumed Gary Ferris' body, or if they'd found the gun, or more DNA.
01:16:22
But they had what they had, and six and a half years after Gary's murder, jurors were having a hard time.
01:16:29
Cheryl Peoples was one of them. We got very emotional in the jury room. We left early one day because I was in tears.
01:16:38
It was hard. It was really hard. Jurors sent notes asking for more details. And they kept talking for almost three days.
01:16:48
And then they sent the judge another note. They just couldn't decide. They were hung.
01:16:56
What was that like? I think my blood pressure went up about 100 points. Because my biggest fear in all of this was that she was going to get out of it.
01:17:07
But the judge sent them back. Keep trying, he said. Chris Hyatt, the jury foreman, did his best.
01:17:16
We just had one juror that was still undecided. And at that time, the juror was just like, look, I really don't feel like I'm going to come to a conclusion than what I am right now.
01:17:28
They talked a couple of hours more. And then. I understand we have a verdict. How are you feeling as we came back into the room with a verdict?
01:17:38
extremely nervous we the jury we find the defendant guilty Melody Ferris was guilty of murdering her husband Gary
01:17:51
Where did your thoughts go at that point? To the family, to the children, immediately.
01:17:58
They had been through a lot. I don't think anybody who sat through that could have come to any other conclusion
01:18:06
then I guilty of hurt it. But we wanted to hear that. We wanted to be there. We had waited six years.
01:18:19
And I just stared at her. I wanted her to show something. Some sort of emotion. Look at your family.
01:18:26
And it never came. She was more worried about taking her jewelry off before she went to jail
01:18:32
than she was about showing any emotion. Sir, was that your verdict in the jury room?
01:18:38
Yes. Was the verdict agreed to by you? Is that still your verdict? Yes. My heartbeat finally slowed down for the first time in a month.
01:18:46
Yeah. You know, I was just ready to get her sentenced and put this all behind me.
01:18:51
Oh, yes. The sentencing. The sentencing that was one to remember. It happened about a month after the verdict.
01:19:00
And Melody, first time in the trial, decided there was something she wanted to say.
01:19:06
Boy, did she ever. I have waited for years to make this statement to everyone. I want the world to know who did this.
01:19:18
You could, as the old saying goes, hear a pin drop. What was coming? Not only did I not do this, I know who did.
01:19:31
I know Scott killed his father. He took my husband, the father of Chris, Emily, and Amanda, Scott.
01:19:42
This is unforgivable. I had no idea that she would start tearing into Scott like that, blaming him.
01:19:52
I just can't believe she stooped to that level. Scott himself looked stunned as his mother went on for more than 20 minutes.
01:19:59
The judge warned her to stop when she trotted out new allegations never presented in court.
01:20:06
But as she pressed on, Scott Ferris could only shake his head. And it took every bit of me not to stand up in that courtroom and say something to her.
01:20:18
I think the expression on your face said a thing or two. You didn't have to open your mouth.
01:20:25
Oh, I'm sure it did. I mean I haven seen videos of it or anything but I was I never had anything happen like that to me ever in my life She will never admit to anybody what she did because she is going to try her best to pin it on somebody else
01:20:47
Melody could have taken the stand, of course, as a witness. It was a strategic decision that was ultimately made.
01:20:54
Yeah, it's very different reading a essentially a self-prepared speech than it is being under cross-examination.
01:21:05
As she was finally wrapping up, Melody pleaded with the judge, throw out the verdict.
01:21:11
Too late. He gave her life. Parole possible after 30 years. She'll be in her 90s by then.
01:21:19
and now now they'll just have to get used to it though Big Daddy's outsized presence
01:21:29
is everywhere around here and it's hard you know living in this town driving by his old office
01:21:37
you know but he also would want me to be strong. He always stayed strong. He was the one who
01:21:57
had his head on his shoulders. He was calming everybody else down. But I miss him dearly.
01:22:13
It's hard to imagine how the family will recover. The Ferris wheel has spun off its axis.
01:22:20
But then, maybe it did a long time ago. No matter how hard Big Daddy tried to keep it rolling.
01:22:31
He wouldn't be mortified that this has been our lives for the last six years. And
01:22:40
while I do get very sad, I'm just faithful that he was my dad. And if I could be half the dad he was, I'd be doing a pretty good job.
01:23:05
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Sunday at 9, 8 central.
01:23:11
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.