Episode 352

Beloved father and prominent attorney, Gary Farris, should have been safe on his own land. But in July 2018, he vanished from his family’s rural dream property, and a smoldering burn pile would unravel everything they thought they knew about their home, their marriage, and each other. Get instant access to all episodes, including premium unreleased episodes, commercial-free at swordandscale.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Boudet?

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• 0:43Mike Boudet?

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• 1:14Speaker 01

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• 1:44Speaker 02

  Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Gary is in the barn pile. No, he is in the barn pile. And I said, "What?"

• 2:07Mike Boudet?

  Are you ready for some murder? Is that a yes? I can't hear you. Speak up. Here we go.

• 2:51Mike Boudet?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Fortability. And it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on the off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and long-lasting trucks. Built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventures, and the rugged style for everything in between. Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus available hybrid power on many models,

• 3:36Mike Boudet?

  you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way. And long after you leave a lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you can trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota. Let's go places.

• 4:22Mike Boudet?

  On July 5th, 2018, in Cherokee County, Georgia, a family goes looking for their missing dad. The address is 2555 Purcell Lane, a dead-end gravel road off a two-lane highway north of Atlanta, but a long way from the city. The expansive house sits on ten fenced-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,

• 5:06Mike Boudet?

  a pond, a barn apartment, and a small collection of animals: a few horses, a few little milkgoats, 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.

• 5:50Mike Boudet?

  Known to the grandchildren as "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 farmhand. When his mother Melody asks him, "Have you seen your daddy?" In her southern drawl, the answer is no. This wasn't entirely unusual.

• 6:34Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 7:03Mike Boudet?

  Just as soon as he releases a loud, "Dad!" He hears his own name. It's his mother, urging him to come back and check out the burn pile. Scott walks to the back of the property, to a spot where his dad sometimes burns trash and brush. It's obvious Gary has been out here. Scott sees a large burn pile there, and for a few seconds, the smoke burns his eyes. The burn pile is blackened, still warm, with chunks of debris fused into the ash. It's early July in Georgia. The air is thick and damp, and the heat radiates off the ground.

• 7:47Mike Boudet?

  Melody and Scott both stand at the perimeter of the large pile, and Melody points out something odd to her son.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  I asked Scott, I said, "Did you throw one of the goats on there or something?" You know, maybe one died, you know, because we have several of them. I said, "Did you throw a goat on there or something?" Because it was just something that just looked, it was like one big ball of just, you know. And I said, "Did you throw a goat on there or something?" And he went over there and looked and, you know, did it. He said, "Well, no, but that doesn't mean daddy, you know, didn't..." Well, then, he really looked.

• 8:26Mike Boudet?

  Scott stepped closer and looked down. At first, it was just shapes in the ash. Charred 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.

• 9:10Mike Boudet?

  He called 911.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  And I will say, he actually took a stick and picked up, you could tell it was a face. It was a face. You know, you could see the font, you know, of it. And I said, "Tell me that that's a goat or a cow or anything." I mean, you know. And he took off, he said, "I'm calling 911 now."

• 9:36Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  Eric, you can't deny a warm vacation or an emergency.

• 9:50Speaker 06

  Um, 21, uh, 2155 for so, blame. Uh, my father has come up missing and I'm, we just searched the properties of a small farm and I just found something near a phone that doesn't, there was a huge bone and brush and I was just going to the phone like that. It could be him, I don't know.

• 10:18Mike Boudet?

  But if anyone would know whether this was a human or animal, it would be Scott Ferris.

• 10:24Speaker 06

  Now I'm calling the same, but I, I just, we've been looking, walking around looking for him. And I went where the, the fire is still small and, uh, I'm ex-military, I was deployed to Iraq. I've seen what burned up bodies look like and this looks like the body.

• 10:42Speaker 05

  Okay. You, you said your father?

• 10:45Speaker 06

  Yes, sir. Uh, he just turned, uh, six weeks.

• 10:52Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  He's had these spells for years. And he talks. He gets very slurred speech. His motor coordination gets very off. He stumbles. He... His dad had Parkinson's, and I kind of wondered if maybe he had Parkinson's. But they did. I never did personally talk to the cardiologist, but I did talk to his physician's assistant. And because Amanda and I... I went with Amanda to go look at a wedding venue. And so we left before the actual cardiologist came in, but they found that he had a leaking aortic valve and a leaking tricuspid valve. And they wanted him to go back to the cardiologist on Friday. He got out late Wednesday.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  They wanted him to go back to the cardiologist on Friday to be hooked up to a heart monitor for a length of time to see, you know, what all was going wrong with his heart. And he refused to go.

• 12:03Mike Boudet?

  Of course, this begged 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.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Well, Tuesday. He started to be burned late Tuesday. Started to be burned.

• 12:25Mike Boudet?

  Tuesday this week?

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Yes. February 1st. And of course, we were all the time out him. He had set the house on fire two years ago, this August, the end of August. And I got so scared of fire after that. He had set it in his office. We think what he did, I don't think he did an ice tray in there, I don't know. You know? That's what started, the sudden of Scott were here. And, you know, I mean, it did so much damage. And so since then, I've been so just scared of fire around here, just late. He's scary, but he is all the time just, he has a thing with starting fires.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  He set one in my other house in the woods, behind my house, we lived in a subdivision. I had called from a neighbor one morning at four o'clock in the morning, fire department was there. He had started it like the week before, and it had been smoking, and it kind of got out of control.

• 13:28Mike Boudet?

  Sounds like Gary might have been a little bit of a pyromaniac. Not saying he actually was, I mean, that's a real mental disorder, and it's not the same thing as being an arsonist. Pyromania is an impulse-controlled disorder. A person feels drawn to setting fires, fascinated by them, and sometimes even relieved by them, like a coping mechanism, a vice, the way some people reach for alcohol or cigarettes. It's weird, man. And honestly, Gary had reasons to need a vice. He was a high-powered attorney with health issues and a big family.

• 14:09Mike Boudet?

  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, his real daily habit wasn't liquor, it was a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. Yeah, 12. He drank 12 Mountain Dews daily. That's gotta be worse than alcohol, right?

• 14:44Speaker 04

  So, we, I, you know, it had been, I don't know, maybe six months or so since he had burned it before.

• 14:51Speaker 07

  This burn ball here?

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, I mean, it had trees, it had bits in it, it had, we had pulled up, when we did the fire pit down here, we had an excavator here, and they had pulled up a bunch of tree stalks and that kind of stuff, and put on the burn pile, so it had a lot of bits and stuff on it. And he said something not long ago that burned it, he said, "Please do not burn it. It's too dry, it's too windy, it's too..." you know, we always go to the excuse, "Don't burn it." Well, Scott came home, I don't know what time it was when he got hit, because I called him and I was chasing horses.

• 15:32Mike Boudet?

  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 her 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.

• 16:15Mike Boudet?

  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 antipsychotic meds, eventually being placed in a memory care facility with what she calls really bad Alzheimer's or dementia.

• 16:56Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  And then somebody asked me, "Why have you stayed?" And I said, "I took a vow to do it."

• 17:20Mike Boudet?

  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 and the farm. Growing kids, coming and going, relying on handouts from a weary patriarch.

• 17:56Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  I told one of the other deputies that was here, I said, "We've been having trouble with him taking money." I mean, over $900 a month, he's got the check and account routing them. And I said, "Gary refuses to talk to him." Refuses to... I said, "He sends emails and text messages." And it's all he does.

• 18:30Mike Boudet?

  She went on to allege that her oldest son, Chris, was unkind, bordering on abusive to his kids, who often stayed at the farm.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  And I said, "Chris, I'm going to stop you from taking money in some way, somehow, some... You've got to get help. You cannot treat them two girls like this. You cannot treat them, you know." And, you know, I said, "I beg, you know, get help."

• 18:58Mike Boudet?

  Melody talked about all the expensive trips her son planned: a bachelor party in Panama, a trip out west because a friend's dad died, and yet another leisure trip he was planning before all this happened. But Chris wasn't the only one taking advantage of Gary, according to Melody.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Gary was just like, you know, "It's not like I can't, you know." He kept saying, "Well, I can afford to do it." And I said, "Gary does not want it." I mean, that's a spot that Elizabeth has learned. He hasn't worked since he came back from Iraq, except for a very short time. And I can't make him work. I can't make him, you know. And I said, "Gary, I mean, he'll be 35 Saturday." And I said, "Gary, he needs to work." He said, "Well, you don't work." Gary...

• 19:44Speaker 07

  Well, I imagine this place is a full-time job to take care of you.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  It's a full-time job. I mean, it is. You know, and Scott, I mean, and Scott is good help. But, I mean, like this last week, I mean, he's played golf three days. He's gone to the league. He's gone, and, you know, it's just like, come on now.

• 20:01Speaker 07

  This is Scott that's done all this? So he's just enjoying life?

• 20:04Speaker 04

  He is enjoying life to the fullest.

• 20:06Mike Boudet?

  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 sundown while her son Scott drifted in and out instead of helping consistently. And Gary's health was getting worse. All of the grown children were mooching off their generous dad. And Melody was trying to rein it all in and hold it all together while Gary was trying to keep the peace. In a setup like that, it isn't hard to imagine his heart finally giving out, or him having one of his spells at the wrong time near an open fire.

• 20:50Mike Boudet?

  And for a little while, that's exactly what this looked like. A tragic accident on a hobby farm with a burned body where a husband and father used to be. But when what's left of Gary was finally boxed up and sent to the medical examiner, detectives started digging into the burn itself and the digital trail it left behind. What they found in the ashes and in the timeline didn't fit the idea that this was just an accident. Soon, the family would dissolve into bickering and finger pointing and blaming each other

• 21:33Mike Boudet?

  for big daddy's death.

• 21:52Mike Boudet?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability.

• 21:58Mike Boudet?

  And it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on the off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and long-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventures, and the rugged style for everything in between. Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic Forerunner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus available hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 22:41Mike Boudet?

  And long after you leave a lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you can trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 23:06Speaker 04

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• 23:50Speaker 04

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• 24:07Speaker 02

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• 24:46Mike Boudet?

  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 his CPAP.

• 25:30Mike Boudet?

  On July 4th, both Melody and Scott said they never laid eyes on Gary. And Melody told investigators this wasn't unusual. He kept to himself even on July 4th. It wasn't until the next morning, July 5th, 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

• 26:12Mike Boudet?

  days that followed, detectives continued processing the situation with the family. This is Chris.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  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, just something seems, I don't know. Something seems weird to me. Well, I will tell you what we do is we handle, try to handle it as if it's the worst possible scenario, because obviously if you approach it like that...

• 26:43Speaker 05

  Then when it turns out to be that he had a heart attack and fell on the fire, you've done everything you could. Yeah. So what we do is we investigate something like this. We follow the evidence. And we gather evidence. Okay. And we try to get to, the evidence is going to lead us to some sort of conclusion. In terms of what happened. Right. So, you know, he will go, your father's remains will go to an autopsy. Hmm. So that is, you know, essentially the next step. We're going to, you know, be documenting outside, the inside of the house. That's why it's secure. Because, because this is the house, it's not far from the house. We have to, you know, look at everything and make sure we're not missing anything and do a good job documenting.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  So that nobody can come and say, you know, if it does turn out that he did fall on the fire, nobody can, and he just had a heart attack, nobody can say, we didn't do a good job and we missed the fact that someone did something bad to him. I just want to know what happened. I ask what we're gonna look at. I hope to God that it's just an accident. I just hope. I understand. But. And we'll do everything we can to get all the evidence or something. Because, you know, we all loved him very much.

• 27:57Mike Boudet?

  But someone obviously did not love Gary very much. Because what the autopsy revealed after putting all of Gary's burned pieces back together, was a bullet lodged in his rib cage. Unless it was suicide. But if that were the case, then why would you be hearing this story on sort of scale? Once the medical examiner confirmed he'd been shot, detectives took that news back to the family. One of the first calls was to their son, Chris.

• 28:30Speaker 05

  Well, I'm gonna tell you something. And I just want to make sure you're ready and then I'm at. I, I, I just want you to tell me what you think when I say it, okay? Okay. The evidence we have obtained on the scene

• 28:46Speaker 05

  suggests to us that your father was shot.

• 28:51Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 28:53Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 28:55Speaker 07

  That's a lot. Oh, man. Have you pulled anybody up for shit?

• 29:00Speaker 05

  There are some other people that are aware.

• 29:03Speaker 07

  I can't believe it, man. I, you know, when I was off the weekday, I was just like, I told you, I, I suspected but I just wanted not to be. But everything in my soul is definitely not right with this.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Well, that would be accurate.

• 29:22Speaker 07

  Whatever you need from, you need from me, let me know, man.

• 29:27Mike Boudet?

  When the medical examiner opens the bags from the burn pit, there's no body in the usual sense. Gary has been reduced to charred pieces of bone and scraps of tissue divided into almost fifty bags labeled by quadrant. Gary was six foot, five inches and more than three hundred pounds. The bones are blackened, brittle and cracked from heat with fragments of pelvis, leg bones and skull mixed in with the ash. The soft tissue left is moldy and wet after sitting in its own liquid collected in the bottom of the bags.

• 30:08Mike Boudet?

  The only way to be sure it's Gary is by matching the teeth to all his dental records. And there's no guarantee that this bullet killed him. Investigators quickly rule out an intruder. There's no broken glass, no kicked in door, no drawers pulled out or valuables missing. This isn't a burglary gone bad. It's a dead man on his own land at a house that sits by itself at the end of a gravel road. Whoever did this was extremely close to Gary.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  So like the night of the third and the day of the fourth, you were just never even in Cherokee County?

• 30:48Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  Okay. Um. Can you, if I asked you if there's anyone who would want to hurt your dad?

• 31:00Speaker 05

  What would you say? Would Scott ever want to hurt your dad?

• 31:05Speaker 06

  No.

• 31:06Speaker 05

  Did they get along pretty well?

• 31:08Speaker 06

  Scott, my brother, yeah, I mean, you know, they lived in the same place and they bickered back and forth all the time, of course.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:14Speaker 06

  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.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:25Speaker 06

  And he loves my dad.

• 31:28Speaker 05

  Who would stand to gain it? Who would stand to gain anything if something happened to your dad?

• 31:34Speaker 06

  Honestly, I mean,

• 31:40Speaker 06

  as far as money goes?

• 31:43Speaker 05

  As far as anything?

• 31:44Speaker 06

  Probably, probably money-wise,

• 31:50Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 31:52Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 32:03Speaker 07

  They've been sifted through the remains and ashes and they have found a projectile in some bones.

• 32:11Speaker 07

  It does not appear to be self-inflicted.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  So, I mean, do we know what kind or what?

• 32:20Mike Boudet?

  The circle was already pretty small. Gary, his wife, and his grown kids who came and went. But it was growing even smaller. You know how it all comes down to motive and opportunity? The motive seems simple. Money. There you go. Once you rule out a stranger, what you're left with is the ugliest kind of murder. Someone inside the family did it, and the rest of them were trying to decide how much they really want to say out loud. The only two family members who were at or around the property at the time of Gary's murder were Melody and Scott.

• 33:01Mike Boudet?

  Once detectives found the projectile in Gary's remains, the search was on for the gun that fired it. On ten-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.

• 33:31Speaker 06

  That's when I found that .38 Special. I said, "Where in the hell did that come from?" And the only reason why I didn't continue to, you know, to ask him about it and everything is I had the AT&T out there and I didn't want to pull the sucker out and, you know, scare the crap out of him. I shut the drawer back and I was, you know, planning on asking my mom and dad where it came from, but it just slipped my mind. And it was sitting right there. It was sitting in holster? Yeah, it was like this level leather crappy-looking holster. And, you know, I just, you know, I saw it and just kind of pulled it out and you could tell it was just a .38 Special. It was small.

• 34:17Speaker 06

  Did it look, I don't know how to say this, old? Yes. Or black and more modern revolver? It did not look brand-new. It looked like it had age on it.

• 34:31Mike Boudet?

  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 in Gary's bones. And the gun that ties them both together used to sit in a drawer beside his bed, and it's not there anymore. Huh.

• 35:15Mike Boudet?

  At this point detectives know two things for sure. Gary was shot and whoever pulled the trigger was close enough to know their way around the house. The pool of suspects is basically just the people who live on that land and move through that basement.

• 35:35Mike Boudet?

  So they don't just look for bullets and phones. They listen to how the family talks about each other. And when they ask Melody about Scott, she doesn't describe a calm, steady son.

• 35:49Speaker 07

  Does he have any PTSD or anything from?

• 35:54Speaker 04

  He's always been very hot-headed ever since he was a little boy. I mean, to the point that, I mean, he went nine one when he was born and he was just a handful.

• 36:05Speaker 07

  So you're not protecting any of your sons?

• 36:08Speaker 04

  No.

• 36:08Speaker 07

  That you know of?

• 36:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 36:10Speaker 07

  And we're not gonna find any evidence to prove otherwise?

• 36:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 36:15Speaker 07

  Can you shed any light on any of this?

• 36:18Speaker 04

  No.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  I mean, I would like to, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like I said, Scott is very hot-tempered.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  I mean, he and Gary, I had seen them get into the point that I was just like, okay, y'all, just take it down a notch. I mean, you know?

• 36:39Speaker 07

  I really like to believe that if Scott shot Gary on your property or inside your house, and then the body was disposed of in your fire pit, that you would probably know about it or find some evidence of it yourself?

• 36:56Speaker 07

  Or help clean up or?

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, like I said, I wouldn't have.

• 37:03Speaker 07

  You were there?

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I was, but I left. I mean, you know, and I just saw it smoldering.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  The thing is, you know, okay, it's not blazing, it's not whatever, we're good, you know.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  The thing, you know, but I kept thinking last night, why did Scott come in here and get so angry? Last night. But that's not all that unusual either, for him to just blow up.

• 37:33Mike Boudet?

  Scott insists he's not a hothead. He admits he gets angry like anyone, and he admits loud bangs still make him jump. But he pushes back on the idea that he's some kind of ticking bomb.

• 37:47Speaker 06

  My version of PTSD is if I hear a loud bang or something, then I'm just not, you know, prepared for it. My adrenaline just goes through the roof, my heart is pounding out of my chest, and I'm learning to, I start taking deep breaths and it calms me down, but gunfire doesn't bother me, I can still be around that, um, you know, and nightmares have ended, and they ended a long time ago. Other than that, no, I don't get violent with anybody. I'm just like my dad, you know?

• 38:23Speaker 06

  I make friends everywhere I go.

• 38:25Mike Boudet?

  By all accounts, Scott and his dad were really likable guys who made friends everywhere they went, and they got along well together. When his dad wasn't able to keep up at 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 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.

• 39:07Mike Boudet?

  So, yeah, Melody's brother-in-law. Melody was fucking her brother-in-law.

• 39:16Mike Boudet?

  The truth is that Melody and Scott had been together for decades until something pulled them apart. And that's something the family would later say was Melody. This was Chris's take on it.

• 39:29Speaker 07

  You know, my parents don't get along. They don't, honestly, don't really like each other. And so the communication.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  How long have they not liked each other? This has been going, this is nothing new.

• 39:41Speaker 07

  My grandmother, in about a series of three months, my grandmother had open-heart surgery that went really wrong. She survived, but it put her in debilitating. At 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, my grandmother's house, because she could no longer function on her own. So my mom had to go up there, get her house, deal with the affairs.

• 40:13Mike Boudet?

  This was a bit of a double entendre. Melody had to deal with the affairs of grandma and her house, but also had her own affairs.

• 40:22Speaker 07

  So during that period, my mom started.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  The affairs?

• 40:29Speaker 07

  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 gonna do." She spent a lot of money.

• 40:48Mike Boudet?

  Everybody was spending all 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 gonna go with Chris on vacation shortly before he died. And Melody wasn't happy about it.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  The last thing that Chris had done was booked a vacation to the beach that they're supposed to be leaving Saturday, I think it's Saturday.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  And Gary had said, "I'm gonna go with him." Instead of him just taking the money, like what he usually does, "I'm gonna go with him." And he said, "Are you gonna go?" And I said, "No, I'm not going." Because Gary, he keeps taking, I mean, his serious money. I mean, it's not, it's serious money. I mean, like I said, it's anywhere from eight, nine hundred dollars a month, plus the girl's airline tickets.

• 42:04Mike Boudet?

  To hear Melody tell it, even plane tickets for her granddaughters were one more example of everyone spending Gary's money. But the truth was that trips with the kids weren't exactly what had nearly blown this marriage up years earlier.

• 42:21Speaker 07

  I mean, I told him he needed to find somebody else. You know, because she talks so bad about him every month, to make him out to be such an awful person. And, now granted, she does that to a lot of people, too. My mother has issues. Basically, he was in a tough situation. He didn't want to break the whole family up. He's a very conservative, traditional person.

• 42:46Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:47Speaker 07

  You know? 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, lot of problems, a lot of issues and a lot of problems.

• 43:02Speaker 05

  Okay. Have you ever known there to be any domestic violence or anything?

• 43:05Speaker 07

  No, never.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Is there any substance abuse?

• 43:07Speaker 07

  Nope.

• 43:07Speaker 05

  Going on? Any, anything other than her cheating and money issues? Do you know any names of anyone she had an affair with? Or you just know she had affairs?

• 43:16Speaker 07

  Ted Wiley, and then some guy named Rusty. I think his last name was Barton. And I don't know that that was an affair that actually happened. That's just something we suspected.

• 43:28Speaker 07

  Because she would tell my daughters things.

• 43:32Speaker 07

  You know, big daddy, this is that and that. And she would like-

• 43:35Speaker 05

  She would just badmouth?

• 43:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, badmouth him. But she'd be on the phone. She would have like always on her phone, always talking to somebody. Ends up getting a tattoo right here that says XOXO. And my daughter said, well, that's who when she calls people, that's it says XOXO on her phone. And the uh, and like my brother told me today, he's like, yeah, she's got a whole nother cellphone.

• 43:58Mike Boudet?

  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 farm where he ultimately died.

• 44:13Speaker 07

  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 and then.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  Has anybody ever actually filed for divorce? Did she know?

• 44:24Speaker 07

  I think my dad filed, but he withdrew it.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 44:28Speaker 07

  Um, cause I remember him calling me and telling him he was gonna take her back. And I told him, you know, I mean, I told him not to buy this place because it's not gonna fix it. I mean, I told him he needed to find somebody else.

• 44:42Mike Boudet?

  Scott backed up Chris's statements about his parents' marriage in a separate interview.

• 44:47Speaker 07

  Why do you think they reconciled and never divorced? Why don't you think your dad followed him with it?

• 44:53Speaker 06

  My dad loved her. Um, he didn't like conflict. He didn't like to argue. He, you know, he always tried to find the easiest way out of any kind of conflict. And that's part of why he, I mean, I think he loved her, loved her. He was the one, I mean, I think at one point he said something to either Chris or somebody. I just heard that he tried to get her to go to marriage counseling and she wouldn't do it.

• 45:26Mike Boudet?

  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 Gary bought to try to hold it all together.

• 45:46Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 46:29Mike Boudet?

  So detectives stopped asking about feelings and went back to the three days that mattered most: July 3rd, 4th, and 5th, to see what evidence said about who was there when Gary died. At first, the family wanted to believe this was an accident. Gary had one of his dizzy spells, maybe a heart attack, and fell into the fire. Poof! Burned quickly and gone, just like that. But finding the bullet immediately rules that out. And the body burning quickly in a fire? Well... That's just not how it works, kids. Bodies don't burn like that.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  You don't burn on bodies. You just don't throw them on a burn pile. That's unusual. Hey, the last-

• 47:17Speaker 07

  The amount of effort needed to burn a body is significant. Go.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  On the battle, I mean, that was just, I know that he burned one.

• 47:25Speaker 07

  Okay, I'm telling you, bodies just don't burn in fires. They just don't go away. We're all water. You can't burn water. Incinerators are designed to burn for a very long time in an exceedingly high heat that is not reaching a regular bonfire, that's not reaching a brush fire, it's barely reaching, it's not even really reaching a house fire. House fires where houses collapse on people, we still find more of those people than we did of your husband.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  Okay, then how did it work?

• 47:54Speaker 07

  It was outside your bedroom window. I was hoping maybe you could shed some light on that.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, all I saw was, you know, I'd never went down there.

• 48:04Mike Boudet?

  But someone did. Because someone would have needed to make sure the body itself kept burning until the job was done. And Melody was on the property all day long on July 4th.

• 48:18Mike Boudet?

  The 5th is when they all went searching for Gary and found what Melody claimed to be a goat.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  I mean, when we were all down there the other day, I mean, everybody, me and Amanda and Scott and Chris, even, you know, Addison and Cameron, I think we were all circling around. Scott, actually, when, when we were discussing that about the goat, I said, "Do we have a goat to die? Did you put one in the burn pile? And, you know, did your daddy put one on?" You know, whatever, because all I saw was two legs. What I thought was two legs digging up.

• 48:53Mike Boudet?

  Melody wasn't just playing along.

• 48:55Speaker 07

  So that fire, it had to be tended to for a while.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  I just told Gary, I said, "You've got to keep an eye on that."

• 49:03Speaker 07

  Someone had to go back. Repeatedly.

• 49:08Speaker 04

  And do what?

• 49:10Speaker 07

  Keep it burning.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  I, I did not do it. I did not do that.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  I mean, when I tell you that fire was massive, it was massive. And he had a bunch, like I said, there was fencing and boards and all kinds of-

• 49:29Speaker 07

  Woefully insufficient for the type of heat and the amount of burn and everything else about it. Woefully insufficient.

• 49:38Mike Boudet?

  Woefully insufficient. It sounds like feedback on a failed science project. But what he's really saying is her version wouldn't come close to doing this. A fire like the one she describes doesn't erase a 300-pound man. Someone had to stay with it and continue feeding the fire.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  That's all I know. That is all I know.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  That's all I know that was on it. I know that Gary-

• 50:10Speaker 07

  What can you tell me about the blood in that?

• 50:13Speaker 07

  What can you tell me about the blood you found?

• 50:16Speaker 04

  I don't, I did not know that there was any blood.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  I mean, how much blood are we talking?

• 50:23Speaker 07

  We found blood. Do you know anything about the blood?

• 50:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did not know anything about the blood. Nothing.

• 50:31Speaker 07

  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.

• 50:40Speaker 07

  Something happened to him. How did he die?

• 50:44Speaker 04

  I didn't know.

• 50:45Speaker 07

  You were told.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  I didn't.

• 50:47Speaker 07

  You were told how he died, weren't you? What happened?

• 50:51Speaker 04

  Well, we just assumed when Scott said, "This is human remains on this site."

• 50:58Mike Boudet?

  But you know what they say about assumptions, right? It's an old Benny Hill joke.

• 51:04Speaker 07

  Have you been told how he died, what we found?

• 51:07Speaker 04

  He told me that there was a a shot or whatever, a slug in the rib.

• 51:16Speaker 07

  Okay, so what does that indicate to you?

• 51:20Speaker 04

  A gunshot wound.

• 51:21Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  I mean, that's like, I mean, I told Amanda last, I mean, we told her last night here.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  And that's when I found out that it was when we came here.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  And it was like, how do you ever have this? I mean, I'm thinking he just got caught up in the fire.

• 51:39Speaker 07

  Because what we have is gunshot wound.

• 51:43Speaker 07

  Burned body.

• 51:46Speaker 07

  All of which took a long period of time.

• 51:51Speaker 07

  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.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did not, I didn't.

• 52:02Speaker 07

  But you, 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.

• 52:25Mike Boudet?

  Of course, Melody knew how he died. It was absurd for her to sit there and claim she didn't. Or she forgot, or whatever. But this wasn't the detective's first rodeo 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.

• 52:48Speaker 07

  The "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.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  But I don't know the time frame. I mean, I know when I saw him.

• 53:00Speaker 07

  You realize, though, this makes no sense, right? And you realize that I have had hundreds of conversations with people that have lost loved ones. People who have had loved ones shot and we didn't know who did it. People that have had loved ones who they have done something bad to. I have had these conversations with people on both ends of the side, both sides of the spectrum. I've had countless ones.

• 53:26Speaker 07

  People tend to act certain ways whether they want to or not.

• 53:30Speaker 04

  But I'm honestly telling you, I don't know.

• 53:33Speaker 07

  And the problem is, is that just doesn't fit. It's absolutely impossible that you don't know. I'm not saying, I'm saying it is absolutely, the evidence we have, it is absolutely impossible.

• 53:47Mike Boudet?

  By now, detectives had made it clear. Her "I don't know" act doesn't match what they're seeing. A body burned to fragments, bullets in the bones, blood inside the house. A fire that, in their words, would be woefully insufficient unless somebody kept coming back to feed it. They've pointed these things out to Melody, but she doesn't know yet that they've tracked Gary's cellphone 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.

• 54:32Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 54:58Speaker 07

  Didn't anybody know I liked him?

• 55:00Speaker 04

  Oh, I can say, probably all the kids, they loved him. They didn't necessarily like him. I mean, that's what I have always said. I loved him.

• 55:08Speaker 07

  How do you feel about him?

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Well, I love him to death. I don't necessarily like him. I did not like the person that he had become.

• 55:17Mike Boudet?

  Did you catch that? She said she loved him to death. Huh. Figure of 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?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  My daughter, when she landed, called my mother and asked, "Can we have that..." Remember the sleepover? "Can we have a sleepover?" They wanted to do it the third, and she said, "Tonight would not be a good night." That's what I know for a fact. Other than that, other facts? I'll tell you what else I know. And I don't know, when I was in, when my dad was in the hospital, what was it, April? I came in there, you know, I walk in, and I was like, "What's the deal?" For my dad, and 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."

• 56:31Speaker 06

  I was like, oh, what's going on? He said, well, your mama 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 run marathons and your dad has better blood sugar than I do.

• 56:47Speaker 06

  So don't say anything. Let me finish. So I was like, oh, okay. Now she could this, like, number one, can you, like, this whole blood sugar thing? Where'd that come from? You know? And why does Melody Ferris have a blood sugar test kit? And 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 half the time even talk to me. And when she does talk to me, she's yelling at me and screaming at me.

• 57:31Speaker 06

  But I was like, well, they look good, so 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, nah, I mean, come on, you know, maybe. But he said, well, then a few weeks before that, she brought home a pasta dish and the same thing happened. And I said, so I just went to the doctor and I said, look, I said, they have a farm.

• 58:16Speaker 06

  They have a lot of stuff going on out there with pesticides. And I was like, maybe y'all should run a toxicology thing on him. That might not be a bad idea.

• 58:25Mike Boudet?

  Just trying not to be like, "Holy shit, he just told me that he thinks my mom might be 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 thinking 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.

• 59:04Speaker 03

  What happens when you leave a plate, forget to take it upstairs, a minor temper tantrum. Of course, I had supper tonight and it was six for me, so I'm sure I'll be feeling poorly here within minutes, but we'll see.

• 59:23Mike Boudet?

  When the two brothers were interviewed together for hours, their memories became clearer and clearer.

• 59:29Speaker 06

  Within this past year, the fighting between the two of them just got, you know, worse and worse and comments my mother, my dad never talked, said anything negative to me about my mother except for just like her going out and spending so much money on, on stuff like that and all, but he never, you know, you know, said anything other than that in a negative way. But my mother, on the other hand, man, 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. I wish he would just have a heart attack and die." Yeah, she definitely tried to turn all of us on to each other. She has said stuff about him, she has said stuff about Emily.

• 1:00:11Speaker 06

  So she's just trying to, you know, basically stir the pot up with us. She's been doing that ever since all this happened. She's been trying to get me to turn against him and my sister Emily.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  And I guess she's been, you know, vice versa with Amanda, I mean, trying to get Amanda to turn on all of us and, um, and that's not really, I mean, that's, that's kind of crap my mother would do. I mean, she pretty much, yeah, she loved drama. It's been always really weird. My mom would treat her like strangers and people she

• 1:00:45Mike Boudet?

  recently knew or, 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.

• 1:01:19Speaker 06

  Family members have, you know, passed away. She didn't want to upset, but when I, you know, when I discovered his body, his remains, and even the paramedic says he has those are human remains, she had zero emotion. None. No crying and nothing. But yet when Rebel, the horse's foot, put down, a couple of months after we found him, she's bawling her eyes out.

• 1:01:49Mike Boudet?

  The more the brothers spoke about their mother, the more they realized they just may have been raised by a sociopath.

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• 1:04:46Mike Boudet?

  On July 5th, 2018, on the Ferris family's 10-acre farm off Purcell Lane in 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 are 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 in Gary's car, the same car Scott had already checked twice. The timeline matters. Gary's last confirmed day is July 3rd, when he's been working around a burn pile behind the house.

• 1:05:29Mike Boudet?

  Melody claims she last saw him that night and never checked on him the next day. That next day is July 4th, and Scott isn't on the property, but Melody is. And by the morning of July 5th, 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.

• 1:06:10Mike Boudet?

  Gary's cellphone 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.

• 1:06:52Speaker 07

  I don't know. We found other things in the basement. Why? Other things in the basement that are significant.

• 1:07:04Speaker 07

  We know how long it took, we know lengths of time things took. We know that moving somebody that's 300 pounds and 6'4", that's bigger than I am, that is a significant feat.

• 1:07:20Speaker 07

  We are putting layer upon layer upon layer upon layer on this picture. And right now, the only thing you're saying, bear 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.

• 1:07:57Mike Boudet?

  Regardless of how 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 an 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.

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, this Rusty guy, he just came in the picture when Martha Jane had a... I knew, I had some suspicions about it before my sister's wedding, because Emily called me...

• 1:08:52Speaker 06

  A few months before and said, Melody's shown up in Nashville, this Rusty guy driving daddy's Mercedes or daddy's whatever car, I don't remember what car he had at the time and just, you know, acting really funny. And then she invited him to my sister's wedding in Franklin, Tennessee, and was dancing with him and acting extremely too friendly.

• 1:09:18Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Also, I wanted to let you know what I told your lawyer that I'm putting my name on the line too, because that's how confident I am in you and about what you're gonna tell us, okay? That would be of interest to us, not the time or anything about what happened. 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 safe to say, there wasn't much talking after that? No. No, that was the end of the conversation. And it's at the last time you was fucking with her? No, no. No, I talked to her. I talked to her every still. I talked to her every day. But again, every day was just, every day. So when that, let's talk about that conversation that you feel.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  Probably the last minute of the last conversation,

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  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 pound. That was all of it.

• 1:10:53Speaker 07

  That was all of it.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  That was everything that she said that had anything to do with whatever happened.

• 1:10:59Speaker 07

  But that's pretty, I mean.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  And I don't.

• 1:11:01Speaker 07

  You gotta admit that's pretty good.

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know when happened or what happened.

• 1:11:04Speaker 07

  And here's the thing, at the time that that statement was made, you gotta remember, he wasn't even reported as missing.

• 1:11:10Mike Boudet?

  By the time the trial took place in October of 2024, Melody's defense tried to shove the spotlight back onto Scott. The son 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,

• 1:11:55Mike Boudet?

  had come up missing in the weeks prior to Gary's murder. It was Melody's cousin, the stepmother of Melody's lover, Rusty. And turned out, Melody had spent a few weeks at her house helping to take care of her. One last question lingered in the minds of the jury. How did tiny Melody move big daddy's body? The answer was a tractor. A tractor with a big bucket attached. Melody knew how to drive the tractor, and Scott knew this because he had taught her. The tractor was moved on Tuesday night, and the RTV was moved in the middle of the night.

• 1:12:39Speaker 06

  Because the reason why I remember that tractor being there is because there was a cat that I've never seen before in the city, right there on the, on that implement, on the back of the tractor. And that's when I walked out and saw the cat and whatever.

• 1:12:55Speaker 05

  It was a cat.

• 1:12:56Speaker 06

  It just, yeah. So I knew the tractor was there on the third. After that, I don't. Till the fifth, when you physically walked out there and saw it. Yeah. I didn't think even to look, so.

• 1:13:12Speaker 06

  The only way I knew that it was down there is because I was looking for my dad and saw it was parked there. And that's when I walked down there and put my hand on the hood to see if it was still warm.

• 1:13:21Mike Boudet?

  When detectives cornered Melody on this, all she had were flimsy excuses and a panicked voice.

• 1:13:28Speaker 07

  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. The RTV was moved in the middle of the night and Gary could not have done it. Things were done. Things happen.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  What are you saying, the RTV was moved in the middle of the night?

• 1:13:56Speaker 07

  You said you parked it in one spot and woke up.

• 1:13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, but that was during the day.

• 1:14:00Speaker 07

  That was, and that was the next, but the tractor wasn't. And here's the thing, even at the end of the day.

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  It does step her out too. I just assumed that Scott had come in.

• 1:14:12Speaker 07

  You did, 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 what happened now.

• 1:14:20Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, I was with the man in jail, in Cameron.

• 1:14:26Speaker 07

  Okay, but the night of the third, the only person there until 11:30.

• 1:14:35Speaker 04

  Wasn't he?

• 1:14:36Speaker 07

  Yes. And then after that, you were still there. His body was burned in that fire pit. It was unquestionable you saw with your own two eyes. 11:30, that fire is still going.

• 1:14:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Speaker 07

  In that timeframe, you don't have.

• 1:14:59Speaker 04

  But Scott.

• 1:15:00Speaker 07

  Nobody's nut came through the woods and was sitting there tending to this fire for time.

• 1:15:07Speaker 04

  But Scott was on that property at that point in time too.

• 1:15:11Mike Boudet?

  Scott found his father in the burn pile and called 911. Melody watched that and later tried to make him out to be a murderer. It's one thing to lie to the police and it's quite another thing entirely to hand your own child to the wolves and call it self-defense. What a bitch.

• 1:15:32Speaker 06

  I was like, gloves are off. I mean, you threw your, you tried to throw your own child under the bus. I'm straight up lying to the police and I confronted her about it. So, she's like, I never said that. I'm like, it's in the police report.

• 1:15:49Mike Boudet?

  By the time Melody Ferris's trial wrapped up in late 2024, the prosecution had presented a 18-day case calling dozens of witnesses and more than a thousand pieces of physical, digital, and forensic evidence. On November 4th, 2024, a Cherokee County jury found her guilty on all five charges: malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, concealing the death of another, and making false statements. The verdict came after several days of deliberation following closing arguments. At her sentencing hearing the next day, the Superior Court Judge sentenced Ferris

• 1:16:30Mike Boudet?

  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 barred her 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.

• 1:17:10Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 1:17:34Mike Boudet?

  And as the prosecutor read her words, Chris sat in the background, breaking down, openly sobbing, wiping tears from his face.

• 1:17:46Mike Boudet?

  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.

• 1:18:14Speaker 04

  On July the 5th, 2018, six years, five months ago today, began the worst nightmare that I could have ever imagined. Not only my world, but my family's world, was absolutely destroyed at the hands of one person.

• 1:18:33Speaker 04

  I have had six blessed years of being told not to talk. Don't say that. Take legal advice. I could walk out of this courtroom today

• 1:18:46Speaker 04

  and drop over dead. 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.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  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

• 1:19:19Speaker 04

  to be the truth in this case?

• 1:19:24Speaker 04

  Not only did I not do this, but who did?

• 1:19:31Speaker 04

  I know Scott killed his father.

• 1:19:34Mike Boudet?

  Melody's sentencing 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. Oh, and, you know, all the lovers. But it was all powered by Gary. How inconvenient for her.

• 1:19:59Mike Boudet?

  And the moment that he stopped fitting the role she needed. She treated him like an obstacle. Just like all narcissists do. When confronted with the consequences, she never once showed empathy, accountability, or concern for what her children had already lost. She minimized, argued, lied, and blamed. When the case threatened her, she didn't protect her family, she used them. First as cover, then as human shields. A normal person, hearing her daughter's grief and seeing her son sobbing like this, would stop the charade.

• 1:20:41Mike Boudet?

  They'd realize all the hurt they'd caused, all the people around them that loved them, that they supposedly loved.

• 1:20:52Mike Boudet?

  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. Melody didn't do that. Put it that way. Even in the end, with nothing left to win. She chose the move that hurt her family the most. Because protecting herself mattered way more than taking responsibility for her own actions.

• 1:22:08Mike Boudet?

  Well, I 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.

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