A Little Patch of Perfect

Speaker 1 the creator of homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat-and-mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 Grand Canyon University is one of the largest universities in the country.

Speaker 2 Praised for its community and impact, GCU integrates a welcoming Christian worldview and open discourse into over 300 online programs.

Speaker 2 Redefine your online education through GCU's industry-driven, academically rigorous programs. In 2024, online students received over $161 million in institutional scholarships.
Find your purpose.

Speaker 2 Private, Christian, affordable. Discover available scholarships at gcu.edu/slash myoffer.

Speaker 1 Tonight, on dateline, my father was larger than life.

Speaker 4 He was the rock of the family.

Speaker 3 My sister called and said, Daddy's missing.

Speaker 1 We started searching for him.

Speaker 3 It clicked in my mind that he was going to burn that burn pile.

Speaker 5 He said he fell in a fire and burned up. I said, there's no way.

Speaker 6 Melody said that he has what she called spells where he would feel faint.

Speaker 1 They found a bullet lodged in my dad's rib bone.

Speaker 6 Obviously, the direction of the case changed very quickly.

Speaker 1 Gary had close ties with all the family members related to money.

Speaker 7 Chris has taken money. He came in and took checks.

Speaker 5 Gary was a workaholic and she liked to spend the money.

Speaker 7 Scott's been making threats against her saying that he's taking over the estate.

Speaker 1 It's almost like an Agatha the Christie story. You've got a confined space and all those people are warring amongst themselves.

Speaker 9 That's exactly right.

Speaker 10 I have waited for years to make this statement.

Speaker 7 I want the world to know who did this.

Speaker 1 A patriarch's body found in a fire and the smoldering family secrets left behind. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 1 Here's Keith Morrison with a little patch of perfect.

Speaker 1 It was the July 4th holiday when the confusion started. The who's, where, and when's he coming back kind of confusion.
They had plans, after all.

Speaker 1 Here at this place, this idyllic symbol of their success. A 10-acre estate near Alpharetta, Georgia.
A little patch of perfect on the northernmost edge of Atlanta's suburban sprawl.

Speaker 1 This was their lifetime dream come true.

Speaker 1 And if they had heard that ancient advice, that father for so many tragedies,

Speaker 1 would they have listened or plowed on to the fate that waited for them?

Speaker 1 Careful what you wish for.

Speaker 1 Their name was Pharis.

Speaker 1 And they hated it when strangers, implying dysfunction, called them the Pharis wheel.

Speaker 1 Still, like spokes on a wheel, they stayed ever connected to this sweet place,

Speaker 1 this hub.

Speaker 1 The farm is what they call it.

Speaker 1 That's Chris, the eldest of the four Ferris children, and they are his parents, Gary and Melody.

Speaker 1 Chris's brother Scott, an Iraq war vet, lived in an apartment above the barn, and he helped run the place. I would run the farm, and I would take care of the property through the week and all.

Speaker 1 Chris and his two sisters, Emily and Amanda, were like near planets in the farm's orbit, and they gathered often for three-generation family dinners.

Speaker 1 Family parties, grandkids coming and going as they pleased, running amok among the goats and horses and chickens.

Speaker 1 Watched by their tiny grandmother, Melody, for whom Gary bought the place, really, an old-fashioned family when it came to money. Gary was a prominent Atlanta attorney, gregarious, friendly, and big,

Speaker 1 six, five, 300 pounds. Big Daddy, the family called him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 We went up to the barn to look at the animals. The barn is about 300 yards away from the main house.
And

Speaker 3 Addison and my mother walked down to the pond to see the new baby ducks.

Speaker 1 And that was that.

Speaker 1 The next day, the 4th, Chris was back with Addison, dropped her off for a farm sweepover with a cousin. And the two girls went looking for Big Daddy.
Couldn't find him. Nor could Melody.

Speaker 1 She said she hadn't seen him all that day.

Speaker 3 I mean, it was a large property, and he would, you know, work on projects and things like that. And it wasn't uncommon for my parents to not know where they, where each other were

Speaker 1 at certain times.

Speaker 1 But he was still gone the next morning, July 5th. Wasn't answering his phone either.
Chris found out from his worried sister, Amanda, who'd arrived at the farm that morning.

Speaker 3 And she said, you know, daddy's missing.

Speaker 1 I mean, was that terribly unusual that he wouldn't be around? No, sir.

Speaker 3 My thoughts were maybe he went to the office, but then when I found out his car was still there,

Speaker 3 it raised my worry

Speaker 3 quite drastically.

Speaker 1 Chris got in his car, drove to the farm, anxiety building with each passing mile.

Speaker 3 So on the way up, I was frantic. I was calling my other sister Emily.
I was talking with Amanda, just trying to

Speaker 3 help in the search for him.

Speaker 1 Chris's brother, Scott, was already looking, of course. At that time, I was thinking

Speaker 1 he had a heart attack somewhere. Scott checked the trail camera for signs of Big Daddy.
Nothing, he said, but images of a few critters. The mood was becoming more and more frantic as Chris arrived.

Speaker 3 I jumped on that ATV and I drove up to the barn and I searched the barn.

Speaker 3 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, 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.

Speaker 1 The burn pile, a common thing on farms like the Ferris's, a place to burn branches and shrubs and whatever, in a controlled, contained place, or sort of contained.

Speaker 1 Gary loved his burn piles, the bigger the better. By the time Scott got to the pile, it had about run its course.

Speaker 1 It had been intense, you could see. It burned everything.

Speaker 1 Or rather,

Speaker 1 not quite everything.

Speaker 1 It didn't look like a rock or anything like that.

Speaker 1 So I grabbed a very, very small piece of it and lifted it up enough to where I saw teeth in the eye socket. A human skull.

Speaker 1 I'll never forget it. I knew immediately at that time this was a very, very bad situation.

Speaker 1 Chris saw it too, and they both knew it was their father's body, the little that was left.

Speaker 3 That image of

Speaker 1 seeing that is something that

Speaker 1 I don't think I'll ever get over.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's one thing to see something that horrific on TV or in a movie, but to see your own father

Speaker 3 like that,

Speaker 3 it's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Speaker 1 By then, the law was on its way to look and poke around and ask awkward questions.

Speaker 1 How did Gary Ferris end up in his own burn pile?

Speaker 1 And why, of course.

Speaker 6 I thought, that's the missing piece to this puzzle.

Speaker 1 There's an old expression. No secrets in a murder investigation.
Not for long, anyway.

Speaker 11 See, this is where I'm torn. I want to tell you what I know.
I want to tell you what I think.

Speaker 1 Not in this family. About to implode.

Speaker 5 Gary started getting suspicious, and he would put trackers on the car.

Speaker 1 Crazy, scary thing, secrets, aren't they? This is called a Perry Mason moment. Late in the trial, a surprise witness.

Speaker 4 I don't know that I'll ever experience that again in my career.

Speaker 1 It wasn't easy to be a Ferris that 5th of July. Imagine finding your father's charred skull in a pile of ashes.

Speaker 3 I pretty much blacked out and went into shock at that time. The authorities arrived very, very soon after all this.

Speaker 6 It was hot. It was, you know, July the 5th.

Speaker 1 It was so hot outside. This is Sergeant Daniel Hayes of the Sheriff's Department.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 And when they saw the place?

Speaker 1 Well, yes, freak accidents happen to rich people, too.

Speaker 6 I think everyone that arrived on that property probably looked around and thought, man, I'd love to have this.

Speaker 1 Job to do, though. First, know your victim.
Detective Hayes asked the family about Big Daddy. Would you say he was larger than life in every way?

Speaker 1 Correct. He's a big man.

Speaker 3 Big man. Very big man.

Speaker 1 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. The oldest son.

Speaker 1 Gary John and their two sisters were raised in a middle-class home in Alabama. And so we were very close.
We had a lot of fun roaming the neighborhoods.

Speaker 5 He was always a loving brother.

Speaker 1 Sister Sherry was seven years younger than her gentle giant of a brother.

Speaker 5 I remember he would come in and he would grab me up and he would put me on his shoulders.

Speaker 1 So smart, playful, and very ambitious. He decided early on that he wanted to become an attorney and made it happen.
A lot of obstacles he had overcome

Speaker 1 and he was very driven.

Speaker 1 He had to be driven because life threw Gary Ferris a little curveball. in the form of a pretty young thing named Melody.

Speaker 1 Still teenagers when they met. They got married very young.
Very young, yeah. And he was a sophomore in college, had a child right away.

Speaker 1 Melody stayed home to raise their son, Chris. Gary worked nights to support his family and put himself through law school.
And the kids kept coming. After Chris, Scott, Emily, Amanda.

Speaker 1 Well, Gary rose fast in the legal world. My dad worked a lot.
Sure. We didn't get to go on all these extravagant vacations.

Speaker 1 I've never been to Disney World. We went down to either Gulf Shores or Dustin because my dad had to do a law seminar.
That was our vacations.

Speaker 3 Even though he was an attorney and had a very important position in his firm, he still made time to coach my baseball teams. He still made time to be at all my school events.
He was always there.

Speaker 3 And my mother was too.

Speaker 3 So growing up, I would say it was a happy family.

Speaker 3 We had a, to me, a normal childhood.

Speaker 1 Gary's firm asked him to open an Atlanta office and then made him managing partner. So in 2013, he could afford to buy that farm Melody had always wanted out near Alpharetta.

Speaker 1 And now, just like that, he was gone.

Speaker 1 When John and his sister Sherry got the news, they felt compelled to get in the car and drive from Alabama to Georgia. Because we thought we need to be there.
I think it was Emily that was texting us.

Speaker 1 She goes, there's nowhere to go. You can't come here.
They won't even let us on the property. And I'm like, why? I did not realize that it was this huge police investigation going on.

Speaker 1 The lead investigator, still trying to find out more about Gary, talked to Melody. his wife of 39 years.

Speaker 6 She was crying when I first walked up, and when I took her down and sat down, she pretty quickly quickly gathered herself and we started having a conversation.

Speaker 1 They sat on the patio, Melody and Detective Hayes.

Speaker 7 He was at the hospital in April but he's been having these spells and they get more and more and more frequent.

Speaker 6 She said that he has what she called spells where you know he would feel faint and he would be down and out basically in bed for a couple of days during these spells and you know nobody knew what was wrong with him.

Speaker 1 One thing Melody did know was that her workaholic husband was not taking care of himself.

Speaker 7 He takes his blood pressure medicine for the Mountain Dew, and he said it tastes it with a cigarette.

Speaker 6 She pointed out he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and, you know, probably drank a 12-pack or more of Mountain Dew.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, he was very overweight. He was a smoker, right?

Speaker 13 Yes, sir.

Speaker 3 He did not live the ultimate healthy lifestyle. He ate what he wanted to eat.
He

Speaker 3 did not exercise.

Speaker 1 Made sense then. Some sort of health incident made him fall down into the fire.
Except the ash heap itself itself had a story to tell, too.

Speaker 1 Almost his whole body was consumed in the fire. Ashley Pope was another sheriff's detective at the time.

Speaker 1 We have had accidental fires where that situation was similar, where people have fell in the fire. It's usually not, the body's not consumed that much.

Speaker 1 So, investigators thought maybe someone had thrown Gary right into the middle of the fire.

Speaker 1 And then, just as they were mulling that over, another startling discovery.

Speaker 6 A bullet was found lodged in some meaty flesh on a rib bone.

Speaker 1 A fragment of a bullet in the rib cage.

Speaker 6 It was a whole bullet. You could see the back of the bullet.

Speaker 1 A bullet lodged in Gary's rib cage.

Speaker 1 Well, that did not seem accidental. How did that change the course of your investigating at that point?

Speaker 6 So we for sure knew at that point we were investigating a homicide. It was no longer this may be an accident.
It was this is a homicide.

Speaker 1 Gary Ferris had been murdered. It wasn't the smoking or the mountain dews or the lack of exercise.
Something else had caught up with Gary or someone else.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 In some shape or form, Gary had close ties or disagreements with all the family members relating to money.

Speaker 1 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.
Limited time offer.

Speaker 1 Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent.
Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only.

Speaker 1 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary. See mintmobile.com.

Speaker 12 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a full design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 19 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the SiriusXM app.

Speaker 19 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 22 Learn more at kia.com/slash sportage dash hybrid, Kia movement that inspires.

Speaker 25 If you're a custodial supervisor at a local high school, you know that cleanliness is key and that the best place to get cleaning supplies is from Granger.

Speaker 10 Granger helps you stay fully stocked on the products you trust, from paper towels and disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

Speaker 26 Plus, you can rely on Granger for easy reordering so you never run out of what you need. Call 1-800 Granger, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.

Speaker 25 Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 1 Gary Ferris was a man who lived large, from his Marlboroughs to his mountain dew to the money he made, money which he loved to give away.

Speaker 1 The Big Daddy nickname covered not just his height and girth, but also his deep-pocketed generosity, spreading green to every leaf on the family tree.

Speaker 1 If someone needed a loan or more likely a gift to get them through a rough patch, Gary was there with a check or a swipe from a credit card.

Speaker 1 Now this family Santa Claus was dead, shot to death, and then cremated on a funeral pyre he himself had built.

Speaker 6 It was obvious that the body had been burning, in my opinion, for some time.

Speaker 1 And you've got to figure out what happened here. What is that like, how's that feeling? And especially on an an estate like that.

Speaker 6 It's a lot of pressure.

Speaker 6 There are a lot of people there, a lot of things to figure out.

Speaker 1 And they're all looking at you. They're all staring at you, wondering what you're going to say.

Speaker 6 Yep, as soon as the supervisor says, Hayes, your lead, everybody's looking at me.

Speaker 1 Murder. That word changed everything.

Speaker 1 Detective Hayes asked Melody to join him at the sheriff's office. He would break the news to her there.

Speaker 13 They've been sifting through the remains and the ashes, and they have found a projectile and some bones. So you

Speaker 13 were the last one to see Gary alive on Tuesday night. Right.
Did you hear any gunshot?

Speaker 7 No,

Speaker 7 but there was a ton of, I mean, like fireworks and firecrackers and all kinds of stuff going off.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 She had the upstairs, while Gary turned the basement into a sprawling man cave, which had a bedroom, a bathroom, office, even a home theater.

Speaker 1 It was a refuge where Gary could go to ground and get lost in his work or a movie, undisturbed by all the clatter of life happening above.

Speaker 6 The only thing he really has to go upstairs for is the kitchen, you know, food. You know, otherwise, he's in the basement.

Speaker 1 But if Gary's subterranean lair was cozy, contained, the crime scene itself was vast. Gary could have been shot anywhere on their spread.

Speaker 1 Lots of wide open space for a killer to slip in and out undetected.

Speaker 6 Well, now we need to know where people were over these last couple of days since the last time Gary Ferris was seen alive and until the day we got there, you know, who was on the property, who could have done this, who would want to do this.

Speaker 1 Prompting Detective Hayes to ask Melody this question.

Speaker 13 Any feuds with the boys lately?

Speaker 1 The boys being sons Chris, who lived and worked in nearby Atlanta, and Scott, who ran the farm and lived there in a converted barn.

Speaker 1 And truth be told, said Melody, Gary had been having problems with both of their sons.

Speaker 7 Scott, he and Scott would get into it pretty heavily.

Speaker 7 I mean, you know, oh, I mean, they'd come to blows. I mean, Scott's hot.
I mean, he is. He's hot-tempered.

Speaker 7 There is no doubt. He's very hot-tempered.

Speaker 1 And Chris?

Speaker 1 Melody said he'd been caught stealing from Gary.

Speaker 7 Chris has taken money. He broke in.
I mean, he came in and took checks and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't just their own sons who were a problem. Daughter Emily's husband was a thief, too, said Melody.

Speaker 7 Her husband's been in and out of jail for

Speaker 1 stairway.

Speaker 1 It appeared that Gary's relationship with everyone was a source of income for all of the kids.

Speaker 1 So in some shape or form, Gary had close ties or disagreements with all the family members relating to money. Melody said daughter Amanda was the only one who wasn't out for Gary's money.

Speaker 7 She and I are a lot alike.

Speaker 7 And she said, why do they all hate us?

Speaker 7 I said, well, you're the only one who didn't steal from it.

Speaker 1 It's hard to put into words the level of family dysfunction detectives were hearing about.

Speaker 1 Seemed almost like that movie Knives Out, where after the death of a family patriarch, all the heirs turned out to have a motive for murder.

Speaker 1 So, like the characters in the movie, nearly every Ferris would have to be considered a potential suspect.

Speaker 1 Oh, and Detective Hayes also had to consider the possibility that money was not the motive, that,

Speaker 1 well, maybe it was love, which meant he had to ask Melody, who just lost her husband of 39 years, a very uncomfortable question.

Speaker 1 Had she been sleeping around?

Speaker 13 Are you currently in an affair with anyone? Yeah.

Speaker 13 Is anyone pursuing you? No.

Speaker 13 There's no jealous boyfriends? No.

Speaker 1 It was by now obvious to Melody that Detective Hayes was looking at her as something other than a grieving widow.

Speaker 7 I mean, do I need to get an attorney?

Speaker 13 That's up to you.

Speaker 13 It's one of your rights.

Speaker 7 I mean, I would have never, ever hurt him. Never.

Speaker 13 The unfortunate thing is that somebody did, and we don't know who did, and it's our job to determine that. You know, you're the spouse.

Speaker 13 We have to do everything in our power to rule you out or to rule you in, you know.

Speaker 1 Melody felt it was time to set Detective Hayes straight, that she... was the last person who would benefit from Gary's death.

Speaker 1 He had no life insurance, and none of the assets were in her name, she said.

Speaker 1 With Big Daddy gone, she didn't know what was to become of her.

Speaker 1 And then, a few hours after this interview, Detective Hayes' investigation took a turn when a fellow detective happened to notice something, and it was nowhere near the burn pile.

Speaker 6 And Detective Cockinah looks down and sees something kind of shiny. Upon closer inspection, he discovers a bullet, a spent projectile.

Speaker 1 Establishing the time of death in a homicide investigation is tricky business, even more so in the case of Gary Ferris.

Speaker 1 By the time investigators started sifting through that burn pile, Gary's remains were nothing more than ash and bone, fragments of which were sent to a crime lab to be positively identified.

Speaker 1 There was no way of telling how long he'd been dead. Hours? Days?

Speaker 1 No one could say. So investigators tried to narrow down the time of death by talking to the pool of potential suspects.

Speaker 1 Gary's son Scott told Detective Hayes in a recorded interview, he saw his dad on Tuesday, July 3rd at the Cherokee Ranch restaurant. Must have been around 1 or 1.30, said Scott.

Speaker 13 That's the last time I ever saw my father.

Speaker 1 Gary's other son, Chris, said he saw his dad a few hours later when he, Chris, dropped by the farm with one of his daughters for a quick visit.

Speaker 3 It was Tuesday,

Speaker 3 approximately 4.45 p.m.

Speaker 3 here at the farm. He was outside when we pulled up and he said he was getting stuff ready.
Either he was burning things or was about to burn things.

Speaker 27 Could you smell any smoke in the air or anything? No.

Speaker 27 Okay. So he was collecting stuff for the fire.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 27 And that's what he explained to you.

Speaker 1 Yes. When you left,

Speaker 27 to your knowledge, what was your dad going to go do?

Speaker 3 Keep collecting stuff to probably put on that pile to burn.

Speaker 1 Chris said he left the farm around 5.30 that evening. Melody, speaking to Detective Hayes, picked up the timeline from there.

Speaker 13 Had you spoken to Gary after Chris left? Yes. Okay, so

Speaker 13 Chris left, Gary was still...

Speaker 7 Yeah, you're still here.

Speaker 6 So he went down and started the fire, and you said it was, you don't know exactly what time, but it's still daylight, though?

Speaker 7 I think long about six o'clock. Okay, something like that.

Speaker 1 Melody said they had dinner about an hour or two later, and then they went their separate ways for the night.

Speaker 13 The last time you talked to him Tuesday was around dinner time, yeah. You'd estimate at 8:30.

Speaker 7 It was not that late that night because he had been here all day. And Stepped, I told him, I said, You are not going to bed and leave the fire.

Speaker 13 How big was the fire when he lit it? Massive.

Speaker 7 I mean, it was massive.

Speaker 1 Melody said she figured Gary had gone back to check on the burn pile before heading off to bed.

Speaker 1 Scott said when he got home about three hours later, the fire was still going, but his dad was nowhere in sight.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 13 It had to be

Speaker 13 somewhere around 8.30 because it wasn't quite dark yet.

Speaker 1 On the morning of Thursday the 5th, he said, he was heading off to get his haircut when his mom stopped him and asked, Have you talked to your dad or seen your dad?

Speaker 13 I'm like, no. She's like, well, you know, we can't find him.

Speaker 1 So based on Scott's and Chris's and Melody's accounts, Gary's whereabouts were unknown between the night of July 3rd and the afternoon of July the 5th.

Speaker 1 when his remains were discovered in the burn pile.

Speaker 1 Except,

Speaker 1 except that while searching Gary's basement dwelling, an investigator came across this CPAP machine, a life-saving device that helps people who suffer from apnea breathe normally while sleeping.

Speaker 1 Gary never went to bed without it. And like many electronic devices we now have in our homes, this CPAP machine is programmed to collect user data.

Speaker 6 And it showed that Gary was usually putting that CPAP on between 11 and 1 a.m.

Speaker 6 There was no data for the night of the 3rd or past. That led us to believe that Gary was killed before his normal bedtime of between 11 and 1 a.m.

Speaker 1 And sometime after, Melody said she saw him around 8 or 8.30 p.m.

Speaker 1 So Gary must have met his death sometime between 8.30 p.m. and 1 a.m.
on the night of Wednesday, July 3rd. The only people home then, as far as police knew, were Melody and Scott.

Speaker 1 And now, a CSI team was finding evidence Gary Gary had been killed in his home.

Speaker 6 There were drops of blood on the carpet, on the stairs, the carpeted stairs leading down to the basement.

Speaker 1 And at the base of the stairs, something shiny caught the eye of a fellow detective.

Speaker 6 At the edge of a rug in the basement on the wooden floor, the hardwood floor. Upon closer inspection, he discovers a bullet, a spent projectile in the basement floor.

Speaker 1 Detective Hayes said a blood-illuminating chemical revealed even more evidence.

Speaker 6 There was some some blood on the wall near the front door. There were some blood droplets that appeared to have been cleaned up.

Speaker 6 They appeared to have been in a smear pattern in the kitchen near the basement door.

Speaker 1 Based on the blood drops, Hayes developed a theory that Gary was shot in the kitchen, 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.

Speaker 1 So, two gunshots inside the house. But Melody had told Detective Hayes she didn't hear a thing.

Speaker 1 So Hayes asked her once again.

Speaker 13 Did you hear any gunshots that night?

Speaker 7 No, but like I said, I mean there's no no gunshots, but there was tons of fireworks going off.

Speaker 1 Melody said that was it. That's all she knew.

Speaker 1 But Gary's sons, Scott and Chris, they said they knew a lot and had a story to tell.

Speaker 11 When I came home, I saw the fire going in the woods.

Speaker 1 The question was, how much of their story could be believed?

Speaker 1 For one thing, as the detectives freely admitted, they were not used to this sort of thing. Murder was a rare business around here on the posh, low-crime side of Cherokee County, Georgia.

Speaker 1 But though the Ferris estate was idyllic, the family most certainly was not.

Speaker 1 So when they interviewed the brothers, they carefully and repeatedly went over their timeline.

Speaker 11 I'm going to ask you a couple questions. What time did you leave on July 3rd?

Speaker 11 July 3rd. It was probably, I don't know, 4.30?

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 1 That was eldest son, Chris. The younger son, Scott, seemed a trickier case.
Scott lived right on the property, in his apartment over the barn.

Speaker 1 He said he'd been gone all day with friends out of the lake.

Speaker 11 And I was up there at the lake house until I didn't leave until about 10.30 at night, roughly,

Speaker 11 and came back home. And that's when, you know, when I came home, I saw the fire going in the woods and, you know.

Speaker 11 Didn't think of anything of it.

Speaker 1 So, police knew two people were at home that night. Melody and later in the evening, Scott.

Speaker 1 Detectives figured Melody was too small to lug her 300-pound husband to the burn pit, but Scott was big enough and strong enough to do exactly that. Plus, his behavior seemed curious.

Speaker 1 Scott told detectives that weeks before the murder, he came across a pistol in the basement. But when he looked for it after the murder, the gun was gone.

Speaker 1 Useful to know? The only problem was Scott started searching for the pistol after his father's remains were found, but before anyone knew he had been shot with a gun.

Speaker 1 Did it seem strange to you that Scott would be going around the house looking for whether a gun was there or not?

Speaker 6 It was

Speaker 1 odd.

Speaker 6 So that started putting the suspicion in our minds that, okay, maybe that's kind of weird. Maybe something's up.

Speaker 1 A feeling that only grew when they found ammunition in Scott's apartment. The same caliber of bullet found in Gary's body.

Speaker 6 There was loose 38 ammo in Scott's dresser drawer. So we found that kind of odd.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 6 Later we'd ask Scott, you know, why are we finding all this? And Scott tells us, well, I have friends come over. We go shoot at the back corner of the property and they sometimes leave stuff behind.

Speaker 1 They also wondered about something Scott did after his father disappeared. His mom had asked him to check the trail camera.

Speaker 13 I went down there and checked the trail cam and there was just a couple squirrels and a couple raccoons and that was it. I deleted everything.

Speaker 1 Everything? I asked my brother, I said, why would you do that?

Speaker 3 He said, well, at the time I didn't know anything was going on. You know, when I checked my trail camera, if there's nothing on there of any significance, I delete the pictures because I'm there.

Speaker 1 Now they had to wonder if he deleted evidence.

Speaker 3 I did ask my brother some very hard questions because I knew he was going to be asked some very hard questions.

Speaker 3 You know, like what was going on with you and

Speaker 3 our dad?

Speaker 3 You know, because they asked me questions about my brother, too. You know, Scott was very much a suspect.

Speaker 1 We all were.

Speaker 1 Especially after detectives learned about the family disputes over money. Melody's friend, David Thomas.
She felt that

Speaker 1 a couple of her kids were abusing her husband financially. She was upset with

Speaker 1 both of her sons because it just seemed that it was a financial drain that was a constant thing over and over.

Speaker 1 Little sister Amanda told police she was worried about Scott and Chris and how they were behaving toward their mother.

Speaker 7 Scott's been making threats against her, saying that he's going to burn the house down and that we can't stop them from taking over the estate because essentially at this point to tell you the

Speaker 7 I mean I just feel like they're

Speaker 7 after money. I'm just, I'm fearing for my safety at this point, and I'm fear for my mother's safety.

Speaker 1 David Thomas said Melanie was increasingly afraid of her sons.

Speaker 1 She got to a point where she felt like, you know, if she was not on the planet, then whatever was left with the estate, the money would go to the kids.

Speaker 1 And so that they would have a motive to do some harm to her. Exactly.

Speaker 1 She thought that was a possibility? She thought it was a real possibility.

Speaker 1 If Scott and Chris were, in fact, suspects, detectives kept that to themselves.

Speaker 11 Let me ask you a question.

Speaker 11 What do you guys think happened?

Speaker 11 See, this is where I'm torn. I want to tell you what I know.
I want to tell you what I think.

Speaker 1 Actually, Chris and Scott Ferris told police exactly what they thought.

Speaker 1 And what they thought was detectives should be taking a long, hard look at Mommy dearest.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 12 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 18 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the SiriusXM app.

Speaker 19 Every SiriusXM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM.

Speaker 21 So the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 22 Learn more at kia.com slash sportage dash hybrid.

Speaker 24 Kia movement that inspires.

Speaker 29 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate.

Speaker 30 And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 1 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 32 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years and we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 33 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 32 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 30 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 33 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 34 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 1 I need you guys.

Speaker 35 If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, drop it, and 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit.

Speaker 35 Which is why Lemonade Pet Insurance is tailor-made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills.

Speaker 35 It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account nervous. Claims are filed super easy through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly.

Speaker 35 Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet, and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled, drop it.

Speaker 1 Huddled up in the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, the brothers Ferris were about to display some family laundry. The soiled kind that generally stays politely secret.

Speaker 1 And in doing so, the brothers revealed they both had a bit of an attitude about their mother, Melody.

Speaker 11 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 stuff like that.

Speaker 11 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 today I don't have to live with him. I wish he would just have a heart attack and die.

Speaker 1 Scott said his mother was

Speaker 1 difficult sometimes. Certainly dramatic.
She always watched Days of Our Lives, and she always wanted to have her life like a soap opera.

Speaker 1 So that's what she did.

Speaker 1 Here's how Chris put it. I was afraid of my mother growing up.
There's no way around that statement. A walking on eggshells kind of existence? Yes.
Did not want to upset her at all.

Speaker 3 I think the best way to describe it is when, you know, she had four children.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 if one child caused a problem, then we all got the wrath.

Speaker 11 I don't know if my mom did this or not. I don't know.
But

Speaker 11 all the she's done for the last 10 years

Speaker 11 has really added up to like

Speaker 11 I mean, what else are we gonna look at?

Speaker 1 Well, what about dredging up a bit of family history? Prompted by the detective's simple question about that missing handgun.

Speaker 11 There's a firearm missing

Speaker 11 from the house. So we need a list of everything of a pistol caliber that anybody has ever seen.
I'll tell you what I know.

Speaker 1 That is when Chris mentioned a family friend named Ted Wiley.

Speaker 11 That son of a bitch kept a freaking

Speaker 11 smallest pistol you could find on your ankle?

Speaker 27 Could be 25.

Speaker 1 So who was Ted?

Speaker 1 Why, a long-kept family secret, it turned out. More like a soap opera on steroids.
Co-starring Gary's sister, Sherry.

Speaker 5 Ted, we had been together, I guess we were together about a little over 20 years.

Speaker 1 Ted and Sherry were together until something pulled them apart.

Speaker 1 Someone, to be clear, someone whose name was Melody Ferris.

Speaker 5 This one guy came up to me at work and said, hey, I saw Ted and Melody out at a restaurant during lunch. And I confronted Melody.
I said, what's going on?

Speaker 5 People are saying that you and Ted's got something going on. She just laughed.
She said, no. She said, me to hit Ted? She said, there's no way.

Speaker 1 But when Gary heard about it, he felt sure she was cheating on him.

Speaker 5 And Gary started getting suspicious, and he would put trackers on the car.

Speaker 1 Melody actually left Gary, and though she denied it, family members believed she was staying at Ted's farm.

Speaker 3 It was a matter of months when she basically refused to come back to Atlanta. And

Speaker 3 shortly after, he filed for divorces when she came back. And my father called me to tell me I needed to accept my mother back, which I told him that would be a hard thing to do.

Speaker 1 All she had to do was come back to him. He must have been...
He must have still been in love with her. Was he?

Speaker 3 He was in love with my mother till the day he died.

Speaker 1 And that's how they ended up with the farm in Cherokee County in 2013, five years before Gary's death.

Speaker 1 He decided to buy the property, the farm, to try to save the marriage because, you know, that's something that she wanted.

Speaker 1 But Gary was a smart guy. Maybe he loved Melody, but he sure didn't trust her.
Not anymore.

Speaker 1 Big deal was made of that, that he was somehow controlling the amount of money she was able to spend because he could see it when she spent it, come out of the bank account. Right.
Why did he do that?

Speaker 3 Well, he had communicated to me that

Speaker 3 he did not want her spending his money on another man.

Speaker 3 But it was a way for him to keep track of her.

Speaker 1 And that brings us back to that toxic family situation in which Gary's children seemed to have ready access to his money, but Melody was on an allowance and under surveillance.

Speaker 6 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, or cut her phone off so she couldn't make phone calls and things like that.

Speaker 1 There was one other thing police couldn't ignore, something they heard time and again. They knew about Gary's unhealthy lifestyle, his appetite for cigarettes and sodas and food.

Speaker 1 But people close to Gary were wondering about those spells of his.

Speaker 3 My father had become very lethargic and could not function properly. He was very dizzy, just wasn't feeling very well.

Speaker 1 One such spell put Gary in the hospital three months before his death. 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.

Speaker 3 She had spent the day very angry at him, the way he put it, screaming at him.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 all of a sudden, she comes walking in with a cast iron skillet full of chocolate chip cookies.

Speaker 3 I made these for you.

Speaker 1 But she couldn't resist, of course. No,

Speaker 3 apparently not. He said he ate the cookies.

Speaker 3 His throat began to burn.

Speaker 3 And that's when

Speaker 3 he began feeling bad.

Speaker 1 Gary believed something terrible was was happening to him. Something unthinkable.

Speaker 3 He said, Chris,

Speaker 3 I think your mother's trying to poison me.

Speaker 6 So Gary believed that when Melody prepared his food, she was poisoning it, and that's why he had the spells that he had.

Speaker 1 Could you prove that he was being poisoned, though?

Speaker 6 Unfortunately not.

Speaker 6 The condition of the body, you know, there wasn't much to test for toxicology.

Speaker 1 Without proof, it could just be an outrageous outrageous old accusation from an angry husband. Melody insisted she would never hurt Gary, and she absolutely was not cheating on him.
And yet,

Speaker 1 well, there just might be evidence to the contrary.

Speaker 6 In Melody's wallet, we found a credit card with a man's name on it that none of us recognized.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 who was this new guy? And why was his credit card in Melody's wallet?

Speaker 1 Melody Ferris was as adamant as a woman could be. 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.

Speaker 10 I will tell you,

Speaker 7 honestly, you know, I did not do it. I don't know who did it, but I did not do it.

Speaker 24 I would have never taken my children's daddy with me.

Speaker 1 Even though Gary gave in to the demands of those children way too often, while making her beg for the money she very much needed.

Speaker 13 So your statement is you didn't do anything to harm Gary? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Detectives reviewed what they had. A dead man shot and burned beyond recognition.
A marriage that was, well, not exactly joyous, but also children who may or may not have had a motive to murder.

Speaker 1 And they had those drops of blood and that spent projectile.

Speaker 1 So, their theory went, Gary was shot in his own house and then moved somehow to the fire.

Speaker 1 Oh, and they also had this: a mysterious credit card in Melody's wallet on which was imprinted the name Roy Barton.

Speaker 6 So that was the topic of our interview. One of our interviews was: who is this Roy Barton?

Speaker 1 A lover, perhaps?

Speaker 1 They danced around the question during Melody's interview.

Speaker 27 You have not had a sexual relationship with anybody in four years. We're not going to find any evidence of it.

Speaker 27 When we test your bed sheets, we're not going to find any male DNA in any way, shape, or form. When we test your vehicle and we swap the seats and we swap the back seat.

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 they dropped it on her. The name on the credit card.

Speaker 1 What about Roy?

Speaker 1 Roy.

Speaker 1 Last name against Bart. Bart.
Barton. Who's Roy?

Speaker 7 Well, Roy is my cousin's dead husband.

Speaker 27 How long ago did he pass away?

Speaker 7 Four years ago.

Speaker 1 Melody told them Roy's widow, Martha Jane Barton, gave her the credit card.

Speaker 7 I had been taking care of her, and so it just got put. I didn't realize I still had it.

Speaker 27 Okay, so you're not using it. So when we look at the financial records, it hasn't been used in over 40 years.
No.

Speaker 27 And it's going to come back to somebody that's deceased.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 That apparently established, they moved on.

Speaker 27 Have you ever had a physical relationship with anyone other than Gary since y'all been married? No.

Speaker 1 Of course, she'd have that affair with Ted, but she wasn't admitting it.

Speaker 27 No one that we're going to find in the history of y'all's marriage.

Speaker 27 I'm talking the whole entire thing. I'm not talking the last five years, ten years, or since I went rocking.
I'm talking forever.

Speaker 1 Long pause.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 melody spilled.

Speaker 1 But not about Ted. Yeah.

Speaker 27 Who and when?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 7 Rusty Barber.

Speaker 7 Roy was his dad.

Speaker 27 So Rusty is his son.

Speaker 27 Where's Rusty?

Speaker 7 He's in Tullahoma, Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Speaker 27 When was the last time you interacted with Rusty?

Speaker 7 Oh, it's been months and months and months ago.

Speaker 27 Okay, but in the last year. So was that physical relationship then in the last year? Oh, no.

Speaker 1 When was that?

Speaker 7 I mean, I ended that a good while ago.

Speaker 1 Ended it a year ago, she said, though she still talked to him on the phone.

Speaker 27 And will we go get Rusty's DNA? Where are we going to find it?

Speaker 7 Nowhere in my car.

Speaker 1 Anywhere in your house? No.

Speaker 27 Where did y'all have your relationship a year ago?

Speaker 7 Up into the sink when I would go up there.

Speaker 1 Hard to tell how much of that was true

Speaker 1 or how much of this.

Speaker 32 Do you have a tattoo?

Speaker 7 I do.

Speaker 27 XOXO? Uh-huh.

Speaker 7 It's just this XO.

Speaker 27 What is that in reference to?

Speaker 7 It's just mine and Gary's symbol. Just XO.

Speaker 27 What did he have to say about it?

Speaker 7 Oh, he loved it. I mean, that's why I got it.

Speaker 1 How long ago did you get it?

Speaker 7 Four years ago, I guess. I got it about the time that we moved into that house.

Speaker 14 That was our start, our fresh start.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 seemed more like a false start to the detectives.

Speaker 1 More likely, they figured the tattoo led back to Rusty, just like that credit card, the one owned by Roy Barton.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 Rusty had known about Gary and how controlling Gary was over Melody and the money.

Speaker 6 And so she eventually said that she had gotten the credit card from him in case she needed money, in case of emergencies, basically.

Speaker 1 The credit card wasn't the only thing Rusty gave Melody. As the detectives discovered, he also got her a cell phone.

Speaker 1 one that allowed them to talk privately. So, of course, they got the records for that phone.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So, we decided it's time to go talk to Rusty.

Speaker 1 Two days later, detectives were on the road, heading north to Tullahoma and Rusty Barton.

Speaker 12 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 19 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle, or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 19 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 22 Learn more at kia.com/slash sportage-hybrid, Kia, movement that inspires.

Speaker 29 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate.

Speaker 30 And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 1 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 32 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years.
And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 33 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 32 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 30 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 33 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 34 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 1 I Need You Girl.

Speaker 35 If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, drop it, and 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit.

Speaker 35 Which is why Lemonade Pet Insurance is tailor-made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills.

Speaker 35 It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account nervous. Claims are filed super easy through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly.

Speaker 35 Get a quote at lemonade.com slash pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you y'all drop it.

Speaker 1 Chase a lie about love and sex and who knows what greater sins it might expose.

Speaker 1 Cherokee County detectives believe that Rusty Barton was key to their murder investigation.

Speaker 6 He knows more than everyone's led on. We know this relationship's a lot deeper than Melody told us.

Speaker 1 Detectives wondered what exactly Rusty knew about Gary's death. Maybe he'd even helped Melody move that big body.

Speaker 1 But when they questioned Rusty with his attorney in Tullahoma, Tennessee,

Speaker 1 they didn't get much.

Speaker 1 Not at first.

Speaker 1 They came at him hard,

Speaker 1 and he came right back at them.

Speaker 1 I don't know what happened or who did it or nothing.

Speaker 13 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. Second of all, if I knew it after the fact, I'd be telling somebody already.

Speaker 13 I'm sorry. Your fingers.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. Your fingers.

Speaker 13 Here's the thing: if we don't do our job, I'm publishing this, then that's what you're supposed to do. No, hey, hey, hey, I'm not just doing what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 13 I'm giving you an opportunity that I ain't got to give you.

Speaker 13 Sir, I don't know anything. I didn't help anybody.

Speaker 1 She has not confided in me. Detective Ashley Polk told Rusty flat out, he didn't believe him.
After all, Rusty gave Melody that phone so they could have private conversations.

Speaker 13 Y'all are talking on the phone ever since a single day. You wake up, Melody.
Melody and coffee. You go to bed, Melody.

Speaker 1 She has talked to you beforehand and since then. No, sir.
Don't let me find out. I do not believe that.

Speaker 13 I'm telling you. Not been a single communication since Thursday morning.

Speaker 1 Thursday, July the 5th, that is. The day the Ferris has started looking for Gary, the day Scott called 911.

Speaker 1 The detectives warned Rusty again that if he knew anything about what happened to Gary,

Speaker 1 now was the time to tell them or possibly face charges himself.

Speaker 1 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 the same damn thing you follow me that 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 he also gave us information to verify his alibi

Speaker 1 they did get checked out

Speaker 1 But then they looked at his cell phone records and discovered he fiddled with his phone after Gary's death, took Melody's name out of his contacts at one point, substituting two letters, X-O,

Speaker 1 the symbol of a beverage they enjoyed together. Huh, whatever.
Obviously, that was the real reason for Melody's tattoo. It had nothing to do with Gary.

Speaker 1 We also find out that he is searching things like how to delete your text messages. What can cops find in text messages? That phone was a revelation.

Speaker 1 As time goes on, Rusty had told us that he had not talked to her on the night of July 3rd. Well, the cell phone data reflected inconsistencies in that, and it also reflected that he had lied to us.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Back in Tullahoma, back at the table. But then Rusty and his lawyer stepped out of the room.

Speaker 6 Rusty's attorney attorney came back into the room during this time and said, he's got something I think y'all want to hear.

Speaker 1 They did want to hear it. And how?

Speaker 1 Because it was huge. Something Rusty said Melody told him in a call just hours after the presumed time of death.

Speaker 13 Probably the last minute of the last conversation, she said,

Speaker 13 Gary is in the burn pile.

Speaker 13 No, she said, he is in the burn pile.

Speaker 13 And I said, what?

Speaker 13 And she said, he's in the burn pile. And I said, do not say another word and do not tell me

Speaker 13 anything. I do not need to know.

Speaker 1 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. The 911 call.
did not occur until July 5th at 1247 p.m.

Speaker 1 So that's a full day and a half before

Speaker 1 anybody knew the nature of this crime.

Speaker 1 The detectives knew they had struck gold,

Speaker 1 but they wanted corroboration. So they asked Rusty to record his conversations with Melody without telling her.
He agreed. They were elated.

Speaker 1 And it didn't last. We feel like Rusty's going to record the phone conversations and not notify Melody, but we later learned that he in fact did tell her.

Speaker 1 Maybe Rusty wasn't being so cooperative after all. What were they left with?

Speaker 1 Well, motive. No will was ever located, so who would benefit from Gary's untimely death?

Speaker 1 Who else?

Speaker 6 In Georgia, if a husband and wife and one of them is killed or dies, the wife is the immediate heir to the estate.

Speaker 6 Melody gets everything. So Scott kills Gary, and Scott's money's gone.

Speaker 6 He knows Melody's not going to give him anything. Same with Chris.

Speaker 1 So why would Chris kill Gary?

Speaker 1 Same for the girls. Despite what Melody told detectives, Emily and her husband said they never stole from Gary.

Speaker 1 And neither Emily nor Amanda stood to gain from their dad's death.

Speaker 6 The only person that benefited immediately from Gary dying was Melody Ferris.

Speaker 1 Gary's brother was sure from the beginning it was Melody.

Speaker 1 You just started adding things up. Was that something that you began to think before you heard it from any official source? You know, I hate to say it, but yeah.

Speaker 1 It took almost a year to get official confirmation of something that detectives were already convinced of: that the bones in the burn pile were indeed Gary's.

Speaker 1 And days later, the Cherokee County authorities issued a warrant for Melody's arrest.

Speaker 1 As it happened, she was in Tennessee at the time visiting Rusty. He drove her to a local police station to surrender.

Speaker 1 And the Ferris family exhaled.

Speaker 1 It was like, oh my gosh, something's happening.

Speaker 1 Because we did all these interviews with the detectives and, you know, we didn't hear anything for quite a while.

Speaker 1 Quite a while indeed.

Speaker 1 It was October 2024

Speaker 1 when Melody Ferris finally went on trial for murder.

Speaker 1 A trial in which jurors would hear a tangled tale as much about the Ferris children as about their mother.

Speaker 4 My first impression of that case was: this is going to be a tricky

Speaker 1 trial.

Speaker 1 When they finally put Melody Ferris in front of a jury, Assistant DA Megan Frankish confronted a few challenges. I mean, it's almost like an Agatha Christie story.
You've got a confined space.

Speaker 1 There's this ranch. There are a few people who are attached to it.
And all those people are kind of in some way warring amongst themselves. And the man who controls the money is suddenly dead.

Speaker 9 That's exactly right.

Speaker 4 What we know is that he ended up on the burn pile. We know he was at least shot twice, but the rest of that theory just leads us to Melody being the only person that could have done that.

Speaker 1 But you had no murder weapon.

Speaker 1 What could you do about that?

Speaker 4 That was part of what made this prosecution challenging.

Speaker 1 Not to mention the long delay, getting to court. Six years.
What with legal delays and COVID

Speaker 1 before Melody cast a baleful eye on Assistant DA Jeffrey Fogus as he addressed the jury.

Speaker 28 I am representing a voice that has been snuffed out

Speaker 28 and taken away.

Speaker 1 Gary's younger brother, John, would be a constant presence at the trial, sitting with his wife Nancy, two rows behind the prosecutor's table. You went to that trial every day, huh?

Speaker 1 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.
I wanted to hear that.

Speaker 1 I wanted to experience it firsthand in the courtroom. But outside the courtroom, he'd find himself himself coming face to face with Melody.

Speaker 1 She'd been free on bond for years, and she took the regular breaks like everyone, passing her late husband's brother in the hallways. How'd you feel about that? I didn't like it.

Speaker 1 You must have carried around a lot of anger about that woman. I don't know that I'm an angry person.
It was probably more frustration and the lack of closure.

Speaker 1 Prosecutors argue that cell phone data and call records told the story of what happened that night. Gary left a farm earlier that evening, returning around 9.30 p.m.

Speaker 1 And that's when Melody, the only other person on the farm, shot and killed him. He never again sent a text or made a call or checked an email, and he never turned on that CPAP machine.

Speaker 1 Melody, meanwhile, was a busy bunny that night and the next morning, talking to Rusty, moving around the property.

Speaker 28 When he was killed and when his body was moved, when things are going on, the only person that's going to be at that house, the only person, is her.

Speaker 17 The defendant

Speaker 1 murdered

Speaker 28 and desecrated her own husband.

Speaker 1 But how was Melody able to move Gary's heavy body? Well, investigators developed a theory after noticing a tractor on the farm and what appeared to be matching tracks near the burn pit.

Speaker 1 Brothers Scott and Chris said it seemed out of place at the time.

Speaker 11 I just found it very, very odd for that tractor to be parked down there. I know my dad wouldn't have just left it there.
I mean, the only time he would have left that tractor there is if it was stuck.

Speaker 11 How well does your mother operate that tractor? She asked me to teach her how to use it. Honestly, that tractor was so easy to operate, I could teach my 13-year-old niece.

Speaker 1 So maybe Melody used the tractor to move the body?

Speaker 1 However, she did it. Prosecutors said Melody figured out a way to get Gary in the fire before Scott came home.

Speaker 1 And they said, Melody all but confessed to it when she told her lover, Rusty Barton, that Gary was dead long before anyone discovered his body.

Speaker 1 To stress this point, they called Rusty as a hostile witness. She said that Gary was on the burn pile.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 The whole reason Melody wanted Gary dead, said the prosecutors, was so she could tap into his resources without any restriction.

Speaker 4 There was only one person who had the motive, means, and opportunity to commit this crime.

Speaker 1 Then prosecutors told jurors about Gary's suspicions that Melody tampered with his food, something he confided to his legal assistant, Angela Phillips.

Speaker 5 He said that he thought she was poisoning him. I said, you need to go be tested for poisoning.
And he said, well, you'll know what to tell Dateline

Speaker 5 if I die mysteriously.

Speaker 1 One by one, each of the Ferris children testified. Three of the four against their own mother.

Speaker 19 Can you please introduce yourself to the jury?

Speaker 12 I'm Emily Ferris Payne.

Speaker 4 How was your parents' relationship when you were younger?

Speaker 37 I mean, it was good from my perspective. Do you know what caused that change?

Speaker 37 Yes,

Speaker 35 basically, my mother

Speaker 37 began having an affair.

Speaker 4 I think

Speaker 4 with Emily, the jury got to see a little bit of Gary. Emily seemed like the closest one to him, and she knew a lot of information from her relationship with her father.

Speaker 37 I just think that he lost trust

Speaker 37 that was once there.

Speaker 4 Gary entrusted her with a lot of information about the family and about his financial position with Melody.

Speaker 1 Including how he didn't want his wife spending his money on other men.

Speaker 37 She no longer was on the bank accounts, so she couldn't, you know, she didn't have access the way that she did before.

Speaker 1 And Melody wasn't just preoccupied with Gary withholding funds from her, said the prosecutors. She was jealous of the money her husband gave their adult children.

Speaker 1 Just days before Gary was killed, Emily told jurors she received a text from her mother, who seemed to be at a breaking point.

Speaker 4 Can you read that please?

Speaker 37 Chris continues to charge his cable, phone, and airline tickets to Gary's checking account. I have had it.
I'm taking measures to stop this insanity.

Speaker 4 State calls Chris Ferris.

Speaker 7 You could please raise your right hand.

Speaker 1 Which is one of the reasons prosecutors called Chris Ferris to the stand.

Speaker 4 We needed him to address his financial issues and his relationship with his father and if those issues led to any conflicts between him and his father, which it did to an extent.

Speaker 4 Would you and your dad ever

Speaker 4 get in arguments about money?

Speaker 1 I wouldn't really consider it an argument.

Speaker 3 I mean, he'd get mad at me for spending money or asking him for money.

Speaker 1 But Chris denied stealing from his father. Did he send you a text saying, you know, you got to pay your own way or I'm going to cut you off?

Speaker 3 I think he said, I'm going to change my account information.

Speaker 1 And then three weeks later, he's dead. Sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I guess that's a good way to try to create reasonable doubt and create a motive for somebody else. But taking myself out of it, it's kind of like, well,

Speaker 3 why would anybody do that to somebody who's

Speaker 3 helping them that much? They were grasping at straws.

Speaker 1 The jury also heard from Chris's younger brother, Scott.

Speaker 1 Was it a risk to put him on the stand to be a kind of a pin cushion for the defense?

Speaker 4 Go after?

Speaker 4 We had to put him on the stand uh he had a significant role in the investigation he also had a front row seat to see his parents fighting every single day and he witnessed his mother threaten gary as well she came out of my dad's

Speaker 1 office doors

Speaker 1 and screaming and cussing and she threw a plate up against the wall of the house 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 did you look out at her right there in the courtroom?

Speaker 1 Small courtroom. Right there, sitting in front of you.
I looked at her when I was asked to look at her and describe what she was wearing.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she's not my mother anymore.

Speaker 1 Oh, but Melody's attorneys were not finished with Scott.

Speaker 1 Not by a long shot.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was he who belonged in the dock, facing life behind bars.

Speaker 28 You were a mooch. No,

Speaker 12 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower, and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 19 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, sports, talk, and podcasts you love, right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 19 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial subscription to SiriusXM, so the experience begins the moment you drive.

Speaker 22 Learn more at kia.com/slash sportage dash hybrid.

Speaker 24 Kia movement that inspires.

Speaker 29 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate.

Speaker 30 And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 1 I'm Gabe Leidman.

Speaker 32 I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years and we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

Speaker 33 It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 32 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 30 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 33 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 34 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 1 I need you, girl.

Speaker 38 Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats! But also, yikes.

Speaker 38 Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where limited Pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 38 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign-up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 38 Pro tip: LemonAid offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you, your pet won't.

Speaker 23 They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 39 The state has introduced a case to you, and it is so full of holes.

Speaker 1 The defense of Melody Ferris was certainly robust. Remember, I told you.
And nothing if not dramatic.

Speaker 39 You're getting on the Ferris wheel.

Speaker 1 Those investigators all but rigged the case against an innocent woman, said defense attorney Michael Ray.

Speaker 39 From day one,

Speaker 39 everything was tailored specifically

Speaker 1 to attempt to convict Melody of the death of Gary Ferris.

Speaker 39 It was a highly circumstantial case. There was no direct evidence

Speaker 39 to tie Melody, you know, to shooting Gary. There was no gun found in the house.
Melody had no accelerants on her hands. There was none of that to directly tie back to Melody.

Speaker 1 It seemed, however, that, you know, if you ask the age-old question, who benefits? Well, Melody benefits. He controls the money.
He's dead. She gets the money.

Speaker 39 You got to have Gary alive to make the money because it didn't necessarily come out at trial. They weren't really cash-rich.
If Gary wasn't working, then there is no money.

Speaker 1 No motive, said the defense, and no actual evidence Gary had even been killed in the house, certainly not by Melody. The blood leading down the stairs, for instance.

Speaker 39 They never tested any of the drops on the stairs. He had two drops on the basement floor that the crime lab determined that was Gary Ferris's blood.

Speaker 1 And that blood, said the defense, didn't even come from a gunshot wound.

Speaker 39 The weekend before, Gary Ferris had been bit by the dog, and he was bleeding when he went down the stairs

Speaker 39 from his ankle.

Speaker 1 As for the bullet found in the basement.

Speaker 39 There is no blood found around the bullet. No impact mark from the bullet on the floor.

Speaker 1 It is literally like the bullet was dropped and placed on the floor.

Speaker 39 And the last person who was in the basement prior to law enforcement arriving was Scott.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, Scott. The defense was getting to him.

Speaker 1 Like when they repeatedly told the jury, Melody wasn't big enough or strong enough to move all that dead weight after Gary was killed.

Speaker 1 In fact, they took jurors to the farm where they could see for themselves how hard it would be.

Speaker 1 Here's defense co-counsel John Luke Weaver.

Speaker 28 How could a 120-pound woman move a 300-pound man down to a burn pile roughly 50 yards below the house in the woods on a relatively treacherous terrain?

Speaker 28 There is one person that could have done that, and that would have been Scott Ferris.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And no one had more motive, the defense said, than freeloading greedy Scott, who'd taken advantage of his parents for years.

Speaker 28 She thought you were a mooch.

Speaker 1 I guess in her eyes, yeah. Right?

Speaker 28 Because you were a mooch.

Speaker 1 No, I wasn't.

Speaker 28 And your father saw you as the exact same way, and he kept a very tight rein over you, and you're mooching off of him.

Speaker 1 What about Scott? What was your strategy for going after him on the stand?

Speaker 28 When it came to Scott, I think it was important to show that if his mother is framed with murder, then he always saw that estate as his.

Speaker 1 Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 And one more Ferris offspring waited in the wings. Amanda, the youngest, supported her mother and told the jury Scott had an unusual fixation with his parents' country estate.

Speaker 28 He would claim things as his that were not his. That's fair to say.

Speaker 7 They belonged to my mother and my father. He would say, this is my property.
I mean, he claimed ownership to it, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 Well, and what would Scott say about that?

Speaker 1 We asked him, of course. I never once said, oh, this is going to be my farm one day.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He also said he never threatened to burn the house down and never once stole anything from his dad.

Speaker 1 In fact, he told us Amanda's testimony was yet another example of their mother's manipulation. That's all because of Melody's brainwashing.
She brainwashed Amanda.

Speaker 28 And it's fair to say that you're biased in favor of your mom?

Speaker 7 I wouldn't say how I'm biased in favor it.

Speaker 19 I believe that somebody is innocent until they're proven guilty.

Speaker 1 But the defense attorneys still had to tackle their most daunting challenge, that incriminating statement from Melody's lover, Rusty Barton, saying she told him Gary was dead before his body was found.

Speaker 39 When we first learned about the phone call with Rusty Barton, that was the biggest, most damning piece of evidence.

Speaker 1 The defense argued Rusty's claim wasn't a big deal because because after the interview with police, he called back to say he had the dates all wrong.

Speaker 1 Melody only told him Gary was dead after his body was discovered.

Speaker 28 So I need you to explain those words to that jury right there.

Speaker 1 She said those words to me.

Speaker 28 But then you tried to explain later that, yes, she told you about that, but that was after Gary was already found, right?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 39 From his testimony, he was under duress and he had to, quote, give them something.

Speaker 39 He later recanted that statement and said that she told him he was on the burn pile much later after Gary's remains had already been found.

Speaker 1 There was an audience for all this in the courtroom, of course, but also an audience of one glued to a live stream way off in Tennessee. Someone who knew Rusty and Melody very well.

Speaker 1 And she had something she desperately needed to share. So she picked up the phone and called the sheriff sheriff

Speaker 1 right in the middle of the trial. You could tell something big had happened and it got us excited.
You know, it's like, what is this going to be?

Speaker 1 The case against Melody Ferris was well underway when it happened.

Speaker 1 It was a call from out of the blue to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department from a woman who said she needed to get something off her chest.

Speaker 4 Judge, as you know,

Speaker 4 the state was made aware of some newly discovered evidence.

Speaker 1 Assistant DAs Megan Frankish and Jeffrey Focus were busy arguing their case when the call came in.

Speaker 4 And I lean over to my co-counsel and I said, we need to take a break after this witness.

Speaker 1 In the gallery, Gary Ferris's brother John noticed a sudden flurry of activity. You could tell something big had happened, and it got us excited.
You know, it's like, what is this going to be?

Speaker 4 So, Martha Jane Barton had called the sheriff's office.

Speaker 1 Martha Jane Barton, Rusty Barton's stepmom and Melody's cousin.

Speaker 4 She had watched Rusty's testimony.

Speaker 28 You didn't have any missing guns that you couldn't account for, right? No, sir.

Speaker 4 And she heard Rusty testify about the guns that his dad owned.

Speaker 1 And that's when Martha Jane remembered. A.38 caliber, Rusty's late father had given her more than 40 years earlier.

Speaker 40 He had given me this.38.

Speaker 40 Snub-Nose Special. I think it was 79 for Christmas.

Speaker 1 But after Melody's arrest, Martha Jane said she realized something was wrong.

Speaker 40 I looked and my gun was missing. I thought Melody has taken my gun.

Speaker 1 After all, Melody had a key to her elderly relative's house. At first, Martha Jane kept quiet about her misgivings.

Speaker 1 But while watching the trial, she got worried about what Melody might have done with her gun, and she called the police.

Speaker 40 And I just said, I have a heavy heart, and I want to tell you something. And then I told about my gun being missing.

Speaker 1 Investigator Daniel Hayes.

Speaker 6 I thought, that's the missing piece. to this puzzle.
That's where that gun that Scott Ferris saw in that basement came from. Melody took it from Martha's house without Martha knowing.

Speaker 1 So you brought her in to testify? We did.

Speaker 28 How were you feeling when you called that number?

Speaker 1 Awful.

Speaker 40 I still love Melody. She was family.
It just kills me.

Speaker 1 And then it was out there for the whole world to know. Martha Jane's suspicion that Melody had taken the 38

Speaker 1 and used it to kill Gary. This is called a Perry Mason moment.
Late in the trial, suddenly a call and you call a new witness, a surprise witness, and look at what that witness has to say.

Speaker 4 I don't know that I'll ever experience that again in my career.

Speaker 28 How much did you tear your house up and things in the house looking for it?

Speaker 5 I looked everywhere. Closets, dressers, chests.

Speaker 1 Defense attorneys Michael Ray and John Luke Weaver tried to dismiss Martha Jane's claims, saying the devoutly Christian woman only came forward once she learned about her stepson Rusty's affair with Melody.

Speaker 28 That was what she was most concerned about, that she couldn't show her face in town anymore. So she felt like she needed to say something.

Speaker 1 They did try to blame it on that.

Speaker 40 No, my motive was because my gun was gone.

Speaker 40 And she was the only

Speaker 40 person that had access to it. That was my only motive.

Speaker 1 Still, the defense argued there was no proof the 38 in question was the gun used in the murder, or that Melody ever took anything from Martha Jane's house.

Speaker 39 Who else has keys other than I assume the cleaning lady? Did she have a key?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 40 she may have a key.

Speaker 39 So, Melody's got a key, cleaning lady may have a key.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 40 you're Rusty.

Speaker 39 Rusty's got a key.

Speaker 39 So, at least five people.

Speaker 1 And then the defense put on a little show-and-tell.

Speaker 1 A play, as it were,

Speaker 1 to show that it would have been impossible for Melody to get Big Daddy's body out of the house and away off to that burn pile.

Speaker 1 Whose idea was it to drag those bags of rock salt or whatever the heck that was out onto the courtroom floor?

Speaker 28 Well, that was my idea. I was constantly trying to think of what I could use for that demonstration.

Speaker 6 I think it starts to become clear why I'm doing this.

Speaker 28 Why am I dropping these bags? These bags are 40 pounds a piece. When I would drop one of the bags, I mean, you could feel the floor shake.

Speaker 28 And I wanted that to happen because I wanted the jury specifically to know how heavy this was. This is 320 pounds.

Speaker 5 I am 185 pounds.

Speaker 5 And that's all I have.

Speaker 28 The whole trial, we were noting that he was 300 pounds. She was 120 pounds.
It was impossible that she could have moved him. But there was a person on the property who could.

Speaker 28 And that's Scott Ferris.

Speaker 1 You were literally pointed at by the defense attorney in court. What did it feel like? I mean, it's

Speaker 1 that was awkward.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't, never, ever, once have I ever

Speaker 1 remotely thought of even harming my father. A point the prosecutor drove home in her closing argument.

Speaker 4 I just kept bringing the jury back to the evidence that was presented at trial, and there was just no evidence that Scott had anything to do with this crime.

Speaker 4 This case is about Gary Wayne Ferris, and you're here

Speaker 4 because Melody Ferris shot him,

Speaker 37 concealed his death by putting him on a burn pile on their property

Speaker 4 like he was trash.

Speaker 1 And then it was in the hands of the jurors.

Speaker 8 We got very emotional in the jury room. I was in tears.
It was hard. It was really hard.

Speaker 1 There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Keith and Andrea available Wednesday.

Speaker 1 It might have been easier if that fire hadn't consumed Gary Ferris's body or if they found the gun or more DNA.

Speaker 1 But they had what they had and six and a half years after Gary's murder, Jurors were having a hard time.

Speaker 1 Cheryl Peoples was one of them.

Speaker 8 We got very emotional in the jury room. We left early one day because I was in tears.

Speaker 8 It was hard. It was really hard.

Speaker 1 Jurors sent notes asking for more details. And they kept talking for almost three days.

Speaker 1 And then they sent the judge another note. They just couldn't decide.
They were hung. What was that like?

Speaker 3 I think my blood pressure went up about 100 points because my biggest fear in all this was that she was going to get out of it.

Speaker 1 But the judge sent them back. Keep trying, he said.

Speaker 1 Chris Hyatt, the jury foreman, did his best. We just had one juror that was still undecided.
And at that time, the juror was just like,

Speaker 1 look, I really don't feel like I'm going to come to a conclusion than what I am right now. They talked a couple of hours more, and then

Speaker 17 I understand we have a verdict.

Speaker 1 How are you feeling as he came back into the room with the verdict?

Speaker 4 Extremely nervous.

Speaker 39 We, the jury, we found the defendant guilty.

Speaker 1 Melody Ferris was guilty of murdering her husband, Gary.

Speaker 1 Where did your thoughts go at that point?

Speaker 4 To the family, to the children, immediately.

Speaker 4 They had been through

Speaker 5 a lot.

Speaker 1 I don't think anybody who sat through that could have come to any other conclusion than a guilty verdict.

Speaker 1 But we wanted to hear that. We wanted to be there.

Speaker 1 We had waited six years.

Speaker 3 And I just stared at her. I wanted her to show something,

Speaker 3 some sort of emotion. Look at your family.

Speaker 3 And it never came.

Speaker 3 She was more worried about taking her jewelry off before she went to jail than she was about showing any emotion.

Speaker 3 Sarah, was that your verdict in the jury room? Yes, sir. Was a verdict agreed to by you? Yes, sir.
Is that still your verdict?

Speaker 6 Yes, sir. My heartbeat finally slowed down for the first time in a month.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know, I was just

Speaker 6 ready to get her sentenced and put this all behind me.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes. The sentencing.
A sentencing that was one to remember. It happened about a month after the verdict.
And Melody, first time in the trial, decided there was something she wanted to say.

Speaker 1 Boy, did she ever.

Speaker 7 I have waited for years to make this statement to everyone.

Speaker 7 I want the world to know who did this.

Speaker 1 You could, as the old saying goes, hear a pin drop. What was coming.

Speaker 13 Not only did I not do this,

Speaker 13 I know who did.

Speaker 7 I know Scott killed his father.

Speaker 7 He took my husband, the father of Chris, Emily, and Amanda.

Speaker 1 Scott,

Speaker 10 this is unforgivable.

Speaker 5 I had no idea that she would start tearing into Scott like that, blaming him. I just can't believe she stooped to that level.

Speaker 1 Scott himself looked stunned as his mother went on for more than 20 minutes. The judge warned her to stop when she trotted out new new allegations, never presented in court.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I think the expression on your face said a thing or two.

Speaker 1 You didn't have to open your mouth.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm sure it did. I mean, I haven't

Speaker 1 seen videos of it or anything, but I was,

Speaker 1 i've never had anything happen like that to me ever in my life

Speaker 1 she will never admit to anybody what she did because she is going to try her best to pin it on somebody else melody could have taken the stand of course as a witness it was a strategic decision that was ultimately made sure yeah it's it's very different reading a essentially a self-prepared speech uh than it is

Speaker 39 being under cross-examination.

Speaker 1 As she was finally wrapping up, Melody pleaded with the judge. Throw out the verdict.
Too late. He gave her life.

Speaker 1 Parole possible after 30 years.

Speaker 1 She'll be in her 90s by then.

Speaker 1 And now,

Speaker 1 now they'll just have to get used to it. Though Big Daddy's outsized presence is everywhere around here.

Speaker 3 And it's hard, you know, living in this town,

Speaker 3 driving by his old office,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 he also would want me to be strong.

Speaker 1 He always stayed strong. He was the one who had his head on his shoulders.
He was calming everybody else now.

Speaker 1 But I miss him dearly.

Speaker 1 It's hard to imagine how the family will recover. The Ferris wheel has spun off its axis.

Speaker 1 But then, maybe it did a long time ago.

Speaker 1 No matter how hard, Big Daddy tried to keep it rolling.

Speaker 1 He wouldn't be mortified

Speaker 3 that this has been

Speaker 3 our lives for the last six years.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 while I do get very sad,

Speaker 3 I'm just thankful that he was my dad.

Speaker 3 And if I could be half the dad he was, I'd be doing a pretty good job.

Speaker 1 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Sunday at 9 8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 1 Good night.

Speaker 1 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them.
Protect your identity with LifeLock.

Speaker 1 LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back.

Speaker 1 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.