Jerrie Bryant

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Speaker 2 Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo. There's no Milo here.

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Speaker 1 I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection.

Speaker 2 You don't understand. It was just the five of us.

Speaker 1 So this was all planned. What are you gonna do?

Speaker 2 I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

Speaker 1 I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people

Speaker 3 killing each other.

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Speaker 2 Together, they built their forever home on a Tennessee mountain.

Speaker 1 Both of them love where their house sit right on the side of the mountain, and it's peaceful there.

Speaker 4 They had the perfect life, you know, they had this beautiful home, and they finally have time to enjoy each other.

Speaker 2 For decades, the couple were fixtures in this rural community. But that all changes one hot summer day when a mysterious disappearance leaves the entire town searching for answers.

Speaker 1 Everything's happening just one right after the other, which even makes me think more there's some foul play going on here.

Speaker 4 I was thinking something bad.

Speaker 2 As law enforcement and family band together in the search, they will soon discover that every twist and curve of this mountain holds secrets. Some that aren't so easily let go.

Speaker 1 It's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, but you're missing a few of the pieces. I just heard that he made some statements that if he ever caught furling, he would shoot and kill him.

Speaker 1 We hadn't been looking long before somebody started hollering.

Speaker 4 It's just like you're in shock, like you're stepping in the twilight zone.

Speaker 2 June 9th, 2005, Van Buren County, Tennessee. Life in this rural middle Tennessee County is simple country living and familiar faces.

Speaker 3 I think we have about a population of 6,400.

Speaker 1 It's very small, and so everybody knows everybody.

Speaker 2 Local law enforcement officer Chris Russell grew up in Van Buren County and knows the area well.

Speaker 2 On this sweltering summer day, he's on the lookout for 58-year-old Ferlin Bryant, whose daughter Pam had recently alerted police of his disappearance.

Speaker 1 Pam was the one to come up to the Sheriff's Department, wanting to report him missing, and we told her that he was going to have to be missing a little more time frame just to make sure that maybe Ferlin hadn't went off somewhere.

Speaker 1 You're supposed to be missing for 72 hours before you can put them in the system to

Speaker 1 report him missing. The chief deputy at that time asked me to go patrol around the area, see if I can see anything out of the ordinary.

Speaker 2 As he makes his way into the remote Baker Mountain area, Officer Russell spots something unusual.

Speaker 1 As I'm approaching the Baker Mountain Road, there's an adjacent house and there's a driveway up there and I catch a glimmer of a vehicle sitting up on top of the hill.

Speaker 1 And I know this place is supposed to be abandoned. So I went up in the driveway just to get a visual on it and quick as I seen seen it, I knew whose truck it was.

Speaker 2 The white Dodge pickup belongs to Ferlin Bryant.

Speaker 1 I'm looking around hoping to see Ferlin, you know, and never did. Ferlin's vehicles was his babies.
I mean, you didn't see one without the other. That's just the way Ferlin was.

Speaker 1 The truck was just left like anybody that would be going hunting or going out in the woods looking for Gin Seng or something like that.

Speaker 2 But for Deputy Russell, there's something more troubling about the situation.

Speaker 1 We always seen Ferlin around in the community.

Speaker 1 He just wasn't one to pick up and

Speaker 1 go off somewhere like that.

Speaker 1 The family had not seen Furlin, which was out of the norm for him. They knew something was wrong.
I mean now we have his truck, but we don't have Furlin.

Speaker 2 Furlin Bryant spent his entire life in Van Buren County. The farmlands and the mountains were as much a part of Furlin as he was a part of them.

Speaker 1 Furlin was just a good country guy. He was.
He loved animals and he used to coon hunt with dogs and some guys around there and he was just a big outdoor kind of person.

Speaker 1 We always had a nickname for Ferland in the community. We all called him Denham Dan because Ferland, you never seen him.
They didn't have blue jeans, cowboy boots. That's just Furlin.

Speaker 2 A simple man with simple tastes, Ferlin found relationships with the opposite sex to be complicated.

Speaker 2 By the time he was 30, Ferlin was twice divorced with two children, a daughter, Pam, and a son, Shannon.

Speaker 2 Then, at the age of 31, he met Jerry Mitchell. Jerry had a strong work ethic and an even stronger personality.

Speaker 4 Real hard worker. She worked from dark in the morning to dark at night, but everything had to go just right

Speaker 4 or she would freak out. She can't handle everything not being perfect.

Speaker 2 Jerry's childhood in Van Buren County was far from perfect.

Speaker 4 She had a really rough childhood. They were extremely poor.
She experienced a lot of abuse.

Speaker 2 By the time Jerry met Ferlin, she was a 21-year-old single mother fleeing a tumultuous marriage. Ferlin wooed her with his kind, sweet nature.

Speaker 1 Ferlin was the type of man that any time frame around him, he's always going to make you smile.

Speaker 1 And even in his relationships, I felt that regardless of what happened, he was going to try to stick together and make it work.

Speaker 2 The courtship was quick. In 1978, the couple married.
Ferlin treated Jerry's daughter, Emma, as his own.

Speaker 4 I was never treated like, okay, you're the stepdaughter.

Speaker 4 We were all family. He was my dad, and that's just the way it was.

Speaker 2 After four years of marriage, Jerry gave birth to another daughter, Amanda.

Speaker 4 It was just me and Amanda and mom and Ferlin. That was our family.
You know, his kids from another family, we would see them some, but they wasn't a part of our like everyday life.

Speaker 2 The family lived in a trailer on Baker Mountain, tucked away on a piece of land that had been in Ferlin's family for decades.

Speaker 2 Jerry and Ferlin began building a house just up the hill from where the trailer sat.

Speaker 4 I can remember me and my little sister like running around playing on the foundation and stuff when they were building it.

Speaker 4 And we'd always been cramped in this little tiny trailer and this was like a mansion to us.

Speaker 2 For Jerry and Ferlin, the home was their little piece of heaven.

Speaker 1 Both of them love where their house sit right on the side of the mountain and it's peaceful there and just you can see miles and miles and it's a breathtaking vista really.

Speaker 2 Ferlin and Jerry both worked factory jobs to support the family and Jerry saw to it that they spent their free time in church.

Speaker 4 Growing up all we did pretty much we we went to church every time the doors were open. Bible Bible Bible all the time.
There was never even a beer in our house okay

Speaker 4 no cussing no beer no nothing like that. We couldn't even watch PG-13 movies.
So she took it pretty serious.

Speaker 2 By 2005, the kids were grown and out of the house, and Ferlin and Jerry had retired from factory work.

Speaker 2 Ferlin began working odd jobs while Jerry cleaned churches and worked part-time at the Highway 30 market.

Speaker 4 To me, they had the perfect life. You know, they had this beautiful home and everything's paid for, and they finally have time to enjoy each other, and then everything falls apart.

Speaker 4 Ferlin just wanted to sit home and he didn't really want to do anything. He's older, you know, and mom's wanting to get out and do things.
I think she just got really lonely.

Speaker 1 They would argue a lot. We basically kind of stayed back because we didn't know, you know, and then Jerry moved out.

Speaker 2 In May 2005, Jerry and Ferlin divorced. ending 27 years of marriage.
For Ferlin, life without his leading lady was anything but easy.

Speaker 4 He'd come to the house and he'd be crying and upset about her. It broke my heart for him.
It really did. I mean, he would be like, I love your mom so much.

Speaker 2 Then, on Mother's Day, just before their marital assets had been divided, Jerry's life was suddenly turned upside down.

Speaker 3 The residence she was living in caught on fire and everything burned.

Speaker 1 She moved in with Ferlin and they lived in the same house. They just didn't live as man and wife.
In our community, there's not a lot of rental properties around that's available.

Speaker 1 She didn't have nowhere else to go. That was kind of an easier place to move right back into.

Speaker 2 Everyone who knew Ferlin knew he was over the moon about having Jerry back in the house.

Speaker 1 Ferlin didn't want to be alone away from her. Ferlin loved her with all his heart, and he would be the first to open the door up to her.

Speaker 4 I think he just

Speaker 4 wanted to be with her, you know.

Speaker 2 It appeared that Ferlin might get his wish.

Speaker 1 From my understanding, I think they were going to try to make things work for their children, grandchildren, what have you, to try to be together as a family.

Speaker 2 And after so many years together in their beloved home, maybe it was a union that was destined to be.

Speaker 2 However, just a month later, on June 9th, there's a more pressing issue brewing at the base of Baker Mountain.

Speaker 3 In June of 2005, Ferlin's truck is found in an area not far from their home, abandoned.

Speaker 3 And Ferlin is nowhere to be seen.

Speaker 1 Any number of medical things that could have happened to him. This is a very mountainous area.
I mean, could he...

Speaker 1 Fell off a bluff. Could he have got out in the woods and got snake bit?

Speaker 2 For Deputy Russell, there's one thing about Ferland's truck that stands out.

Speaker 1 The driver's side window was broken down. If it had been any weathering thing, it would have blown in the truck.

Speaker 1 That's the first thing that struck me as odd because Ferlin was very particular about his vehicles.

Speaker 2 Coming up. The mystery surrounding Ferland Bryant's disappearance deepens.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of cliffs and a a lot of drop-offs up on Baker Mountain. It would be easy to go missing and be hard to be found.

Speaker 2 And a startling allegation raises new questions about one of Ferland's closest neighbors.

Speaker 1 Some statements that if he ever caught Ferlin, he would shoot and kill him.

Speaker 2 Nearly three days after 58-year-old Ferlin Bryant was last seen by friends and family, Van Buren County Sheriff's Deputy Chris Russell discovered Ferlin's white Dodge truck a few miles from his home.

Speaker 2 More law enforcement arrives along with Ferlin's family and friends to begin a search of the area.

Speaker 1 They were just trying to help out, just getting together just to cover some ground. I guess, so to speak, to help kind of help law enforcement out because our department was very small.

Speaker 1 We went down there and we looked at the truck and as what I could tell of the window was about half down.

Speaker 4 It was an old piece of junk truck, you know, but it was his truck and he loved it. So when the window was left down, that seemed weird to me.

Speaker 2 While deputies examine Ferland's vehicle, a search of the adjacent woods gets underway.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of cliffs and a lot of drop-offs up on Baker Mountain. Or he could have just simply had some kind of medical attack.

Speaker 1 All kinds of things that could have been

Speaker 1 just natural occurrences that could have happened to him.

Speaker 2 A closer examination of Ferland's truck raises more questions for law enforcement.

Speaker 1 When I opened up the door, the first thing caught my attention was the actual truck seat was sitting extremely close to the steering wheel.

Speaker 2 Had Ferlin pushed up the truck's bench seat to remove some item behind it?

Speaker 1 It was common for Ferlin to carry around some type of small gun, some type of 22 rifle.

Speaker 2 Yet there's no sign of a weapon. Could Ferlin have carried it with him into the woods?

Speaker 1 Furlin was one, if he's seen a snake or something, he may shoot a snake and he'd love to go talk about it with someone, show it to him and stuff. I mean, that's just the type of guy he was.

Speaker 2 Of course, the other possibility is more ominous. Maybe someone someone besides Ferlin had been behind the wheel.

Speaker 1 I think there's no way Ferlin could have got in that truck and got his legs up under him in a driving position. That seat was where it's at.

Speaker 2 Officers searched the truck for any sign of foul play.

Speaker 1 There'd been blood in it, and we'd like to find that, even if it was a small amount of blood. Shell casings from a weapon that had been fired, maybe a weapon itself.
But we just didn't see anything,

Speaker 1 no real signs of any foul play or anything like that.

Speaker 2 A search of the nearby woods proves equally fruitless.

Speaker 1 There's a couple of us that walked around the woods area up there and looked, but we didn't find nothing but the truck.

Speaker 2 Ferlin's friends and family disperse.

Speaker 2 But before sheriff's deputies leave Baker Mountain, there's someone they want to talk to. The owner of the property where they found Ferland's truck, Monroe Mooneyham.

Speaker 1 Monroe lived down the road or not too far from Ferland. Him and Ferland were good friends.
They'd grown up in that area and knew each other well.

Speaker 1 He didn't know why the truck was there. He didn't have a clue.
The last time he had checked the property, which was a day or so prior, there was no vehicles there.

Speaker 2 Monroe tells them he has just returned from out of town.

Speaker 1 Monroe was in Nashville with his wife Melbourne Munihan, who worked at that time for DCS and was known by all law enforcement.

Speaker 2 Monroe's statement indicates that Ferlin's truck was abandoned sometime in the past three days.

Speaker 1 Somebody pulled up there within that time frame. He last checked it till we found it.

Speaker 2 The information from Monroe, along with the suspicious state of Furlin's truck, heightens deputies' concerns. They decide they need to speak to Furlin's family, starting with his daughter Pam.

Speaker 4 Pam said, something's wrong, you know, I hadn't seen daddy in a couple days.

Speaker 1 Ferlin was all the time, either he was in contact with us every other day or maybe every day.

Speaker 1 He would always pop in either in the evenings or something.

Speaker 2 Pam had taken her concerns to the Sheriff's Department a couple of days prior. While it was too soon to file an official report, deputies knew to be on the lookout.

Speaker 1 We knew something was going on, but we didn't know what at that point in time.

Speaker 2 Pam tells them her biggest concern is that Ferlin and Jerry hadn't been getting along since Jerry moved back in.

Speaker 4 Him and mama was arguing. He'd come to the house and he'd be crying and upset about her.

Speaker 2 Pam worries that if Ferlin saw no hope in reconciling with Jerry, he might do something drastic.

Speaker 4 We were all thinking something bad.

Speaker 4 My first thought was

Speaker 4 suicide

Speaker 4 because he was so upset over Mama.

Speaker 2 Pam said they took their concerns to Jerry.

Speaker 4 My sister called Mama and she's like, we can't find him. Where's he at? She said something about he's took off to Montana.

Speaker 4 I think it might have been like a dream of his to go to Montana, but not seriously. So Pam was like, no, mom, something's wrong.

Speaker 2 Pam doesn't believe that Ferlin took off to Montana. Neither does law enforcement.

Speaker 1 Ferlin wasn't that type of person. He just wasn't one to pick up and go off somewhere like that.
He was a hometown man that liked to stay in his hometown.

Speaker 2 Investigators suspect there's something they are still missing.

Speaker 1 He wasn't one to make enemies. I mean, he just wasn't that type of individual.

Speaker 1 But just in case, you know, has he been in some sort of argument or is there somebody that has got some issue with him or him with them?

Speaker 2 Rumors in the community pointed towards one person who might have had an issue with Ferlin. The same person they say was at the root of Ferlin and Jerry's marital marital woes.

Speaker 1 She was having this affair with a gentleman that lived in that area, Earl.

Speaker 2 The relationship began in 2004 while Jerry and Ferlin were still married.

Speaker 1 She worked part-time at a small market off of Highway 30, and Earl would come into that market and sit around, drink coffee, and talk with all the local people that hung out there.

Speaker 1 Earl, he's a farmer, always has been and always will be, and owns quite a bit of property and has a lot of cattle operations.

Speaker 1 He was sort of a charmer. Earl was attractive, smooth talker.
Evidently it started from riding horses. Burl had horses.

Speaker 1 She got to riding with him and that eventually developed into an affair and led to the divorce between Jerry and Ferland.

Speaker 2 Rumors swirled that Ferlin was so angry about the affair, he went after Earl's livestock.

Speaker 1 Earl had several of his fences cut, and he always suspected that Ferlin had done this because of the affair between Ferlin's wife, Jerry, and Earl.

Speaker 1 I just heard that he made some statements that if he ever caught Ferlin, he would shoot and kill him.

Speaker 2 Sheriff's deputies must take every lead seriously.

Speaker 2 But are Earl's threats merely small-town gossip? Or is Earl the one person in Van Buren County who knows where Ferlin Bryant is.

Speaker 2 Coming up, deputies confront Earl.

Speaker 1 She'd given up everything for him.

Speaker 2 And a homegrown search party changes the course of the investigation.

Speaker 1 We hadn't been looking long before somebody started hollering.

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Speaker 2 In the scorching summer of 2005, sheriff's deputies in Van Buren County, Tennessee, are ramping up their search for 58-year-old Ferlin Bryant.

Speaker 2 New evidence suggests that Ferlin had issues with his ex-wife's lover, Earl. Rumor has it that Ferlin cut Earl's fences, letting his prized livestock free.
And Earl wasn't happy about it.

Speaker 1 Earl, he's a farmer. If an animal gets out or a tractor breaks down or something, you see another side of a farmer.

Speaker 2 Did Earl have something to do with Ferlin's disappearance? Deputies head out to ask him.

Speaker 1 When I went to talk to him, he was really concerned.

Speaker 1 He was upset about the whole situation.

Speaker 2 While Earl admits to the affair, he denies having anything to do with Ferlin's disappearance. He tells deputies he put an end to the relationship right after Jerry finalized her divorce.

Speaker 1 She came down, met with him and told him that I guess they was divorced and that she was a free woman.

Speaker 1 But Earl was not going to leave his wife for Jerry at all, which I think probably caused some discord between them two because that wasn't what she wanted.

Speaker 1 She'd given up everything that she'd worked for, for him.

Speaker 1 And she felt pretty rejected because all of a sudden she'd given up everything in the divorce.

Speaker 2 Jerry had even given up the home on Baker Mountain to be with Earl.

Speaker 1 Jerry had walked away and Ferlin was there, so Ferlin had possession of the home.

Speaker 2 Earl says he'd only run into Jerry a few times since the breakup, the most recent being three days earlier on June 6th.

Speaker 1 She had showed up down at his front gate and needed a ride. I guess he'd give her a ride to her home.

Speaker 2 This immediately grabs investigators' attention. Earl's front gate is walking distance from where Ferlin's truck was found.

Speaker 2 A revelation that might just explain what Jerry was doing there.

Speaker 1 The theory would be that she had just abandoned her late husband's truck.

Speaker 2 A theory that's bolstered by one key detail.

Speaker 1 The seat in the truck was pulled forward, very close to the steering wheel. It would have accommodated a woman of Jerry's height.
Of course, that prompted even more suspicion.

Speaker 2 Deputies believe that even if Jerry was involved, Earl had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1 It was pretty obvious that he had rejected her, but we were never able to put anything together, even though we looked at that option of whether there was any involvement there.

Speaker 2 Deputies believe there's a strong chance that Jerry knows where Ferlin is. It's a theory Chief Deputy Barney Evans finds very plausible.

Speaker 2 He'd personally witnessed how bad things had gotten between Ferlin and Jerry since she moved back in.

Speaker 1 I actually got called out to the residence.

Speaker 1 And when I got there, that's broke glass and everything's messed up.

Speaker 1 She is irate. cussing and going on and she's unruly.

Speaker 1 She said that Ferlin had done several things to her as far as assaulting her. She had supposedly been dragged by the hair of the head up the stairway.

Speaker 2 At the time, the chief deputy couldn't find any proof to support Jerry's allegations.

Speaker 1 She's saying that he had beat her and she never had a mark on her. So I placed her under arrest for making a false report.
Ferlin begged me not to.

Speaker 1 but I went ahead and charged her and got her into court. I was going to let the judge solve their differences for them.

Speaker 2 What was Jerry up to? Investigators have a theory. If Ferlin had been arrested, Jerry could take possession of the house.

Speaker 1 She was trying to make him leave, and he just, he wouldn't leave.

Speaker 2 Chief Deputy Evans heads to Jerry and Ferlin's home with the hope of presenting his questions directly to Jerry. Once there, his mission takes a bizarre turn.

Speaker 1 She was laying on the couch

Speaker 1 and I knocked on the door

Speaker 1 and she just laid there

Speaker 1 and then I knocked harder and harder.

Speaker 1 Finally she aroused enough that she come trying to open the door.

Speaker 1 And it's just like she's drunk.

Speaker 1 And when she unlocked the door, she's trying to talk to me and everything was real slurred.

Speaker 1 And I thought she was having a stroke.

Speaker 3 He found Jerry in a stupor kind of condition where her eyes were bugged out.

Speaker 3 It was obvious that she needed some help.

Speaker 2 Deputy Evans calls for an ambulance.

Speaker 2 Once Jerry has been admitted to a Nashville hospital, law enforcement and her family learn that she wasn't having a stroke.

Speaker 1 She had overdosed, took a bunch of pills.

Speaker 1 Allegedly, she had attempted to commit suicide.

Speaker 4 She was really bad off. They were talking like she might not live, or she had took all the meds.
She might not come back out of it.

Speaker 2 What was eating at Jerry Bryant to the point that she attempted to take her own life?

Speaker 1 A lot of red flags were sent up, you know, that could be regret, you know, that could be guilt, that could be anything.

Speaker 1 Everything's happening just one right after the other, which even makes me think more, you know, there's some foul play going on here somewhere.

Speaker 2 With Jerry unconscious, deputies won't be talking to her anytime soon.

Speaker 2 They head back to Jerry and Ferland's home, where they are met by the couple's friends and family. Together, they search the property.

Speaker 1 We decided that we was going to go in and check all the proximity of the property and see what we could, you know, see if we could come up with anything. We started out just right in behind the house.

Speaker 1 There were several brush piles sitting in behind the house.

Speaker 1 You could smell like a faint smell of something. You could barely make something out.

Speaker 1 I could smell a little bit of something that just wasn't quite right. I don't know how to describe it other than just a bad smell.

Speaker 1 He kept following the scent, led him up to the brush pile, and then there was netting on top of that.

Speaker 1 Barney's like, Hey, you leave that brush pile alone. I was like, Why? And he said, There's a freaking snake.

Speaker 4 There was a dead snake laying there on it.

Speaker 1 It was rotten, and I associated it with that dead snake. It didn't matter to me.
I'm scared to death of snakes.

Speaker 2 Soon afterwards, the search party calls it a day.

Speaker 2 Less than 24 hours later, deputies get a call from one of Furland's friends. He says they had resumed their search of the grounds and that they had just found something troubling.

Speaker 1 We started looking around the house. Somebody had actually noticed a burned pile down there.
And in our county, everybody that lives in the communities has got some type of little burn pile.

Speaker 1 There was a couch laying over top of it. Well, I flipped the couch over.

Speaker 1 Then we started looking and going through all the stuff that was burnt.

Speaker 4 I'm digging around in this burn pile and I'm trying to find something. I don't know what I'm looking for.
I'm kind of crazy myself at the time, you know.

Speaker 4 And I found his wallet

Speaker 4 and the bottom of his boots.

Speaker 4 What man leaves the house without his wallet?

Speaker 4 Why has somebody burnt his stuff in this burn pile?

Speaker 4 I just freaked out.

Speaker 1 I lost it.

Speaker 2 By the time deputies return to Ferlin and Jerry's home, the scene is frantic. The search party had returned to the brush pile.

Speaker 2 Underneath the dead snake and camouflage debris, they'd made an even more horrifying discovery.

Speaker 1 We hadn't been looking long before

Speaker 1 somebody started hollering. Sure enough, there was a foot sticking out from under the brush pile.

Speaker 4 From that point, I mean, it's just like you're in shock, like you're stuck in the Twilight Zone. I'm just dazed.
I don't even know what to do.

Speaker 2 Coming up, a grim turn of events.

Speaker 1 He was just, he's completely burned up.

Speaker 2 The investigation intensifies.

Speaker 4 I mean, it looked like something out of a movie. It didn't look real.
And all these people running around.

Speaker 2 A search party on the property of missing Tennessee man Ferlin Bryant has just made a disturbing find beneath a brush pile behind the Van Buren County home Ferlin shared with his ex-wife, Jerry.

Speaker 1 They hollered for me and I run up there and the guy that actually found him said that he had just raked back a few leaves under a brush pile and there appeared to be something under it.

Speaker 1 He said I think we got something over there and I went over there and I said what are you gonna see and he showed me right foot was ticking out.

Speaker 1 Then when we got up toward the eastern side of the brush pile you could actually see the skull of a human.

Speaker 2 The Van Buren Sheriff's Department immediately clears the scene of family and friends.

Speaker 4 We had to move away from where he was and go down to the bottom of the hill and they're just like coming in like crazy. I mean it looked like something out of a movie.

Speaker 4 It didn't look real and all these people running around.

Speaker 2 After roping off the scene, deputies contact the Van Buren and Warren County prosecutors.

Speaker 1 Van Buren County Sheriff's Department is a very small sheriff's department. They didn't have a lot of individuals that worked homicide cases on a regular basis.

Speaker 1 My investigator and I were able to get the Warren County Sheriff's Department to come up and help us work this case. And they came up along with the medical examiner's office.

Speaker 1 A medical examiner came down there and when we actually started getting the body out there was like a little over 19 pounds of actual body. It was a lady that carried him out.

Speaker 1 She had him in a bag and she was carrying him with one arm.

Speaker 1 And I mean he was just, he's completely burnt up.

Speaker 1 There was obviously an attempt to get rid of the body at the scene where the fire was. That didn't work.

Speaker 1 And at some point, there was the effort made to move it up into the woods, cover it with brush, and put the netting on it with a snake.

Speaker 2 Investigators from Van Buren and Warren counties comb over the rest of the property, hoping to stay ahead of the summer storms.

Speaker 1 It does add to the urgency because Middle Tennessee in June, it gets really, really hot during the day.

Speaker 1 You'll have some really heavy storms that will will just pop up and you risk losing any kind of fluids or blood.

Speaker 1 The house was extensively searched to try and see if there was any blood there. We really went over the house with a fine tooth comb.

Speaker 1 Didn't come up with anything that would lead us to believe that anything happened in the house.

Speaker 2 Law enforcement fans out to question area neighbors.

Speaker 1 There were some neighbors that saw the smoke going.

Speaker 1 They heard the gunshots, but didn't think much about it because being in a rural area, it's not uncommon for people to be out shooting in the woods, target practicing, or to burn the trash.

Speaker 1 That's our whole community. Everybody likes to get out and shoot guns.

Speaker 2 Having gleaned all they can from the crime scene, investigators are eager to talk to Jerry. When they check in with her doctors, they learn she is still unconscious.

Speaker 2 They also learn that when she first arrived, she made some concerning comments to hospital staff.

Speaker 3 She starts talking out of her head, talking about Ferlin being dead, talking about the brains and putting the brains back in the head.

Speaker 2 Jerry's cryptic statements only fuel investigators' suspicions.

Speaker 1 We were pretty sure that it wasn't hallucinating as much as she was definitely recalling some events that

Speaker 1 had happened.

Speaker 2 Then, investigators get word that the autopsy is complete. The medical examiner confirms what everyone already suspects.

Speaker 1 We were able to come up with enough medical records to put it together that it was Ferland's body.

Speaker 2 Ferlin's death is also no accident.

Speaker 1 Ferlin was shot two to four times with a.22 caliber round.

Speaker 1 Some type of a one instrument was used against him, breaking some facial bones, some arm bones. And then after that point, his body was was burned

Speaker 1 there were traces of gasoline found on some of the clothing that belonged to Ferlin

Speaker 1 if Jerry killed Ferlin investigators need proof they head to the Highway 30 market the Highway 30 market was a place not only did Jerry work at but Ferlin would go down and hang out, talk to people, drink coffee, or whatever.

Speaker 2 Jerry's employers reveal that over the past few weeks, Ferlin had come to the store with some bizarre stories about Jerry. He believed that on more than one occasion, she had tried to poison him.

Speaker 1 One of them involved coffee not smelling right, smelling like some kind of bug repellent put into it.

Speaker 1 And then on another occasion, he found medicine or a lot of white stuff in the bottle of a soft drink. that he was drinking.

Speaker 3 He had stated to the owner of the store that he thought she had put some of that in his coffee, and he felt like the items in the bottle was put in the refrigerator for him to drink.

Speaker 2 A store employee clearly remembers a disheveled Jerry coming by the store in the early morning hours of June 6th.

Speaker 1 She had went to the local store early in the morning, bought a lot of gas.

Speaker 2 A few hours later, she returned.

Speaker 1 Supposedly was going to mow grass and then went back and bought some more gas that same day.

Speaker 2 Was Jerry really doing yard work

Speaker 2 or was she trying to cover up a crime?

Speaker 2 Investigators continue hitting up gas stations in the county. They find that the Highway 30 market wasn't the only place Jerry made a purchase that day.

Speaker 1 She bought like five gallons of gasoline. And then later on, she buys, you know, another

Speaker 1 quantity of gasoline and says, you know, she's using that to mower a yard.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of gas to run through a lawnmower to mow one yard.

Speaker 2 The gas purchases are the proof investigators need to place Jerry under arrest.

Speaker 2 But there's one problem. Will Jerry live long enough for them to do it?

Speaker 2 Coming up, investigators zero in on a motive.

Speaker 4 They worked their whole life for it. Neither one of them wanted to give it up.

Speaker 2 But some bizarre claims could bring a new theory to light.

Speaker 4 Mom had said that people had broken the house and made her take all them pills.

Speaker 2 As 48-year-old Jerry Bryant recovers from a suicide attempt in a Nashville hospital, investigators in Van Buren County, Tennessee are building a case against her for the murder of her ex-husband, 58-year-old Ferlin Bryant.

Speaker 2 On June 18th, 2005, word reaches deputies that Jerry is expected to make a full recovery.

Speaker 2 In fact, ever since Jerry has regained consciousness, she has been offering up her own theory about what happened to Ferlin.

Speaker 1 She had said someone had come in and forced her to take pills, going to try to kill her off for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 Whoever possibly might have done something to Ferlin might be going to do something to her.

Speaker 2 But with all the evidence pointing toward Jerry, investigators don't buy it. On June 28th, they place 48-year-old Jerry Bryant under arrest.

Speaker 4 I knew it was coming. I mean, it wasn't shock or anything like that.
I'm just still so devastated because we lost our whole family.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I mean, it's just hard on everybody to believe.

Speaker 2 Jerry is charged with murder and abuse of a corpse. Once in custody, she refuses to make a statement.

Speaker 2 As they prepare for trial, prosecutors face not knowing exactly what happened the day Ferlin was killed.

Speaker 1 We don't know if this happened while he was asleep or if he had been outside and she approached him and shot him. I think she went and got the 22, shot him dead.

Speaker 1 Then she drug him to the burn pile, tried to dismember his body, and figured out that there's going to be a lot of work, got some gas.

Speaker 1 But when the body didn't burn like it should, out comes the couch.

Speaker 1 And you try to light that up and use it to accelerate the fire.

Speaker 1 We just know he was killed in that area, and then his body was taken up on the hillside there and put in the woods and hid under depression.

Speaker 1 It was going to be a circumstantial evidence case, which meant we had a harder burden of proof than if somebody had just shot somebody and we had a witness as to who did it.

Speaker 2 In March 2006, Jerry's trial begins at the Van Buren County Courthouse in Spencer, Tennessee. As far as Jerry's motive, prosecutors argue that when Earl dumped her, she went back to Furlin.

Speaker 2 Only she didn't want Ferlin. She wanted their Baker Mountain home all to herself.

Speaker 1 They had been advised that in a marital dispute like that, if two parties can agree on it, then the easiest option is just to say, we'll sell it and split it down the middle.

Speaker 1 they worked their whole life for it and neither one of them wanted to give it up the only way she saw to do it was to shoot him and then try to dispose of the body we think it was premeditation she intended to do it because she said she would never give up that house

Speaker 2 prosecutors reveal that upon ferlin's death jerry would inherit the home she cherished and a decent chunk of change to boot.

Speaker 1 There was a $50,000 life insurance policy Ferlin had on his life that Jerry was still the beneficiary of.

Speaker 2 Jerry's defense attorneys opt not to put her on the stand. Instead, they hone in on whether or not Jerry was physically capable of committing the crime.

Speaker 1 Their deal was that someone else done it and is most likely the boyfriend.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors fire back, pointing to the fact that there is no evidence linking Earl or anyone else to the crime.

Speaker 1 As we looked into this, we had nothing that led us to believe that Earl had any part in this.

Speaker 2 Prosecutors argue that all of the evidence points directly to Jerry as the killer.

Speaker 1 It's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, but you're missing a few of the pieces. But it's obvious from what pieces you have that it could only be that one person, Jerry Bryant.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, both sides rest their case and the jury reaches a verdict. They find 48-year-old Jerry Bryant guilty of second-degree murder.
She is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Speaker 1 The waiting up till the verdict was the hardest part,

Speaker 1 but once it was read that she was guilty, I felt a little bit of a sense of relief. I felt some satisfaction maybe for Ferlin.

Speaker 4 He didn't have to raise me and he did. I mean he took me to the doctor.
He worked and took care of me.

Speaker 2 Ferlin loved his kids. He also loved Jerry and that love ended up costing him everything.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately sometimes love is blind and you overlook things that the person you're in love with is doing to you. You just don't want to believe that they would do that to you.

Speaker 1 And he was really in love with Jerry.

Speaker 4 I think he would have always pestered her to death trying to get her back. If you could bring him back right now, he would say,

Speaker 4 let her out of prison. I forgive her.

Speaker 1 He would.

Speaker 4 I know he would.

Speaker 2 Verlin and Jerry Bryant's house and land have since been sold. Jerry served her full sentence and was released in June of 2022 at the age of 65.