A Little Patch of Perfect

Summary

Dateline NBC: "A Little Patch of Perfect"

Host: Lester Holt
Episode Release Date: January 21, 2025

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Introduction and Background

In the serene suburban expanse of Alpharetta, Georgia, the Ferris family epitomized success and togetherness. Gary Ferris, a prominent Atlanta attorney affectionately known as "Big Daddy," was the patriarch of a close-knit family residing on a sprawling 10-acre estate. The farm, a symbol of their hard-earned prosperity, was a hub for family gatherings and activities. Gary’s wife, Melody, an elderly matriarch, oversaw the household, while their children—Chris, Scott (an Iraq war veteran), Emily, and Amanda—each played integral roles in maintaining the family legacy.

The Disappearance of Gary Ferris

The tranquility of the Ferris family's life was shattered around the Fourth of July, 2018. On July 3rd, Chris Ferris recalls, "We went up to the barn to look at the animals... And that was that." The following day, July 4th, Chris returned to the farm with his daughter Addison, only to find his father and Melody missing. Concern quickly escalated when Gary's car remained stationary on the property, sparking immediate worry.

Discovery of Gary’s Remains

On the morning of July 5th, the grim reality unfolded. While searching the burn pile—a designated area for controlled debris incineration—Chris made a horrifying discovery. At [07:55], he recounts, "I'll never forget it. I knew immediately at that time this was a very, very bad situation." Both Chris and Scott recognized Gary's skull amid the ashes, confirming their worst fears: Gary Ferris had been brutally murdered before being incinerated on the very property he cherished.

Family Secrets and Motives

As the investigation commenced, underlying family tensions came to light. Gary's financial dealings had woven a complex web of dependencies and resentments among his children:

• Chris Ferris admitted to taking money from his father, stating, "Chris has taken money, he came in and took checks."
• Scott Ferris, living above the barn, was described as hot-tempered and had previously found a pistol in the basement, which later went missing.
• Emily and Amanda were implicated in financial misconduct, with Melody expressing concerns about their integrity.

Melody herself became a central figure of suspicion. Gary had grown distrustful of Melody, suspecting her of infidelity and possible poisoning, a belief fueled by her spending habits and a mysterious credit card found in her wallet belonging to Roy Barton, Melody’s cousin.

The Investigation

Detective Daniel Hayes led the investigation with meticulous scrutiny. Evidence such as a bullet lodged in Gary's rib [15:10] and blood droplets on the property indicated foul play. The CPAP machine revealed that Gary had not turned it on the night of his death, suggesting he met his demise between 8:30 PM and 1 AM on July 3rd.

Interviews painted a picture of a family rife with financial disputes and emotional strife. Melody's controlled spending and Gary's authoritarian management of finances created a fertile ground for motives among multiple family members.

The Trial

By October 2024, Melody Ferris stood trial for the murder of her husband. The courtroom drama unfolded with testimonies that scrutinized every facet of the family's dynamics:

• Prosecution's Case: Assistant DA Megan Frankish presented cell phone data and financial records, suggesting Melody had both motive and opportunity. The discovery of a spent bullet and blood evidence pointed to Melody’s involvement. A pivotal moment was the testimony of Martha Jane Barton, Melody’s cousin, who revealed Melody had taken a .38 caliber pistol belonging to her late father, linking Melody directly to the weapon used in Gary’s murder.

• Defense's Arguments: Defense attorneys Michael Ray and John Luke Weaver contended that the evidence was circumstantial. They highlighted Melody's physical limitations in moving Gary's body and pointed suspicion towards Scott Ferris, who had both motive and the physical capability to commit the crime. Demonstrations in court illustrated the improbability of Melody moving a 300-pound body through the rugged terrain of the farm.

Throughout the trial, family members testified, with three of the four children supporting the prosecution's case against their mother, while Amanda Ferris described Scott as having an "unusual fixation" with the estate, though Scott denied any involvement.

Verdict and Aftermath

After six grueling years marked by legal delays and intense scrutiny, the jury found Melody Ferris guilty of murdering Gary Ferris [84:43]. The verdict was met with a mix of relief and emotional turmoil among the family and community.

During sentencing, Melody made a final, explosive statement, attempting to shift blame onto her son Scott, asserting, "I know Scott killed his father." However, this accusation did not sway the court, and Melody was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

Conclusion

The Ferris family, once a portrait of success and unity, was irreparably fractured by greed, suspicion, and betrayal. Gary Ferris’s legacy, overshadowed by his tragic and untimely death, left the family grappling with loss and the remnants of their shattered relationships. "A Little Patch of Perfect" serves as a poignant reminder of how hidden tensions and unresolved conflicts can culminate in devastating consequences, unraveling the very fabric of a seemingly idyllic family life.

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Notable Quotes:

• Chris Ferris [01:35]: "Chris has taken money, he came in and took checks."
• Chris Ferris [07:55]: "I'll never forget it. I knew immediately at that time this was a very, very bad situation."
• Melody Ferris [22:50]: "I have waited for years to make this statement. I want the world to know who did this."
• Melody Ferris [87:45]: "I know Scott killed his father. He took my husband."

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This summary encapsulates the intricate and emotionally charged narrative of the Ferris family tragedy, providing a comprehensive overview of the key points, discussions, and conclusions presented in the "A Little Patch of Perfect" episode of Dateline NBC.

Transcript

[Lester Holt]

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[Chris Farris]

My father was larger than life. He was the rock of the family. My sister called and said, daddy's missing. We started searching for him. It clicked in my mind that he was going to burn that burn pile. He said he fell in a fire and burned up. I said, there is no way. Melody said that he has what she called spells where he would feel faint. They found a bullet lodged in my dad's rib bone. Obviously, the direction of the case changed very quickly.

[Lester Holt]

Gary had close ties with all the family members relating to money.

[Chris Farris]

Chris has taken money. He came in and took checks. Gary was a workaholic and she liked to spend the money. Scott's been making threats against her, saying.

[Lester Holt]

That he's taking over the estate. It's almost like an Agatha Christie story. You've got a confined space and all those people are warring amongst themselves.

[Chris Farris]

That's exactly right. I've waited for years to make this statement. I want the world to know who did this.

[Lester Holt]

A patriarch's body found in a fire and the smoldering family secrets left behind. I'm Lester Holt and this is dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with a little patch of perfect. 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, 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. This was their lifetime dream come true. And if they had heard that ancient advice, that fodder for so many tragedies, would they have listened or plowed on to the fate that waited for them? Careful. What you wish for. Their name was Ferris and they hated it when strangers implying dysfunction called them the Ferris wheel. Still, like spokes on a wheel, they stayed ever connected to this sweet place, this hub.

[Chris Farris]

The farm is what they call it.

[Lester Holt]

That's Chris, the eldest of the four Ferris children and they are his parents, Gary and Melody. Chris brother Scott, an Iraq war vet, lived in an apartment above the barn and he helped run the place.

[Chris Farris]

I would run the farm and I would take care of the property through.

[Lester Holt]

The week and all. 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, family parties, grandkids coming and going as they pleased, running amok among the goats and horses and chickens, 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. Six, five, three hundred pounds. Big Daddy the family called him. Everybody loved big daddy. On July 3, 2018, just before things happened, Chris took his daughter Addison to the farm, said hello to Big Daddy and Melody.

[Chris Farris]

We went up to the barn to look at the animals. The Barn is about 300 yards away from the main house and Addison and my mother walked down to the pond to see the new baby ducks.

[Lester Holt]

And that was that. The next day, the fourth, Chris was back with Addison. Dropped her off for a farm sleepover with a cousin and the two girls went looking for Big Daddy. Couldn't find him, nor could Melody. She said she hadn't seen him all that day.

[Chris Farris]

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 at certain times.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

Morning, and she said, you know, Daddy's missing.

[Lester Holt]

I mean, was that terribly unusual that he wouldn't be around?

[Chris Farris]

No, sir. My thoughts were maybe he went to the office. But then when I found out his car was still there, it raised my worry quite drastically.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

So on the way up I was, I was frantic. I was calling my other sister Emily. I was talking with Amanda, just trying to help in the search for him.

[Lester Holt]

Chris's brother Scott was already looking. Of course, at that time I was.

[Chris Farris]

Thinking he had a heart attack somewhere.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

I jumped on that ATV and I drove up to the barn and I searched the barn on the way back. I looped back around the house and saw my brother and my mother walking down towards where that burn pile was. And it clicked in my mind that he had told me on July 3rd that he was going to burn that burn pile on the 4th of July.

[Lester Holt]

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. Garry loved his burn piles, the bigger the better. By the time Scott got to the pile, it had about run its course. It had been intense, you could see. Burned everything, or rather not quite everything.

[Chris Farris]

It didn't look like a rock or anything like that. So I grabbed a very, very small piece of it and lifted it up enough to where I saw teeth in the eye socket.

[Lester Holt]

A human skull.

[Chris Farris]

I'll never forget it. I knew immediately at that time this.

[Lester Holt]

Was a very, very bad situation. Chris saw it too, and they both knew it was their father's body. The little that was left, that image.

[Chris Farris]

Of seeing that is something that I don't think I'll ever get over. I mean, it's one thing to see something that horrific on TV or in a movie, but to see your own father like that, it's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

[Lester Holt]

By then, the law was on its way to look and poke around and ask awkward questions. How did Gary Ferris end up in his own burn pile? And why, of course, I thought, that's.

[Chris Farris]

The missing piece to this puzzle.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

See, this is where I'm torn. I want to tell you what I know. I don't want to tell you what I think.

[Lester Holt]

Not in this family. About to implode.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I pretty much blacked out and went into shock at that time. The authorities arrived very, very soon after all this. It was hot, it was you know, July 5th, it was so hot outside.

[Lester Holt]

This is Sergeant Daniel Hayes of the Sheriff's department.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

And when they saw the place. Well, yes, freak accidents happened to rich people, too.

[Chris Farris]

I think everyone that arrived on that property probably looked around and thought, man.

[Lester Holt]

I'd love to have this 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?

[Chris Farris]

Correct.

[Lester Holt]

That's a big man.

[Chris Farris]

Big man. Very big man.

[Lester Holt]

A big man with a big brain, said his brother John.

[Chris Farris]

He was always smart, you know, growing up, he kind of set a precedent for our family.

[Lester Holt]

The oldest son, Gary, John, and their two sisters were raised in a middle class home in Alabama.

[Chris Farris]

And so we were very close. We had a lot of fun roaming the neighborhoods. He was always a loving brother.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

So smart, playful, and very ambitious.

[Chris Farris]

He decided early on that he wanted to become an attorney and made it happen. A lot of obstacles he had to overcome, and he so very driven.

[Lester Holt]

He had to be driven because life threw Gary Farris a little curveball in the form of a pretty young thing named Melody. Still teenagers when they met.

[Chris Farris]

They got married very young.

[Lester Holt]

Very young, yeah.

[Chris Farris]

And he was a sophomore in college. Had a child right away.

[Lester Holt]

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. Well, Gary rose fast in the legal world.

[Chris Farris]

My dad worked a lot. We didn't get to go on all these extravagant vacations. I've never been to Disney World. We went down to either Gulf Shores or Destin because my dad had to do a law seminar. That was our vacations. Even though he was an attorney and had a very important position in his firm, he still made time to coach my baseball team. He still made time to be at all my school events. He was always there and my mother was too. So growing up, I would say it was a happy family. We had a, to me, a normal childhood.

[Lester Holt]

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. And now, just like that, he was gone. When John and his sister Sherry got the news they felt compelled to get in the car and drive from Alabama to Georgia because we thought, we need to be there.

[Chris Farris]

I think it was Emily that was texting us. She goes, there's nowhere to go. You can't come here. They won't even let us on the property.

[Lester Holt]

And I want.

[Chris Farris]

I did not realize that it was this huge police investigation going on.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

They sat on the patio. Melody and Detective Hayes, he was at.

[Chris Farris]

The hospital in April. He's been having these spells, and they get more and more and more frequent. 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.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

He takes his blood pressure medicine from the Mountain Dew. And he said, and Chase is it with secret. She pointed out he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and, you know, probably drank a 12 pack or more of Mountain Dew.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

Yes, sir. He did not live the ultimate healthy lifestyle. He ate what he wanted to eat. He did not exercise.

[Lester Holt]

Made sense. Then some sort of health incident made him fall down into the fire. Except the ash heap itself had a story to tell, too. Almost his whole body was consumed in the fire. Ashley Pope was another sheriff's detective at the time. 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. So investigators thought maybe someone had thrown Gary right into the middle of the fire. And then, just as they were mulling that over, another startling discovery.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

A fragment of a bullet in the rib cage.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

A bullet lodged in Gary's rib cage. Well, that did not seem accidental. How did that change the course of your investigating at that point?

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

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. 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 in some shape or form. Gary had close ties or disagreements with all the family members relating to money. Latte, anyone?

[Chris Farris]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Chris Farris]

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[Lester Holt]

Gary Ferris was a man who lived large. From his Marlboros to his Mountain Dew to the money. He made money, which he loved to give away. 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. If someone needed a loan or home, more likely a gift to get them through a rough patch, Gary was there with a check or a swipe from a credit card. Now this family Santa Claus was dead, shot to death and then cremated on a funeral pyre he himself had built.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

And you got to figure out what happened here. What is that like? How's that feeling? And especially on an estate like that.

[Chris Farris]

It'S a lot of pressure. There are a lot of people there, a lot of things to figure out.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

Yep. As soon as the supervisor says, hayes, your lead, everybody's looking at me.

[Lester Holt]

Murder. That word changed everything. Detective Hayes asked Melody to join him at the sheriff's office. He would break the news to her.

[Chris Farris]

There they've been sifting through the remains in the ashes and. And they have found a projectile and some bones. So you were the last one to see Gary alive on Tuesday night. Right. Did you hear any gunshots? No, but there was a ton of. I mean, like, fireworks and firecrackers and.

[Lester Holt]

All kinds of stuff going off. 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. 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. 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.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

But if Gary's subterranean lair was cozy, contained, the crime scene itself was vast. Gary could have been shot anywhere on their spread. Lots of wide open space for a killer to slip in and out undetected.

[Chris Farris]

Well, now we need to know where people were over these last couple of days since the last time Gary Farris was. Was seen alive. Until the day we got there. You know, who was on the property, who could have done this, who would want to do this?

[Lester Holt]

Prompting Detective Hayes to ask Melody this question.

[Chris Farris]

Any feuds with the boys lately?

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

He and Scott would get into it pretty heavily.

[Lester Holt]

I mean, you know, I mean, they come blows. I mean, Scott's hot.

[Chris Farris]

I mean, he is. He's hot tempered. There is no. There is no doubt. He's very hot tempered.

[Lester Holt]

And Chris, Melody said he'd been caught stealing from Gary.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

And it wasn't just their own sons who were a problem daughter. Emily's husband was a Thief, too, said Melody.

[Chris Farris]

Her husband's been in and out of jail for Stanley.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

She and I are a lot alike. And she said, why do they all hate us? I said, well, you're the only one who didn't steal from him.

[Lester Holt]

It's hard to put into words. The level of family dysfunction detectives were hearing about 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. So, like the characters in the movie, nearly every Ferris would have to be considered a potential suspect. Oh, and Detective Hayes also had to consider the possibility that money was not the motive. That, well, maybe it was love. Which meant he had to ask Melody, who just lost her husband of 39 years, a very uncomfortable question. Had she been sleeping around?

[Chris Farris]

Are you currently in an affair with anyone? No. Is anyone pursuing you? No. There's no jealous boyfriends? No.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I mean, do I need to get an attorney? That's up to you. It's one of your rights. I mean, I would have never, ever heard him. Never. The unfortunate thing is somebody did, and we don't know who did. And it's our job to determine that. You know, you're the spouse. We have to do everything in our power to rule you out or to rule you in, you know.

[Lester Holt]

Melody felt it was time to set Detective Hayes straight, that she was the last person who would benefit from Gary's death. He had no life insurance and none of the assets were in her name. She said with Big Daddy gone, she didn't know what was to become of her. 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.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Establishing the time of death in a homicide investigation is tricky business. Even more so in the case of Gary Farris. 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. There was no way of telling how long he'd been dead, hours, days, no one could say. So investigators tried to narrow down the time of death by talking to the pool of potential suspects. 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 one or 1:30, said Scott.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

It was Tuesday, approximately 4:45pm here at the farm. He was outside when we pulled up. He said he was getting stuff ready. Either he was burning things or was about to burn things. Could you smell any smoke in the air or anything? No. Okay, so he was collecting stuff for the fire? Yes. And that's what he explained to you? Yes. When you left, to your knowledge, what was your dad gonna go do? Keep collecting stuff to probably put on that pile to burn?

[Lester Holt]

Chris said he left the farm around 5:30 that evening. Melody, speaking to Detective Hayes, picked up the timeline from there.

[Chris Farris]

Had you spoken to Gary after Chris left? Yes. Okay, so. Oh, yeah, Chris left. Gary was still. Yeah, he was still here. So he went down and started the fire. And you said it was. You don't know exactly what time is it? Still daylight though, I think on about 6:00. Okay. Something like that.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

The last time you talked to him Tuesday was around dinner time? Yeah. You'd estimate 8, 8:30. It was not that late that night.

[Lester Holt]

Because he had been here all day and stuff. But I told him, I said, you.

[Chris Farris]

Are not going to bed and leaving that fire. How big was the fire when he lit it?

[Lester Holt]

Massive.

[Chris Farris]

I mean, it was massive.

[Lester Holt]

Melody said she figured Gary had gone back to check on the burn pile before heading off to bed. Scott said when he got home about three hours later, the fire was still going, but his dad was nowhere in sight. 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.

[Chris Farris]

It had been somewhere around 8:30 because.

[Lester Holt]

It wasn't quite dark yet. On the morning of Thursday the 5th, he said he was heading off to get his hair cut when his mom stopped him and asked, have you talked.

[Chris Farris]

To your dad or seen your dad? I'm like, no.

[Lester Holt]

She's like, well, but you know we can't find him. 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 5th when his remains were discovered in the burn pile. Except. 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 normal while sleeping. 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.

[Chris Farris]

And it showed that Gary was usually putting that cpap on between 11 and 1am There was no data for the night of the third or past. That led us to believe that Gary was killed before his normal bedtime of.

[Lester Holt]

Between 11 and 1am and sometime after. Melody said she saw him around 8 or 8, 8:30pm so Gary must have met his death sometime between 8:30pm and 1am on the night of Wednesday, July 3rd. The only people home then, as far as police knew, were Melody and Scott. And now a CSI team was finding evidence Gary had been killed in his home.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

There was some blood on the wall near the front door. There was some blood droplets that appeared to have been cleaned up. They appeared a bit in a smear pattern in the kitchen near the basement door.

[Lester Holt]

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. So two gunshots inside the house. But Melody had told Detective Hayes she didn't hear a thing. So Hayes asked her once again, did.

[Chris Farris]

You hear any gunshots that night? No, but like I said, I mean there's no, no gunshots, but there was tons of fireworks going off.

[Lester Holt]

Melody said that was it. That's all she knew. But Gary's sons, Scott and Chris, they said they knew a lot and had a story to tell.

[Chris Farris]

When I came home, I saw the.

[Lester Holt]

Fire going in the woods and question was, how much of their story could be believed. 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 part low crime side of Cherokee County, Georgia. But though the Ferris estate was idyllic, the family most certainly was not. So when they interviewed the brothers, they carefully and repeatedly went over their timeline.

[Chris Farris]

I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. What time did you leave on July 3rd? July 3rd, it was probably, I don't know, 4:30.

[Lester Holt]

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. He said he'd been gone all day with friends out of the lake. And I was up there at the.

[Chris Farris]

Lake house until I didn't leave until about 10:30 at night roughly and came back home.

[Lester Holt]

And that's when, you know, when I.

[Chris Farris]

Came home I saw the fire going.

[Lester Holt]

In the woods and, you know, didn't.

[Chris Farris]

Think of anything of it.

[Lester Holt]

So police knew two people were at home that night, Melody. And later in the evening, Scott. 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. 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. 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. Did it seem strange to you that Scott would be going around the house looking for whether a gun was there or not?

[Chris Farris]

It was odd. So that started putting the suspicion in our minds that okay, maybe that's kind of weird, maybe something's up.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I went down there and checked the trail cam and there's just a couple squirrels and a couple raccoons.

[Lester Holt]

And that was it.

[Chris Farris]

I deleted everything.

[Lester Holt]

Everything.

[Chris Farris]

I asked my brother, I said, why would you do that? 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 now.

[Lester Holt]

They had to wonder if he deleted evidence.

[Chris Farris]

I did ask my brother some very hard questions because I knew he was going to be asked some very hard questions, you know, like what was going on with you and our dad, you know, because they asked me questions about my brother, too. You know, Scott was very much a suspect. We all were.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

A couple of her kids were abusing her husband financially. She was upset with, you know, with both of her sons because it just seemed that it was a financial drain that was a constant thing. Over and over.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

Scott's been making threats against her, saying that he's going to burn the house down and that we can't stop them.

[Lester Holt]

From taking over the estate because essentially.

[Chris Farris]

At this point, to tell you bluntly, I mean, I just feel like they're after money. I'm just fearing for my safety at this point, and I'm fear for my mother's safety.

[Lester Holt]

David Thomas said Melanie was increasingly afraid of her sons.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

Go to the kids and so that they would have a motive to do some harm to her.

[Chris Farris]

Exactly.

[Lester Holt]

She thought that was a possibility.

[Chris Farris]

She thought it was a real possibility.

[Lester Holt]

If Scott and Chris were, in fact, suspects, Detectives kept that to themselves. Let me ask you a question.

[Chris Farris]

What do you guys think happened? See, this is where I'm torn. I want to tell you what I know. I want to tell you what I think.

[Lester Holt]

Actually, Chris and Scott Farris told police exactly what they thought. And what they thought was detectives should be taking a long, hard look at Mommie Dearest.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

I wish he would just have a.

[Chris Farris]

Heart attack and die. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families with Greenlight. You can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight [e-mail] podcast Sling has the sports you can't miss and will reward you for watching. Every time you watch is another chance to win cash and prizes. Plus, only Sling lets you choose and customize your channel lineup starting at just $45.99 a month. @ that price, there's no such thing as an off season. Catch all your favorite Sports, go to sling.com to customize your channel lineup and start earning rewards just for watching. Sling lets you do that. Restrictions apply this cold and flu season. Instacart is here to help deliver all of your sick day essentials. Whether you're in prevention mode and need vitamins, hand sanitizer and that lemon tea your Nana swears by, or you're in healing mode and need medicine, soup and a lot more tissues, simply download the Instacart app to get sick day supplies that reinvigorate or relieve Delivered in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Excludes restaurant orders, service fees and terms app.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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. But my mother, on the other hand, man, I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, I can't wait till the day I don't have to live with him.

[Lester Holt]

I wish he would just have a.

[Chris Farris]

Heart attack and die.

[Lester Holt]

Scott said his mother was difficult sometimes, certainly dramatic.

[Chris Farris]

She always watched Days of Our Lives and she always wanted to have her life like a soap opera. So that's what she did.

[Lester Holt]

Here's how Chris put it.

[Chris Farris]

I was afraid of my mother growing up. There's no way around that statement.

[Lester Holt]

A walking on eggshells kind of existence.

[Chris Farris]

Yes. Did not want to upset her at all. I think the best way to describe it is when, you know she had four children and if one child caused a problem, then we all got the wrath. I don't know if my mom did this or not. I don't know. But all the she's done for the last 10 years, 15 has really added up to like, I mean, what else are we gonna look at?

[Lester Holt]

Well, what about dredging up a bit of family History prompted by the detective's simple question about that missing handgun.

[Chris Farris]

There's a firearm missing right 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.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

That son of a bitch kept a freaking. What's the smallest pistol you could find on your ankle? It could be.25.

[Lester Holt]

So who was Ted? Why a long kept family secret? It turned out more like a soap opera on steroids, co starring Gary's sister Sherry.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Ted and Sherry were together until something pulled them apart. Someone, to be clear, someone whose name was Melody Ferris.

[Chris Farris]

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? People are saying that you and Ted's got something going on. She just laughed. She said, no. She said, ted. She said, there's no way.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

It was a matter of months when she basically refused to come back to Atlanta. And shortly after he filed for divorce is when she came back. And my father called me to tell me I needed to accept my mother back, which I told him that would be a hard thing to do.

[Lester Holt]

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?

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

And that's how they ended up with the farm in Cherokee county in 2013, five years before Gary's death, he decided.

[Chris Farris]

To buy the property, the farm, to try to save the marriage, because, you know, that's something that she wanted.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

Why did he do that?

[Chris Farris]

Well, he had communicated to me that he did not want her spending his money on another man, but it was a way for him to keep track of her.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

She had spent the day very angry at him, the way he put it, screaming at him. And all of a sudden she comes walking in with a cast iron skillet full of chocolate chip cookies. I made these for you.

[Lester Holt]

Which he couldn't resist, of course.

[Chris Farris]

No, apparently not. He said he ate the cookies, his throat began to burn and that's when he began feeling bad.

[Lester Holt]

Gary believed something terrible was happening to him, something unthinkable.

[Chris Farris]

He said, chris, I think your mother's trying to poison me. So Gary believed that when Melody prepared his food, she was poisoning it and that's why he had the spells that he had.

[Lester Holt]

Could you prove that he was being poisoned, though?

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Without proof, it could just be an outrageous old accusation from an angry husband. Melody insisted she would never hurt Gary and she absolutely was not cheating on on him. And yes, well, there just might be evidence to the contrary.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

So who was this new guy and why was his credit card in Melody's wallet? Melody Ferris was as adamant as a woman could be, 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.

[Chris Farris]

I will tell you, honest, you know, I did not do it. I don't know who did it, but I did not do it. I would have never taken my children's daddy.

[Lester Holt]

But 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.

[Chris Farris]

So your statement is you didn't do Anything to harm Gary. Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

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. And they had those drops of blood and that spent projectile. So their theory went, Gary was shot in his own house and then moved somehow to the fire. Oh, and they also had this. A mysterious credit card in Melody's wallet, on which was imprinted the name Roy Barton.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

A lover, perhaps? They danced around the question during Melody's interview.

[Chris Farris]

You have not had a sexual relationship with anybody in four years. We're not gonna find any evidence of it when we test your bed sheets. We're not gonna find any male DNA in any way, shape. Or when we test your vehicle. And we swabbed the seats. And we swabbed the back seat.

[Lester Holt]

Then they dropped it on her. The name on the credit card.

[Chris Farris]

What about Roy?

[Lester Holt]

Roy.

[Chris Farris]

Last name again? Bart. Barton. Barton. Who's Roy? Well, Roy is my cousin's dead husband. How long ago did he pass away? Four years ago.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I had been taking care of her, and so it just got put in. I didn't realize I still had it. Okay, so you're not using it. So when we look at the financial records, that hasn't been used in over four years. No. And it's gonna come back to somebody that's deceased, right?

[Lester Holt]

That apparently currently established. They moved on.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

No one that we're gonna find in the history of Yalls marriage. I'm talking the whole entire thing. I'm not talking the last five years, 10 years, or since I went Rocky. I'm talking forever.

[Lester Holt]

Long pause, and then Melody spilled. But not about Ted. Yeah.

[Chris Farris]

Who and when? Rusty Barton. Roy was his dad. So Rusty is his son. Where's Rusty? He's in Tullahoma, Tennessee. When was the last time you interacted with Rusty?

[Lester Holt]

Oh, it's been months.

[Chris Farris]

Months and months and months ago. Okay, but in the last year. So was that physical relationship then, in the last year? Oh, no. When was that? I mean, I ended that a good while ago.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

And when we go get Rusty's DNA. Where are we gonna find it? Nowhere. In my car, anywhere.

[Lester Holt]

In your house? No.

[Chris Farris]

Where did y'all have your relationship? A year ago? Up in Tennessee, when I would go up there.

[Lester Holt]

Hard to tell how much of that was true. Or how much of this.

[Chris Farris]

Do you have a tattoo? I do. Xoxo. It just says xo. What is that in reference to? It's just mine and Gary's symbol.

[Lester Holt]

Just xo.

[Chris Farris]

What did he have to say about it?

[Lester Holt]

Oh, he loved it.

[Chris Farris]

I mean, that's why I got it.

[Lester Holt]

How long ago did you get it? Four years ago, I guess I got.

[Chris Farris]

It about the time that we moved into that house. That was our start.

[Lester Holt]

Our fresh start. Well, seemed more like a false start to the detectives. More likely, they figured the tattoo led back to Rusty, just like that credit card, the one owned by Roy Barton. 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.

[Chris Farris]

Rusty had known about Gary and how controlling Gary was over Melody and the money. And so she eventually said that she had gotten the credit card from him in case she needed money in case of emergencies.

[Lester Holt]

Basically, the credit card wasn't the only thing Rusty gave Melody, as the detectives discovered. He also got her a cell phone, one that allowed them to talk privately. So, of course, they got the records for that phone.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Two days later, detectives were on the road heading north to Tullahoma and Rusty Barton. Latte, anyone?

[Chris Farris]

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[Lester Holt]

Chase a lie about love and sex and who knows what greater sins it might expose. Cherokee county detectives believed that Rusty Barton was key to their murder investigation.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Detectives wondered what exactly Rusty knew about Gary's death. Maybe he'd even helped Melody move that big body. But when they questioned Rusty with his attorney in Tullahoma, Tennessee, they didn't get much. Not at first. They came at him hard and he came right back at them.

[Chris Farris]

I don't know what happened or who did it or nothing. 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. I'm sorry. You're fine. I'm sorry I used to.

[Lester Holt]

Look, here's the thing.

[Chris Farris]

If we don't do our job, I'm pushing this. Then that y'all are doing what you're supposed to do.

[Lester Holt]

No, hey, hey, hey. I'm not just doing what I'm supposed to do.

[Chris Farris]

I'm giving you an opportunity that I.

[Lester Holt]

Ain'T gotta give you.

[Chris Farris]

Sir, I don't know anything. I didn't help anybody. She has not confided in me.

[Lester Holt]

Detective Ashley Pope told Rusty flat out he didn't believe him after all. Rusty gave Melody that phone so they could have private conversations.

[Chris Farris]

Y'all are talking on the phone every single day.

[Lester Holt]

You wake up Melody, Melody and coffee.

[Chris Farris]

You go to bed. Melody, she has talked to you beforehand and since then? No, sir. Don't let me find out.

[Lester Holt]

I do not believe that.

[Chris Farris]

I'm telling you. Not being a single communication since Thursday morning.

[Lester Holt]

Thursday, July 5th. That is the day the Ferris has started looking for Gary the day Scott called 91 1, the detectives warned Rusty again that if he knew anything about what happened to Gary, now was the time to tell them or possibly face charges himself.

[Chris Farris]

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, they gonna do the same damn thing.

[Lester Holt]

You follow me? That. That ain't speculation, brother. That's a fact.

[Chris Farris]

By the end of that interview, Rusty.

[Lester Holt]

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. They did. It checked out. But then they looked at his cell phone records and discovered he fiddled with his phone after Gary's death. Took Melody's name out of his contacts, at one point substituting two letters, xo, the symbol of a beverage they enjoyed together. Whatever. Obviously, that was the real reason for Melody's tattoo. It had nothing to do with Gary. 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. 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.

[Chris Farris]

In that, and it also reflected that.

[Lester Holt]

He had lied to us. 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 back in Tullahoma, back at the table. But then Rusty and his lawyer stepped out of the room.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

They did want to hear it, and how, because it was huge. Something Rusty said Melody told him in a call just hours after the presumed time of death, probably the last minute.

[Chris Farris]

Of the last conversation. She said, gary is in the burn pile. No, she said, he is in the burn pile. And I said, what? And she said, he's in the burn pile. And I said, do not say another word and do not tell me anything. I do not need to know if this statement was true.

[Lester Holt]

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 12:47pm so that's a full day and a half before anybody knew the nature of this crime. The detectives knew they had struck gold, but they wanted corroboration, so they asked Rusty to record his Conversations with Melody without telling her. He agreed. They were elated. And it didn't last. We feel like Rusty's going to record the phone conversations and not notify Melody.

[Chris Farris]

But we later learned that he, in.

[Lester Holt]

Fact, did tell her. Maybe Rusty wasn't being so cooperative after all. What were they left with? Well, motive. No will was ever located. So who would benefit from Gary's untimely death? Who else?

[Chris Farris]

In Georgia, if a husband and wife and one of them is killed or dies, the wife is the immediate heir to the estate. Melody gets everything. So Scott kills Gary and Scott's money's gone. He knows Melody's not going to give him anything. Same with Chris. So why would Chris kill Gary?

[Lester Holt]

Same for the girls. Despite what Melody told detectives, Emily and her husband said they never stole from Gary. And neither Emily nor Amanda stood to gain from their dad's death.

[Chris Farris]

The only person that benefited immediately from Gary dying was Melody Faris.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

You just started adding things up.

[Lester Holt]

Was that something that you began to think before you heard it from any official source?

[Chris Farris]

You know, I hate to say it, but yeah.

[Lester Holt]

It took almost a year to get official confirmation of something the detectives were already convinced of. That the bones in the burn pile were indeed Gary's. And days later, the Cherokee county authorities issued a warrant for Melody's arrest. As it happened, she was in Tennessee at the time, visiting Rusty. He drove her to a local police station to surrender. And the Ferris family exhaled.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, because we did all these interviews.

[Chris Farris]

With the detectives and, you know, we didn't hear anything for quite a while.

[Lester Holt]

Quite a while Indeed. It was October 2024, when Melody Ferris finally went on trial for murder. A trial in which jurors would hear a tangled tale as much about the Ferris children as about their mother.

[Chris Farris]

My first impression of that case was, this is going to be a tricky trial.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

That's exactly right. 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. The only person that could have done that.

[Lester Holt]

But you had no murder weapon. What could you do about that?

[Chris Farris]

That was part of what made this prosecution challenging.

[Lester Holt]

Not to mention the long delay getting to court. Six years, what with legal delays and Covid before. Melody cast a baleful eye on Assistant DA Jeffrey Fogas as he addressed the jury.

[Chris Farris]

I am representing. A voice has been snuffed out and taken away.

[Lester Holt]

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?

[Chris Farris]

Yeah, I don't think I missed a day.

[Lester Holt]

It's not an easy experience, is it?

[Chris Farris]

There was a lot of things that came out in the trial that we didn't know. I wanted to hear that. I wanted to experience it firsthand in the courtroom.

[Lester Holt]

But outside the courtroom, he'd find himself coming face to face with Melody. 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?

[Chris Farris]

I didn't like it.

[Lester Holt]

You must have carried around a lot of anger about that woman.

[Chris Farris]

I don't know that I'm an angry person. It was probably more frustration and the lack of closure.

[Lester Holt]

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 9:30pm 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. Melody, meanwhile, was a busy bunny that night and the next morning, talking to Rusty, moving around the property when he.

[Chris Farris]

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. The defendant murdered and desecrated her own husband.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I just found it very, very odd.

[Lester Holt]

For that tractor to be parked down there.

[Chris Farris]

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. 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.

[Lester Holt]

So maybe Melody Used the tractor to move the body. However she did it, prosecutors said Melody figured out a way to get Gary in the fire before Scott came home. 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. To stress this point, they called Rusty as a hostile witness.

[Chris Farris]

She said that Gary was on the burn pile. 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.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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 if I die mysteriously.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

Can you please introduce yourself to the jury? I'm Emily Farris Payne. How was your parents relationship when you were younger? I mean, it was good from my perspective. Do you know what caused that change? Yes, basically. Basically my mother began having an affair, I think 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. I just think that he lost trust that was once there. Gary entrusted her with a lot about the family and about his financial position.

[Lester Holt]

With Melody, including how he didn't want his wife spending his money on other men.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

And Melody wasn't just preoccupied with Gary withholding funds from said the prosecutors, she was jealous of the money her husband gave their adult children. Just days before Gary was killed, Emily told jurors she received a text from her mother, who seemed to be at a breaking point.

[Chris Farris]

Can you read that, please? 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 incident. State calls Chris Farris. You could please raise your right hand.

[Lester Holt]

Which is one of the reasons prosecutors called Chris Farris to the stand.

[Chris Farris]

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. Would you and your dad ever get in arguments about money? I don't really. Wouldn't really consider it an argument. I mean, he'd get mad at me for spending money or asking him for money.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I think he said, I'm gonna change my account information.

[Lester Holt]

And then three weeks later, he's dead.

[Chris Farris]

Sure. Yeah. 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, why would anybody do that to somebody who is helping them that much? They were grasping at straws.

[Lester Holt]

The jury also heard from Chris's younger brother, Scott. Was it a risk to put him on the stand, to be a kind of a pin cushion for the defense?

[Chris Farris]

Go after we had to put him on the stand. 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 office doors and screaming and cussing, and she threw a plate up against the wall of the house, and she screamed, I.

[Lester Holt]

Can'T wait till the day he dies.

[Chris Farris]

I can't wait till the day I don't have to live with him anymore.

[Lester Holt]

Did you look out at her right there in the courtroom? Small courtroom right there sitting in front of you?

[Chris Farris]

I looked at her when I was asked to look at her and describe what she was wearing. And she's not my mother anymore.

[Lester Holt]

Oh. But Melody's attorneys were not finished with Scott, not by a long shot. Maybe it was he who belonged in the dock, facing life behind bars.

[Chris Farris]

You are a mooch. No, I wasn't. And your father saw you as the exact same way, mooching off of him. Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications, kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight [e-mail] podcast. Sling has the sports you can't miss and will reward you for watching. Every time you watch is another chance to win cash and prizes class only. Sling lets you choose and customize your channel lineup starting at just $45.99 a month. @ that price, there's no such thing as an off season. Catch all your favorite Sports. Go to sling.com to customize your channel lineup and start earning rewards just for watching. Sling lets you do that. Restrictions apply this cold and flu season. Instacart is here to help deliver all of your sick day essentials. Whether you're in prevention mode and need vitamins, hand sanitizer and that lemon tea your Nana swears by, or you're in healing mode and need medicine, soup and a lot more tissues. Simply download the Instacart app to get sick day supplies that reinvigorate or relieve Delivered in as fast as 30 minutes plus enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Excludes restaurant orders, service fees and terms apply the state has introduced a case to you and it is so full of holes.

[Lester Holt]

The defense of Melody Ferris was certainly robust and nothing if not dramatic.

[Chris Farris]

You're getting on the Ferris wheel.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

From day one, everything was tailored specifically to attempt to convict Melody of the death of Gary Farris. It was a highly circumstantial case. There was no direct evidence 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.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

No money, 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.

[Chris Farris]

Instance, 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 Farris's blood.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

The weekend before, Carrie Farris had been bit by the dog and he was bleeding when he went down the stairs from his ankle.

[Lester Holt]

As for the bullet found in the.

[Chris Farris]

Basement, there is no blood found around the bullet, no impact mark from the bullet on the floor. It is literally like the bullet was dropped and placed on the floor. And the last person who was in the basement prior to law enforcement arriving was Scott.

[Lester Holt]

Oh yes, Scott. The defense was getting to him. 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. In fact, they took jurors to the farm where they could see for themselves how hard it would be. Here's defense co counsel John Luke Weaver.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

She thought you were a mooch, I guess, in her eyes. Yeah, right, because you were a mooch. No, I wasn't. And your father saw you as the the exact same way. And he kept a very tight rein over you and your mooching off of him.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

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. Yes, sir.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

Well, and what would Scott say about that? We asked him. Him, of course.

[Chris Farris]

I never once said, oh, this is going to be my farm one day. 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.

[Lester Holt]

He also said he never threatened to burn the house down, had never once stole anything from his dad. In fact, he told us Amanda's testimony was yet another example of their mother's manipulation.

[Chris Farris]

That's all because of Melody's brainwashing. She brainwashed Amanda. And it's fair to say that you're biased in favor of your mom. I wouldn't say how I'm biased. In favorite, I believe that somebody is innocent until they're proven guilty.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

The defense argued Rusty's claim wasn't a big deal because after the interview with police, he called back to say he had the dates all wrong. Melody only told him Gary was dead after he his body was discovered.

[Chris Farris]

So I need you to explain those words to that jury right there. She said those words to me. But then you tried to explain later that yes, she told you about that. But that was after Gary was already found, right? Yes, from his testimony, he was under duress and he had to, quote, give them something. 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.

[Lester Holt]

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 and she had something she desperately needed to share. So she picked up the phone and called the sheriff right in the middle of the trial.

[Chris Farris]

You could tell something big had happened. And it got us excited. You know, it's like, what is this going to be?

[Lester Holt]

The case against Melody Ferris was well underway when it happened. It was a call from out of the blue to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department from a woman who said she needed to get something off her chest.

[Chris Farris]

As you know, the state was made aware of some newly discovered evidence.

[Lester Holt]

Assistant DA's Megan Frankish and Jeffrey Focus were busy arguing their case when the call came in.

[Chris Farris]

And I leaned over to my co counsel and I said, we need to take a break.

[Lester Holt]

After this witness in the gallery, Gary Ferris, brother John, noticed a sudden flurry of activity.

[Chris Farris]

You could tell something big had happened. And it got us excited. You know, it's like, what is this going to be? So Martha Jane Barton had called the sheriff's office.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

She had watched Rusty's testimony. You didn't have any missing guns that you couldn't account for, right? No, sir. And she heard Rusty testify about about the guns that his dad owned.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

He had given me this.38 snub nose special. I think it was.79 for Christmas.

[Lester Holt]

But after Melody's arrest, Martha Jane Said she realized something was wrong.

[Chris Farris]

And I looked, and my gun was missing. I thought, Melody has taken my gun.

[Lester Holt]

After all, Melody had a key to her elderly relative's house. At first, Martha Jane kept quiet about her misgivings. But while watching the trial, she got worried about what Melody might have done with her gun. And she called the police.

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

Investigator Daniel Hayes.

[Chris Farris]

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

[Lester Holt]

So you brought her in to testify.

[Chris Farris]

We did. How were you feeling when you called that number? I still love Melody. She was family. It just kills me.

[Lester Holt]

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

[Chris Farris]

I don't know that I'll ever experience that again in my career. How much did you tear your house up? And things in the house looking for it? I looked everywhere. Closets, dressers, chests.

[Lester Holt]

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 stuff. Stepson Rusty's affair with Melody.

[Chris Farris]

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. They did try to blame it on that. No, My motive was because my gun was gone and she was the only person that had access to it. That was my only motive.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

Who else has keys other than, I.

[Lester Holt]

Assume, the cleaning lady?

[Chris Farris]

Does she have a key? Oh, she may have a key. So Melody's got a key. Cleaning lady may have a key. Well, you're Rusty. Rusty's got a key. So at least five people.

[Lester Holt]

And then the defense put on a little show and tell a play, as it were, to show that it would have been impossible for Melody to get Big Daddy's body out of the house and way off to that burn pile. Whose idea was it to drag those bags of rock salt or whatever the heck that was out onto the courtroom floor.

[Chris Farris]

Well, that was my idea. I was constantly trying to think of what could I use for that demonstration. I think it starts to become clear why I'm doing this. Why am I dropping these bags? These bags are £40 apiece. When I would drop one of the bags, I mean, you. You could feel the floor shake. And I wanted that to happen because I wanted the jury specifically to know how heavy this was. This is £320. I am £185, and that's all I have. The whole trial, we were noting that. That he was £300, she was £120. It was impossible that she could have moved him. But there was a person on the property who could, and that's Scott Farris.

[Lester Holt]

You were literally pointed at by the defense attorney in court. What did it feel like?

[Chris Farris]

I mean, it's. That was awkward. I wouldn't never, ever once had I ever remotely thought Avery even harming my father.

[Lester Holt]

A point the prosecutor drove home in her closing argument.

[Chris Farris]

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. This case is about Gary Wayne Ferris. And you're here because Melody Farris shot him, concealed his death by putting him on a burn pile on their property like he was trash.

[Lester Holt]

And then it was in the hands of the jurors.

[Chris Farris]

We got very emotional in the jury room. I was in tears. It was hard. It was really hard. There's always more to the story to.

[Lester Holt]

Go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Listen to our talking Datelines series with Keith and Andrea, available Wednesday. It might have been easier if that fire hadn't consumed Gary Farris body or if they'd found the gun or more DNA. But they had what they had. And six and a half years after Gary's murder, jurors were having a hard time. Cheryl Peoples was one of them.

[Chris Farris]

We got very emotional in the jury room. We left early one day because I was in tears. It was. It was hard. It was really hard.

[Lester Holt]

Jurors sent notes asking for more details, and they kept talking for almost three days. And then they sent the judge another note. They just couldn't decide. They were hung. What was that like?

[Chris Farris]

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.

[Lester Holt]

But the judge sent them back. Keep trying, he said. Chris Hyatt, the jury foreman, did his best. We just had one juror that was.

[Chris Farris]

Still undecided and at that time, the juror was just like, look, I really.

[Lester Holt]

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.

[Chris Farris]

I understand we have a verdict.

[Lester Holt]

How are you feeling? As he came back into the room with a verdict?

[Chris Farris]

Extremely nervous. We, the jury, we find the defendant guilty.

[Lester Holt]

Melody Ferris was guilty of. Of murdering her husband, Gary. Where did your thoughts go at that point?

[Chris Farris]

To the family, to the children, immediately. They had been through a lot. I don't think anybody who sat through that could have come to any other conclusion than a guilty verdict. But we wanted to hear that. We wanted to be there.

[Lester Holt]

We. We had waited six years.

[Chris Farris]

And I just stared at her. I wanted her to show something, some sort of emotion. Look at your family. And it never came. She was more worried about taking her jewelry off before she went to jail than she was about showing any emotion. Sir, was that your verdict in the jury room? Yes, you, Honor. Was it verdict agreed to by you? Is that still your verdict? My heartbeat finally slowed down for the first time in a month. Yeah, you know, I was just ready to. Ready to get her. Get her sentenced and put this all behind me.

[Lester Holt]

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. Boy, did she ever.

[Chris Farris]

I have waited for years to make.

[Lester Holt]

This statement to everyone. I want the world to know who did this. You could, as the old saying goes, hear a pin drop what was coming. Not only did I not do this.

[Chris Farris]

I know you did. I know Scott killed his father. He took my husband. The father of Chris, Emily and Amanda Scott. This is unforgivable. 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.

[Lester Holt]

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 allegations never presented in court. But as she pressed on, Scott Farris could only shake his head.

[Chris Farris]

And it took every bit of me not to stand up in that courtroom and say something to her.

[Lester Holt]

I think the expression on your face said a thing or two. You didn't have to open your mouth.

[Chris Farris]

Oh, I'm sure it did. I mean, I haven't seen videos of it or anything, but I was. I've never had anything happen like that to me ever in my life. She will never admit to anybody what.

[Lester Holt]

She did because she is going to.

[Chris Farris]

Try her best to pin it on somebody else.

[Lester Holt]

Melody could have taken the stand, of course, as a witness.

[Chris Farris]

It was a strategic decision that was ultimately made.

[Lester Holt]

Sure.

[Chris Farris]

Yeah, it's very different reading essentially a self prepared speech than it is being under cross examination.

[Lester Holt]

As she was finally wrapping up, Melody pleaded with the judge. Throw out the verdict. Too late. He gave her life parole possible after 30 years. She'll be in her 90s by then. And now? Now. They'll just have to get used to it though. Big Daddy's outsized presence is everywhere around here.

[Chris Farris]

And it's hard, you know, living in this town, driving by his old office, you. But he also would want me to be strong. He always stayed strong.

[Lester Holt]

He was the one who had his head on his shoulders.

[Chris Farris]

He was calming everybody else down. But I miss him dearly.

[Lester Holt]

It's hard to imagine how the family will recover. The Ferris wheel has spun off its axis. But then, maybe it did a long time ago. No matter how hard Big Daddy tried to keep it rolling, he wouldn't be.

[Chris Farris]

Mortified that this has been our lives for the last six years. And while I do get very sad, I'm just thankful that he was my dad. And if I could be half the dad he was, I'd be doing a pretty good job.

[Lester Holt]

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, good night.

[Chris Farris]

Meet Flip. She's one half of a Flip Flop. That's me. Who got left behind at Celebration Key, Carnival's exclusive paradise in Grand Bahama. Uh, I chose to stay here. It really is paradise. So now Flip spends her time lounging on the beach, swimming in the lagoon and eating. The only thing more impressive than my appetite are all the dining options. Yeah. Have you tried food service to your cabana?

[Lester Holt]

Ooh, yum.

[Chris Farris]

Flip. Where'd she go? Book your cruise. Vacation to Carnival.

[Lester Holt]

Celebration Key.

[Chris Farris]

A paradise you'll want to lose yourself in. Ships registry, the Bahamas.

[Lester Holt]

In Panama.