A Little Patch of Perfect

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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's no way. Melody said that he has what she called spells where he would feel faint.

They found a bullet large in my dad's rib bone. Obviously the direction of the case changed very quickly. Gary had close ties with all the family members relating to money. Chris has taken money.

He came in and took checks. Gary was a workaholic and she liked to spend the money. He's got some making correct against her. Saying that he's taking over the estate.

It's almost like an egg of a crispy story. You've got a confined space and all those people are wearing amongst themselves. That's exactly right. I've waited for years to make this statement.

I want the world to know who did this. A patriarch's body found in a fire and a smoldering family's 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. But 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 northern most edge of Atlanta's suburban sprawl. This was their lifetime dream come true.

And if they had heard that ancient advice, that father 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. The farm is what they call it. That's Chris, the oldest of the four Ferris children, and they are his parents, Gary and Melody. Chris's brother Scott and Iraq Warvet lived in an apartment above the barn and he helped run the place.

I would run the farm and I would take care of the property for 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 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 everybody loved Big Daddy.

On July 3rd, 2018, just before things happened, Chris took his daughter Addison to the farm and said hello to Big Daddy and Melody. 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. And that was that.

The next day, the fourth, Chris was back with Addison, dropped her off for a farm's sleepover with the 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.

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 each other were at certain times. But he was still gone the next morning. July 5th wasn't answering his phone, either.

Chris found out from his worried sister, Amanda, who'd arrived at the farm that morning. And she said, you know, Daddy's missing. Was that terribly unusual that he wouldn't be around? 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. Chris got in his car, drove to the farm, anxiety building with each passing mile. 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. Chris's brother Scott was already looking, of course. I thought I was thinking he had a heart attack somewhere. Scott checked the trail camera for signs of Big Daddy.

Nothing, he said, but images with a few critters. The mood was becoming more and more frantic, as Chris arrived. I jumped on that ATV and I drove up to the barn and I searched the barn. On the way back, I looped back around the house and saw my brother and my mother walking down towards where that burn pile was.

And it clicked in my mind that he had told me on July the 3rd that he was going to burn that burn pile on the 4th of July. The burn pile, a common thing on farms like the Pharisees, a place to burn branches and shrubs and whatever, in a controlled contained place, or sort of contained. Gary 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. 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.

A human skull. I'll never forget it. I knew immediately at that time this 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 of seeing that is something that I don't think I'll ever get over. I mean, it's one thing to see something 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 on anyone. 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 the missing piece to this puzzle. There's an old expression. No secrets in a murder investigation. Not for long anyway.

See, this is where I'm torn. I want to tell you what I know. I want to tell you what I think. Not in this family.

About two implode. Gary started getting suspicious and he would put trackers on the car. Crazy scary thing secrets, aren't they? This is called a Perry Mason moment.

Late in the trial, the surprise witness. I don't know that I'll ever experience that in my career. It wasn't easy to be a Ferris that 5th of July. Imagine finding your father's charred skull in a pile of ashes.

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

It was so hot outside. This is Sergeant Daniel Hayes of the Sheriff's Department. So we thought a guy was probably cleaning up his yard, burning some things, burning some debris, got hot, passed out, fell into the fire. And when they saw the place, well, yes, freak accidents happened to rich people too.

I think everyone that arrived on that property probably looked around and thought, man, I'm going to have this. Job to do, though. First, know your victim. Detective Hayes asked the family about Big Daddy.

We just say he was larger than life in every way. Correct? That's a big man. Big man.

Very big man. A big man with a big brain said his brother John. He was always smart. You know, growing up, he kind of set a precedent for our family.

The oldest son. Gary John and their two sisters were raised in a middle-class home in Alabama. And so we were very close. We had a lot of fun.

Roman the neighborhoods. He was always a loving brother. Sister Sherry was seven years younger than her gentle giant of a brother. I remember he would come in and he would grab me up and he would put me on his shoulders.

So smart, playful, and very ambitious. He started early on that he wanted to become an attorney and made it happen. A lot of obstacles he had overcome. And he so very driven.

He had to be driven because life through Gary Ferris, a little curveball, in the form of a pretty young thing named Melody. Still teenagers when they met. They got married very young. Very young, huh?

And he was a sophomore in college, had a child right away. Melody stayed home to raise their son Chris. Gary worked nice 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. My dad worked a lot. We didn't get to go on all these extravagant vacations. I've never been in a Disney world.

We went down to either Gulf Shores or Dustin 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. So 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 to me a normal childhood.

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 in your alpha Reddit. 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. 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. And why? I did not realize that it was this huge police investigation going on.

The lead investigator, still trying to find out more about Gary, talked to Melody, his wife of 39 years. 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. They sat on the patio, Melody, and Detective Hayes.

He was a husband on April that he's been having his spells, and they get 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.

One thing Melody did, though, was that her workaholic husband was not taking care of himself. She pointed out he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. And, you know, probably drank a 12 pack or more of Mountain Dew. I mean, he was very overweight.

He was a smoker, right? Yes, sir. He did not live the ultimate healthy lifestyle. He ate what he wanted to eat.

He did not exercise. It 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. How much this whole body was consumed in the fire?

Actually, Pope was another sheriff's detective at the time. We have had accidental fires where that situation was similar, where people had 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. A bullet was found lodged in some meaty flesh on the ribo. A fragment of a bullet in the rib cage. There's a whole bullet?

You can see the back of the bullet. 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?

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

Gary Ferris had been murdered. It wasn't the smoking or the mountain douche of the lack of exercise, something else that 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 related to money.

Gary Ferris was a man who lived large, from his marboros, to his mountain doo, 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 more likely a gift to get them through a rough patch, Gary was there with a check for his swag from a credit card. Now this family's Santa Claus was dead, shot to death, and then cremated on a funeral pyre he himself had built.

It was obvious that the body had been burning. It might have been painted for some time. And you've got to figure out what happened here. What is that like?

What's that feeling? And especially on a state like that? It's a lot of pressure. There are a lot of people there, a lot of things to figure out.

And they're all looking at you. They're all staring at you wondering what you're going to say. Yep. As Santa's supervisor says, hey's your lead.

Everybody's looking at me. Murder. That word changed everything. Detective Hayes asked Melody to join him at the sheriff's office.

He would break the news and do her there. They consented through the remains and ashes and they have found a projectile. It's about, so you were the last one to see Gary allowable to do that. Right.

Did you hear any gun shot? No, but there was a ton of, I mean like, fireworks and firecrackers and all kinds of stuff going. Melody said she and Gary had gotten to a stage in their affluent lives in which the two of them stepped, not just in separate rooms, but on separate floors. She had the upstairs.

Well, Gary turned the basement into a sprawling man cave, which had a bedroom, a bathroom, office, even a home theater. 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. The only thing he really has to go upstairs for is the kitchen, you know, food, you know, otherwise he's in the basement. 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. Well, now we need to know where people were over these last couple of days. Since the last time Gary Ferris was seen alive and until the day we got there, you know, who was on the property?

Who could have done this? Who would want to do this? Propped in Detective Hayes to ask Melody this question. Can you hear what the boys lately?

The boys being sons Chris 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. So he had started getting to it re-heathling. I mean, you know, I mean, they come to blows.

I mean, Scott's like, I mean, he is, he's like him, but there is no, there is no doubt. He's very hot too. And Chris, hmm, Melody said he'd been caught stealing from Gary. Chris has taken money.

He broke in. I mean, he came in and took Jackson, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it wasn't just their own sons who were a problem. Dr.

Emily's husband was a thief too, said Melody. Her husband's been in and out of jail for a statement. 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. She and her alumni, and she said, why do they all hate us? I said, well, you're the only one who didn't steal from it. It's hard to put into words the level of family dysfunction detectives were hearing about.

It seemed almost like that movie Knives were half of 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 maybe it was love, which Manti had to ask Melody, who just lost her husband of 39 years, a very uncomfortable question.

Has she been sleeping around? Are you currently in a fair with anyone? Is anyone pursuing you? There's no jealous boyfriends?

Yeah. It was by now obvious to Melody. The detective Hayes was looking at her as something other than a grieving widow. I mean, do I need to get an attorney?

That's up to you. That's what he writes. I mean, I would never, ever hurt you. Never.

The unfortunate thing is that somebody did, and we don't know who did, and it's our job to determine that when you know you're in the spouse. We have to do everything in our power to rule you out or to rule you in, you know. Melody felt it was time to set detective Hayes straight, that she was the last person who had 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. And the detective talking all looks down and sees something kind of shiny, applying closer inspection, he discovers a bullet, a spent projectile. Establishing the time of death in a homicide investigation is tricky business.

Even more so, in the case of Gary Ferris. 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 and 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 1 or 130, said Scott. That's the last time I ever saw my father. 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.

It was Tuesday, approximately 4.45 pm, 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 a balance of burn things. You could just smell any smoke in the area, 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 going to go to you? Collecting stuff to probably put on that power barn.

Chris said he left the farmer on 5.30 that evening. Melody, speaking to detective Hayes, picked up the timeline from there. Had you spoken to Gary after Chris left? Yes.

Okay, so Chris left Gary and 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 it was, so they went down? I think, well, I'm about six o'clock.

Okay. Something like that? Melody said they had dinner about an hour or two later, and then they went their separate ways for the night. The last time you talked to him Tuesday was for a bit of time?

Yeah. You'd estimate 8.30. It was not that late that night, because he had been here all day, and stuff like that time they said you are not going to be leaving the fire. How big was the fire when he lit it?

Massive. It was massive. 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. It had been somewhere around 8.30, because it wasn't quite dark yet. On the morning of Thursday the 50s said he was heading off to get his haircut, when his mom stopped him and asked, Have you talked to your dad or seen your dad? I might know.

She said, well, we came home. So based on Scott's, and Chris's, and Melody's accounts, Gary's whereabouts were unknown between the night of July 3, and the afternoon of July 5, 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 normally 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. And it showed that Gary was usually putting that CPAP on between 11 and 1 a.m. There was no data for the night of the third or past. That led us to believe that Gary was killed before his normal bedtime of between 11 and 1 a.m.

And sometime after Melody said she saw him around 8 or 8.30 p.m. So Gary must have met his death sometime between 8.30 p.m. And 1 a.m. on the night of Wednesday, July 3.

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. There were drops of blood on the carpet, on the stairs, the carpeted stairs leading down to the basement. And at the base of the stairs, something shiny caught the eye of a fellow detective.

At the edge of a rug in the basement on the wooden floor, the hardwood floor, a plunk, closer inspection. He discovers a bullet, a spit projectile in the basement floor. Detective Hayes said a blood-illuminated chemical revealed even more evidence. There were some blood on the wall near the front door.

There were some blood droplets that appeared to have been cleaned up. They appeared in a smear pattern in the kitchen near the basement door. Based on the blood drops Hayes developed a theory that Gary was shot in the kitchen, then fired out 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, hey, he's asked her once again. Did you hear any gunshots at night? No, but like I said, I mean, there's no gunshots, but there was tons of fireworks going off.

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. When I came home, I saw the fire going into the woods. Question was, how much of their story could be believed?

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

I'm going to ask you a couple questions. What time did you leave on July 3rd? July 3rd. It was probably, I don't know, 430?

Yes. That was Elder Sun 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 lake house until I didn't leave until about 10, 30, at night, roughly, and came back home. And that's when I came home, I saw the fire going into the woods and didn't think of anything other. So, the 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 bit, 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?

It was, it was odd. So that's already put into suspicion in our minds that, okay, maybe that's kind of weird, maybe something's up. A feeling that only grew when they found ammunition in Scott's apartment, the same caliber of bullet found in Gary's body. There was loose 38 ammo in Scott's dresser drawer, so we found that kind of odd.

Yeah, no kidding. Later we'd ask Scott, you know, why are we finding all this? And Scott tells us, well, I have friends come over, we go shoot at the back corner of the property and they sometimes leave stuff behind. They also wondered about something Scott did after his father disappeared.

His mama asked him to check the trail camera. I went down there and checked the trail cam and there was just a couple of squirrels and a couple raccoons and that was it. I deleted everything. Everything?

I asked my brother, why would you do that? So 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 they had to wonder if he deleted evidence. I did ask my brother some very hard questions because I knew he was going to be asking 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. Especially after detectives learned about the family disputes over money. Now that he's friend, David Thomas.

She felt that 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. Little Sister Amanda told police she was worried about Scott and Chris and how they were behaving toward their mother. Making correct against her saying that you're going to burn the house down and that we can't stop them from taking over the estate because it's usually the point.

I mean, I just feel like they're after money. I'm just appearing for my safety at this point and I'm here for my mother's safety. David Thomas said melody was increasingly afraid of her sons. She got to a point where she felt like, you know, if she was not on the planet, then whatever was left with the estate, the money would go to the kids.

And so they would have a motive to do some harm to her. Exactly. She thought that was a possibility. She thought it was a real possibility.

If Scott and Chris were, in fact, suspects, detectives kept that to themselves. Let me ask you a question. 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. Actually, Chris and Scott Ferris told police exactly what they thought. And what they thought was, detectives should be taking a long, hard look at mommy dearest.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, I can't wait till the day. I'll have to live with him. I wish you would just have a heart attack. I sit down with one of the biggest bands in the world, Mumford and Sons, as we get the boys together to talk about their new number one album, Prize Fighter, and the evolution of that irresistible foot stomping sound.

You can get our conversation for free wherever you download your podcasts. We're going out and studying so much money on stuff like that. No, but my mother on the other hand, I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, I can't wait till the day. I don't have to live with him.

I wish you would just have a heart attack and die. Scott said his mother was difficult sometimes, certainly dramatic. 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.

Here's how Chris put it. I was afraid of my mother growing up. There's no way around that statement. Walking on eggshell is kind of existence.

Yes, did not want to upset her at all. I think the best way to describe it is when 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 shit she's done for the last 10 years has really added up to like, I mean, what else are we going to look at? Well, what about dredging up a bit of family history? Prompted by the detective's simple question about that missing handgun.

There's a firearm missing from house. So we need a list of everything of this encounter that anybody has ever seen. I'll tell you what I know. That is when Chris mentioned a family friend named Ted Wiley.

That's some of it you kept a freaking little boy. What was the small special you could find on your ankle? It could be 25. So who was Ted?

My long-kept family secret. It turned out more like a soap opera on steroids, co-starring Gary's sister, Sherry. Ted, we had been together. I guess we were together about a little over 20 years.

Ted and Sherry were together until something pulled them apart. Some one to be clear. Someone whose name was Melody Ferris. This one guy came up to me at work and said, Hey, I saw Ted and Melody out at a restaurant during lunch.

And I could find a melody. I said, what's going on? People are saying that you and Ted's got something going on. She just lied.

She said no. She said me to hit Ted. She said there's no way. But when Gary heard about it, he felt sure she was cheating on him.

And Gary started getting suspicious. And he would put trackers on the car. Melody actually left Gary. And though she denied it, family members believed she was staying at Ted's farm.

It was a matter of months when she basically refused to come back to Atlanta. And shortly after he filed for divorces when she came back, and my father called me to tell me I needed to accept my mother back, which I told him that would be a hard thing to do. Oh, she had to do his come back to him. He must have been, he must have still been in love with her.

Was he? He was in love with my mother till the day he died. And that's how they ended up with the farm in Cherokee County in 2013, five years before Gary's death. He decided to buy the property, the farm, to try to save the marriage because, you know, that's something that she wanted.

But Gary was a smart guy. Maybe he loved Melody, but he sure didn't trust her. Not anymore. He deal with me to that, that he was somehow controlling the amount of money she was able to spend because he could see it when she spent it, come out of the bank account.

Right. Why did he do that? 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.

And that brings us back to that toxic family situation, in which Gary's children seem to have ready access to his money, but Melody was on an allowance and under surveillance. Gary would get mad at her or suspect her of having an affair and cut the credit card or the debit card off or whatever, or cut her phone off so she couldn't make phone calls and things like that. There was one other thing police couldn't ignore, something they heard time and again. 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. My father had become very lethargic and could not function properly. He was very dizzy, just wasn't feeling very well. 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. 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. But you couldn't resist, of course. No, apparently not.

He said he ate the cookies, his throat began to burn. And that's when he began feeling bad. Gary believed something terrible was happening to him, something unthinkable. He said, Chris, I think your brother'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. Could you prove that he was screaming poison though? Unfortunately not.

The condition of the body, you know, there wasn't much to test for toxicology. 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 him. And yet, well, it just might be evidence to the contrary.

And Melody's wallet we found a credit card with a man's name on it that none of us recognized. 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. I will tell you, honestly, you know, I did not do it. I don't know who did, but I did not do it. I would have never taken my children's daddy, 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. So, your statement is, you didn't do anything to harm Gary. Yeah. 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. So, that was a topic of our interview.

One of our interviews was, who was this Roy Barton? A lover, perhaps. They danced around the question during Melody's interview. You have not had a sexual relationship with anybody in four years.

We're not going to find any evidence of it. When we test your bed, she's not going to find any male DNA in any way, she performed. When we test your vehicle, and we swap the seat and we swap it back seat. Then, they dropped it on her, the name on the credit card.

What about Roy? Roy. Last time he gets a part. A part?

He's a Roy. Well, Roy is my cousin's dad husband. How long did he pass away? Four years ago.

Melody told him Roy's widow Martha Jane Barton gave her the credit card. I had been taking care of her, and so it just happened. I didn't realize I still had it. Okay, so you're not using it.

So, when we looked at the financial records, that hasn't been used in over 40 years. I mean, it's going to come back to somebody that's deceased. Right. That apparently established, they moved on.

Have you ever had a physical relationship with anyone other than Gary since something married? Yeah. Of course, she'd have that affair with Ted. But she wasn't admitting it.

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

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

Who and when? Um, Rusty Barton. Roy, this is Dan. So Rusty is a son.

Where's Rusty? He's in telehumidity. What was the last time you interacted with Rusty? About what's been months and months and months ago.

Okay, but in the last year. So, was that physical relationship then in the last year? Okay. When was that?

I mean, I hinted that a good while ago. And it did a year ago, she said, though she still talked to him on the phone. And when we go get Rusty at the end, we're going to find it. And then we're in Markov.

Anyone in your house? No. Where did it all have your relationship with your account? Up in Chelsea.

When I would go with you. Hard to tell how much of that was true. Or how much of this? Do you have a tattoo?

I do. XO, XO. Uh-huh. It's just XO.

What does that mean? It's just not a Gary symbol. Just XO. What do you have to say about it?

Oh, he loved it. I mean, that's why I got it. How long ago did you get it? Four years ago, I guess.

I got it about the time that we moved into that house. That was our start, our first start. Well, seem 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. Rusty had known about Gary and how controlling Gary was over Melody and the money.

So she basically said that she had gotten the credit card from him in case she needed money, in case of emergency, 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.

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

He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died, and then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn.

I'm Josh Maguetz, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an only podcast from Dateline. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts. Chase of Eye, Bud Love, and Sex. And who knows what greater sins it might expose.

Cherokee County detectives believe that Rusty Barton was key to their murder investigation. He knows more than everyone's led on. We know this relationship's a lot deeper than Melty told us. Detectors wondered what exactly Rusty knew about Gary's death.

Maybe he'd even helped Melty move that big body? But when they questioned Rusty with his attorney in telehome at Tennessee, they didn't get much, not at first. They came at him hard, and he came right back at them. I didn't help anybody.

She has not confided in me. Detective Ashley told Rusty flat out he didn't believe him. After all, Rusty gave Melty that phone so they could have private conversations. Y'all are talking on the phone ever since of the single day.

You wake up, Melty. Melty and Coffee. You go to bed, Melty. She has talked to you before he answers him.

No, sir. Don't let me find out. I do not believe that. I'll tell you.

Not been a single communication since Thursday morning. Thursday, July the 5th, that is. The day the Pharise had started looking for Gary, the day Scott called 911. 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.

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, they're going to do the same damn thing. You follow me, that? That's a fact. By the end of that interview, Rusty explained to us that he wanted to do anything he could to assist us, because he had no part of this homicide.

He also gave us information to verify his alibi. 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 context. 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 in that, and also reflected that he 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 telephoma, back at the table. But then Rusty and his lawyer stepped out of the room. Rusty's attorney came back into the room during this time and said, he's got something I think y'all want to hear.

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 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, it was 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 47 p.m. 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 is going to record the phone conversations and not notify Melody, but we later learned that he infected to her. Maybe Rusty wasn't being so cooperative after all. What were they left with?

Will. Motive. No will was ever located. So who would benefit from Gary's untimely death?

Who else? In Georgia, if husband and wife and one of them is killed or dies, the wife is the immediate. Air 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?

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

Gary's brother was sure from the beginning. It was Melody. Was that something that you began to think before you heard it from any official source? You know, I hate to say it, but yeah.

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

It was like, oh my gosh, something's happening. Yeah. Because we did all these interviews with the detectives and, you know, no, we didn't hear anything for quite a while. Wait a while indeed.

It was October 2024 when Melody Ferris finally went on trial from murder, the trial in which jurors would hear a tangled tale as much about the Ferris children as about their mother. My first impression of that case was this is going to be a tricky trial. When they finally put Melody Ferris in front of a jury, Assistant DA Megan Frankish in front of the few challenges, I mean, it's like almost like an egg of the 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 somebody dead.

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 only person that could have done that.

But you had no murder weapon. What could you do about that? That was part of what made this prosecution challenging. Not to mention the long delay getting to court.

Six years, but with legal delays and COVID, before Melody cast a bail for a lie on Assistant DA Jeffrey Foggis as he addressed the jury. I am representing a voice that has been snuffed out and taken away. Gary's younger brother John will be a constant presence of the trial, sitting with his wife Nancy, two rows behind the prosecutor's table. You went to that trial every day, huh?

Yeah, I don't think I missed a day. It's not an easy experience, isn't it? 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 that first hand in the courtroom. 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?

I didn't like it. You must have carried around a lot of anger about that woman. I don't know that I'm an angry person, it was probably more frustration, and the lack of closure. Prosecutors argued that cell phone data, call records, stole the story of what happened that night.

Gary left a farm earlier that evening, returning around 9.30 pm, 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 in the next morning, talking to Rusty, moving around the property. When he was killed, and when his body was moved, when things are going on, the only person is going to be in that house, the only person, it's her, that's defended, murdered, and desecrated around the husband.

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. My brother Scott and Chris said it seemed out of place at the time. I just found it very, very on for that tractor to be parked down there.

I know my dad lived, I've just left it there. I mean, all the time you want to left that tractor there is that 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 them how to make their own knees. So, maybe Melody used the tractor to move the body? However, she did it.

Rusty jitter said Melody figured out a way to get Gary in the fire before Scott came home. And they said, Melody all that confessed to it when she told her lover, Rusty Barton, that Gary was dead long before anyone discovered his body. Distressed this point, they called Rusty as a hostile witness. She said that Gary was on the burn pile.