Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, listeners. It's 48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant. Today, I have a special episode to share with you from my new podcast, Blood is Thicker, The Ferris Wheel. It's the story of a family caught up in a blame game when their beloved patriarch is murdered. Gary Ferris went missing and was later discovered dead on his 10-acre Georgia property. Who would want to kill him?
Much like an actual Ferris wheel, the blame game in this family went round and round. Here's the episode.
You know it's still under criminal investigation, right?
The Georgia Guidestones may be America's answer to Stonehenge.
The county administrator says there were conspiracy theories.
Let's not forget that a crime was committed here and somebody got away with it.
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Chapter 2: What disturbing statement did Melody Ferris make about her children?
I'm Tyler McBrien. Join me as we take a wild ride through granite quarries, graveyards, cults, small town southern lore, and a lot of explosives. In the new AJC original podcast, Who Blew Up the Guidestones? Follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.
This is horrible to have to put all the secrets out on the table.
Melody Ferris was upset that her family's private lives were now public record. She was talking to detectives Daniel Hayes and Trent Kuykendall in Cherokee County, Georgia.
Chapter 3: What evidence was found at the crime scene of Gary Ferris's murder?
And just so you know, I am sincerely sorry for you and your family's loss. I don't know what to say. It was on the morning of July 6, 2018, the day after Gary Ferris' remains were found. Melody was at the local sheriff's office. Unlike her earlier conversations with the detectives, this one would go on for nearly eight hours as Melody spun stories of intrigue and suspicion.
I had nothing, nothing to gain by him dying. I had everything to lose. Everything to lose.
Almost as soon as they started recording, Melody didn't hesitate to point fingers.
The only thing I found odd was that he wanted to leave immediately.
Melody was talking about her oldest son, Chris. He had left the farm not long after investigators arrived. Melody said she didn't trust him.
And he left and came back.
He came back after Emily got here. I forbid him from being in my house without me being there.
The two had been feuding for at least a year. Melody would go on to share disparaging details about more of her children that day. And that's the worst part of it is, I raised him. Tensions were high. Midway through her marathon interview with detectives, Melody casually alluded to a parent's worst fear.
I'm sitting there thinking, what if I, you know, could one of my children have done it, which is the worst nightmare, is to think that one of them could have done it. That's my worst nightmare.
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Chapter 4: How did Melody's relationship with her children affect the investigation?
We don't have a lot of homicides and murders in Cherokee County. So this was my second one being named lead detective. This is your case.
Just your second murder investigation.
Second one ever. And this is the first case I've been involved with with so much electronic forensic data. You know, the cell phones, the computers, cell phone tower dumps, all these, you know, big words that I've had to research to figure out even what they were and how to utilize this data that we got to our analyst.
Interestingly, one of the most critical bits of information came from the breathing device Gary kept on his bedside.
Another detective with different experience than me overheard us talking about Gary sleeping with a CPAP every night. He actually brought up, he's like, you know those record data, right? I actually wrote another search warrant and went back to the house, took the CPAP, learned, you know, technology's updated, it's just got an SD card in there.
So we were able to take the SD card and get the data off of it that we were looking for.
Hayes was interested in the data from the evening of July 3rd, the last day anyone saw Gary alive.
That's when we determined that Gary always went to bed around midnight. And he hadn't gone to bed that night. He had never put on the CPAP. We know he was killed that night.
But who pulled the trigger? And where was the gun? Was a murder weapon found? And you guys looked, right? We did. What do you think happened to that gun? That's the million-dollar question. Another million-dollar question, how did Gary's body get from the house where he was presumably shot onto the burn pile more than 50 yards away?
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Chapter 5: What were the detectives' key findings about Gary Ferris's last moments?
When he needed something or wanted something or wanted to go out, he had to go to Gary and ask, hey, can I have some cash to spend or can you put some money on this card or can you unlock the credit card, whatever it was.
And he's an adult, right? He's a war veteran. He'd served in the Middle East. And he's talking to his dad like he's getting his allowance all the time, like he's 12 years old. That must have been humiliating for him.
At the time, he didn't seem humiliated. He very much seemed like he enjoyed the lifestyle of being there and taking care of the farm.
But Melody told me that Scott's leisurely lifestyle was about to end.
Gary had made it very well known that Scott needed to get a job. Things were fixing to change on that property.
Scott knew the end was coming. He was just letting me know
hey, things are gonna change around here. You need to probably pursue another job.
Could this sudden change have been a motive for murder? There were certain things that happened the day Gary Ferris' remains were found that raised suspicion. When family members first began their search for Gary, Melody asked Scott, an avid hunter, to go check his trail camera. It's used for tracking deer.
I was looking at that trail camera to see if there was any clues to where my dad could have gone. But just out of habit that I've done hundreds and thousands of times before, I checked it and just hit clear all because I didn't see my dad on there.
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