Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Increased energy costs due to the war in Iran are impacting households and businesses across Ireland. Government has introduced a range of supports to help. Reduced fuel excise, lower VAT on energy, a diesel rebate scheme and an expanded fuel allowance are helping right now.
We're also supporting homes, farms and businesses to lower costs with grants for energy upgrades, electric vehicles and solar. Free upgrades and solar panels are also available in certain cases. There are simple ways to save too. Switching supplier, checking your plan and managing your energy use can all cut your bills. Saving energy saves money. Visit gov.ie forward slash reduce your use.
Brought to you by the Government of Ireland. Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Gary is in the burn pile. No, he is in the burn pile. And I said, what?
Are you ready for some murder? Is that a yes? I can't hear you. Speak up. Here we go.
Increased energy costs due to the war in Iran are impacting households and businesses across Ireland. Government has introduced a range of supports to help. Reduced fuel excise, lower VAT on energy, a diesel rebate scheme and an expanded fuel allowance are helping right now.
We're also supporting homes, farms and businesses to lower costs with grants for energy upgrades, electric vehicles and solar. Free upgrades and solar panels are also available in certain cases. There are simple ways to save too. Switching supplier, checking your plan and managing your energy use can all cut your bills. Saving energy saves money. Visit gov.ie forward slash reduce your use.
Brought to you by the Government of Ireland.
On July 5th, 2018, in Cherokee County, Georgia, a family goes looking for their missing dad. The address is 2555 Purcell Lane, a dead-end gravel road off a two-lane highway north of Atlanta, but a long way from the city. The expansive house sits on ten fenced-in acres back from the road, past pasture and trees.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Gary Farris on July 5th, 2018?
This burn pile here?
Yeah. I mean, it had trees. It had fencing. We had pulled up into the fire pit down here. We had an excavator here, and they had pulled up a bunch of tree stumps and that kind of stuff and put on the burn pile. So it had a lot of fencing and stuff on it. And he said something not long ago about burning. He said, please do not burn it. It's too dry. It's too windy. We always give him an excuse.
Don't burn it. Well, Scott came home. I don't know what time it was when he got hit. Because I called him and I was chasing horses.
Gary had started the burn pile on Tuesday, the evening of July 3rd. He forgot to close the gate and the horses got out. Melody remembered chasing the horses and calling for her son Scott to help. She was worried about the fire getting out of control because it was going to burn for a long time.
The next day, she says Scott came up to the house for a credit card and remarked that the fire was still going. Right before Melody left the property, she saw Gary gathering up even more wood to put on the fire. She begged him not to make it any bigger, but he didn't listen. Not only was Melody worried about the fire and the property, she was also worried about his mental health.
According to her, he had tried to commit suicide twice before they were married. Keep in mind, they had been married for 38 years, but still, he had a family history of all kinds of mental and physical problems. Melody didn't just say Gary was struggling. She told investigators his whole family tree was steeped in mental and physical problems.
His sister with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in and out of psych hospitals. His mother on antidepressants and antipsychotic meds. eventually being placed in a memory care facility with what she calls really bad Alzheimer's or dementia. And his father, who had mental illnesses of his own, later dying from Parkinson's disease.
Melody claimed Gary would say things like, I think I'm getting like my parents. Yet they shrugged as a couple through the good and bad times.
And then somebody asked me, why have you stayed? And I said, I took a vow to him.
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Chapter 3: How did the Ferris family react to Gary's disappearance?
But when what's left of Gary was finally boxed up and sent to the medical examiner, Detectives started digging into the burn itself and the digital trail it left behind. What they found in the ashes and in the timeline didn't fit the idea that this was just an accident. Soon, the family would dissolve into bickering and finger-pointing and blaming each other for Big Daddy's death.
Increased energy costs due to the war in Iran are impacting households and businesses across Ireland. Government has introduced a range of supports to help. Reduced fuel excise, lower VAT on energy, a diesel rebate scheme and an expanded fuel allowance are helping right now.
We're also supporting homes, farms and businesses to lower costs with grants for energy upgrades, electric vehicles and solar. Free upgrades and solar panels are also available in certain cases. There are simple ways to save too. Switching supplier, checking your plan and managing your energy use can all cut your bills. Saving energy saves money. Visit gov.ie forward slash reduce your use.
Brought to you by the Government of Ireland.
In Cherokee County, Georgia, Melody and Gary Farris have spent the last five years of their lives on a 10-acre hobby farm. Melody's dreamscape. Gary worked hard as an attorney, and Melody worked on the farm and managed the family. Four grown children with children of their own, including Scott, who lived on the property.
The last time Melody saw her husband was on Tuesday evening, July 3rd, after he'd set a bonfire. Or burn pile. Melody said he came upstairs that evening, asked if she was making dinner, and she pointed him to the food in the fridge. After that, he went back down to the basement bedroom where he slept alone with his CPAP. On July 4th, both Melody and Scott said they never laid eyes on Gary.
And Melody told investigators this wasn't unusual. He kept to himself even on July 4th. It wasn't until the next morning, July 5th, that two of his grandkids wanted to ride the RTV with Big Daddy, but couldn't find him. Their daughter Amanda was already there. Their oldest son Chris showed up soon after, and the adults started searching the house and the property.
Scott walked down to the burn pile, looked into the ashes, and saw part of Dad's skull, so he called 911. While detectives and medical examiners were sifting through the bones and the days that followed, detectives continued processing the situation with the family. This is Chris.
What I want to think is he just had one of his spells and something happened, had a heart attack and fell in there. Just, I don't know, man. Just something seems, I don't know. Something seems weird to me.
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Chapter 4: What was found in the burn pile that raised suspicions?
That would be accurate.
When the medical examiner opens the bags from the burn pit, There's no body in the usual sense. Gary has been reduced to charred pieces of bone and scraps of tissue divided into almost 50 bags labeled by quadrant. Gary was 6 foot 5 inches and more than 300 pounds. The bones are blackened, brittle, and cracked from heat with fragments of pelvis, leg bones, and skull mixed in with the ash.
The soft tissue left is moldy and wet after sitting in its own liquid collected in the bottom of the bags. The only way to be sure it's Gary is by matching the teeth to all his dental records. And there's no guarantee that this bullet killed him. Investigators quickly rule out an intruder. There's... No broken glass, no kicked in door, no drawers pulled out or valuables missing.
This isn't a burglary gone bad. It's a dead man on his own land at a house that sits by itself at the end of a gravel road. Whoever did this was extremely close to Gary.
So like the night of the 3rd and the day of the 4th, you were just never even in Cherokee County? Sure. Okay. Um... Can you, if I asked you if there's anyone who would want to hurt your dad, what would you say? Would Scott ever want to hurt your dad?
No.
Did they get along pretty well?
Scott, my brother, yeah, I mean, you know, they lived in the same place and they bickered back and forth all the time, of course. But, you know, let's be honest, like... Scott has a pretty good life. He's got his apartment. He's got, I mean, my dad does a lot for him and he loves my dad.
Who would stand to gain it? Who would stand to gain anything if something happened to your dad?
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Chapter 5: What were the outcomes of Melody's trial and sentencing?
I mean, I would like to... I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like I said, Scott is very hot-tempered. I mean, he and Gary, I have seen them get into the point that I was just like, okay, y'all, just take it down a notch.
I'd really like to believe that if Scott shot Gary on your property or inside your house, and then the body was disposed of in your fire pit, that you would probably know about it or find some evidence of it yourself. Or help clean up.
Yeah. No, like I said, I wouldn't have heard it. You were there. Well, I mean, I was, but I left, you know, and I just saw it smoldering. Didn't think, you know, okay, it's not pleasing, it's not whatever, we're good, you know. Didn't think, you know. But I kept thinking last night, why did Scott come in here and get so angry last night?
But that's not all that unusual either, for him to just blow up.
Scott insists he's not a hothead. He admits he gets angry, like anyone, and he admits loud bangs still make him jump. But he pushes back on the idea that he's some kind of ticking bomb.
My version of PTSD is if I hear a loud bang or something that I'm just not prepared for, my adrenaline just goes through the roof, my heart is about to pound out of my chest, and
I've learned to, I start taking deep breaths and it calms me down. But gunfire doesn't bother me. I can still be around that. Nightmares have ended and they ended a long time ago.
Other than that, no, I don't get violent with anybody. I'm just like my dad. I make friends everywhere I go.
By all accounts, Scott and his dad were really likable guys who made friends everywhere they went. And they got along well together. When his dad wasn't able to keep up with the farm anymore, Scott was a huge help. It was more Gary and Melody who didn't get along so well. And Melody had her own habit of making friends wherever she went. If you know what I mean.
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Chapter 6: What health issues did Gary Farris have before his disappearance?
Just like that. But finding the bullet immediately rules that out. And the body burning quickly in a fire? Well, that's just not how it works, kids.
Bodies don't burn like that. You don't burn on bodies. You just don't throw them on a burn pile. That's unusual. The amount of effort needed to burn a body is significant. Go.
I mean, that was just, I know that he burned one.
Okay, I'm telling you, bodies just don't burn in fires. They just don't go away. We're all water. You can't burn water. Incinerators are designed to burn for a very long time in an exceedingly high heat that is not reaching a regular bonfire. It's not reaching a brush fire. It's barely reaching. It's not even really reaching a house fire.
House fires where houses collapse on people, we still find... more of those people than we did of your husband.
Okay, then how did he learn?
It was outside your bedroom window.
I was hoping maybe you could shed some light on it. All I saw was a bird. I'd never went down there.
But someone did. Because someone would have needed to make sure the body itself kept burning until the job was done. And Melody was on the property all day long on July 4th. The fifth is when they all went searching for Gary and found what Melody claimed to be a goat.
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Chapter 7: What evidence led to Melody's arrest in Gary's case?
a minor temper tantrum, which I had separate tonight, and it was six for me, so I'm sure I'll be feeling poorly here within minutes, but we'll see.
When the two brothers were interviewed together for hours, their memories became clearer and clearer.
Within this past year, the fighting between the two of them just got worse. you know, worse and worse. And the comments my mother, 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 and all that. He never, you know, said anything other than that negative way.
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. I wish she would just have a heart attack and die. And she's definitely tried to turn all of us on to each other. She has said stuff about him. She has said stuff about me. Emily, she's just trying to, you know, basically stir the pot up with us.
She's been doing that ever since all this happened. She's been trying to get me to turn against him and my sister Emily. And I guess she's been, you know, Vice versa with Amanda. I mean, trying to get Amanda to turn on all of us. And that's not really, I mean, that's kind of crap my mother would do. I mean, pretty much her entire life. Yeah, she loved drama. It's been always really weird.
My mom would treat strangers and people she recently knew or even her pets a lot better than her family.
It wasn't that Melody couldn't show emotion. It's that every emotion began and ended with her. And the only thing she ever seemed to feel for Gary was resentment. Resentment that he'd seen through her hedonistic version of marriage. She didn't just want to have her cake and eat it too. She wanted to eat hers, take his, and still complain that there wasn't enough frosting.
you know, passed away.
She got more upset, but when I, you know, when I discovered his body, his remains, and even the paramedic says, yes, those are human remains, she had zero emotion. None. No crying, no nothing.
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Chapter 8: What role did Melody play in Gary's life and their marriage?
It's one thing to lie to the police, and it's quite another thing entirely to hand your own child to the wolves and call it self-defense. What a bitch.
I was like, gloves are off. I mean, you try to throw your own child over to the bus.
By the time Melody Ferris' trial wrapped up in late 2024, the prosecution had presented a 18-day case calling dozens of witnesses and more than a thousand pieces of physical, digital, and forensic evidence. On November 4, 2024, a Cherokee County jury found her guilty on all five charges.
Malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, concealing the death of another, and making false statements. The verdict came after several days of deliberation following closing arguments.
At her sentencing hearing the next day, the Superior Court judge sentenced Ferris to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the murder conviction and an additional five-year term for related charges to run concurrently. The judge also bartered from contact with certain family members as part of the court order.
The prosecutor read a letter from Gary's daughter, Emily, as part of the victim impact statement. She said that since Gary was taken, their family was living inside an unbearable void. Not sometimes, every day. They'd lost the laughter, the warmth, the steady presence that held them all together. And now even the happy moments felt contaminated because he wasn't there to share them.
But the worst part wasn't only that he was gone, but it was who did it. The betrayal of realizing the suffering came from the person who should have cared for them the most. Their own mother. And as the prosecutor read her words, Chris sat in the background, breaking down, openly sobbing, wiping tears from his face. Scott conveyed an expression of hurt so deep it was impossible to ignore.
while Melody just sat there, resolved to finish what she started one way or another. In the moments that preceded her statement, she spoke to the judge in a calm and steady voice, but the second she began reading, she suddenly and dramatically, uncontrollably became tearful.
On July the 5th, 2018, six years, five months ago today, began the worst nightmare that I could have ever imagined. Not only my world, but my family's world was absolutely destroyed at the hands of one person. I've had six plus years of being told not to talk, don't say that, take legal advice. I could walk out of this courtroom today...
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