Private Affairs | "Blood is Thicker: The Farris Wheel" | "48 Hours" Podcast Episode 3 | Forensic Files

It was the father-daughter dance at Emily Ferris's wedding in July 2016. Emily wore a white satin dress. Her
proud father towered over her in a black suit as they swayed back and forth to the music.
>> All right, let's give it up for Gary and Emily. They took a sweet bow toward each other
and ended the magical moment. Here's Emily. It was it was a it was a good wedding wedding. I was the bride, so I
was a little I was a little like probably in another world compared to everyone else.
You're hearing Emily answering questions from prosecutors in 2024. By then, the investigation of Gary
Ferris's murder had gone to trial. A wedding is a milestone event, a memorable day where everyone's eyes are
on the bride and groom. But some eyes at the reception turned from Emily to her mother Melody as she
spent the night on the arm of a man who wasn't her husband, Gary. From what I understand, um
they were like dancing dancing together, like canoodling if you will, during the
reception. Emily was on the stand recounting the shock of her wedding day when her mother
openly flirted with a man named Rusty Barton. The interactions between the two were of
of a couple. Like there was like I felt like under the table, like touching, um like
getting really close together to talk. Um just like like whispering to each other, like into
each other's ears. She said the scene left the whole family shaken and ashamed. And Daddy said, "That's the last time
That's the last time she's ever going to embarrass me like that again." Um I mean, I can only imagine how
devastated he was by that. Prior to her wedding day, Emily said she had suspected Rusty could be more than
just a friend to her mother. If we're like running errands or going shopping or something like that, like she would
talk about Rusty. Like she would just like bring him up. When she got her mother's guest list,
Emily emailed the names to her father. I just wanted you to see who all he she's
inviting. Her mom's friend Rusty was coming. Emily felt like her hands were tied.
That's because her parents were paying for the wedding, and Melody had already complained about its nearly $30,000
cost. So, Emily decided to keep her feelings about Rusty to herself. If I press her on this, she will cancel my
wedding. Like she will cancel my wedding. She will It'll be over. Emily said she considered Melody's list an
ultimatum. Invite this man, or else. Turns out all the rumors and suspicions within the family were true.
Melody had started cheating on Gary with Rusty two years before Emily's wedding.
On top of that, her children claimed she'd been having nasty arguments with Gary over money. We knew Melody was
having affairs. We knew that she was constantly lying to people, spending all my dad's money.
And even before this, she would make up lies about us. Just to make her life a soap opera.
I'm Peter Van Sant from 48 Hours. This is Blood Is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel. Episode 3, Private Affairs.
We just got where we just didn't talk. Melody and Gary Ferris had been together for 38 years before his murder in 2018.
In their early years, Melody worked hard helping support the family and pay Gary's way through university all while
raising the kids. I was the strict one. We didn't co-parent, we counter parented.
Counter parented? What does that mean? If I said no, he said yes. I was the one who held my children accountable for
what they did. Was Gary a good father? He was. And how about husband? Not so much.
As you can tell, there were deeper problems in their marriage. By the time they moved to the farm in
2013, they'd been sleeping apart for years. He slept down in the basement in a bedroom and she slept in the master.
According to Scott, Gary would use the master bedroom to shower and store his clothes, but he always slept downstairs.
Cuz my dad slept with his CPAP machine. It's loud. It's loud. He, you know, prior to that, he was a very loud
snorer. Leading up to his death, Gary had been experiencing a mysterious illness.
We just referred to as the Ferris spells. The Ferris spells? He would get very lethargic.
Uh would sleep a lot. Uh they there was no rhyme or reason to how often they In April of 2018, one of the spells had
been bad enough to send Gary to the ER. Here's how Melody described it to me. The night that we carried him to the
hospital, he was hallucinating. And several weeks beforehand, he believed that there was a party being
held out in the hot tub outside of his bedroom. According to Melody, the cause was
uncertain. He had severe vitamin deficiencies, B12 being one of them. Uh we knew that.
Here's Detective Daniel Hayes. Gary allegedly didn't like going to the doctor. The few times he had gone, they
hadn't really found anything. Melody suggested it could be Gary's unhealthy lifestyle. She didn't know if he was
diabetic. She pointed out he drank Mountain Dews and smoked cigarettes all day. Perhaps he was just unhealthy.
But Hayes said Gary grew suspicious about the timing of these spells. Others that we spoke with about these
spells, whether it be his secretary, other co-workers, people that that liked him, pointed out it only seemed he only
seemed to have these spells after he had been home for like a weekend or a holiday
or something like that. They >> With Melody. They seemed to occur around right after he spent some
time with her and she prepared his meals. Gary believed Melody was poisoning him.
Their eldest son, Chris, questioned if his father had taken the threat seriously enough. He's like, "Oh, I'm
okay. I'm okay." Like, "No, you're not okay. What's the deal?" I was like, "What's the deal? For my
dad?" This is Chris at the sheriff's office a few weeks after the murder. Chris recalled his father telling him
about feeling unwell after eating Melody's freshly baked cookies. He He just like, "Oh, I think she's
trying to poison me or something." And just laughing it off and I thought, "Oh my god, you know, like, nah, man. Come
on, you know, maybe." But he said, "Well, then a few weeks before that, she brought home a pasta dish
and the same thing happened." I brought this up with Melody. Did you know at the time that Gary had
speculated with at least two different people that he thought you were poisoning him? Were you? No. Absolutely
not. But while Melody denied poisoning Gary, detectives learned that Gary and Melody's relationship had been strained
to the breaking point in the months before his death. We found evidence through, you know, the
cell phone data, text messages, and things that he was taking action, taking steps to cut her off, and control her
spending. Detective Hayes said that Gary controlled their finances and created a
separate account for her to access money. It wasn't attached to the main account
with all the big money. You know, it would be smaller amounts of money, a few thousand dollars instead of
multi-thousand dollars. Here's Melody. I had a debit card. It had his name on it.
I was free to use it however I wanted to. His name on it. You didn't have a debit card with your name on it.
>> not. But just like Gary did with their son Scott, he monitored her spending. Anything over, I believe, $25 went
immediately to his email. And while she admits Gary was controlling, Melody claimed he was not
angry with her. But was there financial arguing going on Was there financial disputes going on between the two of you
during the course of your marriage? When he Was he angry at your spending? >> No.
Son Scott and Chris Ferris said that's simply not true. They told detectives in 2018 their
father was upset. Here's Scott. That's what irritated my dad. Um, you know, spending money stuff on
that we did not we needed to spend money on. They said their mom loved to shop, spending lavishly on stuff they
considered useless like fur coats, jewelry, and art. It seemed like she thought she had an endless bank account.
She would just, you know, spend money whatever. Melody once even withdrew a $50,000 line of credit without telling
Gary. But money wasn't the only thing dividing the Ferrises. Gary believed his wife was
having affairs. He said she he's caught her. Oh, yeah. He's been He >> what? Caught her cheating? Yeah, he's
gotten he's gotten emails from you know, people saying, "Oh, she's doing this with this person." And he was
right. And how many affairs did you have? Two. Melody Ferris admitted to me that she
had two affairs during her marriage with Gary. But our conversation was years after the investigation started.
Back in 2018, she was, shall we say, deceptive. Here's Melody talking to Detective Trent
Kuykendall back then. Any boyfriend at all? Yeah. Even though she said no, Detective
Kuykendall rephrased his question. When's the last time you had one? I won't call him a boyfriend.
But it was a my sister-in-law's boyfriend at the time, but we were all >> How long ago? Ted?
>> That's been 2 years. Ted? Yeah. Ted was Ted Wiley, and you heard that right. Melody said she was seeing her
husband's sister's boyfriend. Ted dated Gary's sister for about 20 years. The two never married, but the
Ferrises treated him like family. He lived in Alabama. Melody said he helped her back in 2007
as she cared for her mother who had cardiac problems. She had a open heart surgery that did not go well.
I was pretty much gone for a year taking care of her. Melody basically moved to Alabama.
He was there to help with things. We would go horseback riding together, but my sister-in-law was right there.
Detective Kuykendall asked Melody more about Ted. You had a relationship with Ted many, many, many years ago.
Was that physical as well? Yeah. That was never physical. >> Yeah. Her son Scott told detectives otherwise.
I was the one who discovered my mom was running around with Ted because I was helping her take care of my grandmother
in the hospital and the house and everything. One night at the bar we went to uh That
was 2007. >> Logan's Logan's Roadhouse or whatever. I saw Ted grabbing my mom's rear end.
He confronted his mother. She just told you you don't know what you're talking about and blah blah blah.
I tried to tell everybody else. Nobody else would listen to me. Ted later admitted the affair went on
for several years. But in 2018, Melody wasn't easily sharing those details. She denied that there had been another
man in her life in the years leading up to Gary's murder. So, when was the last time you had a
physical relationship with somebody, your husband or anyone? Oh, Gary? Mhm. It's probably been 4 years again. Okay.
So, when was the last time you had an an a sexual interaction with anyone else? 4
years again. The detectives wanted to ask her about something they found in her purse.
She had told them she had a debit card with Gary's name, and she did. But they also found a second card with a
different name on it. What about Roy? Roy? Last time you guys talked Barton? Barton?
Here is where the Ferris wheel really gets a spinning. Roy Barton was Rusty Barton.
Remember Rusty? He's the man Melody invited to Emily's wedding. What was the last time you
interacted with Rusty? Oh, it's been months and months and months ago. Melody tried to downplay her
relationship with Rusty, but the detective pushed. Like years? Like months? >> No. It seems like it's been within the
last year. Yeah. It seems like you've had a you have a boyfriend. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I
would still talk to him on occasion. But I mean, it's >> When was When was it physical with
y'all? Oh. It's been quite at least a year ago. Melody told me that she and Rusty went
way back. Well, Rusty Barton and I first met at when his dad and my cousin got married.
I was 15. Um we would see each other occasionally through the years. Not very often.
They met in 1975. Rusty was 22. The two of them didn't start a romantic relationship until almost four decades
later, when in 2014, Melody's mother called. She asked Melody to take her cousin,
Martha Jane, to the doctor. Martha Jane was married to Rusty's father. So, Ted Wylie was her sister-in-law's
boyfriend, and Rusty was her cousin's stepson. Follow? And I said, "Sure, I'll do it."
And I did. I went up there. Uh his dad had a stroke on the day that I had taken Martha Jane to Nashville to
a cardiologist. And he and I you know, started out as, you know, basically working together to take care
of his dad and his stepmother, which was my cousin. So, in 2014, as they cared for their
loved ones, Rusty and Melody also started caring for each other. And one thing led to another.
>> One thing led to another. And you you started an affair? >> Mhm. Rusty lived in Tennessee, about a 3-hour
drive from the Ferris farm in Georgia. Handsome and filled with Southern charm and humor, Rusty's white hair and goatee
gave him a charismatic look. And you guys would meet in Dalton, Georgia. How often would you do that? Uh it would
depend on what he had going, what I had going. It was 2 years into their affair when
Melody put Rusty on Emily's guest list. At your daughter's wedding, you you brought Rusty Barton. He was there. And
isn't that kind of an in-your-face move to everyone? Wasn't that a Gary knew I was taking
>> terrible thing to do? >> I had invited him. Why would you even have done that? Cuz
you know, your daughter was very upset that here you are touching each other during the course the of the reception
and dancing. >> It was after all this happened that she said she was upset about it.
She never said a thing about it then. That wasn't a nice move on your part, was it? No. In hindsight, no.
But Gary didn't file for divorce or separate from Melody. Then in October 2017, a woman named
Christina Grant emailed Gary. She claimed to be, if you're ready for this, Rusty's girlfriend.
In Christina's first email to Gary, she wrote, "Just FYI, your wife and Rusty Barton have been lovers for 3 years."
Gary responded, "Do I know you?" Christina then said, "You want to talk?" He replied, "Not right now."
But according to Melody, Gary wouldn't have minded it because Melody told me that Gary was the first to cheat.
Gary had an affair? When I was pregnant with Amanda. He was the first to cheat. Absolutely.
The not dynamic of Melody and Gary Ferris were they lived separate lives. In 2018, Detective Daniel Hayes with the
Cherokee County Sheriff's Office heard that Melody and Gary had an unusual marital arrangement, one where they each
slept in separate beds and at times with separate lovers. We did find evidence of both. Both had
affairs. Yes. Both are living on different floors of a house under the same roof
but not really living as a married couple. Correct. They're roommates. Melody told me that it wasn't always
this way. Things changed in the late '80s. That's when Melody was pregnant with their fourth child. I found out that he
was having his first affair when I was pregnant with Amanda. Amanda was born in 1989.
Then we moved to Atlanta in 1995 and he brought his secretary, who he had been having an affair with, with him.
And you knew he was having this affair. >> Oh, absolutely. As Melody tells it, Gary's infidelity
was the real reason they started sleeping in separate rooms. And if this southern soap opera couldn't
get more tawdry, Melody claimed that Gary confessed to something big, really big.
He confessed that he had fathered a child to somebody. Very shortly after that, I packed my
clothes and I left. He came, talked to me, begged me to come back. And I did. I came back.
Until on I believe it was in January of '09, I believe, don't hold me to that, that I got a credit card
statement. And he had joined match.com and several other dating websites. I went down, handed it to him, already
had my stuff packed, and I said, "I'm going to go stay at my mom's for a while."
But eventually, Melody came back. She didn't tell me the identity of this mystery mother.
I'm still not getting why you the two of you just didn't split up and go your separate ways.
I don't get it. I still wanted a home that my children could come to. I didn't want them to
have to go to two separate places. Her son Scott told me in 2024 that he believes his mother is lying.
My father didn't have a a relationship with anybody. They didn't have an open marriage.
But Gary Ferris's former assistant, Angela Phillips, admitted she did have a relationship, an affair, with her boss
in the mid-1990s. Angela wouldn't call the relationship romantic. In her words, she said they
were physical for about a year. The sex stopped, Angela said, after she met Melody, and And two, in her words,
became friends. After years of allegedly playing musical beds, Gary did file for divorce in 2010.
That was about the time Melody said she ended her relationship with Ted Wiley. And long before she started seeing Rusty
Barton. Scott remembered that when he was serving in Iraq, his dad emailed about
the troubles back home. He goes, "Hey, I just want to let you know that I filed for, you know, I got
paperwork for a divorce." And I responded back with, "I'm glad you're able to see, you know,
what, you know, what's going on and all, but I can't deal, I can't hear this stuff while I'm over here." Scott's
brother Chris claimed Melody hid in the bedroom when his father tried to serve his mom with those divorce papers in
2010. But Gary eventually called off the divorce, and the Ferrises didn't separate. Instead, they bought the farm
for a fresh start. But in the months leading up to Gary Ferris's murder, Melody admitted things
were getting vicious. Gary and I said some horrible things to each other. We did.
Gary was very much one who cut to the bone, and I got to where that I would throw it right back at him.
But there was one argument on July 2nd, 2018, that caught detectives' attention.
It occurred the day before investigators think Gary was shot. Here's Scott. One day I was planting some plants or
something, and she comes out of the house with a plate in her hand, and she's screaming and cussing, and she
throws the plate up against the wall of the house, and breaks it, shatters it all into pieces.
And she says, "I can't wait till that man's dead. I can't wait till I don't have to live with him anymore.
But Melody told me she didn't throw the plate because of Gary. She threw it because Scott had yelled at her for not
having dinner prepared for him. He's standing there screaming his lungs out at me.
And I told him, I said, "I hope that there is a day that I do not have to live with you screaming at me." My
35-year-old man child screaming at his mother for not cooking him dinner. You live free on this
property. And that's when, according to Melody, the plate took flight. Melody and Scott have different versions
of that incident. But Gary's recovered cell phone records showed that he pulled out his phone and hit record.
This is what happens when you leave a plate, forget to take it upstairs, a minor temper temper tantrum.
Gary is saying, "This is what happens when you leave a plate and forget to take it upstairs." As he shows the
shattered pieces scattered on the ground. He adds, "Minor temper tantrum." Plus, I had supper tonight, and it was
fixed for me, so I'm sure I'll be feeling poorly here within minutes. But we'll see.
In that last part, he's saying that he had supper and that it was fixed for him, so quote, "I'm sure I'll be feeling
poorly here within minutes." Directly referencing the idea Melody might be poisoning him.
The next day would be his last. I could see he finally reached a point that he was tired.
He finally got so tired of fighting for the marriage that he's just like, "It's time to end this." Tired of the
fighting, the lies, the humiliation, the secrets. Scott said his father was ready
to finally divorce Melody. She's going to continue on having affairs, and he was
ready to move on. And detectives believe that Melody may have also wanted out. And how serious is
this relationship between Melody and Rusty? Depends on who you ask. Um the evidence showed it it it appeared to
be pretty serious. They were researching wedding bands. Uh you know, they were discussing
what life looked like without Gary in it. The clues from the case were pointing to
Melody as the likely murderer. But detectives didn't make an arrest that summer.
Instead, they turned to Melody's lover, Rusty Barton, to see if he would secretly record their main suspect.
From 48 Hours, this is Blood Is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel, produced by Sony Music
Entertainment. I'm your host, Peter Van Sant. Judy Tygard is the executive producer of
48 Hours. Original reporting by 48 Hours producers Betsy Schuler, Ryan Smith, and Hannah
Vere. Jamie Benson is the senior producer for CBS News podcast, and Mara Waltz is the
senior story editor. Recording assistance from Alan Pang and Alana Myers. Special thanks to CBS News podcast vice
president Megan Marcus. Blood Is Thicker was written and produced by Alex Sherman.
Stephanie Serrano is our editor. Our executive producer is Shera Morris. Our associate producer is Zoe Calkin.
Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shee. Cedric Wilson is our sound designer and
mixed the episodes. We also use music from Epidemic Sounds. Fendall Fulton is our fact checker.
Our production manager is Tamika Balance Kolasny. If you're enjoying the show, be sure to
rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. Thanks for listening.

While Melody Farris points suspicion at her children, some of them point their fingers right back at her. They said she had been having affairs for years with one lover, even showing up at a family wedding, causing drama. Behind closed doors, Gary and Melody’s marriage had been unraveling for years, with the couple living separate lives under the same roof.

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Brief Summary

Emily Ferris's wedding reveals family tensions and leads to the investigation of her father's murder amid marital infidelity.

Key points

Emily's Wedding Day. Emily Ferris's wedding in July 2016 takes a shocking turn when her mother flirts with another man.
The Affair Unveiled. Emily discovers her mother's long-term affair with Rusty Barton, which began before her wedding.
Marital Strain. Melody and Gary's marriage was plagued by infidelity and financial disputes, leading to a toxic environment.
Gary's Last Supper. Gary hints at feeling unwell after dinner, suggesting possible poisoning.
End of the Marriage. Scott decides it's time to end his marriage with Melody after enduring too much.
Melody's Serious Affair. Evidence suggests Melody's relationship with Rusty was serious, discussing life without Gary.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

That's the last time she's ever going to embarrass me like that again.

Emily recounts her father's reaction to her mother's behavior at the wedding.

2:00WatchMar 25, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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