Private Affairs

aftershow podcast post-mortem. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 hours and then

“join me 48 hours correspondent and Marie Green on Tuesday for a new episode of post-mortem.”

Where we bring you a closer look at each case. This case was eye-opening on so many different levels. Follow and listen to 48 hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. It was the father-daughter dance at Emily Ferris' 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. They took a sweet bow toward each other and ended the magical moment.

Here's Emily. It was a good way that wedding. I was the bride, so I was the one who was 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' 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, they were like dancing together, like canoeing 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 a couple. Like, I felt like under the table, like touching, like getting really close together to talk,

“just 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, I mean, I can only imagine how devastated she was about. Prior to her wedding day, Emily said she had suspected Rusty could be more than just a friend to her mother. If we were like running errands or going shopping or something like that, like she would talk about Rusty, like she would just like bring an 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 pain 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 keep some of my wedding. She will, it'll be over. Emily said she considered Melody's list and 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 claim

she'd been having nasty arguments with Gary over money. We knew Melody was having the fairs. We knew that she was constantly lying to people, spinning all my dad's money. Even before this, she would make up laws about us. Just to make her life a soap opera. I'm Peter Vansant. From 48 hours, this is bloodesticker, 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 a strict one. We didn't co-parent. We counter-veraged it.

much older than 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. Because my dad slept with a

seat Pat machine. And it's loud. He was allowed. 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 little larger with sleep a lot. There was no rhyme or reason to how often they happened. 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 before

hand, 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 between 12 being one of them. We knew that. Here's detective Daniel Hayes. Gary allegedly didn't like going to the doctor. The few times a had gone mad and really found anything. Melody suggested it could be Gary's unhealthy lifestyle. She didn't know he was diabetic. She pointed out he drank mountain news 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 liked him. Pointed out and 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 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 said, "Oh, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm not. You're okay. What's the deal? What's the deal? For the 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 melodies freshly baked cookies. He was just like, "I don't know, I think she's”

trying to poison me or something." Just laughing it off and I thought, "Oh my God, you know what? Now, maybe, but he said, "Well, that a few weeks before that, she brought home a post-addition 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 message and the 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 a smaller amount 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 afraid to use it however I wanted to. His name on it. You didn't have a debit card with your name on it or not. But just like Gary did with their son Scott, he monitored her spending.

“Anything over I believe 25 dollars went immediately to his email. And while she admits Gary”

was controlling, Melody claimed he was not angry with her. But was her financial arguing going on it? Was her financial dispute going on between the two of you? I mean, the course of your marriage. When he was he angry at your spending. No. Sun Scott and Chris Ferris said that's simply not true. They told detectives in 2018, their father was upset. Here's Scott.

spending money on it. 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 it. It was bank account. She just spent money, whatever. Melody once even withdrew a $50,000

“line of credit without telling Gary. But money wasn't the only thing dividing the Ferris's.”

Gary believed his wife was having affairs. You said she's caught her? Oh, yeah, he's been caught her. He caught her. What? Cottage? Yeah, 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, too? 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 Kaikendall back then. And he boyfriend it all. Even though she said no, Detective Kaikendall

“rephrased his question. Oh, it's last time you had one. I won't call him a boyfriend. But it was a”

messaged on Walls. Boyfriend at the time. But we were all along. It's been two 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 Ferris

has 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 him 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 was right there. Detective Kaikendall

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.

Her son Scott told detectives otherwise. I was the one who discovered my mom was right around with Ted because I was helping her take care of my grandmother and the hospital and the house of everything. One night at the bar, we went to, I was doing that. Logan's roadhouse right there. I saw Ted grabbing my mom's wear in. He confronted his mother. She did. So you don't know what you're talking about. I'm talking about him. I'm trying to tell everybody else. Nobody asked

what listening 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? It's my best four years again. Okay, so when was the last time you had an sexual interaction with anyone else? Four years.

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 he gets a part. Barton Barton? Here is where the Ferris wheel really gets a spin-in. Roy Barton was Rusty Barton.

“Remember Rusty? He's the man Melody invited to Emily's wedding.”

It was a lot of time you interacted with Rusty. But it's been months and months and months again. Melody tried to downplay her relationship with Rusty, but the detective pushed. Like years? Like months? It seems like it's been within the last year. Yeah. It seems like you've had a boyfriend. Well, I mean, yeah, I'm an hour still talk to him on occasion. I mean, when was the physical wiggle? It's been at least a year ago.

Melody told me that she and Rusty went way back.

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 Wiley 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. Oh, 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, 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 started in a fairer. Rusty lived in Tennessee about a three-hour drive from the Ferris farm in Georgia. Handsome and filled with southern charm and humor. Rusty's white hair and go tea gave him a

“charismatic look. And you guys would meet in Dalton, Georgia. How often would you do that?”

And it would depend on what he had going, what I had going. It was two years into their affair when Melody put Rusty on Emily's guest list. At your daughter's wedding, you brought Rusty Barton. He was there. And isn't that kind of an in your face moved to everyone? Wasn't that a Gary Newell was a terrible thing. Gary Newell had invited him. Why would you even have done that?

Because you know, your daughter was very upset. Then here you are touching each other during the course through the reception. It was then, 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? Yeah, in hindsight now. 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 three 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 it affair. And I was pregnant with Amanda. He was the first to cheat. "Catchin?" "Safe. Viso Stoya." It is not hard to destroy a college.

Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults, and more. And now, Campus Files is back for another season. There's a guy screaming into his phone, he's like, "Just saw Charlie Kirkus assinated right in front of me." Every week is a new episode and a new story. It's almost a university on a siege. Listen to and follow Campus Files, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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 him. And you knew he was having this affair? 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 toadry, Melody claimed that Gary confessed to something big, really big. He confessed that he had bothered to child as a money. 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 I believed

“it was in January of '09. I believe, don't hold me to 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,

I already had my stuff packed and I said, I'm gonna 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 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 together to two separate places. Her son Scott told me in 2024 that he believes his mother is lying.

The muffler didn't have a relationship with anybody. They didn't have an open marriage.

“The Gary Ferris' former assistant, Angela Phillips admitted she did have a relationship”

and 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 the 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 trouble's back home.

I guess hey, I just want to let you know that I've followed for him. I got paperwork for a divorce

“and I responded back with it. I'm glad you're able to see what's going on in all”

that I can't do. I can't hear this stuff long 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 Ferris' didn't separate. Instead, they bought the farm for a fresh start. But in the months leading up to Gary Ferris' murder, Melody admitted things were getting vicious. Gary announced in 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 detective's attention. It occurred the day before investigators think Gary was shot. You're Scott. One day, I was planting some plants for 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 on the pieces and she says, "I can't wait to that f*** 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 been 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's home. Screaming at his mother for not picking 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 record showed that he pulled out his phone and hit record. "This is what happens when you leave

"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 temporary. "Well, I had it separate”

at nine and it was six-four minutes, so I'm sure I'll be filling Portland here with it in minutes. 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. "Occasy, he finally reached a point

that he was tired. He finally got so tired of fighting for the marriage that he's just like his

“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. Pizzle on who you asked. They haven't

showed it appear to be pretty serious. They were researching wedding bands. 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 Bloodest Thicker, the Ferris Wheel produced by Sony Music Entertainment. "I'm your host, Peter Vansant." Judy Tigard is the executive producer of 48 hours. Original reporting by 48 hours producers Betsy Schuler, Ryan Smith, and Hannah Verr. Jamie Benson is the senior producer for CBS News Podcasts, and Mara Waltz is the senior

story editor, recording assistance from Alan Peng and Alana Myers. Special thanks to CBS News Podcast Vice President Megan Marcus. Bloodest Thicker was written and produced by Alex Schumman. Stephanie Sorano is our editor. Our executive producer is Shera Morris. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin. Theme and original music composed by Hans Dale Shee. Sedrick Wilson is our sound designer and mix the episodes. We also use music from Epidemic Sounds.

Fendell Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Tamika Balance Colassney. 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. Your favorite true crime series 48 hours is back for a new season, and so is the official after show podcast postmortem. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48

hours and then join me 48 hours correspondent and regreen on Tuesday for a new episode of postmortem. Where we bring you a closer look at each case. This case was eye-opening on so many different levels. Follow and listen to 48 hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast.