Big Daddy Is Missing | Blood is Thicker: The Farris Wheel

0:00Hello, 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. Hey, Sal. Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana, and it was so easy.

0:44Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options. Found a great car at a great price. And it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. I got a feeling, and I really hope I'm wrong. But I just, I expect foul play out of this. Scott Ferris was worried. No one had seen his father, Gary, in two days. Have you noticed anything odd at the house? Anything unusual in the last two days? Anything strange? Any unusual visitor activity? Everything that I found unusual was today.

1:35It was July 5th, 2018. A hot and humid Thursday in Cherokee County, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. Scott was talking to Detective Daniel Hayes on the Ferris' beautifully manicured family farm. And where do you live at? I live here on the property. I live above the barn. There's an apartment. me. Scott was in his mid-30s, ex-military, and a big guy like his dad, six feet, six inches tall. He managed the farm for his parents. On that Thursday, he was heading out to get a haircut when he saw his sister sitting on the front porch of the main house with his mother, Melody. And she was out there with my sister, and she's like, have you seen your father?

2:21Have you talked to him? I'm like, no. Apparently no one in the family had. Were there any July 4th plans? They don't do, he doesn't, he doesn't have a very social life. Scott noticed that Gary's Mercedes was still parked at the farm. He then ticked through the other clues that might indicate Gary was somewhere on the property, beginning with his dad's wallet. When Gary was home, he'd leave that on his dresser in the master bedroom. But it wasn't there. He thought about what else Gary would have taken if he left on a trip or was staying safely somewhere else. Gary used a CPAP machine every night for his sleep apnea.

3:08And Scott knew his father wouldn't spend the night anywhere without it. So the CPAP machine was there. Yes. Did y 'all look for a cell phone or anything? Or does he carry that with him? Well, I started calling the cell phone, and my sister started calling the cell phone. It was going straight to voicemail. But with Gary's car and CPAP machine all on the property, he had to be nearby. At this point, Scott's brother Chris had joined the search. Scott wondered if his father had fallen somewhere. I've always worried about him having a heart attack. I mean, just being somewhere on this property and him having a heart attack.

3:46They searched the more than 8 ,000-square-foot main house, the barn, and surrounding woods. I was going to start walking down into the woods to see if, you know, he went off down in there. And then I saw my sister Amanda and my mother standing by the fire. The fire was a smoldering burn pile. It's where they'd burn yard waste. She goes, has a goat died or anything? Have you thrown a dead goat? Was there a dead animal in the pile?

4:23Scott moved down for a closer look. I picked up one little piece, I turned it, realized it was a skull. I immediately just set it back down gently. I said, back up, I'm calling 911.

4:42Jerry, can you have a warm location of your emergency?

4:47Blame.

4:52My father has come up missing, and we just searched the properties of a small farm, and I just found something near a farm that doesn't... There was a huge burning brush, and I was just stuck in the fire that it could be him. I don't know. Scott was horrified and certain he had just picked up human remains, remains he believed could be his father. All right, sir, I've got him on the way out there for you.

5:25Sheriff's deputies and detectives quickly realized that what had happened that day at the Ferris family farm was no accident. They learned that the Ferris's were a dysfunctional family. Accusations went round and round like a sinister Ferris wheel. investigators now had to figure out if any of those arguments pushed one of gary's own kin to kill him it has been called the ferris wheel and it was but it was our ferris wheel this ferris wheel was powered by distrust over finances jealousy and personal betrayal it's a real that would go on for years, dragging them through a carnival of lies, turning into a murder case the likes of which I have never before experienced.

6:25I'm Peter Van Sant. From 48 Hours, this is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel. Episode 1, Big Daddy is Missing.

6:43When Gary and Melody Ferris bought their 10-acre property in 2013, it was meant to be the beginning of a new era. The two had raised four kids, Chris, Scott, Emily, and Amanda, and were now grandparents. The idyllic, well-groomed acreage was lined with a winding black painted fence and a long gravel road that could take you through the trees, past the pond, the main house, and all the way up to a huge horse barn. By 2018, Gary and Melody had owned the place for five years. They were in their 50s and had known each other for most of their lives. And how old were you when you first met Gary? Sixteen.

7:30They met in Florence, Alabama. She first saw him when visiting a church there. He worked at Fuller's Big Star. It was a little grocery store that was there in town. It's where that you would run to to go pick up things. They dated for a few years and then eloped in 1979. Gary was a sophomore at the University of North Alabama, studying finance. Melody also studied there for about a year, but dropped out to start working. Chris was born when I was days before I was 20 years old. She ended up working at her parents' hardware store. I could take Chris to my parents' hardware store. He grew up in a hardware store.

8:14Do you have warm memories of that? Very much so. Three and a half years later, they had their second, Scott. Scott was a handful, but you loved him anyway. Precious little boy. Meanwhile, Gary decided to study law. We had Emily one month to the day before he graduated law school. We moved to Birmingham. We had Amanda. Gary practiced commercial real estate law and quickly climbed the ladder at his firm. Melody said Gary was smart. Book smart. Workaholic. An absolute workaholic. When Gary opened the firm's office in Atlanta, Melody was a full-time mom. She took charge of the home and the kids and made sure their upbringing was special, especially during the holidays.

9:08I understand you're a big Christmas decorator. I love to decorate my home for Christmas. I think it became more and more because we would have the Christmas party at our house for the law firm. So it became more, more and more. One home video shows a Ferris family Christmas that could be a scene from a Hallmark movie. The piping bag! Who is this from? There's a tall Christmas tree covered in ornaments, overlooking a happy family ripping open their gifts.

9:42Gary was the provider and patriarch of it all, and he was a big presence. The people closest to him even called him Big Daddy. The nickname made sense. After all, he was about 6 '4 and nearly 300 pounds. Gary had gray hair, a goatee, and this deep, gregarious voice with a southern drawl. You can read my dad like a book. Scott talked about his father to investigators in 2018. He's very, very predictable. He will come in from work. Usually he will stand in the driveway, smoke a cigarette, and he will go from his bedroom back to the garage, grab a Mountain Dew, grab his briefcase, and go down to the basement in his office.

10:31And he will stay there until dinner's ready. The family revolved around Gary, both as their father and financier, the central axle, if you will, in this Ferris wheel. To the normal person, he makes an astronomical amount of money. But I couldn't give you a certain amount of what he even makes. I'm not privy to that. While Gary controlled the money, that didn't mean he was holding back dollars from his children. Take oldest son Chris. He was married to his second wife and had kids from his first marriage. But Melody said Gary helped him out. I mean, he's got a$300-something cable bill. Every month, he's got, you know, over a$300 cell phone bill.

11:20Now, I don't know whether that's just his or it's him and his two girls. I mean, there's airline tickets out the union. Melody said their daughter, Emily, who was married and living in Tennessee, also counted on her dad for help. Same goes for Scott. The only adult child who Melody said wasn't depending on Gary was their youngest daughter, Amanda. As detectives put it, Gary was giving away money like it grew on trees. It sounds like everybody was suckling on the teeth for a farm phrase. They weren't, except for a minute.

12:10As detectives worked to figure out what had happened in the days leading up to Gary Ferris' murder, they took a deeper look into the family. There was Chris, the oldest. Back in 2018, he was 38, married, and had two daughters. The second oldest, Scott, turned 35 two days after the remains were discovered. He was single, living and working on his parents' property, and didn't have any children. Scott and Chris looked like they could be twins, even though they're three years apart. Emily, their third child and first daughter, was 30, Married with one young daughter, and she was the only sibling who lived out of state, building a life in Tennessee.

12:57And finally, Amanda, their youngest. At the time, she was 29 and engaged. Her wedding was set for the upcoming spring.

13:11The last time Amanda and Emily saw Gary was the weekend before he disappeared. The whole family had gotten together to celebrate Gary's 58th birthday. They had a cookout at the farm. Scott told detectives that the last time he saw his father was at a restaurant called Johnny's Cherokee Ranch, not far from the farm. This was on July 3rd, two days before finding the human remains. Were you all having dinner or did you just run into them there? I was actually having lunch. I was having lunch with my mother. He was there already. This is from an interview with Detective Hayes. My dad eats their lunch.

13:55Is that unusual that y 'all went and sat together or not? Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, that's... He left before, so he was already there. So he was almost done already. Yeah, he was almost done already, so... Okay, so then he left, and after that, did he say what he was doing the rest of the day? I didn't, we didn't, we see each other so much, we don't always talk to each other. He said that he and his mom didn't stay much longer before heading their separate ways. Later in the day, his brother Chris stopped by the farm with his daughter. She wanted to see Big Daddy. Here's Chris talking to detectives in 2018.

14:32We pulled up and he's, you know, I'm working. And he said, he's like, I would hug you, but I'm all hot and sweaty. I'm just going to kiss you. And told my daughter, and she said, well, what are you doing? Gary was in the midst of collecting items for the burn pile. We were there for maybe 20 to 30 minutes. After Chris and his daughter left, Melody told Detective Hayes that Gary lit the burn pile. He started it, and then he went up to the very front entrance and was messing around up there. And it's Gary. Don't leave that fire. Please don't leave the fire. She estimated the last time she spoke with him was around 8 or 8.30 on the evening of July 3rd.

15:16In a final exchange of words, Melody said she warned him not to leave the burn pile burning. He said you are not going to bed in leaving that fire. How big was the fire when he lit it? Massive. As massive as the fire might have been, Melody said something else caught her attention that night. The horses had escaped the gated pasture. I had two horses. He got out, so I was chasing them. She called Scott, who spent the day at his friend's lake house. Scott remembered getting back to the farm that night at around 11 or 11.30, when he saw a glow in the distance. Immediately when I pulled in the driveway, I could see the fire going in the woods.

16:02He assumed Gary was being irresponsible.

16:10Early the next morning, Scott said he called Melody. He needed the debit card. He and Melody used the same card that had Gary's name on it. She walked it out to me, handed it to me out the door. And I went, got some cash out of the ATM, came back, gave her the card, and I left. I went to go play golf. He had a 7.30 a.m. round of golf planned and then was heading back to his friend's lake house. Melody was heading to the same lake as Scott, but a different area. She was going to spend the day with her daughter Amanda, along with Amanda's fiancé and his daughter. According to Amanda, Gary didn't accept an earlier invitation to join in the holiday fun.

16:58Melody said they didn't see him when they returned in the evening. In the Ferris family, that was just normal for Gary. After spending the 4th of July at the lake, two of the Ferris grandchildren slept over at the farm. By the time Amanda showed up at the house the next morning, the grandkids were asking Melody if they could see their grandpa, Big Daddy. And they said they couldn't find him. well about that time Scott showed up at the house and I said hey have you seen your dad over at the barn his immediate reaction there's a gun missing he took off and went into the house Amanda followed him immediately I went on into the house going what is he talking about what did he say

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18:25Give me a sense of how this story started for you. It was a typical day at the office for me. We had just finished lunch. In 2024, Detective Daniel Hayes drove us to the Ferris' family property. He told me about the moment he got that call. I believe I was in the car with Detective Kuykendall and we heard the radio call. What did it say? That a body was found in a fire. The family had called at 9-1-1 and said they had just found their father and his remains in the fire. He was familiar with this affluent part of Cherokee County and figured what happened here was an accident. It was a hot day in July.

19:06We thought, from what it sounded like, sometimes it happens. Somebody's by a fire, it's already 90-something degrees outside. A medical episode happened and he fell into the fire. They didn't even think the case would take long. Detective Kackendall and I both were, you know, let's go up here and get this knocked out so we can get home in time for dinner. Once he drove up the Ferris' long driveway, Detective Hayes got out of his car and made his way to the burn pile. Give me a sense of what you saw as you're walking up to it. Describe it for me. You went past their three-car garage and a big chicken coop, and we walked through the backyard.

19:48It was wooded. You know, the trees, there was no grass or anything like that, and it was a downhill, a gradual downhill slope. And we were taken to this very large pile of debris that was still smoldering. It was still smoking. And while Detective Hayes had never investigated a body found in a burn pile before, one thing was certain. This guy didn't have a heart attack or a heat stroke and fall into the fire and burn the side of his arm. This guy's been in this fire burning for quite some time, in my opinion. Which suggested someone must have placed him there? I found it hard to believe that he could be missing from this property with this affluent family for any length of time back there burning, you know.

20:36So that indicated to me that someone likely possibly knew that he was back there burning and was helping it continue to burn. What Detective Hayes first thought could have been a tragic accident now looked like a murder. They brought in canines to help search the property. Detective Hayes went inside the house. Any evidence whatsoever in the house of a break-in? No. Any sign of a struggle inside that house, that a battle had gone on? The house was, other than a few visible drops of blood that were left on the floor, the house was in pretty immaculate condition. Investigators then checked if there was more blood, invisible to the naked eye, by spraying a special chemical across the floor You spray it on blood and take a picture of it, if there's blood there it's supposed to glow They found some on the floor upstairs, they found some on the floor downstairs in the basement They found some on the stairs leading down to the basement on the carpet, there was blood evidence And does that suggest in any way some sort of progression of an attack on Gary?

21:41That's what we interpreted it as as we started looking at it. Spots of blood weren't the only things they found in the basement. One of Detective Hayes' colleagues later noticed something on the floor. He sees it, kind of sees a shiny object or something, gets closer looks and says, that's a bullet. Outside, sheriff's deputies found more evidence. It was pointed out to us that the tractor was parked in an area, a position that is uncommon. Scott told detectives that the tractor Gary regularly used was parked in the yard and not under the shed where Gary usually parked. This tractor has been moved by someone who left it there on purpose, forgot that, you know, Gary's rules about it.

22:31Once detectives got a closer look, they noticed something. Gary's blood was found on the tractor around one of the steps. We're talking, though, a couple of drops, right? Not much, yeah. There was also blood on RTV. Detectives talked to the oldest, Chris Ferris. Chris was already en route to pick up his daughter from her sleepover at the farm that morning when Amanda called with news that their father was missing. Chris recounted his movements in an interview with detectives a few weeks after the remains were discovered. I was mad because nobody seemed to have any sense of urgency about this. Chris said that he was on the RTV looking for his father when he spotted Melody walking towards the burn pile.

23:21He was suspicious no one in the family had checked that area until after he arrived. It's like, well, somebody's about to find something out, so let's get it over with. You know, that's, I don't, I mean, that's just what pops into my mind. Like, why, why did it take me getting there for this to happen? Scott also told detectives about something he thought was strange. Back on the first day of the investigation, Scott noticed more than just his father was missing. A few weeks before Gary disappeared, Scott said he saw an unfamiliar.38 snub-nosed revolver in a basement drawer. It wasn't a gun that I've, you know, grown up seeing.

24:07However, when he searched the house the day of his father's disappearance, the gun was gone. Later, he told detectives that during that same search, Melody walked up to him, holding something that belonged to Gary. She came back out with his wallet. That didn't sit right with Scott. He had looked earlier for that wallet because he said his father only kept it in two places, a dresser or his back pocket. I'm like, where did you get this? Well, it was in the car. It was underneath his cigarettes. He never leaves his wallet underneath cigarettes in the car. Detectives spoke to Scott that night until the early morning of July 6th.

24:50That's when Detective Hayes decided to let Scott in on a major new discovery. I gotta tell you something, and it's not easy, but there's no good way to say it. Detective Hayes told Scott that investigators had recorded a temperature of 230 degrees Fahrenheit in the spot where they found the remains. Destroying a ton of DNA, but the extreme heat hadn't destroyed an ominous object. They've been excavating and sifting the ashes. They found a piece of ribs and it has a bullet in it. So the evidence is showing that your, the remains, if they are in fact your father's, has been shot. It was in the ribs, not the head?

25:39Correct. So far that's what they've found.

25:45Did y 'all search that house for about 38? They're doing it right now.