November 7, 2024 • 43 mins
How does a 130 pound, 58-year-old woman, put her 6'3", 300 pound husband on a burn pile?
When law enforcement was called to a farm outside of Atlanta, they were told a body was found burned up in a burn pile. Taking a quick look around, the body is burned beyond recognition, but it is probably 58-year-old Gary Farris. He and his wife Melody live on the 10-acre farm. Gary Farris is a big man, 6 foot 3 inches tall, 300 pounds, it looks like he might have had a heart attack and fallen into the burn pile, dead. His body is burned to the bone and he is identified by dental records. But before this death can be written up as a natural death, a bullet is found lodged in one of his ribs! Joseph Scott Morgan will unpack what it's like to investigate a death that starts in a burn pile and Dave Mack will share how investigators put together a case that ends up with Gary Farris wife, Melody, convicted for his murder.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.47 Introduction - moving heavy weight
04:31.17 How to move 300 pounds of dead weight
09:45.12 What happens to a body when it is burned
14:06.78 Melody Farris burns body of husband
19:01.72 Can't get a height on a body that's been burned
25:52.49 Collecting body from burned area
30:37.21 How big is a bullet?
34:34.87 What was used to start fire?
39:29.36 Smell of Citronella at burn pit
42:02.85 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body buys, but Joseph's got more. I've been having these
ongoing discussions with my buddy Dave mac and the one
thing that Dave and I have in common other than
gray hair, is annoying back injuries. It's just one of
(00:23):
those things that just sticks with you. It's nagging. And
just briefly, let me tell you how I wound up
with back pain when I was twenty or so started
working in the Morgue. And the thing about working in
the morgue as an autopsy assistant back then, I had
(00:46):
no help. So daily I would go into the Morgue,
and being young and arrogant and not knowing the limitations
of my mortal body, I would move other body sometimes
that outweighed me times two. I literally remember having a
(01:09):
five hundred pound body follow on me one day in
the Moru by myself. It was terrifying, and not in
the sense that ghosties and goblins and those sorts of things.
It was terrifying thinking this is literally dead weight and
I am going to have to extricate myself from this body.
(01:34):
And then once I do, I'm still faced with the
prospect of getting the body up off the floor. Now
think about that in a sense of you're one hundred
and thirty pound woman and for whatever reason, you don't
like your husband too much and you decide to take
(01:56):
his life. The only problem is once you take his life,
what do you do with him? How are you going
to move him? Because this guy three hundred pounds plus,
what do you do? Do you call on help, do
you call on adrenaline or do you wish it to disappear? Well,
(02:16):
in today's case, we're going to talk about an individual
that certainly took initiative in the case involving her husband
and his homicide, but she put in a lot of
hard work, but still to no end. Today we're going
(02:37):
to talk about what is now being referred to as
the burn Pile murder, involving Melody Ferris out of Georgia.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks. Many people,
Dave have heard the term dead weight, and they really
(02:59):
don't understand what it is. I've tried to describe it generally.
The only way I can really describe it to people
is picking up sacutators, all right, a really big sactators.
The sactators don't help you when you're moving them. You
have to do it yourself. Or if you've ever been
(03:20):
in the military, filling sandbags, moving sandbags. Sandbags don't help you.
You know, when people are alive, you don't think about it.
But let's say, for instance, even if you're a more
diminutive person, you wrap your arms around somebody and you
pick them up. People don't understand kind of the biomechanics
(03:40):
of this and the fact that the person that is
being picked up is technically helping you because of their
inner ear, their equilibrium. They adjust. Now, sometimes this winds
up badly, but it's different than deadweight. And in our
case today, we've got this diminutive wife who decided that
(04:02):
she was going to do something rather ghastly with her
husband's remains, who, by the way, she had murdered. Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
The story of the burn pile murder. Melody Ferris accused
of killing her husband Gary Ferris, fifty eight years old
at the time. He's a big guy, pushing three hundred
pounds when he was like six foot four. He was
not a small man her one hundred and thirty pound frame.
I thought the first thing was she either had help
(04:33):
or something else.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well, well, let me freeze you, right, there. You know
what Kim said, My wife said when I told her
that we're going to do this case, because she's kind
of been following it, she said, she had to have
had a wheelbarrow. That's that's what That's what Kim was saying. Sure,
you know, and so you know you have to think
of it that way.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well, here's what else though, in looking at the case,
the actual geography of the area. They have a ten
acre farm in Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, and the
when you look at pictures overhead the map view, yeah,
(05:16):
it doesn't show the terrain. And even looking at some
of the pictures there, it didn't show the grade of
the hill. Yep, it was only a juror that went
there to the scene because they were able to take
this has been adjudicated, and they took the jury out
to the scene, and that was what convinced a juror
(05:36):
that Melody Ferris could do it by herself. And so
I listened to her and she explained it the grade
from the house to the to the fire of the
burn pile was actually enough of a grade downhill that
gravity could have had something to do with her ability
to get him in there by herself. Now, Joe, I
(05:59):
have to ask ask you this right now, because you
have filed it. As you followed around and you mentioned Kim.
We have a couple that's been married for three decades.
There has been in fidelity. There's been a lot going
on here in this case. But you have a man,
a very large man, who actually dies and falls into
the burn pit when police are called to the scene.
(06:20):
When they get the call, they show up because there's
a dude that is burned to death in the burn file,
and they thought he had a heart attack and fell
in that some type of medical issue happened. They did
not at first think he had been murdered and then
drug into the burn pile, right, And it was at
first it looked at that way, I say, at first,
(06:43):
but I know that there's two things that happen in
an investigation. There is the thing that they talk to
in the media and other people, and then there's the
thing they talk about amongst themselves. Some hinky here something right, yeah, yeah,
And that's what happened. And in this case, while they
publicly were saying, you know, we believe that he had
(07:04):
a medical emergency of some sort and fell into the
burn pile and that's what caused his demise and that
he had to be He was burned enough that he
had to be identified by dental records. So this lays
out a case for us, Joseph Scott Morgan and I'm
so glad. I'm not glad recovering it because it means
that somebody is dead in.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
A very heav This is what we do, man, But
I can't flee from that. That's right, we do.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, But after doing the show with you many times,
you have discussed what it would take to build a
fire to break down a body to the point where
you couldn't identify it. And you have said on this
show to me many times, you would have to have
that thing burning really hot and for a really long time.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yep, yep, yeah, you do. Uh, and it takes, it
takes a protracted period of time. And let me let
me direct our friends here to a video if you've
never seen it out there, and it's actually on YouTube,
and it is a video. I think it's called Secrets
of the Body Farm. And people think that it's all
(08:14):
going to be about skeletal remains and it's not because
they actually do testing and this is gruesome. I got
to tell you right from Jump Street, it's very gruesome.
The forensic anthropology PhD students, what they will do up
there is actually dismember a body and they will starting
(08:37):
using charcoal, like you know charcoal that you're get in
a bag. They'll start with multiple bags of charcoal and
they'll get a fire roll in with it and they
have a big pit and then they feed it with
wood and then they'll take a dismembered human remain. And
this is actually on camera. It's one of the I've
(08:59):
actually had students that left the room when they were watching,
and this is available on YouTube. It's not like I
guess there might be an age requirement. I have no idea.
That's not my that's not my areas down the hall
to the left. But you can see you can see
just with a single arm, the arm beginning to contract.
(09:20):
And the reason it contracts is, you know, we we
have this the way the body is structured, all of
the connected tissue, as a result of the heat, responds
to the heat by drawing up. So you know, if
you find a body that has been burned, you'll have
them in what's referred to as the fighter's position, or
(09:42):
the pugilistic position. The hands actually draw up to the
face and the head like you're you know, pugilism is
actually a term that used to be applied to boxing.
You're a pugilist, and it was they didn't know the
term boxing, so that we talk about pugilism what it's
called a pew jollistic posture. So the hands contract, you know,
(10:03):
the fingers, the risk contract, the elbows contract, and even
the shoulders and the arms will draw up like this.
It almost looks like they're in a protective pose as
opposed to, you know, like an attack pose. But the
only thing that could really come up with is, hey,
this person looks like a boxer. And the reason I
bring up this this idea the Secrets of the Body Form.
I think that's the name of the title. Somebody correct me,
(10:25):
but is that it gives you a real insight into
what we see at the scenes and you're talking about.
First off, you do have the initial like spot on
heat that you're dealing with at that moment in time
where you know, you introduce a body into a bonfire
(10:45):
and let's say you've got it rolling for a while.
It might be I don't know, anywhere from nine hundred
toy maybe top in thirteen hundred degrees, and you'll get
that initial burst of heat when a body is exposed
to that. However, the big part with outdoor bonfires and
(11:08):
burn pits is that the fires, and I think this
might be what you're getting today, fires have to be tended. Well.
The fires are tended, you have to have them in
in a position where you have ongoing fuel. You have
(11:29):
an uninterrupted source of oxygen. Okay, where oxygen is free flowing,
it's fueling. You know. You have to have oxygen to
have fire, and then you have to have fuel in
the form of wood or something else that's flammable to
maintain that heat. Because have you ever seen a fire
that'll kind of go cold. It'll be warm, you know,
but when you add fuel to it again, it kind
(11:52):
of bursts burst up. And in order to sustain that
level of heat, not only do you have to put
wood or another fuel source on it, but you also
have to turn it. And whatever happened out there at
that burn pit when his body was taken out their Dave,
(12:14):
his body was burned to the point that you have
whate referred to as fourth degree burns. Most people don't
think about fourth degree burns. They only think about first, second, third. Well,
if you have fourth degree burning, fourth gree burning means
that you literally have you have elements of the skeleton
(12:34):
that are visible. Now, do living people actually have fourth
degree burns and can survive because you know your chance
is to surviving third degree burns are slim and none.
It's dependent upon where you know the surface area that's
involved fourth degree burns. I have heard of these cases
(12:55):
where people are trapped in a location and it's generally
like a a burning vehicle. The fire is only say,
making contact with maybe the feet and the ankles, and
the rest of the body is protected. There have been
cases where people's feet have literally been burned off. And
(13:19):
if you can, you know, if the person can, if
you can prevent them from going into shock, you can
survive it. But it's such a This guy had force
green burns all over his body to the point where
his ribs were all visible. And it creates a real
problem for you as an investigator because you know what's
(13:39):
the purpose of fire. Well, it's not just a heat source.
It's used to destroy things. Okay, that's why that's why
those with malevolent intentions use fire Because they're trying to
eradicate any evidence that might be there, anything that would
wipe away their connection to perhaps a death, or maybe
(14:04):
some other bit of evidence involving a nefarious action that
they might have been engaged in. But we do know
this with the body of this gentleman that Melody Ferris
essentially torched, this is her own husband, who she has
(14:26):
created a family with and had children. We do know
that heat was applied by her in order to eradicate
any memory of him. I don't know what it takes, Dave.
(14:56):
I've thought about this for many years. What button it
has to be pushed so that it drives an individual
to look at the person that's laying in bed next
to them or maybe in this case, occupying another wing
of the home. We'll get into that in a second.
(15:17):
What drives this individual to the point where they say, Okay,
I'm not going to leave, I'm not going to walk
away and start my life over. What drives that person
to the point where Okay, I'm going to take firearm
fired into their body and burn them up. You know, still,
(15:38):
to this day, I don't know that there is a
specific point that is uniform, you know, a long spectrum.
I don't know if there is is an actual trigger
point for that, but I've always been fascinated by the
proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and I think
that there were a lot of these instances throughout this marriage,
(15:59):
weren't there day.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Gary Ferris was a very successful attorney in Atlanta, a
corporate attorney dealing with a lot of big business, is
a lot of big money, and they had some squabbles
about money, and when Gary finally took her off the
bank account, it was like, yeah, I trust you and
we're going to work this out, but you're not having
access to this anymore. And there were some accusations made
(16:23):
about what she had done with money, you know, and
which gave him the reason to do it. We have
a relationship pretty much in ruins when it comes to trust.
You mentioned early on what would take make somebody look
over the person that they've been spending their life with
and decide, I'm going to take this person out, and
I'm going to do it in such a way that
(16:44):
I can get away with it. He's going to be
dead and I'm going to burn his remains in the fire,
so they can't even find out what killed him. And
to be honest with you, it almost worked, Joe. The
only thing that really hit in this. There are so
many questions I have in this for you, Okay. Right
when police are called to the scene, the body had
been on the fire long enough to be down to
(17:05):
where they could not identify him. They didn't know how
tall he was because of what was left of the remains.
You mentioned, his rib cage was showing. And after they
looked at him and identify him with dental records, then
they notice, hey, there's a bullet in one of these ribs. Yep,
And all of a sudden, now it's a murder investigation.
(17:26):
It's a homicide and I want to know. And here's
I wrote it down, because there are things we don't know,
even after the trial, Joe, we do not know I
mean this. We know that Gary Ferris had a bullet
in his rib, one of his ribs, but we do
not know where he was shot. We don't know when
(17:51):
he was shot. We don't know how his body ended
up on the burn pile. He could have been shot
right there and then pushed in the burn pile or
he could have been murdered in the basement of the
house and drugged down to the burn pile. But even
after the trial, and we don't know, and you're the investigator, I.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Don't know that, brother, I don't know that we'll ever know,
you know, sequencing here because again, you know, you still
have that bit of doubt that exists there. And I
think that if this case ever went up on appeal,
that could be an underpinning, you know, to kind of
build that whole process out. It's fascinating to me because
(18:39):
one of the things that you lose with with the
burned bodies, and this goes to what you had mentioned
about getting gettngary ided is that you lose elements of
the body to the extent that and I've had this happen.
You cannot get a height on a body. Again. You
(19:00):
receive a body in a body bag that has come
from a house fire or from any kind of fire.
And do you remember how I was talking about pugilism.
You'll have the body drawn up and it almost looks
like a fetal position. The hips are flexed, the knees
are flexed, and they flexed to the point where they're
(19:20):
contracted where they're drawn in to the torso okay, and
then the arms and the shoulders actually kind of drop
down and draw up like this. You're losing volume. What's
the first thing that you're going to lose with with
fire a body that's exposed to fire. Well, I think
(19:44):
some people would say, oh, well, you know, clothing, hair
that that might be accurate. Those are very superficial things.
What's going to lose is water weight? Because you'd be surprised.
I think people would really be. You know, there's the
adage that you know, there's an overwhelming percentage of our
(20:05):
total body is made up of water. I think we've
heard that for years and years, and that is the honest,
goodness truth. Even when you look at a bone, a
singular bone that has been burned, you can one of
the things that forensic anthropologists do, and there's a forensic
pathologist that is involved in this case. By the way,
(20:25):
you will actually take Let's say you have a human femur,
which is the largest long bone in the body. It's
where your hip is extends down to your knee. It's
the most robust that bone. If you have a suspected
guide that is X number of years old a height
(20:46):
in life that you know of, and maybe three hundred pounds.
The bone itself has an expected weight. Okay, Now, if
you pick that bone up, it'll have a if it's
not charred completely, it will have kind of a yellowed,
(21:07):
almost parchment like appearance to it. And that goes to heat.
And what's happened is the bone is actually cooked from
the inside out. You lose all of the water that's
contained in there, so the bone is actually lighter when
you're holding I've actually done this. I've actually held two.
I don't think there were femurs. There were two humorouses
(21:31):
or humor eye, I don't know, the upper long bones
in the arms, and one had been subjected to indirect fire,
not in the flame, but adjacent, you know, so that
its heat, you know, heat is impacting it, and the
other had in fact remained intact. And you could tell
(21:51):
that there is a precipitous difference between the two ways
because the water has all gone out. So one of
the ways that we get bodies identified, Dave traditionally has
been visual inspection of the body. Now, you know, you
can go back to the old days where we would
show families the body. You know, you pull it back
and you know the sheet and everything, and you know
(22:13):
in Hollywood people faint or they gasp. Those things do happen,
but not so much in a case like this. It
would be the height of cruelty to show a family
member or body that has charred and contracted and burned
beyond recognition. So now you reliant upon the science. You
(22:34):
know what, what physical elements are still there that you
can say, Okay, this is in fact this man who
is now currently missing, and we suspect that this is him,
it's on his property and he's deceased. Well, the only
thing you have left to turn to is, you know,
or his teeth. Here, here's one other piece to this.
(22:56):
I think that's very important. When they when they received
this body day in the body bag, before that body
is ever going to be opened, the bag is ever
going to be opened. I can tell you where they
did this autops. They did it at GBI headquarters where
the State Medical Examiner's office is. I was actually signed
there for I think seven or eight of the longest
months of my life working for the State Medical Examiner
(23:20):
for a while in Georgia. The first thing that's going
to happen is that body is going to be x
rayed in the bag. And when you're collecting a body
at a fire scene, here's what happens. And this happens
particularly with structural fires. Many times you will go after
(23:42):
the actual body has been lifted out of that space.
It's a practice to take a shovel, like a very
broad have you ever seen these really broad shovels. They're
not as big as a snowshovel.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I was going to say kind of like a snowshovel, but.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It kind of but a little bit smaller. We actually
scoop stuff up and then put it in the bag
along with the body. And sometimes they'll bag it individually,
and if they do, that's fine, it will still accompany
the body. To the more, all those bags before you
open them will in fact be x rayed. Okay. And
just to give you an idea when when you have
(24:16):
like a house fire, if this is a traditional burn
pit which they're using, which a lot of people in
the country have burn pits because they're getting ready of debris,
old lumber trees that are broken down, anything that's there
that it can't be hauled off or they don't want
to haul it off. They're just going to burn it
right there. So many times what will happen is that
(24:37):
when you're X ray in a body, you'll see old nails, screws, washers, nuts,
I found old bottle caps. What else have I found?
Oh yeah, bullets? And it's a radio opaque appearance when
you're seeing these things. The problem is when you're talking
(24:58):
when you're talking about a burned body and you're trying
to assess what's in there. Is that because the body
is so has been so anatomically compromised, Dave that when
you look at the x ray, it's not like going
to the hospital and getting an X ray where you
can say, okay, you've got a fracture of the head
(25:20):
of your humorous or whatever. It's right here. Let things
displace now because of fire, and not to mention anything
that attached itself to the body as the body is
cooking in there, and so it's all a skewed there's
no real The standard anatomical orientation that you're looking at
when you're reading an X ray, say like in the hospital,
(25:41):
doesn't apply in the MORKU. It's all skewed because everything's
so contracted. It is outside the norms. So you really
have to be creative with the way you're looking at
this thing, because you can't. Even though you have the
X ray and you've got it upon a lightboard the
autopsy room, when you open that bag, you still have
(26:03):
to be very careful. My suspicion is is that when
they began to open this bag, they knew from that moment.
Can you imagine what an epiphany this was in a morgue,
because I've been there to see this happen, and it's
it is. It is amazing. To say the least, it
(26:24):
sends a chill up your spine because you'll have like
a house fire. I've had two things that have really
chilled me over the years relative to evidence, finding bullets
and finding broken knife blades, particularly the tip of a
blade that has been snapped off in a bone after
it's been you know, buried in this person's body multiple times,
(26:47):
and you'll see these things on it and you think,
oh my gosh, because at first you don't believe what
you're seeing, say, oh my gosh, you know, did I
miss something. I've got to be really really careful now.
The other thing that you contend with, just like you
know how I was talking about how the bone loses,
It loses that volume of water that it contains and
(27:10):
it changes. Well, bullets, which are a lead core projectile,
their dimensions will become compromised in a fire as well.
So let's just say we have a projectile that weighs
a certain number of grains, okay, which is how bullets
(27:30):
are measured in weight grains. You might look at it
in dimensionally. Say, for instance, you know, when you're looking
at the size of the bullet, if you've got the
base of the bullet, you can approximate the caliber, like
is it a nine to milimeter, a forty cow is it,
(27:52):
I don't know, a twenty two caliber. In this case,
we're looking at thirty eight okay. Now, every he's heard
the term thirty eight, most of the time it's associated
with a round that's called a thirty eight special, which
is a revolver round. That's compared to a point three
(28:14):
eight zero, which is a three point eighty, which is
actually a semi automatic round. Well, dimensionally, their circumference is
the same point three eight inches in circumference, Well, you
lose that volume of the weight of the bullet. Now,
if you have the base, you can still approximate the caliber,
(28:36):
but you're losing elements of that along the way. What
they did take note of, though, is that there will
fracture bony bony structures within the body that had been
probably fractured by the bullet. The bullet was actually found
lodged in a rib, but one of the things they
(28:58):
were faced with. They knew that they had point three eight,
But the question is did it come from a three
eighty auto or did it come from I'm thirty eight
special Dave. I'm showing Dave right now. You guys can't
(29:28):
see it obviously because we're not on YouTube yet, but
Dave and I we have camera between us. I'm showing
Dave right now a nine millimeter projectile and the people
are pocket come to work. No, I'm not going to
and I'm not going to have it as I'm going
through TSA. I can hope that. But yeah, okay, do
you know that? Did you know? I actually frisked myself
(29:51):
every time I go to the airport. Now I've heard
and it's not that I walk around with loose ammunition
in my pocket. I always have this. It called me paranoid.
Always have this this fear that somebody has slipped something
into my pocket and I'm gonna get thrown against a
wall or something. I always frisk myself. People might think
I'm absolutely insane before I go through t s.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
At see what we got here, I'm caring Stark.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And I'm such a Looney Tunes and absent minded. Many
times I forget, you know that I've got something, you know,
like coins in my pocket and all kinds of things
like that.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Plus you get bagger and somebody packet for you.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah that's true. Uh yeah, So but you know the
nine millimeter and people are very familiar with that round
is that's obviously measured on the metric scale. Okay, so
when you hear point three eight, that's the British what
they refer to as as the British numbering system, and
(30:53):
it's a it's a system that we've used and it's
based on standardized measurements. Uh you think about inches. Okay,
so as opposed to metric, you have the British measurement
system and we kind of exchange these back and forth.
But I guess the nine mill I guess the nine
millimeter is probably about as close to a point three
(31:17):
to eight as you can get. Of course, you jump
up to a point four zero caliber, which obviously is
two ticks bigger than the thirty eight, but the nine
is generally a bit closer, a bit closer to a
thirty eight. When a bullet actually hammers into a body,
(31:41):
and I say bullet, I need to chastise myself for that,
because bullets don't slam into bodies. Projectiles do. The bullet
is the intact cartridge that still has it's on fired.
So once you send that round down range and the
projectile slams into the body, well depended upon the makeup
in this case with this is actually this nine milimeter
(32:02):
I'm showing, he's actually a Holow point. This is a
hydra shock. It mushrooms and expands. So with an expanding
projectile like this, it'll jump from say if it's technically
it's supposed to do this, they don't always work. But
when it deploys the little wings, the circumference doubles at
(32:23):
that point in top. Okay, so you might go from
a nine millimeter up to something that's roughly fifteen millimeters
in circumference. So you're throwing that into the body. It's
supposed to expand and tear it more tissue and it
stays in the body with a thirty eight point three eight,
(32:44):
and that's slamming into the body. Well, you can have holowpoint.
You can have holowpoint rounds with thirty eight, certainly with
point three eight zero and which is a semi automatic
round thirty eight special as a revolver. It turns out, Dave,
that they're looking at zero point three eight zero auto,
(33:06):
which means that when they get this projectile out of
the body, they're going to try to compare it to
other things that they might find around it. Interestingly enough,
my understanding is that in the Fairis' case, they did
find another round and it was laying on the basement
(33:26):
floor in the house adjacent to blood.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Which is why there's a question of where was where
was he killed? Because the belief is that he wasn't
shot right there at the burn pile, that he was
shot elsewhere and then brought to the burn pile. It's
the blood and the bullet. Well, they weren't able to
(33:52):
go much further than that, Joe, and something right, yes.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Let me say something right here. This is one thing
that I can't get past and this is the medical
emergency aspect of this. They thought that he had a
medical emergency, and medical emergency generally would mean, I think
one of two things. Either you've had a stroke or
you've had an m I an infarction myocardial infarction, which is,
(34:19):
you know, fancy term for common vernacular's heart attack when
you look at the burn pile, and I think it
was actually his son that found him on the burn pile. Okay,
so is there any evidence out there of a starter,
(34:42):
gas cans, matches, lighters, anything out there, Because if Gary
Ferris is out there and he's burning debris on his
burn pile, it would stand a reason that as an
adjunct to this, you know, to this, he would have
(35:02):
starter that was out there where his fingerprints on any
of the starter. If you did have a gas can
or whatever it is that you're trying to ignite this
thing with, because this is a really hot fire, this
would have and they would have known this. The investigators
would have known this fire. And my suspicion is that
not only did they have regular investigators out there, Dave,
(35:24):
they're going to have arson investigators. And by the way,
one of the biggest neglected areas of getting respect in
forensics are arson investigators. They're probably the most forensic of
any forensic that's out there, and people don't talk about
them a lot because they're miracle workers. As far as
I'm concerned, I worked a lot of fire desks and
(35:44):
over the course of my career, and it all looks
like a big pile of black mashed potatoes when I'm
out there. But for them, they can look at a
scene like that, that's not what they're seeing, see things
that I can never see because I don't have that
level of training in fire related deaths or arsons and
(36:07):
that sort of thing. They would have been out there
to take a look. They would have talked about how
deep the fire went, imagine that they can actually measure
the depth out there, How what remnants were out there
that might be associated with any kind of ignition that
may have started the fire. They would have assessed all that.
(36:30):
They would have taken samples dave out there to check
for accelerant, okay, like anything that was associated if you'd
poured gas on it or you know, lighter fluid or
whatever it is. They would have attempted to assess it
from that perspective. So anyway, I had to give a
shout out to the arson people because they're going to
(36:50):
be involved in a case like this, so you've got
multiple eyes on this case. And then to try to understand, well,
if you're having a medical emergency, you're telling me that
this guy has a heart attack and falls over into
a blazing fire, right and the heart attack facilitated him
(37:10):
dropping dead and just going, I mean, graveyard dead, right
into the fire, no reaction to it whatsoever. People have
heart attacks every day, but that doesn't mean that they're
not responded to pain.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
They're not all widow makers. They don't talk them out right, then.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
No, they're not. And even with strokes, and I know
that there are exceptions, but there's no effort to move
off the fire, right, you know, he's just there. So
I've got a lot of questions relative to that.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
The thing is, Joe is a lot of those questions
are still not answered now when looking at the fire.
Here's what I was trying to figure out, because you
have taught me so many things about death fires and
things like that, and the one thing that came to
my mind, Okay, his body is on the burn pile.
First of all, how long would it take and I'm
(37:59):
out door fire pit, how long would it take to
render down that body? And how often would that fire
have to be stoked?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Joe, Yeah, it's bonfires even to a certain degree, well
to a great degree, probably lesser, but even fireplace fires
are one of the most inefficient heat sources there are
because you're constantly losing that radiating heat. Okay outdoor, Yeah,
(38:29):
it is outdoor, so you're bleeding off heat all the while.
And it's you're not going back to physical science class here.
You're not making you're not making the best use of
the unrestricted chemical chain reaction. That's that's literally occurring before
you heat source, vaporization, sustainability and fueling and retaining that energy.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well, the one thing that was noticed in the police
report the overwhelming smell of centronell. I had to look
it up because centronella is actually something in mosquito repellent, yes,
and it is also used in those fire logs that
(39:20):
we use to put on the fire to burn hotter
longer without tending to them. And that was there was
an overwhelming smell of centronella at the burn pit.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
And you also keep those we don't have a pool.
You know, I know, you know people that have a pool.
But you know you've got the big citronella candles that
are that are out there that people will put all
around we have and you've got the torches. Got to
pour that stuff in.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I've got because we do have a big pool. I've
got those things.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, And so you smell that it's a citrusy smell
that has But it's a petroleum based product. Here's the thing.
It burns at a lower temperature. This is this is
really interesting. It actually burns at a lower temperature than say,
if you were using gas like gasoline. However, however, when
(40:11):
you burn with gasoline. If anybody has ever seen someone
you can see the videos all over the place, Please
do don't do this at home. If you ever see
anybody have a fire outside and they take a cup
of gasoline, don't do it. Don't do it. Pitch it
on the fire. What does it do? Well? People will
say it blows, it's not really exploding as much as
(40:32):
it is flashing over And what is the heat source doing? Well,
it's consuming all of that. Now for a time, it
will burn, but it's not sustainable. It's great to start
a fire with. But when you start to get into
something like citronella, and it's it's kind of a greasy,
a greasy substance. It's got a it will sustain for
(40:58):
a longer period of time. The heat will be lower,
but it will last longer. Okay, it'll burn longer. That's
why it's in candles for instance, you know, or in
these torches that we have out by. Can you imagine
if you had one of those torches and you put
unleaded gas in there and lit that thing. You talk
about an explosion within a canister. This repellent actually burns
(41:22):
at a lower temp, but it's sustainable, so you could
douse an object, even a body, with the stuff, set
it a blaze. And this is kind of interesting. I
didn't think about this, Dave, until you mentioned it. The
smell well bodies And for those of you that have
(41:45):
never smelled a body that's burning, I'll go ahead and
tell you what it smells like. Smells like barbecue. Yeah,
smells like a barbecue. Dave's raising his eyebrows right now,
but that's it. It smells a lot like a pork barbecue. Now,
if you particularly, if you have a body that is unclothed.
(42:08):
It smells just like any other tissue burning. I take
exception to people that say, yeah, I smelled a body
that was burning one time, and it is it's the
most unforgettable smell that you've ever smelled. Well, probably you
created that in your mind where you knew that it
was a human burning, and so automatically you said, well,
(42:30):
it smells unlike anything else. Not to me, it doesn't.
When I'm around bodies, I can't distinguish the difference between
between say, pork ribs that might be cooking on a grill,
when compared to human that is burning. The hair smells bad,
you know, clothing will smell bad. It's all offensive. It's
(42:54):
just thinking about it. So But isn't it interesting though
that if your thought, if you're a perpetrator, your thought is, well,
if I use gas, that might not mask the smell.
But I've been using the citronella candles for a while
and they are very distinctive and they're flammable. Well, the
(43:16):
liquid is flammable, I doubt something into stuff. Who's going
to be to tell the difference is somebody getting rid
of the skeeters around their property or somebody getting rid
of their spouse, Melody Ferris, has been found guilty. She
is looking probably at the rest of her life in prison.
(43:43):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body bags.
Body buys, but Joseph's got more. I've been having these
ongoing discussions with my buddy Dave mac and the one
thing that Dave and I have in common other than
gray hair, is annoying back injuries. It's just one of
(00:23):
those things that just sticks with you. It's nagging. And
just briefly, let me tell you how I wound up
with back pain when I was twenty or so started
working in the Morgue. And the thing about working in
the morgue as an autopsy assistant back then, I had
(00:46):
no help. So daily I would go into the Morgue,
and being young and arrogant and not knowing the limitations
of my mortal body, I would move other body sometimes
that outweighed me times two. I literally remember having a
(01:09):
five hundred pound body follow on me one day in
the Moru by myself. It was terrifying, and not in
the sense that ghosties and goblins and those sorts of things.
It was terrifying thinking this is literally dead weight and
I am going to have to extricate myself from this body.
(01:34):
And then once I do, I'm still faced with the
prospect of getting the body up off the floor. Now
think about that in a sense of you're one hundred
and thirty pound woman and for whatever reason, you don't
like your husband too much and you decide to take
(01:56):
his life. The only problem is once you take his life,
what do you do with him? How are you going
to move him? Because this guy three hundred pounds plus,
what do you do? Do you call on help, do
you call on adrenaline or do you wish it to disappear? Well,
(02:16):
in today's case, we're going to talk about an individual
that certainly took initiative in the case involving her husband
and his homicide, but she put in a lot of
hard work, but still to no end. Today we're going
(02:37):
to talk about what is now being referred to as
the burn Pile murder, involving Melody Ferris out of Georgia.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks. Many people,
Dave have heard the term dead weight, and they really
(02:59):
don't understand what it is. I've tried to describe it generally.
The only way I can really describe it to people
is picking up sacutators, all right, a really big sactators.
The sactators don't help you when you're moving them. You
have to do it yourself. Or if you've ever been
(03:20):
in the military, filling sandbags, moving sandbags. Sandbags don't help you.
You know, when people are alive, you don't think about it.
But let's say, for instance, even if you're a more
diminutive person, you wrap your arms around somebody and you
pick them up. People don't understand kind of the biomechanics
(03:40):
of this and the fact that the person that is
being picked up is technically helping you because of their
inner ear, their equilibrium. They adjust. Now, sometimes this winds
up badly, but it's different than deadweight. And in our
case today, we've got this diminutive wife who decided that
(04:02):
she was going to do something rather ghastly with her
husband's remains, who, by the way, she had murdered. Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
The story of the burn pile murder. Melody Ferris accused
of killing her husband Gary Ferris, fifty eight years old
at the time. He's a big guy, pushing three hundred
pounds when he was like six foot four. He was
not a small man her one hundred and thirty pound frame.
I thought the first thing was she either had help
(04:33):
or something else.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well, well, let me freeze you, right, there. You know
what Kim said, My wife said when I told her
that we're going to do this case, because she's kind
of been following it, she said, she had to have
had a wheelbarrow. That's that's what That's what Kim was saying. Sure,
you know, and so you know you have to think
of it that way.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well, here's what else though, in looking at the case,
the actual geography of the area. They have a ten
acre farm in Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, and the
when you look at pictures overhead the map view, yeah,
(05:16):
it doesn't show the terrain. And even looking at some
of the pictures there, it didn't show the grade of
the hill. Yep, it was only a juror that went
there to the scene because they were able to take
this has been adjudicated, and they took the jury out
to the scene, and that was what convinced a juror
(05:36):
that Melody Ferris could do it by herself. And so
I listened to her and she explained it the grade
from the house to the to the fire of the
burn pile was actually enough of a grade downhill that
gravity could have had something to do with her ability
to get him in there by herself. Now, Joe, I
(05:59):
have to ask ask you this right now, because you
have filed it. As you followed around and you mentioned Kim.
We have a couple that's been married for three decades.
There has been in fidelity. There's been a lot going
on here in this case. But you have a man,
a very large man, who actually dies and falls into
the burn pit when police are called to the scene.
(06:20):
When they get the call, they show up because there's
a dude that is burned to death in the burn file,
and they thought he had a heart attack and fell
in that some type of medical issue happened. They did
not at first think he had been murdered and then
drug into the burn pile, right, And it was at
first it looked at that way, I say, at first,
(06:43):
but I know that there's two things that happen in
an investigation. There is the thing that they talk to
in the media and other people, and then there's the
thing they talk about amongst themselves. Some hinky here something right, yeah, yeah,
And that's what happened. And in this case, while they
publicly were saying, you know, we believe that he had
(07:04):
a medical emergency of some sort and fell into the
burn pile and that's what caused his demise and that
he had to be He was burned enough that he
had to be identified by dental records. So this lays
out a case for us, Joseph Scott Morgan and I'm
so glad. I'm not glad recovering it because it means
that somebody is dead in.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
A very heav This is what we do, man, But
I can't flee from that. That's right, we do.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, But after doing the show with you many times,
you have discussed what it would take to build a
fire to break down a body to the point where
you couldn't identify it. And you have said on this
show to me many times, you would have to have
that thing burning really hot and for a really long time.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yep, yep, yeah, you do. Uh, and it takes, it
takes a protracted period of time. And let me let
me direct our friends here to a video if you've
never seen it out there, and it's actually on YouTube,
and it is a video. I think it's called Secrets
of the Body Farm. And people think that it's all
(08:14):
going to be about skeletal remains and it's not because
they actually do testing and this is gruesome. I got
to tell you right from Jump Street, it's very gruesome.
The forensic anthropology PhD students, what they will do up
there is actually dismember a body and they will starting
(08:37):
using charcoal, like you know charcoal that you're get in
a bag. They'll start with multiple bags of charcoal and
they'll get a fire roll in with it and they
have a big pit and then they feed it with
wood and then they'll take a dismembered human remain. And
this is actually on camera. It's one of the I've
(08:59):
actually had students that left the room when they were watching,
and this is available on YouTube. It's not like I
guess there might be an age requirement. I have no idea.
That's not my that's not my areas down the hall
to the left. But you can see you can see
just with a single arm, the arm beginning to contract.
(09:20):
And the reason it contracts is, you know, we we
have this the way the body is structured, all of
the connected tissue, as a result of the heat, responds
to the heat by drawing up. So you know, if
you find a body that has been burned, you'll have
them in what's referred to as the fighter's position, or
(09:42):
the pugilistic position. The hands actually draw up to the
face and the head like you're you know, pugilism is
actually a term that used to be applied to boxing.
You're a pugilist, and it was they didn't know the
term boxing, so that we talk about pugilism what it's
called a pew jollistic posture. So the hands contract, you know,
(10:03):
the fingers, the risk contract, the elbows contract, and even
the shoulders and the arms will draw up like this.
It almost looks like they're in a protective pose as
opposed to, you know, like an attack pose. But the
only thing that could really come up with is, hey,
this person looks like a boxer. And the reason I
bring up this this idea the Secrets of the Body Form.
I think that's the name of the title. Somebody correct me,
(10:25):
but is that it gives you a real insight into
what we see at the scenes and you're talking about.
First off, you do have the initial like spot on
heat that you're dealing with at that moment in time
where you know, you introduce a body into a bonfire
(10:45):
and let's say you've got it rolling for a while.
It might be I don't know, anywhere from nine hundred
toy maybe top in thirteen hundred degrees, and you'll get
that initial burst of heat when a body is exposed
to that. However, the big part with outdoor bonfires and
(11:08):
burn pits is that the fires, and I think this
might be what you're getting today, fires have to be tended. Well.
The fires are tended, you have to have them in
in a position where you have ongoing fuel. You have
(11:29):
an uninterrupted source of oxygen. Okay, where oxygen is free flowing,
it's fueling. You know. You have to have oxygen to
have fire, and then you have to have fuel in
the form of wood or something else that's flammable to
maintain that heat. Because have you ever seen a fire
that'll kind of go cold. It'll be warm, you know,
but when you add fuel to it again, it kind
(11:52):
of bursts burst up. And in order to sustain that
level of heat, not only do you have to put
wood or another fuel source on it, but you also
have to turn it. And whatever happened out there at
that burn pit when his body was taken out their Dave,
(12:14):
his body was burned to the point that you have
whate referred to as fourth degree burns. Most people don't
think about fourth degree burns. They only think about first, second, third. Well,
if you have fourth degree burning, fourth gree burning means
that you literally have you have elements of the skeleton
(12:34):
that are visible. Now, do living people actually have fourth
degree burns and can survive because you know your chance
is to surviving third degree burns are slim and none.
It's dependent upon where you know the surface area that's
involved fourth degree burns. I have heard of these cases
(12:55):
where people are trapped in a location and it's generally
like a a burning vehicle. The fire is only say,
making contact with maybe the feet and the ankles, and
the rest of the body is protected. There have been
cases where people's feet have literally been burned off. And
(13:19):
if you can, you know, if the person can, if
you can prevent them from going into shock, you can
survive it. But it's such a This guy had force
green burns all over his body to the point where
his ribs were all visible. And it creates a real
problem for you as an investigator because you know what's
(13:39):
the purpose of fire. Well, it's not just a heat source.
It's used to destroy things. Okay, that's why that's why
those with malevolent intentions use fire Because they're trying to
eradicate any evidence that might be there, anything that would
wipe away their connection to perhaps a death, or maybe
(14:04):
some other bit of evidence involving a nefarious action that
they might have been engaged in. But we do know
this with the body of this gentleman that Melody Ferris
essentially torched, this is her own husband, who she has
(14:26):
created a family with and had children. We do know
that heat was applied by her in order to eradicate
any memory of him. I don't know what it takes, Dave.
(14:56):
I've thought about this for many years. What button it
has to be pushed so that it drives an individual
to look at the person that's laying in bed next
to them or maybe in this case, occupying another wing
of the home. We'll get into that in a second.
(15:17):
What drives this individual to the point where they say, Okay,
I'm not going to leave, I'm not going to walk
away and start my life over. What drives that person
to the point where Okay, I'm going to take firearm
fired into their body and burn them up. You know, still,
(15:38):
to this day, I don't know that there is a
specific point that is uniform, you know, a long spectrum.
I don't know if there is is an actual trigger
point for that, but I've always been fascinated by the
proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and I think
that there were a lot of these instances throughout this marriage,
(15:59):
weren't there day.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Gary Ferris was a very successful attorney in Atlanta, a
corporate attorney dealing with a lot of big business, is
a lot of big money, and they had some squabbles
about money, and when Gary finally took her off the
bank account, it was like, yeah, I trust you and
we're going to work this out, but you're not having
access to this anymore. And there were some accusations made
(16:23):
about what she had done with money, you know, and
which gave him the reason to do it. We have
a relationship pretty much in ruins when it comes to trust.
You mentioned early on what would take make somebody look
over the person that they've been spending their life with
and decide, I'm going to take this person out, and
I'm going to do it in such a way that
(16:44):
I can get away with it. He's going to be
dead and I'm going to burn his remains in the fire,
so they can't even find out what killed him. And
to be honest with you, it almost worked, Joe. The
only thing that really hit in this. There are so
many questions I have in this for you, Okay. Right
when police are called to the scene, the body had
been on the fire long enough to be down to
(17:05):
where they could not identify him. They didn't know how
tall he was because of what was left of the remains.
You mentioned, his rib cage was showing. And after they
looked at him and identify him with dental records, then
they notice, hey, there's a bullet in one of these ribs. Yep,
And all of a sudden, now it's a murder investigation.
(17:26):
It's a homicide and I want to know. And here's
I wrote it down, because there are things we don't know,
even after the trial, Joe, we do not know I
mean this. We know that Gary Ferris had a bullet
in his rib, one of his ribs, but we do
not know where he was shot. We don't know when
(17:51):
he was shot. We don't know how his body ended
up on the burn pile. He could have been shot
right there and then pushed in the burn pile or
he could have been murdered in the basement of the
house and drugged down to the burn pile. But even
after the trial, and we don't know, and you're the investigator, I.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Don't know that, brother, I don't know that we'll ever know,
you know, sequencing here because again, you know, you still
have that bit of doubt that exists there. And I
think that if this case ever went up on appeal,
that could be an underpinning, you know, to kind of
build that whole process out. It's fascinating to me because
(18:39):
one of the things that you lose with with the
burned bodies, and this goes to what you had mentioned
about getting gettngary ided is that you lose elements of
the body to the extent that and I've had this happen.
You cannot get a height on a body. Again. You
(19:00):
receive a body in a body bag that has come
from a house fire or from any kind of fire.
And do you remember how I was talking about pugilism.
You'll have the body drawn up and it almost looks
like a fetal position. The hips are flexed, the knees
are flexed, and they flexed to the point where they're
(19:20):
contracted where they're drawn in to the torso okay, and
then the arms and the shoulders actually kind of drop
down and draw up like this. You're losing volume. What's
the first thing that you're going to lose with with
fire a body that's exposed to fire. Well, I think
(19:44):
some people would say, oh, well, you know, clothing, hair
that that might be accurate. Those are very superficial things.
What's going to lose is water weight? Because you'd be surprised.
I think people would really be. You know, there's the
adage that you know, there's an overwhelming percentage of our
(20:05):
total body is made up of water. I think we've
heard that for years and years, and that is the honest,
goodness truth. Even when you look at a bone, a
singular bone that has been burned, you can one of
the things that forensic anthropologists do, and there's a forensic
pathologist that is involved in this case. By the way,
(20:25):
you will actually take Let's say you have a human femur,
which is the largest long bone in the body. It's
where your hip is extends down to your knee. It's
the most robust that bone. If you have a suspected
guide that is X number of years old a height
(20:46):
in life that you know of, and maybe three hundred pounds.
The bone itself has an expected weight. Okay, Now, if
you pick that bone up, it'll have a if it's
not charred completely, it will have kind of a yellowed,
(21:07):
almost parchment like appearance to it. And that goes to heat.
And what's happened is the bone is actually cooked from
the inside out. You lose all of the water that's
contained in there, so the bone is actually lighter when
you're holding I've actually done this. I've actually held two.
I don't think there were femurs. There were two humorouses
(21:31):
or humor eye, I don't know, the upper long bones
in the arms, and one had been subjected to indirect fire,
not in the flame, but adjacent, you know, so that
its heat, you know, heat is impacting it, and the
other had in fact remained intact. And you could tell
(21:51):
that there is a precipitous difference between the two ways
because the water has all gone out. So one of
the ways that we get bodies identified, Dave traditionally has
been visual inspection of the body. Now, you know, you
can go back to the old days where we would
show families the body. You know, you pull it back
and you know the sheet and everything, and you know
(22:13):
in Hollywood people faint or they gasp. Those things do happen,
but not so much in a case like this. It
would be the height of cruelty to show a family
member or body that has charred and contracted and burned
beyond recognition. So now you reliant upon the science. You
(22:34):
know what, what physical elements are still there that you
can say, Okay, this is in fact this man who
is now currently missing, and we suspect that this is him,
it's on his property and he's deceased. Well, the only
thing you have left to turn to is, you know,
or his teeth. Here, here's one other piece to this.
(22:56):
I think that's very important. When they when they received
this body day in the body bag, before that body
is ever going to be opened, the bag is ever
going to be opened. I can tell you where they
did this autops. They did it at GBI headquarters where
the State Medical Examiner's office is. I was actually signed
there for I think seven or eight of the longest
months of my life working for the State Medical Examiner
(23:20):
for a while in Georgia. The first thing that's going
to happen is that body is going to be x
rayed in the bag. And when you're collecting a body
at a fire scene, here's what happens. And this happens
particularly with structural fires. Many times you will go after
(23:42):
the actual body has been lifted out of that space.
It's a practice to take a shovel, like a very
broad have you ever seen these really broad shovels. They're
not as big as a snowshovel.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I was going to say kind of like a snowshovel, but.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It kind of but a little bit smaller. We actually
scoop stuff up and then put it in the bag
along with the body. And sometimes they'll bag it individually,
and if they do, that's fine, it will still accompany
the body. To the more, all those bags before you
open them will in fact be x rayed. Okay. And
just to give you an idea when when you have
(24:16):
like a house fire, if this is a traditional burn
pit which they're using, which a lot of people in
the country have burn pits because they're getting ready of debris,
old lumber trees that are broken down, anything that's there
that it can't be hauled off or they don't want
to haul it off. They're just going to burn it
right there. So many times what will happen is that
(24:37):
when you're X ray in a body, you'll see old nails, screws, washers, nuts,
I found old bottle caps. What else have I found?
Oh yeah, bullets? And it's a radio opaque appearance when
you're seeing these things. The problem is when you're talking
(24:58):
when you're talking about a burned body and you're trying
to assess what's in there. Is that because the body
is so has been so anatomically compromised, Dave that when
you look at the x ray, it's not like going
to the hospital and getting an X ray where you
can say, okay, you've got a fracture of the head
(25:20):
of your humorous or whatever. It's right here. Let things
displace now because of fire, and not to mention anything
that attached itself to the body as the body is
cooking in there, and so it's all a skewed there's
no real The standard anatomical orientation that you're looking at
when you're reading an X ray, say like in the hospital,
(25:41):
doesn't apply in the MORKU. It's all skewed because everything's
so contracted. It is outside the norms. So you really
have to be creative with the way you're looking at
this thing, because you can't. Even though you have the
X ray and you've got it upon a lightboard the
autopsy room, when you open that bag, you still have
(26:03):
to be very careful. My suspicion is is that when
they began to open this bag, they knew from that moment.
Can you imagine what an epiphany this was in a morgue,
because I've been there to see this happen, and it's
it is. It is amazing. To say the least, it
(26:24):
sends a chill up your spine because you'll have like
a house fire. I've had two things that have really
chilled me over the years relative to evidence, finding bullets
and finding broken knife blades, particularly the tip of a
blade that has been snapped off in a bone after
it's been you know, buried in this person's body multiple times,
(26:47):
and you'll see these things on it and you think,
oh my gosh, because at first you don't believe what
you're seeing, say, oh my gosh, you know, did I
miss something. I've got to be really really careful now.
The other thing that you contend with, just like you
know how I was talking about how the bone loses,
It loses that volume of water that it contains and
(27:10):
it changes. Well, bullets, which are a lead core projectile,
their dimensions will become compromised in a fire as well.
So let's just say we have a projectile that weighs
a certain number of grains, okay, which is how bullets
(27:30):
are measured in weight grains. You might look at it
in dimensionally. Say, for instance, you know, when you're looking
at the size of the bullet, if you've got the
base of the bullet, you can approximate the caliber, like
is it a nine to milimeter, a forty cow is it,
(27:52):
I don't know, a twenty two caliber. In this case,
we're looking at thirty eight okay. Now, every he's heard
the term thirty eight, most of the time it's associated
with a round that's called a thirty eight special, which
is a revolver round. That's compared to a point three
(28:14):
eight zero, which is a three point eighty, which is
actually a semi automatic round. Well, dimensionally, their circumference is
the same point three eight inches in circumference, Well, you
lose that volume of the weight of the bullet. Now,
if you have the base, you can still approximate the caliber,
(28:36):
but you're losing elements of that along the way. What
they did take note of, though, is that there will
fracture bony bony structures within the body that had been
probably fractured by the bullet. The bullet was actually found
lodged in a rib, but one of the things they
(28:58):
were faced with. They knew that they had point three eight,
But the question is did it come from a three
eighty auto or did it come from I'm thirty eight
special Dave. I'm showing Dave right now. You guys can't
(29:28):
see it obviously because we're not on YouTube yet, but
Dave and I we have camera between us. I'm showing
Dave right now a nine millimeter projectile and the people
are pocket come to work. No, I'm not going to
and I'm not going to have it as I'm going
through TSA. I can hope that. But yeah, okay, do
you know that? Did you know? I actually frisked myself
(29:51):
every time I go to the airport. Now I've heard
and it's not that I walk around with loose ammunition
in my pocket. I always have this. It called me paranoid.
Always have this this fear that somebody has slipped something
into my pocket and I'm gonna get thrown against a
wall or something. I always frisk myself. People might think
I'm absolutely insane before I go through t s.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
At see what we got here, I'm caring Stark.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And I'm such a Looney Tunes and absent minded. Many
times I forget, you know that I've got something, you know,
like coins in my pocket and all kinds of things
like that.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Plus you get bagger and somebody packet for you.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah that's true. Uh yeah, So but you know the
nine millimeter and people are very familiar with that round
is that's obviously measured on the metric scale. Okay, so
when you hear point three eight, that's the British what
they refer to as as the British numbering system, and
(30:53):
it's a it's a system that we've used and it's
based on standardized measurements. Uh you think about inches. Okay,
so as opposed to metric, you have the British measurement
system and we kind of exchange these back and forth.
But I guess the nine mill I guess the nine
millimeter is probably about as close to a point three
(31:17):
to eight as you can get. Of course, you jump
up to a point four zero caliber, which obviously is
two ticks bigger than the thirty eight, but the nine
is generally a bit closer, a bit closer to a
thirty eight. When a bullet actually hammers into a body,
(31:41):
and I say bullet, I need to chastise myself for that,
because bullets don't slam into bodies. Projectiles do. The bullet
is the intact cartridge that still has it's on fired.
So once you send that round down range and the
projectile slams into the body, well depended upon the makeup
in this case with this is actually this nine milimeter
(32:02):
I'm showing, he's actually a Holow point. This is a
hydra shock. It mushrooms and expands. So with an expanding
projectile like this, it'll jump from say if it's technically
it's supposed to do this, they don't always work. But
when it deploys the little wings, the circumference doubles at
(32:23):
that point in top. Okay, so you might go from
a nine millimeter up to something that's roughly fifteen millimeters
in circumference. So you're throwing that into the body. It's
supposed to expand and tear it more tissue and it
stays in the body with a thirty eight point three eight,
(32:44):
and that's slamming into the body. Well, you can have holowpoint.
You can have holowpoint rounds with thirty eight, certainly with
point three eight zero and which is a semi automatic
round thirty eight special as a revolver. It turns out, Dave,
that they're looking at zero point three eight zero auto,
(33:06):
which means that when they get this projectile out of
the body, they're going to try to compare it to
other things that they might find around it. Interestingly enough,
my understanding is that in the Fairis' case, they did
find another round and it was laying on the basement
(33:26):
floor in the house adjacent to blood.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Which is why there's a question of where was where
was he killed? Because the belief is that he wasn't
shot right there at the burn pile, that he was
shot elsewhere and then brought to the burn pile. It's
the blood and the bullet. Well, they weren't able to
(33:52):
go much further than that, Joe, and something right, yes.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Let me say something right here. This is one thing
that I can't get past and this is the medical
emergency aspect of this. They thought that he had a
medical emergency, and medical emergency generally would mean, I think
one of two things. Either you've had a stroke or
you've had an m I an infarction myocardial infarction, which is,
(34:19):
you know, fancy term for common vernacular's heart attack when
you look at the burn pile, and I think it
was actually his son that found him on the burn pile. Okay,
so is there any evidence out there of a starter,
(34:42):
gas cans, matches, lighters, anything out there, Because if Gary
Ferris is out there and he's burning debris on his
burn pile, it would stand a reason that as an
adjunct to this, you know, to this, he would have
(35:02):
starter that was out there where his fingerprints on any
of the starter. If you did have a gas can
or whatever it is that you're trying to ignite this
thing with, because this is a really hot fire, this
would have and they would have known this. The investigators
would have known this fire. And my suspicion is that
not only did they have regular investigators out there, Dave,
(35:24):
they're going to have arson investigators. And by the way,
one of the biggest neglected areas of getting respect in
forensics are arson investigators. They're probably the most forensic of
any forensic that's out there, and people don't talk about
them a lot because they're miracle workers. As far as
I'm concerned, I worked a lot of fire desks and
(35:44):
over the course of my career, and it all looks
like a big pile of black mashed potatoes when I'm
out there. But for them, they can look at a
scene like that, that's not what they're seeing, see things
that I can never see because I don't have that
level of training in fire related deaths or arsons and
(36:07):
that sort of thing. They would have been out there
to take a look. They would have talked about how
deep the fire went, imagine that they can actually measure
the depth out there, How what remnants were out there
that might be associated with any kind of ignition that
may have started the fire. They would have assessed all that.
(36:30):
They would have taken samples dave out there to check
for accelerant, okay, like anything that was associated if you'd
poured gas on it or you know, lighter fluid or
whatever it is. They would have attempted to assess it
from that perspective. So anyway, I had to give a
shout out to the arson people because they're going to
(36:50):
be involved in a case like this, so you've got
multiple eyes on this case. And then to try to understand, well,
if you're having a medical emergency, you're telling me that
this guy has a heart attack and falls over into
a blazing fire, right and the heart attack facilitated him
(37:10):
dropping dead and just going, I mean, graveyard dead, right
into the fire, no reaction to it whatsoever. People have
heart attacks every day, but that doesn't mean that they're
not responded to pain.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
They're not all widow makers. They don't talk them out right, then.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
No, they're not. And even with strokes, and I know
that there are exceptions, but there's no effort to move
off the fire, right, you know, he's just there. So
I've got a lot of questions relative to that.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
The thing is, Joe is a lot of those questions
are still not answered now when looking at the fire.
Here's what I was trying to figure out, because you
have taught me so many things about death fires and
things like that, and the one thing that came to
my mind, Okay, his body is on the burn pile.
First of all, how long would it take and I'm
(37:59):
out door fire pit, how long would it take to
render down that body? And how often would that fire
have to be stoked?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Joe, Yeah, it's bonfires even to a certain degree, well
to a great degree, probably lesser, but even fireplace fires
are one of the most inefficient heat sources there are
because you're constantly losing that radiating heat. Okay outdoor, Yeah,
(38:29):
it is outdoor, so you're bleeding off heat all the while.
And it's you're not going back to physical science class here.
You're not making you're not making the best use of
the unrestricted chemical chain reaction. That's that's literally occurring before
you heat source, vaporization, sustainability and fueling and retaining that energy.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well, the one thing that was noticed in the police
report the overwhelming smell of centronell. I had to look
it up because centronella is actually something in mosquito repellent, yes,
and it is also used in those fire logs that
(39:20):
we use to put on the fire to burn hotter
longer without tending to them. And that was there was
an overwhelming smell of centronella at the burn pit.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
And you also keep those we don't have a pool.
You know, I know, you know people that have a pool.
But you know you've got the big citronella candles that
are that are out there that people will put all
around we have and you've got the torches. Got to
pour that stuff in.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I've got because we do have a big pool. I've
got those things.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, And so you smell that it's a citrusy smell
that has But it's a petroleum based product. Here's the thing.
It burns at a lower temperature. This is this is
really interesting. It actually burns at a lower temperature than say,
if you were using gas like gasoline. However, however, when
(40:11):
you burn with gasoline. If anybody has ever seen someone
you can see the videos all over the place, Please
do don't do this at home. If you ever see
anybody have a fire outside and they take a cup
of gasoline, don't do it. Don't do it. Pitch it
on the fire. What does it do? Well? People will
say it blows, it's not really exploding as much as
(40:32):
it is flashing over And what is the heat source doing? Well,
it's consuming all of that. Now for a time, it
will burn, but it's not sustainable. It's great to start
a fire with. But when you start to get into
something like citronella, and it's it's kind of a greasy,
a greasy substance. It's got a it will sustain for
(40:58):
a longer period of time. The heat will be lower,
but it will last longer. Okay, it'll burn longer. That's
why it's in candles for instance, you know, or in
these torches that we have out by. Can you imagine
if you had one of those torches and you put
unleaded gas in there and lit that thing. You talk
about an explosion within a canister. This repellent actually burns
(41:22):
at a lower temp, but it's sustainable, so you could
douse an object, even a body, with the stuff, set
it a blaze. And this is kind of interesting. I
didn't think about this, Dave, until you mentioned it. The
smell well bodies And for those of you that have
(41:45):
never smelled a body that's burning, I'll go ahead and
tell you what it smells like. Smells like barbecue. Yeah,
smells like a barbecue. Dave's raising his eyebrows right now,
but that's it. It smells a lot like a pork barbecue. Now,
if you particularly, if you have a body that is unclothed.
(42:08):
It smells just like any other tissue burning. I take
exception to people that say, yeah, I smelled a body
that was burning one time, and it is it's the
most unforgettable smell that you've ever smelled. Well, probably you
created that in your mind where you knew that it
was a human burning, and so automatically you said, well,
(42:30):
it smells unlike anything else. Not to me, it doesn't.
When I'm around bodies, I can't distinguish the difference between
between say, pork ribs that might be cooking on a grill,
when compared to human that is burning. The hair smells bad,
you know, clothing will smell bad. It's all offensive. It's
(42:54):
just thinking about it. So But isn't it interesting though
that if your thought, if you're a perpetrator, your thought is, well,
if I use gas, that might not mask the smell.
But I've been using the citronella candles for a while
and they are very distinctive and they're flammable. Well, the
(43:16):
liquid is flammable, I doubt something into stuff. Who's going
to be to tell the difference is somebody getting rid
of the skeeters around their property or somebody getting rid
of their spouse, Melody Ferris, has been found guilty. She
is looking probably at the rest of her life in prison.
(43:43):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body bags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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