A woman who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering her husband threw her son under the bus for his death just before her sentencing.
Melody Farris, 64, was convicted in Cherokee County, Georgia earlier in November on charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, concealing a death, and making a false statement.
During her trial, prosecutors revealed that Farris had been carrying on an affair in 2009, which reportedly led to the degradation of her marriage to attorney Gary Wayne Farris. Nine years later, Gary was killed.
Just before her sentencing, Farris decided to drop a bomb on the courtroom; she said she was going to reveal the real culprit of her husband’s murder.
According to Farris, it was not she who murdered her husband, but her son Scott.
“I’ve had six-plus years of being told not to talk, don’t say that, take legal advice. I could walk out of this courtroom today and drop over dead,” she told the court. “I want to make sure that my children, my grandchildren, and Gary’s family, and to be honest, at this point in time, the entire world who has viewed this … I have waited for years to make this statement to everyone.”
She accused her son of taking “Big Daddy” from her and his siblings, and said that even though she’d spent her life protecting and loving him, she was going to tell the “truth.” Farris also claimed that her own mother advised her to take the fall for the murder.
This isn’t the first time Scott was accused of his father’s death; Farris’s defense attorneys also tried to pin the blame on her son, basing their argument in part on the fact that it was he who discovered his father’s body in a burn pile on the family’s property.
Police initially believed that Gary had suffered a medical emergency and fell into the burn pile, but they later found a .38 caliber bullet lodged in his chest. The defense argued that Scott was the only member of the family who owned that caliber of bullet.
However, prosecutors argued that Farris and her husband had been arguing about money, noting that Farris was the beneficiary of her husband’s $2m life insurance policy, according to the Tribune Ledger.
Scott, who testified during the trial, denied any involvement in his father’s death.
Farris accused Scott of the murder and of framing her for the death before pleading for mercy from the judge.
“I know that in my heart, body, and soul, who did this,” she said. “And I am begging for help. I’m begging you, Judge Cannon. Please do not send me to prison for something I didn’t do. I did not do this. If I had done this, I would take this charge gladly.”
The judge ultimately sentenced her to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 30 years but noted his skepticism that she would live long enough to try for an early release.
