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Post by Joanna on Jul 5, 2014 3:58:40 GMT -5
Dad Sent Nude Pics to Teen While Son Was Dying in Hot Car, Police Say A judge has ordered that the Georgia man charged with murder in his young son's death inside a hot car be held without bond in preparation for a trial. At Thursday's bond and probable cause hearing, a detective testified that Justin Harris (above), 33, was "sexting" pornographic images of himself to multiple women, including a 17-year-old girl, while his son was dying inside a hot SUV on June 18. Cobb County Police Detective Phil Stoddard also testified there were two life insurance policies on 22-month-old Cooper. One was for $2,000 and the other, which was acquired in November 2012, was for $25,000.
Stoddard described evidence that prosecutors say shows Harris intentionally left the child in the car, was practically leading a double life and should not be granted bond. The detective said Harris, who told police he accidentally forgot to take the boy to daycare, had been exchanging nude photos with up to six women while he was at work the day the child died. He also said the investigation revealed Harris had a habit of speaking with various women through computer-related messaging services and had even met up with some women and told at least one that he had cheated on his wife before. The detective also said that in the weeks before Cooper's death, Harris did an Internet search for "how to survive in prison" and had looked at websites that advocated living a "child-free" life.
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore argued that the evidence involving Harris' Internet and texting activities had no bearing on his client's intent and was being used simply to publicly shame him.
According to Stoddard, Harris told police that on the morning of June 18, he went to breakfast with his son at Chick-fil-A, then strapped the child into his car seat and gave him a kiss. Harris was supposed to drive the child to daycare, but he told police he instead drove to work without realizing that his son was in the backseat. Stoddard said Thursday that the drive from Chick-fil-A to Harris' workplace is approximately .6 miles and that about one-tenth of a mile away from Chick-fil-A, there is a stoplight where Harris would have had to turn to go to the daycare.
Instead, Harris didn't turn and the child was left in the car alone for about seven hours while his father went to work at Home Depot's corporate office. The temperature that day was 88 degrees at 5:16 p.m., according to a police warrant filed the day the child died. The medical examiner's office ruled the child died of hyperthermia and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.
Detective Stoddard said authorities obtained surveillance video from the parking lot of Harris' workplace on the day the child died and determined that Harris left work at lunchtime with friends and when he returned, he opened the driver's side door of his vehicle to place a bag of light bulbs he had just purchased inside before going back into his workplace. The toddler was in the car at that time.
Kilgore, the defense attorney, argued that Harris did not intentionally leave the boy in the car. "If that were the case, why in the world would he bring his colleagues right up to the car?" he asked.
Alex Hall, one of the people Harris went to lunch with that day, testified Thursday that Harris talked about how much he loved his son all the time. He said he and Harris had planned to go to the movies after work that day. "Nothing stuck out," Hall, who has been a friend of Harris since their sophomore year of college and is a co-worker at Home Depot, said. "Nothing was weird."
When Harris left work for the day around 4:15 p.m., the detective said, surveillance video showed him driving out of the parking lot with his windows up, which is relevant because even hours later, when authorities searched his car, it had a strong, foul smell of decomposition. Harris left his work parking lot, drove farther down the road and then pulled over in a strip mall parking lot, screamed for help and took the child, who was already dead, out of the car and placed him on the ground. A defense witness testified that Harris appeared to be extremely upset and was trying to do CPR on his son. "He was saying, 'Oh my God! Oh my God! My son is dead, oh my God!'" witness Leonard Madden said. When authorities responded to the scene, an officer told Harris to get off his cell phone, Stoddard said. Harris twice refused, using profanity, and was then arrested. The detective said that Harris showed no emotion while being interviewed by investigators.
Stoddard also addressed search warrants released over the weekend which said Harris and his wife – the child's mother – told investigators they both had done research on the Internet on what temperature could cause a child's death in a vehicle because they feared such a thing might happen. Stoddard said the searches were conducted prior to the child's death.
The child's mother, Leanna Harris, has not been charged in the death and police have not called her a suspect. Leanna Harris reportedly is standing by her husband and says she believes he is innocent. Stoddard testified Thursday that Leanna Harris went to pick up the 22-month-old at daycare on June 18, but was told by workers there that her husband had never dropped the boy off. Upon hearing this, Stoddard said, Leanna Harris became calm and said her husband "must have left him in the car." When police later informed Mrs. Harris that her son had died, Stoddard said she showed no emotion, other than saying it was "her worst nightmare" and asked to see her husband. At one point, when Leanna Harris was reunited with her husband, she asked, "Did you say too much?" the detective related.
Source: WPEC News, July 4, 2014.
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Post by aprillynn93 on Jul 5, 2014 14:16:57 GMT -5
Oh...well this certainly sheds new light on it. Ugh!
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Post by kitty on Jul 5, 2014 20:31:54 GMT -5
But it doesn't prove that he killed the kid, only that he's a perv.
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Post by aprillynn93 on Jul 6, 2014 14:34:24 GMT -5
No...but it's looking worse and worse.
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Post by aprillynn93 on Jul 6, 2014 14:35:44 GMT -5
I wonder if his wife will change her tune too when she finds out about the "sexting."
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Post by Sam on Jul 7, 2014 4:21:45 GMT -5
He must have known how easy it is to trace texts and internet searches and phone calls, so would he have been sending things like that to women if he knew that his son was still in the car?
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Post by aprillynn93 on Jul 7, 2014 11:43:24 GMT -5
I would think not, but crazy people do crazy things.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 6, 2016 0:34:40 GMT -5
Justin, Leanna and Cooper Harris Dad Who Left Son to Die in Car Indicted for Sexual Exploitation of MinorsThe Georgia father accused of intentionally leaving his toddler to die in a hot car two years ago was indicted Friday (March 4, 2016) on new counts involving the sexual exploitation of minors. Justin Ross Harris is now facing an additional two counts of sexual exploitation of children and six counts of disseminating harmful material to minors, his attorneys said. The indictment is stemming from an alleged exchange of lewd photos with two underage girls and sending nude photos to another underage girl, and then engaging in sexually explicit conversations with all three from January to May 2014.
Authorities conducted a 20-month investigation into Harris' life following the June 2014 death of his son, 22-month-old Cooper, who was found dead in the back seat of the family's SUV. Harris is set to go on trial in April on multiple murder-related charges, including malice murder and felony murder, and cruelty to children.
His attorney expressed concern about the timing of the new charges. "Despite possessing Ross Harris' cellphone for almost two years, the Cobb County District Attorney has only now chosen to indict Ross for some alleged consensual electronic communications," H. Maddox Kilgore said in a statement. "We are concerned that the timing of this indictment is a calculated maneuver to inflame public opinion against Ross on the eve of jury selection. It is clear that these allegations are wholly unrelated to the accidental death of Cooper Harris," the attorney added.
Harris, of Marietta, told investigators that he forgot Cooper was in the back seat when he went to work. After more than seven hours, he said, he realized his mistake. Prosecutors allege Harris was having marital problems and left Cooper to die on purpose because he wanted a child-free life. His wife, Leanna, filed for divorce last month.
Harris had already been charged with three counts of sending inappropriate texts to underage girls in the original 2014 indictment against him for Cooper's death. His defense team has argued these allegations, even if they're true, have no connection to his son's death. Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the latest indictment couldn't wait. "Had the state delayed charging any further, prosecution of some of the charges would have been barred by the statute of limitations," he said. Source: Elizabeth Chuck, NBC, March 5, 2016.
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Post by natalie on Mar 8, 2016 11:13:27 GMT -5
He is an idiot and a filthy pervert.
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Post by Kate on Mar 8, 2016 15:12:17 GMT -5
He is definitely a pervert, but I still can't understand why someone would leave their own child, or any child to die in a hot car because that would be a horrible way to die. There's a lot that's strange about this case. They said that there was a foul odor from the decomposition and unless he was a very heavy smoker, or had a very bad cold or something like that, how could he have not smelled it? If he did kill his son intentionally, he didn't plan it very well. I doubt that they did a drug test on him when it happened, but he couldn't have thought that people would believe that he was driving around with such a bad odor in the car and he didn't even notice it.
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Post by madeline on Mar 9, 2016 1:39:26 GMT -5
He is definitely a pervert, but I still can't understand why someone would leave their own child, or any child to die in a hot car because that would be a horrible way to die. There's a lot that's strange about this case. They said that there was a foul odor from the decomposition and unless he was a very heavy smoker, or had a very bad cold or something like that, how could he have not smelled it? If he did kill his son intentionally, he didn't plan it very well. I doubt that they did a drug test on him when it happened, but he couldn't have thought that people would believe that he was driving around with such a bad odor in the car and he didn't even notice it. I agree that he's a perv, but he could just be stupid. He looks "slow" and he was working at Home Depot.
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Post by jane on Mar 14, 2016 12:25:45 GMT -5
If they wanted to get rid of the baby, there must have been better and more humane methods than leaving it in a hot car. I would think that suffocating in a hot car would be a long and painful death.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Nov 1, 2016 18:52:21 GMT -5
Justin Harris at the defense table. Highlights from Justin Harris Trial
A tragedy. A mystery. A front-page story. From the moment the news broke in Georgia, people couldn’t stop talking about it: Cooper Harris, 22-months-old, was found dead on June 18, 2014, in the back of an SUV and his grieving father was devastated. But then the story took a turn. An investigation followed and, just three months later, Ross Harris was indicted on murder charges. Since then, he has spent long days in a courtroom in the small town of Brunswick watching each side present its case in a bid to answer the question: Is Harris a grieving father who will forever live with the mistake he made – or a killer who was leading a double life? Here’s how the Justin Ross Harris trial has unfolded, day-by-day:
Day 1: Monday, October 3, 2016. During the state’s opening statements, Prosecutor Chuck Boring painted Ross Harris as a man who was living a double life. “You will see the deception and the double life. How he behaved and how he lied in this case,” Boring said. “The defendant intended to kill Cooper and he intended to do all the things that killed Cooper.”
Day 2: Tuesday, October 4. Defense attorney H. Maddox Kilgore argued during his opening statement that Cooper’s death was not premeditated, but an accident. “What you are going to see here in this trial is that irresponsible is not the same thing as criminal. The evidence will show that Ross loved that little boy more than anything. Cooper’s death was an accident. It was always an accident and that is what he told the police over and over again. This was an accident. Not intentional,” Kilgore said. Then he claimed the lead investigative agency, the Cobb County Police Department, “made up” evidence.
Day 2: Tuesday, October 4. Akers Square Mill shopping center witness, James Hawkins, recalls how he attempted to perform CPR on Cooper after Harris pulled the boy from the vehicle. He broke down on the stand while describing how Cooper felt. “It was like blowing through a busted bag. He was gone,” he told jurors.
Day 3: Wednesday, October 5. As several first responders took the stand, jurors saw disturbing photos and video of Cooper’s lifeless body lying on the hot asphalt of the shopping center. Justin Ross Harris appeared to cry and hid his face into his hands. Some jurors hid their faces and at least one juror cried as the gruesome images were displayed on a courtroom monitor. “He had some scratches on his face. He had a shirt that had bicycles on it and little tennis shoes,” related Brad Shumpert, a technician with the Cobb County Police Department’s Evidence Unit.
Court was in recess from Thursday, October 6, until Wednesday, October 12, because of Hurricane Matthew.
Day 4: Wednesday, October 12. For the first time, jurors saw images of Cooper when he was still alive. Prosecutors showed video of Harris and his son ordering breakfast at Chick-fil-A on the morning of June 18. Cooper was balanced on Harris’ hip as they ordered their meal. The boy was alert and awake when he left with his father. Restaurant general manager, Charles Christopher Redmon, recalled telling police at the time, “Man, he was absolutely in love with his kid.”
Day 5: Thursday, October 13. One of Cooper’s daycare teachers at Home Depot’s Little Apron Academy, Keyatta Patrick, testified that Ross Harris seemed like a loving parent who took pictures of his son every day. She recalled that about two weeks before Cooper died, she noticed Harris had stopped taking pictures of his boy. “I just thought it was kind of strange that he stopped,” Patrick remembered. “So I asked him, you don’t take pictures anymore? And he said no, because he’s getting older.”
Day 6: Friday, October 14. Former Atlanta escort Daniela Doerr (above) told jurors that Ross Harris paid her $125 for what she described as 30 minutes of “vanilla sex,” on May 31, 2014, two weeks before Cooper’s death. Her description of Harris was “dumpy, short, had no presence about himself. You could tell he didn’t care about how he looked.” They had three sexual encounters that month, she said.
Day 7: Monday, October 17. Testimony from Cobb County police forensic computer analyst Ray Yeager, who examined Harris’ computer, revealed five links to the social media website Reddit containing the words “child free.” The state later called Harris’ former friend and colleague, Home Depot engineer Alex Hall. During cross-examination, defense attorneys produced a chat log in which Hall sent Harris a link to a “child free” subreddit. Hall told jurors it was he who had sent the link all along, explaining that it was a page advocating not having children. The chat log showed Harris’ response to the link was “grossness.”
Day 8: Tuesday, October 18. Jurors again were shown photos of Cooper’s body taken during the autopsy. Medical examiner Dr. Brian Frist described in detail how Cooper may have suffered in the time leading up to his death. “He would have experienced nausea. He would have had a headache, he would have become dehydrated. He may have had seizures. Even at his young age he would have had anxiety, because he’s been in a car seat before and he’s just strapped in there and he probably would have struggled as he was becoming more and more uncomfortable,” Frist said.
Day 9: Wednesday, October 19. As Cooper died inside his father’s SUV, temperatures peaked at 125 degrees Fahrenheit, according to heat transfer expert David Brani of Applied Technical Services, who conducted a test inside Harris’ car. At 12:45 p.m. – around the time Ross Harris returned to his car after lunch – the inside of his SUV would have been around 98 degrees, said Brani. Dr. Frist had testified Cooper may have still been alive at that temperature. The defense brought into question the accuracy of the heat test, drawing attention to multiple unknown variables.
Day 10: Thursday, October 20. Up to this day, five women, including one minor, testified that Ross Harris communicated with them on the day Cooper died. Again and again, jurors heard vulgar, sexually explicit messages exchanged between Harris and the women, along with graphic photos of genitalia. One of the women, Jaynie Meadows carried on a one-year relationship with Harris that started when she was 18 years old. She said they met in person only once, but nonetheless they fell “in love.” She testified that Harris told her if it wasn’t for Cooper, he would have left his wife. In cross-examination, defense attorneys produced a letter Meadows wrote to Harris shortly after he was arrested, telling him she knew how much he loved Cooper and would never do anything to hurt him.
Day 11: Friday, October 21. For the first time, jurors heard from Harris – in his own words in a video shown in court – what happened on the day Cooper died. Lead investigator Detective Phil Stoddard questioned Harris hours after he was taken into custody. Harris told Stoddard he was “careless” and that Cooper was “probably asleep” when he got into the car. “As I was driving down, when I looked to my right to change lanes, I thought I was seeing things,” said Harris. “Then I lost it. I pulled in. I couldn’t compose myself.” When asked about his marriage to Leanna, Harris told Stoddard, “We have a pretty strong relationship. We are about to find out if that is true or not.” Jurors also got a glimpse into Harris’ relationship with his wife as they watched interview-room video of the couple meeting for the first time since their son’s death. In a surprising moment, Leanna asked Harris, “Can I ask you a weird question? Do you want to have more kids?” Harris tells her, “Absolutely, I want to have more kids. Just because we lost one child, it doesn’t mean we can’t have anymore. I want a family. We have a family.”
Day 12: Monday, October 24. Jurors again heard directly from Ross Harris when prosecutors played a second interrogation video from the night he was arrested. In the video, Harris tried to negotiate the legal elements of cruelty with lead detective Stoddard. He said Harris told him, “But there was no malicious intent,” after the interview room camera had been switched off. Stoddard also testified to what he smelled inside the car that day. “There was a foul odor inside the vehicle,” he explained, “I associate that odor with death. It is that foul, stale strong odor that you associate with a dead body.”
Day 13: Tuesday, October 25. Sparks flew in the courtroom as the lead defense attorney cross-examined Stoddard. Kilgore highlighted multiple inconsistencies in Stoddard’s testimony during a preliminary hearing in July 2014. Back in 2014, Stoddard testified that Harris searched for the term “how hot does it need to be for a child to die inside a hot car.” It was later revealed that a video titled “How hot does it get inside a parked car,” appeared on Harris’ Reddit homepage and he clicked on it. Citing motive, Stoddard testified in 2014 that Harris had visited a subreddit group named “child free for people who advocate child free living.” “As it turns out,” Kilgore said, “this child-free subreddit was discovered by Alex Hall, Harris’ friend. And Alex was the one that directed Harris to this site.” Stoddard agreed. Kilgore pressed Stoddard on the stand, asking repeatedly when he knew this was the case. Stoddard responded multiple times that he couldn’t “recall” when he found this information.
Day 14: Wednesday, October 26. Cobb County Police detective David Raissi confirmed lead detective Stoddard’s account that Ross Harris uttered the phrase “but there was no malicious intent” as he “debated” why he was being charged with a crime. Raissi said he was taken aback by “the way” Harris was debating. “Specifically the wording, the vernacular which was language that was not of a lay person. As a police officer or a lawyer you understand … malicious intent or malice, that is pretty specific to certain statutes, so the words that he said caught my attention,” added Raissi. Kilgore pointed out that Harris’ brother-in-law works in law enforcement in Alabama and that Harris also had worked as a police dispatcher in that state. Urged by the state, Raissi testified there was no “malice” or “malicious intent” statute in Alabama. On re-cross, the defense insisted there is no evidence that Harris researched the terms “malicious intent” on his computer.
Day 15: Thursday, October 27. Jurors saw up close the SUV in which Cooper died. After the viewing, Kilgore moved for a mistrial, arguing that “jurors have been given free reign to substitute their vantage point for the evidence.” Boring called the car “the murder weapon” and argued that jurors had “to see where the defendant is sitting for those 30 seconds while he is messing around in his car that morning while his child was sitting right beside him.” Judge Mary Staley denied the mistrial motion. Later in the day, digital forensics expect Jim Persinger testified that Harris had deleted his Chrome web search history before June 6, 2014. In cross-examination he told jurors, “I believe he [Harris] is crafty. I believe that some of the methods that he used to hide the information, to delete the information was an intentional move.” Additionally, a sixth woman testified that she and Harris were sexting the day Cooper died.
Day 16: Friday, October 28. The state rested after calling a total of 51 witnesses over 15 days. Prosecutors brought the crime scene into the courtroom when a 3D-scan expert took the stand. David Dustin showed jurors a scan of the interior of Ross Harris’ SUV – including an image of a doll placed in the car seat, to resemble Cooper. Outside the presence of the jury, the defense objected to the scan, calling it a reenactment, and questioned the placement of the car seat. Nevertheless, the judge allowed the scan to be presented to the jury. The defense began its case by calling Harris’ former real estate agent to the stand. He testified that Harris and his ex-wife, Leanna had been house-hunting in the months leading up to Cooper’s death. Tensions rose when the defense and the prosecution argued outside the presence of the jury as to whether Detective Sean Murphy could testify about the contents of multiple search warrants he filed in the case. The defense maintained the information in the warrants was blatantly wrong, proving that investigators had jumped to conclusions.
Day 17: Monday, October 31. Harris’ ex-wife, Leanna Taylor, took the stand as a defense witness. She fought back tears as she recalled her favorite memories of Cooper, a “very cute baby” who “loved to smile at everybody.” She described Harris as a “very involved” parent who never expressed anger or malice toward Cooper. Jurors spent 30 minutes viewing approximatley 70 photographs of Cooper and Harris spending time as father and son, and Cooper, Harris and Leanna as a family. Some jurors smiled and laughed as they watched 21 home videos of Cooper interacting with his parents.
Taylor told jurors Harris confessed in 2008 that he had a problem with pornography and on two occasions, she found text messages on his phone that seemed to originate from other women. On cross-examination, Taylor said she was oblivious to the extent of Harris’ “double life,” as Boring described it, saying she did not know whether he was sexting with minors or meeting a prostitute. “It started off with one thing and progressed to something else,” she explained. Taylor said that before Cooper died, she would have divorced Harris if she found out he was having a physical affair. But when Boring pressed her on why it took her more than a year after she had learned of Harris’ sexual behavior to file for divorce, she replied, “I didn’t know what to believe.”Source: CNN, November 1, 2016.
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Post by natalie on Nov 4, 2016 12:01:53 GMT -5
I still think he is guilty, and the part where she asked him "did you say too much?" and the lack of emotion when told about Cooper's death makes her somehow seem connected to all this, as well.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Nov 10, 2016 22:18:50 GMT -5
Harris crying in courtroom, or is he? Jury in ‘Hot Car’ Death Adjourned for WeekendA jury weighing murder charges against a Georgia man whose toddler son died in a hot car has adjourned for a long weekend. Court will be in recess tomorrow for Veterans Day: will jurors try to wrap it up before the three-day weekend? Harris is charged with malice murder in the death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The jury returned for its third day of deliberations around 8:30 this morning.
At 2:30 p.m. today, the jury asked to review the Home Depot security video of Justin Ross Harris’s arrival at work after his lunch break on the day he left his son in the car. The judge ordered the video shown on the big screen set up in the courtroom. As the video played, several jurors leaned forward and watched intently. Police asserted that Harris could easily have seen his little boy in the SUV when he went to the vehicle to place light bulbs on the front seat after lunch that day. (He had purchased the light bulbs while out to lunch with co-workers.) The surveillance video shows that, when he opens the car door, Harris's line of sight remains above the roof line.
Following are five points jury members are likely considering:
1. Ross Harris’s double life. A theme that ran through the prosecution case from beginning to end was that Harris led a double life: he was the loving father, friendly co-worker and happy-go-lucky friend. And he was the sexually insatiable philanderer who spent most of his time on sex sites and anonymous messaging apps trolling for women. Prosecutor Chuck Boring said Harris was unable to keep these two selves in balance and, as Cooper’s death approached, Harris’s dark self was beginning to overwhelm his other self.
2. What Harris said and what he meant. The prosecution made much of a series of texts that Harris sent on the messaging app Whisper in the minutes before he left Cooper in the car. In response to a female stranger who posted, “I hate being married with kids,” Harris replied, “I love my son and all, but we both need escapes.” The prosecution contended this was proof that Harris planned to kill his child. The defense insisted the remark was far more benign: a man seeking sex with strangers to escape the routines of ordinary life.
3. Harris’s ex-wife testified for the defense. Taylor testified on her ex-husband’s behalf and was unwavering in her assertions that Harris loved their son and would never have deliberately harmed him. She was mostly composed on the stand, withstanding several attempts by the prosecution to get under her skin during cross-examination. But she also ended her testimony with these words about her ex: “He destroyed my life. I’m humiliated. I may never trust anybody again, the way that I did. If I never see him again after this day, that’s fine.
4. ‘Murder is murder is murder.’ Harris was charged with three counts of murder: malice murder, which accuses him of intentionally killing his son, and two counts of felony murder, which charge that someone died while Harris was committing a felony. The charges are different, but the penalties are the same: life in prison, with a minimum of 30 years. Hence, defense attorney Maddox Kilgore’s remark to the jury that “murder is murder is murder.”
5. Was he crying or faking? Harris’s behavior in the hours after Cooper died ignited suspicions among police officers that this was something other than an accident. Lead investigator Phil Stoddard said he began to believe Harris was play-acting. Cobb police officer Jacquelyn Piper put it this way on the stand: “If you’ve ever seen Anchorman and you have Will Ferrell shouting ‘I’m in a glass case of emotion.’ It’s that monotoned yelling that seems really forced.” The defense ridiculed this argument, saying the police had no meter with which to gauge the authenticity of Harris’s grief. Kilgore asserted that the police seemed to suspect Harris for everything he did and everything he didn’t do. Sources: Christian Boone and Bill Rankin, The Atlantia Journal-Constitution, November 10, 2016, and the Associated Press.
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