Dad Leaves His Son in the Car On PURPOSE?! Cooper & Ross Harris

hey guys welcome back to my channel so today we have another chruch I think crew trying all the knives guys welcome back to my channel and welcome to another true crime video this video is going to be really different from most of the true crime videos I do because it's like the most unusual crime and idea for a crime that you could think of I mean it's really really bizarre how this whole thing goes down and I think there's gonna be a lot of different opinions at the end of this video this is gonna be one of those ones where you guys are gonna decide either way what you think and I am just going to be thrilled to hear your thoughts because this case has been driving me nuts today I'm retelling you guys a story about a adorable little boy named Cooper Harris this is Cooper's mom Leanna she was raised actually by a single mother in Demopoulos Alabama and she grew up really introverted she was kind of a goody two-shoes actually she thought about being a nurse but honestly her biggest goal in life was having a family and having a child when she was 20 years old she met a man named Ross Harris and things with her and Ross got serious really really quick and we're already talking about marriage within a year of dating Ross Harris was born in 1980 in Tuscaloosa Alabama he graduated from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa he received a bachelor's degree in commerce and Business Administration once they were married they wanted to have kids pretty much right away but they really struggled to get pregnant as so many people do I mean infertility is incredibly common and very difficult and frustrating for parents eventually they moved to Atlanta Ross was a web developer for home depot and they moved for his work and Leanna was a dietitian and so she got a job in the area as well and then a miracle happened they finally got pregnant this is their adorable son Cooper Harris he was born in August 8th of 2012 Leanna said that Ross was extremely excited to be a dad I mean overjoyed in fact just loved being a father he was extremely involved and helped a ton really really let her be able to rest would get up in the middle of the night never complained about it just was enjoying being a father it was a completely normal morning on June 18th of 2014 Russ was in charge of bringing Cooper to daycare every day on his way to work it was just the routine and then lianna would pick him up on her way home so on that day lianna left work around 4:00 p.m. she headed straight to Cooper's daycare to pick him up and there's all this camera footage of her she looks completely normal going in there like any other day to get him however when she went in there she went up to the the teacher that was you know running Cooper's class and she said that Cooper wasn't there and was never dropped off that morning I mean can you imagine how freaked out you would be as a mother you would instantly go into panic and she did although her behavior she was very very calm for someone in this type of situation I mean me personally I'd be a nervous wreck I would be like on the FIDE be crying she stayed very calm and stoic but you know maybe in a situation like that you would just feel that you would need to you know stay focused and on track to be able to solve the situation or come up with a solution or fix things if that makes sense but people were very critical about her reaction that she didn't seem as concerned on the video cameras but how much can you tell on a security camera anyway her first thought was that someone kidnapped Cooper from daycare but then her second thought was and she said this out loud maybe Ross left him in the car it's kind of a weird thing to say very specific she tried to call Ross over and over again and he wasn't answering his phone so she called his office so now it was 509 p.m. she couldn't get ahold of Ross there was no sign of Cooper and she was left completely confused so Giuliana decided to go to Ross's office and when she got there everyone in the lobby was watching the TV a 22 month old child died in the back parking lot here she mentioned apparently had been in the back of a very hot car now if that was me I would be so freaked out so upset so scared I would seriously have to be sedated I can't even imagine the fear especially not knowing for sure but I mean when all those things are happening you can't find me can't find your husband they see that on the news you start connecting the dots and I'm sure at that point she already knew finally her phone ringing and it was a detective and he said to just stay where she was he was gonna come to her and when he got there he said this your child is deceased I'm very sorry to have to tell you that let's back up a little bit here and talk about how this whole day went down from the beginning around 7:15 a.m. Liana says that she kissed Cooper goodbye and went to work rasca Cooper in the car and they left and they actually went to chick-fil-a first to get some breakfast there's even video footage of them in chick-fil-a everything looks fine Cooper looks happy Ross looks happy I mean nothing out of the usual I would say completely contrary I looked at the video and when I first saw it and I thought it seemed very out of the ordinary in particular the way that he was introducing Cooper to some of the workers there and how they eventually described it to us as being almost like he was putting on a show almost like he was going out of his way to do that but then Ross did something really really weird he usually would it turn left at a specific intersection to take Cooper to daycare on the way to work but on that day he went straight through the intersection going right past Cooper's daycare and it wasn't even that far from chick-fil-a to his work it was literally just up the street a little bit like couple minutes he went into his office parking lot with Cooper still in the back and 30 seconds later he exited the vehicle locking it and leaving Cooper outside in the parking lot in the hot Sun now I wanted to do this video specifically because we're going into these summer months and I know many of you probably understand it that you can't leave someone or a pet in a hot car but I just for the sake of it want to remind people of how hot cars can get I don't think some people realize that it's like literally turns into an oven it's a giant piece of metal dude and the Sun heats it up until the point where it is extremely uncomfortable check out this video clip of a doctor trying to be in a car and experience what that would be like so I'm your pet and I'm now in the car I've got all four windows cracked down about an inch so let's start a timer and let's see exactly how hot it gets in here 94 degrees so it's pretty hot in here but we're just getting started 100 degrees already and I can tell you that it is stifling in here fifteen minutes now and it's about a hundred and ten in my car if I were a little dog left out here maybe I'm barking I'm very nervous I can only imagine what the core body temperature must be at this point 25 minutes hundred and thirteen degrees thirty minutes in a parked car with the windows cracked the temperature right now is about 116 now this is the same for animals as it is for humans at 4:15 p.m. Ross left work went into his car got in like everything was normal and drove out of the parking lot he seems to still not have been aware that his son was in the back because he continued to drive too full one and a half miles before pulling over after he realized that Cooper was dead in the back he got out of his car and started frantically asking people for help and someone called the police after seeing him doing this and this is the 911 call onlookers tell me exactly what happened the guy pulled apart you know the baby's not breathing it doesn't look like some other person got Cooper laid him on the ground and started to try to do CPR on him meanwhile Ross was do nothing wasn't trying to resuscitate his son at all when the police got there they described bras as acting extremely unusual said that someone else was giving his son CPR and Ross was just walking around the parking lot on his cell phone underground started doing CPR trying to resuscitate him when they arrived someone else is doing CPR to Cooper he was talking on the phone to somebody officer came up and yelled at her with Ross's behavior being so strange he was immediately considered to be a suspect and placed in a police car I mean I feel like I have a pretty good detection radar and this guy just screams to me he goes back and forth between being frantically upset and almost to the point where it sounds fake like you know when someone's fake crying or just trying to get attention and you can kind of tell I mean in my opinion that's what it sounded like to me the back squad car ultimately weeping or very distraught and then sort of looking around see in their mind they felt like he was putting on a performance [Music] next minute he's called I can't even imagine how I would be and I certainly would never calm down for a moment I would be on top of them I'd be pushing people away I mean I just can't imagine walking away on your phone and being more concerned with yourself and then get this he started complaining that his handcuffs were hurting him were too tight and if you think complaining about your hands being in pain while your son is dead on the ground is bad wait till you hear he'd said next boss started complaining that the car was too hot that he wasn't getting enough air back there are you kidding me do you know what you just put your son through are you serious yeh said that his behavior was completely out of the spectrum for normal in these types of cases it was just not a typical reaction to finding out that your child died in the car and that it was your fault however the public quickly took his side and actually I remember when this happened and I took his side too when I heard about it I instantly felt bad for him thinking oh my god how terrible would you feel if you left your child God it must be a mistake like that must be so horrible and so people were on Ross's side from the beginning and the thing about this is I'm sure most of you know this is not uncommon at all in a hot car call for four hours for 16 hours really an unspeakable tragedy out here at the shopping mall on acres Road near Highway in many cases these debts seem to be the cause of a parent in a morning fog for getting a daycare drop and that their child is still in the car when they park at work investigators say the mom forgot her daughter was in the car while she went to work but police think something more sinister is at play with Ross Harris police bring him to Cobb County police headquarters to be questioned on average 37 children die per year from being left inside of a hot car this actually even has a name forgotten baby syndrome well it seems unthinkable absent mindedly leaving a child behind but truth be told many parents do it and now it has a name forgotten baby syndrome well for cotton baby syndrome is our attempt to try to understand how it is that normal attentive and loving parents forget that their children are in the car with them as a survey was conducted in the u.s. of a large number of parents and it's remarkable that 25 percent other parents who had children under 3 reported that they actually forgotten that their children were in the car at some time during the drive this situation happens all the time where a good loving parent who loves their kids accidentally leaves them in the car forgets that they're there and tragically kills them and a big part of this is obviously distraction but also exhaustion I mean a lot of parents new parents especially are so tired I mean there's some babies that just don't sleep they're up all night and you're going to work as a zombie if slept 2 hours even how to screaming infant in your face and a lot of parents end up getting kind of brain fog and they honestly don't forget and it's terrible it ruins their lives they I mean can you imagine how you would feel it's just horrible they actually think that the parents create some type of artificial memory of dropping them off at daycare so obviously Ross was brought directly to the station for questioning and in there his behavior was just as sketchy when he was first placed into the interrogation room he started sobbing like heavy sobs that don't sound genuine to me and I could be wrong I know I don't have any way to prove he wasn't actually crying but I don't know about you guys tell me your thoughts in this to me it looked like a lot of faking and a lot of over exaggerating knowing that he was now obviously people do deal with grief very differently so I'm not trying to be judgmental here but I'm just saying it's unusual and odd the way he was acting and then when they were interrogating him he also mentioned that he had just seen a video about parents leaving their kids in cars it was super super weird that he had just seen this a couple days before so then Liana got to the police station and went into the room with Ross neither of them were aware that they were being filmed or that they were being audio recorded [Music] [Music] I turned out at chick-fil-a and I just went to work-like but you wouldn't make a sound I think he had some comfort for Liana too now people were really torn about Leanna's behavior in this room and I don't know really what to fully think of it first thing that she did when she saw Ross knowing that he just I mean as she thought accidentally killed her son I mean whether was not to not you be angry right you'd be like well how could you do this and she instantly went into this super nurturing caring mode for him asking if he was okay rubbing his leg and then she asked him if he said too much detectives wondered what she meant they came back into the room had told Ross he wasn't going home he's going to jail people are wondering how did she stay that calm when her son just died in a hot car suffocated got hyperthermia he told Liana that he was worried about seeing Ross being taken out of the car because he was scared about what he would look like and this kind of struck officers funny because they figured that that seemed like he knew that he was already dead either way and the public being supportive of Ross and feeling sorry for him was very confused about why he was being held the public thought he just made a terrible mistake but investigators thought but investigators were starting to think that he may have actually set this up and killed fifteen days later Ross and Liana went to court prosecutors immediately started talking about how this was not a typical case of a person leaving their child in a car on accident first of all the position of the car seat to Ross's seat were extremely close only six inches away Ross says that Cooper must have fallen asleep in the car ride but that's kind of an unusual statement to make because there were just at chick-fil-a and he was wide awake in the video recording so did he fall asleep that quickly chick-fil-a was only half a mile from Ross's work he would have had to fall asleep extremely quickly and then probably the most damning evidence in my opinion Ross actually went back to his car around noon opened the door of the car I think to put light bulbs in it and the weird thing about this is he never mentioned it to police when detectives were searching his home for leads they looked through his computer and they found in his video search history that same video that I showed you earlier in this video dr. Ernie Ward doing a demonstration of how hot a car can get on a warm day he watched this video only five days before leaving his child in a hot car detectives also looked at Leanna they thought that maybe her behavior could have been a little awkward maybe she had something to do with it they also thought her reaction to finding out that her son was dead was very very odd your child is deceased police spoke with her there did they say anything of note about her reaction at the same reaction at the scene um she'd she didn't show any emotion when they asked her or actually when they notified her of Cooper's death Leanna also made a statement at his funeral that was just a little odd she said that Cooper was in a better place now which is a really common thing to say but she also said that if she was able to bring him back she wouldn't because she wouldn't want to bring him up into this messed up world she said she was just coping and you know saying what was on her mind and that's how she really felt she was so betrayed and so heartbroken my opinion I don't think it was that unusual so the ended up determining that there was honestly nothing that they could definitively prove that Liana had any knowledge of this or planned her child murder the whole idea of her being in on this was dismissed and trial continued for Ross however one of the biggest discoveries in this case happened a year after Ross was first arrested after going through Ross's phone he found out that he had been using this app it's called whisper um some of you may have heard of it it's an anonymous app where you can post things publicly or privately but it's all anonymous and he was using this messaging app on that morning with Cooper is actually talking to someone anonymously about how he wasn't happy in his marriage or being a father and the last thing that he said to this person before locking his child in the car was I love my son and all but we both need escapes they also found out that Ross had been sexting various people that morning he had been virtually and physically cheating on Lana and he was doing this with dozens of women men and underaged girls it turned out that Ross had been texting and mess with over 30 different people most of them women so Ross would actually take pictures of Cooper every morning and send them to Leanna you would do this as he was dropping him off at daycare and two weeks before Cooper died and Ross stop doing this and with many of them he exchanged comments about how he was unhappy with his marriage and Walla Cooper was outside in the car died Ross was busy sending nudes to a total of nine different women prostitute a babysitter a co-ed his ex-girlfriend's other women that he would regularly sext with and he even was sending nudes to a 15 year old girl so a plus buddy during the trial Leanna had to get up on the stand and many people were shocked that she actually ended up sort of defending with him I would agree that I did not know the depth how do you read the text messages that he sent to these other women no I have had no I have no reason to have read them okay if he's saying foul things to a fifteen-year-old girl you wouldn't think that that was something different than the way he portrayed himself to you I think it's horrible did you know that was an afternoon he actually called a prostitute and went to have sex with her instead of being at home I didn't know that humiliating as it was she stuck it up for nearly two days of testimony penny field is your ex-husband you ruined my life 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 noting Brotherhood when it came to the cheating she said that he had become a completely different person she wouldn't ever have expected him to do that to her and she was disgusted and devastated by them Liana thinks that even though he was a jerk and he was cheating and doing all his crazy but he loved his son and that he would never actually kill him now I think there's plenty of evidence to show that he could have purposely done this however I do think that it's possible that maybe he was just so distracted texting all these people and taking dick pics that he straight-up actually did forget but with the way the evidence looks and all of the other weird elements I definitely leaned in the direction of he did this on purpose Liana is completely convinced that that death was unintentional although she pretty much despises Ross for all of this and after 26 days of trials 70 witnesses 1200 pieces of evidence Ross was found guilty of all eight counts including felony murder and was sentenced to life in prison plus 32 years if he's innocent and he didn't purposely do this and it was an accident then that's so crazy but if he really did do this and that's the way it looks I think that's well deserved Liana still says that she thinks the jury got it wrong however she understands that people kind of just need to close the book on this when a child dies someone's got to take responsibility someone's got to take the blame and Ross looked pretty damn bad very interesting but Ross and Lana have never actually gotten to talk about Cooper dying about the whole thing he never got alone time buddy and that so there hasn't really been any closure for her she's had a terrible time with this she's even contemplated taking her own life in the past says she's still grieving to this day over her son this isn't so sad this breaks my heart but she still has a sippy cup that's like half filled on the table from where he had left it and she will not move it she won't let anyone touch it she won't clean it it just stays there and she also got a tattoo of his foot print on her foot on the bright side of this Liana has decided to dedicate her life to raising awareness about forgotten baby syndrome I really want to know what you guys think do you think this was pre-planned by Ross or could this have been a really bad mistake I want to know your thoughts as far as I'm concerned I can't say 100% either way but I just think there's too much evidence pointing in the direction of purpose and at the end of the day that's really what I feel happened anyway do you want to know your opinion so leave me a comment that's it for me today guys I will talk to you next time [Music]

Channel: Kendall Rae

Views: 2,702,982

Keywords: Cooper harris, ross, harris, cooper, forgotten, baby, syndrome, forgotten baby syndrome, hot car, eddie ward, vet

Id: DLs8zUnxQVs

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018