Closing Statements : The Death of Cooper Harris

This episode of Closing Statements takes a final look at the Death of Cooper Harris. Mixed by: ResonateRecordings.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The case being discussed in the next couple of episodes
of Sworn was an emotional case. It was a horrific case.
It was a highly publicized and emotional case. But the
purpose of this podcast is not to relitigate guilt or innocence,
and nothing that I say should be interpreted as an
expression of my opinion about the guilt or innocence of anybody.

(00:24):
Neither I nor this podcast is intended to relitigate the
issues at trial. The jury has spoken. This is about
what the case looks like from the inside looking out.
The case was extensively litigated by very good lawyers on
both sides. A jury reached a verdict, and it's not
our place to relitigate those issues. But we do want

(00:46):
to bring you inside the case for an insider's look
at the case of the State of Georgia versus Justin
Ross Harris. Place your left hand on the bay Bible
and Andre's your right hand and repeat after me. I

(01:08):
solemnly swear the jury trying it defended, not scared and
a rob the country. It makes no sense if it
doesn't fit your must equipped judge. You are the last
line of reason in this case. Very one of those
to all the apothis and we're sworn to uphold of

(01:29):
the Constitution. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta. This is Sworn.
I'm your host, Philip Holloway. After releasing the first episode
of the Death of Cooper Harris, I received a very
interesting and unexpected phone call. It was from Leanna Taylor,

(01:51):
the ex wife of Ross Harris and mother to Cooper Harris.
As fate would have it, she was a listener of
Sworn herself, and she asked to speak with me for
the podcast. I am Leanna Taylor, and Cooper is my son,

(02:12):
and I'm the ex wife of Ross Hairs. When this
case first started, how were you made aware of your
son's death? I was told by a detectives that came
to Ross's workplace. I was not able to find my
son at daycare. He wasn't there, and I was frantically

(02:35):
trying to get in touch with Ross and was not
able to And eventually, after trying to find him at
work when his cell phone wouldn't connect, got a security
guard involved and a daycare worker from Cooper's staycare, and
we weren't able to locate him. We knew that he
had left work and that was That was it, but
we weren't able to locate exactly where he was, where

(02:57):
Ross was, And eventually I've a phone call from an
unknown number and when I answered it, it was the
detective of Cobb County basically telling me to stay where
I was, that they were going to come to me,
but they wouldn't tell me what was going on. They
wouldn't tell me, you know, if Cooper was okay or
if Ross was okay. I didn't know any details. I

(03:18):
didn't know what had happened. So they came to Ross's office,
which is where I was at the time, took me
into a room and basically told me what had happened.
What was that like? Can you describe what you felt
in that moment? It was awful. I mean I spent
about I spent about thirty minutes in this state of

(03:40):
mind of not knowing where Cooper was or what was
going on, and uh, I knew in my heart that
something had happened. I knew that something bad had happened,
and you're just kind of in the state of maybe
I'm overreacting, maybe I'm thinking the worst, but a part
of my brain was still working. It was still you know,
thinking of a Cooper should have been at daycare. Something's

(04:02):
really really wrong. And by the time they got there,
I had got myself. I was worked up on the inside,
but not on the outside. I was going through all
the scenarios in my head. I mean, I've seen video
of myself up here very calm, but only inside I was.
I was very distraught. When they got there, it was
it was kind of like a dream state. It was

(04:24):
very odd experience. I felt pretty much like I was floating.
It felt very much like you feel in a dream
when it feels extremely real but you know something really
really bad is off. It just felt very foreign, just
really odd. You're knowing that something that you're about to
get told some really bad news, and there's nothing you

(04:46):
can do about it. There's nothing you can do to
stop it, and there's nothing you can do to change it.
It's just happening. It's almost kind of like being swept
up in a in a wave and being pulled under.
I mean, you can't stop it. There's nothing you can do.
It's just happening. Well, obviously, we know this case was
a very high profile case and lots of things were

(05:09):
speculated about and lots was made about statements and conversations
that you had with your now ex husband, particularly in
the police holding cell. There was a conversation where you
were heard to ask him, did you say too much?
What did you mean by that? I want to be
very clear in the fact that I was legitimately out

(05:34):
of my mind. I I was so confused. I didn't
show any of that on the outside, and that tends
to be my personality anyway. I'm just I'm not a
very openly emotional person. I keep a lot of stuff internalized.
I had a lot of thoughts running through my head,
and I was very confused. I had just been told
that my son had died. I'd been told how he died,

(05:57):
and I couldn't make sense of anything, really, you know.
I had Ross sitting in front of me telling me
that he was going to be charged, and I couldn't
reconcile that either. And when you're sitting there in a
state of mind where you're really you're really not believing
what's happening, you're trying to, at least I was trying

(06:18):
to figure out, Okay, how what's going on, How is
this happening? How are they charging him? I didn't believe
that it was intentional. I believe that it was was
an accident. And that was kind of the mindset that
I had. And I knew Ross, and I knew the
kind of person that he was personality wise, and I

(06:39):
knew that he talked a lot, and I knew that
he would carry on a conversation, you know, longer than needed.
I guess she could say. The only thing that I
could think in my head is if they're charging him
with this, then he must have said something that made
him look guilty in a way. And I didn't because
I didn't understand the charges of the time. I wouldn't

(07:01):
have been able to understand it if they had clearly
explained it to me, which I'm sure they did. I
wasn't in a mental or emotional state to really understand
what was happening. And that's the only thing that I
could think. Ross said something to make him sounds guilty
in a way, and now they're charging him. And so

(07:21):
that's basically what came out of my mouth. Did you
say too much? And I didn't preface that statement with anything.
The thoughts in my head were going, and I just,
you know, just said, well, did you say too much,
and I can see where that could be seen as
a suspicious statement, you know, now looking back on it
and knowing the circumstances at the time, I mean I

(07:44):
was I was not thinking about a video camera in there.
I wasn't thinking about an audio recording. I was thinking
about my son being gone and my husband at the
time being arrested for his murder. And that's the only
thing that I was thinking about. I wasn't trying to
do anything that sounded suspicious or didn't sound suspicious. I

(08:07):
truly was just in that moment and trying to understand
what was happening in that situation. I was just trying
to understand what was happening in that situation. What would
you have to say to the people who watched this
case closely and who saw that recording of that conversation

(08:27):
in the holding cell and felt like your attention was
improperly focused more on your husband than on your late child.
What would you say to those people? I would say
that you have no idea how you're going to react
in any given situation until you're in that situation. If

(08:48):
I had been told a month before that this is
going to happen to you, I would have told them
that they would have had to put me in a
mental institution, that there's no way I would have been
able to survive it. But we have an ability, our
bodies and brains have an ability to overcome things in
our lives that we never would have thought was possible.

(09:08):
And in that situation, I'm very much a kind of
person that I'm trying to fix what's going on right
in front of me, and the only thing that was
in front of me it was Ross, and that was
the only thing that I knew to focus on. Was
you know, at that time, you've got to people have
got to understand it. At that time, I was a
I was a wife, and yes my husband was cheating

(09:32):
on me, but I didn't know that at the time.
I'm sure my reaction would have probably been different had
that been knowledge that I had at the time. I
didn't have any of that knowledge, and so for all
intentsive purposes, I was speaking to my husband that I
trusted and that I didn't feel had done this on purpose.
And I'm a nurturing type of person anyway, that was

(09:55):
just a default mode that I went into. Ross was
in front of me, and the there wasn't anything that
I could do for Cooper. And I don't mean that
the way it maybe sounds two people, but there was
nothing that I could do Cooper at that point. It
was too late. The only thing that I could do
was trying to help Ross at the time. I want

(10:15):
to fast forward just a minute to Cooper's funeral, and
at the funeral when you were giving, in essence a eulogy,
the media was there and it was everything was recorded,
and so that it was audio that was broadcast of
basically you saying words to the effect that you would

(10:36):
not bring Cooper back if you could, but that Ross
was a good father and you would you would have
another child with him. People found that to be an
unusual statement, and a lot of people found it to
be a suspicious statement. What would you say to those
people and what did you mean by that? I can
understand how that could be taken a couple of different ways.

(10:59):
I can playing it in the way that I am
a Christian and I'm very strong in my faith, and
we believe as Christians that when you die, especially children,
we believe that they go immediately to heaven, and heaven
is a place of paradise, it's the place of no
tears and no pain. And as a mother who is
burying her child, I was trying to be unselfish, and

(11:22):
I was still in a very strange mental state at
that point. I was I was not emotionally stainable. I
was not mentally stable in any way. And it's not
like I've said anything with the intention of people taking
it and picking it apart and trying to make something
that it wasn't. But as a parent, if your child

(11:44):
is experiencing something amazing like heaven, that's paradise, it would
be selfish for you to to pull them back from that.
But I don't want that to be confused with the
fact that if I could have prevented what happened to
Cooper opening the Cooper, I would have prevented it. I
would have prevented him that pain. I would have prevented

(12:04):
him that suffering. I would have never chosen that for
him in any way. I think that what I said
was just kind of taken out of the context that
I meant it in. I really don't know how to
explain it other than the fact that I believe that
Cooper's in heaven. I believe that he's there now, and
I believe that heaven is a much better place than
we live on earth, and that it would be selfish

(12:27):
of me to pull him back from that now as
a selfish human, because I am a selfish human. Do
I wish I had my son right now? Absolutely? I
mean I'm having to watch my friends who had children
around the same time I had Cooper send to their
children off to kindergarten this year. I'll never see him
do that. I'll never see him play ball, I'll never

(12:49):
see him graduate from high school. I'll never dance with
him at his wedding like I'll I'll never have those
experiences with him, and I want that. I wanted that
with him, and and I can't have that. So selfishly
I want those things and it hurts me every single day.
What was it like for you personally? What did it

(13:10):
feel like? What was your life like when you were
living under this cloud of suspicion that you ultimately were
cleared from but it took a while. What was that like? Well,
I do want to be clear about something before I
do elaborate on that, and and that's the fact that
I don't I don't view myself as a victim in

(13:31):
this case. I don't live my life with a victim mentality,
but there have been some tragic and terrible things happened
in my life that are just facts of my life.
And sometimes when I talk about those things, people get
the idea that I'm playing the victim card. That's not
the case, so I just wanted to kind of clarify
that before I did give details on this. It was

(13:52):
very difficult to be and I was simultaneously mourning the
loss of my child and dealing with the fact that
my husband was in jail. You know, when you have
bad things happen in your life, the world doesn't stop.
You think it should, but it doesn't stop, and you
still have responsibilities as an adult. And then finding out

(14:14):
that you know, not only am I having to deal
with the loss of my son in the absence of
my husband being in jail, now I'm a suspect, and
it was very difficult to deal with. I'm an only child,
my mother's only child, and I had to prepare her,
who had just buried her only grandchild. I had to
prepare her for me possibly getting arrested. It was a

(14:36):
legitimate concern. I was advised to get an attorney. I
got on an attorney. It was probably one of the
smartest things that I did in my situation. And then
I had to prepare my family for my possible arrest.
It was horrible because I was trying to keep it
together for multiple people in my life. I was trying
to be strong. I was trying to stay on my
feet and prepare them for this possible nick really horrible

(15:01):
thing to happen, and I didn't know for a while
if that was going to be a reality for me.
And sitting there knowing that I had absolutely nothing to
do with this other than the fact that Cooper was
my son, it was terrified. At the time, it was
an average thirty year old dietitian, just you know, mom,
just working and taking care of Cooper and being a wife,

(15:23):
and within a day everything changed. Where were you living
and what were you doing to get by? Ross was
the breadwinner of our household. I mean, he was the
full time worker. He was the one that the majority
of our income came from. He held our health insurance.
I was just an as needed employee at the time,

(15:47):
and I had family in Tescaloosa, and I had a
position come open with the company. That I was with
around that time. Actually the position was open before everything happened,
and when it happened, I made the decision and to
move back to the Tuscaloosa area and be close to
my family so that I would have that family support system,

(16:07):
but also so that I could have full time employment.
It was September of two thousand and fourteen that I
officially moved back to the Tuscaloosa area and I started
working full time towards the end of September. Like I said,
the world doesn't stop moving, and it was good for
me actually to get back into a routine of some kind,

(16:31):
something to keep me busy and and try to keep
my mind off of things. So I just I went
back to work about ninety days after everything happened, and
it was probably one of the good things that I
did for myself at that time was to get back
to work and just basically keep yourself busy because you can't.
There was nothing about the situation that I could change.
It was completely out of my control. I had zero power,

(16:55):
and my goal was basically at the time to put
one foot in front of the other and keep moving.
And that's what I did, and that's honestly, that's what
I do today. People always say that it gets better,
that time hills those kinds of wounds, but it's just
not true. It's it doesn't get better. You just learn
to live with it. You just learned to live with

(17:16):
the pain. That's what I did. I just learned to
keep going despite what was going on in my life.
Tell us about your son. I only got twenty two
months with him, but they were probably the best twenty
two months of my entire life. He had such a
adventurous personality. I guess he could say he um. He

(17:38):
was a happy child. He was very personable. He he
wasn't scared of strangers, he wasn't scared of new people.
He was just very loving towards just about anybody. We
used to joke with the daycare workers he had a
lot of incident reports written up on him, and they
do instant reports any time a child gets a boo

(17:59):
boo at the day care, and and he would. He
would have very frequent falls and stuff at daycare, and
we used to joke with them that he probably had
one of the largest incident report files in the daycare
because we would get a call several times a week
that Cooper climbed on the table and bumped his head
or I mean he was trying to climb on the
tables in daycare before he was walking. He was just fun.

(18:22):
I mean, he was a pretty laid back child. We
we took a trip when he was five months old,
a road trip from Atlanta, Georgia, down to Miami, Florida,
when he was only five months old, and he was
just he was just a joy. I mean, he would
get fuzzy, but it didn't last very long. I think
about now what he would be like, and that is

(18:43):
he would be five now. He would have turned five
on August two, and I think about all the time.
You know, what would he be like now, how tall
would he be? You know, what would his favorite things be?
What would he be enjoyed. It's hard to know that
I'll never know those things because I think that he
would have grown to a very lovable and loving child

(19:05):
and been into an adult. I think you would have
been a very loving, caring personal. One day, let's talk
about some things that you learned about your ex husband
during the course of the investigation. Did you have any

(19:27):
idea prior to the days Cooper died that your husband
might be unfaithful. I had suspicions because of some of
the problems that we've had in our marriage prior to that.
I didn't know that he had been unfaithful to me physically.
I knew that there were some issues with pornography, and

(19:48):
there was an occasion of some sexting that I had
discovered in two thousand and ten, But I didn't know
that he was actually having physical affairs with multiple women.
I didn't know that out based on those issues that
you were aware of, had you sought counseling or any
type of marital assistance to get past those things? We did.

(20:10):
Neither one of us were really interested in divorce. It's
strange to say, but we actually had a very good marriage.
We didn't fight, we didn't have problems, We co parented
very well, We got along very well. The only aspect
which was very clear from the trial was intimacy issues.
That Faily way I really know how to categorize it,

(20:31):
is that we had issues with intimacy, and that has
been going on for several years, and so when I
had the most recent discovery of him using pornography, probably
in two thousand twelve or maybe two thousand thirteen. Honestly
can't remember. We did seek professional counseling from a license
sex therapist to try to kill some of the damage

(20:53):
that had occurred in our relationship because of the pornography addiction.
I think we've been in counseling a little over each
year when it happened. What was it like learning later
what you learned about, what really was another life that
you were not aware of that your husband was living.

(21:13):
I don't think of it in my head as another life,
but I can see how people can see it that way,
But I don't think about it that way in my head.
The intimacy issues in our marriage that we had that
were ultimately called by his infidelity to me, it was
evidence of that betrayal. I just didn't know that that
betrayal was there, but there was evidence of it in

(21:34):
our lack of intimacy and relationship, and there were signs,
I guess you could say there were signs that there
was a problem. I just didn't exactly know what that
problem was. Those little bits of evidence that there was
a problem they showed through I just didn't know exactly
what was causing those problems at the time. Now hindsight

(21:56):
is like they say, it's very easy to look back
on our relationship now and say, well, that's exactly why
we never could overcome the problems that we had because
he was he was engaging in multiple affairs with multiple women.
You learned, I guess from law enforcement or other sources
that your husband had in fact been sexting with multiple

(22:20):
women and engaging in sex acts with prostitutes. When did
you learn those things, and when you did, how did
you react to it? So the initial information that got
regarding his extramarital affairs was at the Problem of Cause Hearing. However,
there were some things said in the Problem Cause Hearing

(22:40):
that I knew were not true because they involved me,
And when that happened, I had a immediate distrust in
the law enforcement, and I didn't necessarily believe what they
were saying because I knew that they had said some
things about me that was was not true, and I
didn't know where they drew the line. So at that
time didn't know what was true, and I didn't know

(23:01):
what wasn't true, And there were no conversations between Ross's
attorney and myself about those things because of confidentiality, So
I did not find out until much later the truth
about some of those accusations at the time, and I
would say it was probably closer to the end of

(23:23):
two thousands, fifteens before I found out exactly how extensive
Ross's extramarital affairs were, and it was probably about six
months after that information was getting demeded. I thought the
divorce was that an easy thing to do, filing for divorce.
Many people might say that you should have done it
much sooner, right. I've seen different comments from different people

(23:48):
about that, about me doing it. They didn't like the
timing of it. My job in any of this was
not to please anybody. I did things on my own
time and what I could cope with. I was feeling
and reeling with the fact that my son was gone
and when I got there, you know, the rest of
the story and the rest of the information. So for

(24:09):
me personally, I had to work through that. I had to.
There was a lot of thinking and a lot of
contemplating about, you know, each thing that I was told.
It took me a while to come to terms with it.
I guess you could say I had to. I had
to come around to the fact that my husband had
been extremely unfaithful to me, and once I came two

(24:31):
terms with it all, it was an easy decision. It
wasn't a hard decision to make. Once I made that decision,
it was done. I did not waver, it wasn't questioned.
I mean, I can remember the day that I made
the decision. I went into counseling one day with my
therapist that I was seeing twice a month at that time,
and and I didn't go in there with the intention of,
you know, talking about getting a divorced, and I don't

(24:52):
even think we really talked about it that much. But
when I walked out, the decision was made and it
was done. It wasn't necessarily a hard decisi And it's
just I had to I had to come to terms
with everything that had happened in my life. I had
to come to terms with basically the fact that my
life blew up in my face and I lost everything.
I mean, I lost everything in one day, and I

(25:14):
had to come to terms with all of that. And
that's a difficult thing to come to terms with when
you're thirty and your your life has basically just started.
So the once I did, it wasn't a difficult decision
it was. It was hard only because when you've been
married to somebody for almost a decade, and we have
been dating since I was in my early twenties, and
probably I think you started dating when I was twenty

(25:36):
and I was thirty at the time. I mean, his
family had become my family and had been my second
family for a third of my life. And it was
a difficult decision to make because of those aspects that
when you looked at the facts of it, and I
just couldn't, regardless of what was going to happen in
the future with a trial, regardless of any of that,

(25:57):
I could not reconcile with being deceived that severely for
that long. What was it like, some two years or
so after the fact, to have to drive to Brunswick, Georgia,
to go into a courtroom full of people that you
don't know and relive this. I really don't know any

(26:20):
way to explain it other than absolutely horrible. I mean,
it was a torturous experience. When you go through something
like that in your life, that traumatic, and you get
to a point where you feel like you're able to
move forward, it's almost like starting your life over again.
I couldn't do that until the trial was over with.
I couldn't move forward in many ways until that was

(26:42):
behind me, because I knew that as soon as I
got up on that stand and had to start reliving
that day and that experience, that it would be a
secondary traumatic experience. Everything that I said was going to
be picked apart. It does not at or you know,
what my intentions have been in any of this process, situation,

(27:05):
of these experiencesiness that I've had every time I opened
my mouth, I say something that is is taken wrong
by somebody. It's not my job to please everybody. I
can't please everybody, And if somebody is going to think something,
then they're going to think it is. That's not my problem.
I can't change that. For the most part, I didn't know,
you know, what was coming next. I didn't know, you know,

(27:28):
what they were gonna do. I didn't know if they
were going to try to show me pictures. I didn't
know if they were going to try to show me
things that I was not going to physically be able
to be able to witness and see. It was scary
what happened when you walked out of the courtroom the
first day, when I walked out of the courtroom, I
I basically just wrote down there was a result of

(27:49):
me trying to hold it together for an entire eight
hour period, and when I walked off, it just all
came out. I was in the company a few people
that are close to me, and one of them was
my attorney, and he had never seen me like that.
He had never seen me in that kind of state.

(28:10):
I couldn't stop crying, I couldn't breathe. It was a
good thirty minutes of just of them just basically trying
to get me to start breathing again. It just all
came out. At one time. You reached out to me
after you heard part one of this podcast. Why did
you do that? I think that the main thing that

(28:31):
really struck me with something that Chuck Boring said in
the first episode about how a lot of times, especially
child victims, don't have anybody there for them at trial,
and they don't have anybody to speak for them. And
that was never my intentions with Cooper to not I
was there for him during the trial, and that was

(28:55):
never my intention in any of this for it to
appear as though I was supportive of my son throughout
the trial. I believe you testified that Ross ruined your life.
Do you still feel that way? I mean, yeah, She's
the reason why I don't have my son anymore. And
the actions that he took during our marriage and being

(29:18):
unfaithful to me, there's a reason that everything else happened.
If those extramarital affairs were what made him appear and
look like to be a very bad person, if it
had just been Cooper, if it had just been losing Cooper,
that would have been bad enough. I mean, that was
that would have been enough to have to deal with.

(29:38):
It just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and
most of that was because of the things that he
was doing outside of our marriage, and so I stand
by that statement. He's a big part of why I
hurt the way that I did today. How did you
become a listener a Swan? I travel a lot for work.
I've spent about eight hours in my car every week

(29:59):
committing to work. And it was suggested by a friend
that I listened to have been vanished, and so I
started listening to that a couple of months ago, and
basically Binge listened to most of the episodes and eventually
caught up to real time and you know, didn't have
to wait for the episodes to come out. That's where
I found out about Born And so when Thorne started up,

(30:20):
I migrated over to that podcast and I started listening
to it and listened to the first couple of episodes
and never crossed my mind that you would have an
episode on Cooper. And then you know, I listened to
the trailer of the next episode and and realized what
it's going to be about. I actually didn't see the
trailer until the day that the episode dropped. The first episode,

(30:43):
so uh, Jerry cautiously listened to it. I had made
somebody listen to it with me, because I don't like
to over listen to things that it's been involved Cooper
and and our situation without support of some kinds. I
had to about you listen to it with me. I
was surprised at the impartiality of it. It seems with

(31:05):
our situation, you either follow on one side or the other,
and the and the media to begin with was very
They didn't have any trouble following on one side or
the other, and they made no apologies for that. And
any time I hear anything about our our story that
is obviously trying very hard to be impartial and and

(31:27):
look at those sides of it. I'm very respectful of that,
and I appreciate that very much because it is very
difficult to be on the hate side of a mob.
That's basically what I've experienced for a lot of the
past three years of my life is being on the
hate side of a mob, and not a physical mob,

(31:49):
but a social media mob. Do you see any parallels
in your stories and listening to have been vanished? Obviously
I did listened to it in a way to you know,
have something to listen to all the way to work,
and a lot of people see the true crime podcasts
as a form of entertainment, and obviously that's how I

(32:12):
viewed up and Vanish. But I never I never forgot
the fact that these were real people, that Terror was
somebody's daughter, and that she was lost and they didn't
know where she was for you know, ten plus years,
and and it's it's the pain that they experienced. I
can relate to that very much. But to think, the
thing that really really got me were the episodes on

(32:36):
Marcus Harper, and especially after they actually made an arrest
in the case, you know, after he was basically found
to not be involved in her disappearance. I remember, you know,
listening to those episodes and thinking, oh, my gosh, I
know how he feels. I know, I know what that
feels like. For people to think that you were complicit

(32:56):
in something horrible happening to somebody that you've loved. That's
a very difficult place to be in emotionally, to know
that people think that you're capable of something so horrible,
and that people legitimately believe it. They're not leaving that
train of thoughts, and I just thought, man, I know, unfortunately,

(33:18):
know how he feels. I know what that feels like.
So what is your life like now? Three years later?
It's a pretty normal, boring her life. I work as
a dietician with the same company that I worked with
before I left the Atlanta area. I try to find
small joys in my life, in the relationships that I

(33:39):
have with my family and my friends. My perspective of
things is completely different now than it was three years ago.
I don't worry about little things that I used to
worry about. I don't take for granted the people in
my life and the people that I love. I wouldn't
say I've necessarily turned into a spontaneous person. That's not

(34:00):
my personality. But I definitely appreciate the little things in
life and I'm not going to take for granted anything
ever again, probably because when you have your most your
most precious thing in your life taken from you, and
nothing else can compare to that. There's you know, little
arguments or work difficulties in the scheme of things. They're nothing.

(34:23):
They're not worth getting worked up over losing sleepover, because
there are way worse things that can happen in your life.
I guess just overall, I'm probably a more compassionate person.
I look at things differently, especially news stories when I
see them come on the news or see them pop
up on social media or newspapers or whatever. I think

(34:45):
about things well differently. I think about everybody in the
scenarios and what they're having to go through emotionally because
of of that situation in their life. And so I
think I'm overall what compassionate person and just a more
appreciative person of a little things in life. What do
you say to people now that it's been publicly declare

(35:06):
that there's no evidence to suggest that you were involved
in Cooper's death. What do you say to people who
did or do still think that you had something to
do with Cooper's death. That is something that I've essentially
had to relieve myself up and move on from because

(35:27):
I can't change somebody's opinion. I can't change their fault
understanding of what happened. There's nothing that I can do
to change that. But I would just urge people to
withhold judgment because unless you have walked in that person's shoes,
unless you have experience of things that they have experienced,

(35:50):
you have no idea what they're going through. You have
no idea what they've been through, and you have no
idea the pain that can be caused to the person
because of the things that you say and things that
you do with just what Chinee did, its information that
you have about their life. I mean, it's not your life,

(36:11):
it's not your experiences. And a lot of these people
that get so obsessed with these cases, for number one,
may need to be thankful, but it's not their situation
and not their life. And number two, they honestly just
need to move on because nothing is happening because they
are lashing out at somebody who has has been accused
of something that they ultimately didn't do. And you just

(36:34):
don't understand the emotional and mental damage that you can
inflict on somebody with something as simple as you know,
sending a extremely hateful or even threatening Facebook message. It's
not helpful in any way. Did you receive threats? Yes?
I did. Do you receive threats of physical harm? I did?

(36:58):
Of physical violence? Yeah? H How frequent was that a few?
There weren't as many as as Honestly I would have
thought there would have been. As bad as things got,
I was not on social media at the peak of
everything we're talking, and probably two years out people were
still very, very angry and very accusing of me, basically

(37:23):
things like I hope you burn in hell, you know,
think things like that of that nature. But the most
hateful one was, you know, basically threatening violence on me.
That's scary. I mean, to just be an average person
there is experienced this, and for whatever reason, it became
national news. And then to just have random people sending

(37:45):
hateful things, it's an odd thing to experience. I've never
responded to anybody that's been hateful to me, and I
won't because it's not productive and it's not going to
solve anything. If somebody has an opinion, they haven't a opinion,
and that that is fine. I would just caution people
about actually reaching out to this person that you don't

(38:07):
know and trying to inflict further pain on them because
you just don't know their situation. You don't know, I mean,
he could be wrong, the information you have could be wrong,
and and you're just causing further damage regardless of what
you read in this case and this situation and the
your knowledge of it going into this podcast, that Cooper
was a wanted child. He was very much wanted, and

(38:30):
he was absolutely loved and adored and cherished and nothing
will ever replace him. I mean, he was irreplaceable and
you can't be undone. I think it was rather serendipitous.

(38:56):
Who have gotten that phone call from Leanna. I couldn't
have asked for a more complete ending to our story
on Cooper. Now we've all had the chance to actually
hear from a family member and just about the closest
person to this case besides Justin Ross Harris. I think
what Leanna said about learning to deal with the media
is true. You can't always please everyone, and in a

(39:19):
case like this, everyone is going to have an opinion.
After a tragic case like this is over, perhaps the
only thing you can do is try your best to
move on with your life. As some of you may know,
there's another podcast out there that covers the Justin Ross
Harris case. It's called Breakdown, and it covered the case

(39:41):
extensively up to real time during the trial. Today I
talked with Bill Rinkin, the host of Breakdown and also
a reporter for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Bill is
extremely well versed on the case, having covered it in
two different mediums. He's here to talk with us about
his experience during the trial, as well as being in
the True Crown podcast sphere in general. I'm Bill Rankin.

(40:05):
I'm the legal affairs reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
I covered the case for the newspaper, and I also
hosted the Breakdown podcast, which focused on the Ross Harris
case in season two. I've covered courts now for more
than twenty five years, and I've loved it. I've covered
a lot of high profile cases. I covered the Michael

(40:27):
Vick case, the quarterback for the Falcons who was accused
of animal cruelty. There was a very high profile case
involving the Gold Club in Atlanta with the wrecked hearing
case involving mobs alleged connection with the mob and prostitutes
who were having sex with professional athletes. But I think

(40:48):
the most high profile case I'd covered before this was
the Ray Lewis murder trial. He and two others were
accused of killing two people shortly after Super Bowl thirty
four in Atlanta, uh and the trial here in Atlanta
was followed nationwide on Court TV. And but I think
Ross Harris was in another realm because social media now

(41:12):
is so pervasive, and the attention on this case was
unlike any any other I've ever covered. I covered the
case with a very able colleague, Christian Boon, and we
took turns during the day that this was about a
five week trial, if I recall, and we wrote stories
for the our website throughout the day depending on whether

(41:35):
big news came from testimony, And there were a lot
of moments that demanded us to write updates for our
website at the same time I had to. I felt
like I was part of the radio and TV crew
because I was I had a recorder hooked up to
the sound that came out of the courtroom, and I
was having to monitor that too, make sure I could

(41:58):
mark the most importan in moments when I heard interesting
testimony and couldn'tess gracious. There was a lot of it.
When I heard somebody say something that I thought would
be great on a podcast, I would market so I
could go back at night after the trial was over,
and then I would go back through all that recorded
testimony and try to winnow down the best sound bite

(42:18):
that I knew I would use on the weekly podcast.
It was like nothing I've ever done before, and it
it took a lot of time. It was very long days,
but it was interesting. It was so new to me,
and it was fun, actually it was. It was a
fascinating trial. During the jury selections, some jurors did say
they had listened to breakdown, but I think it was

(42:39):
just the the total inundation of news coverage about the
case on all fronts TV, radio, newspapers, and social media.
At first, when Cooper was found dead in the car,
the case was already a national story, but after the
probable cause hearing and news of his sexty and infidelities,

(43:01):
came out, the case just went viral. You could see
sitting through jury selection and Cobb, especially before the case
was moved, how so many jurors not only had fixed
opinions about Harris's guild, they it was just so clear
that many of them just despised him. I don't know
if they could have gotten a fair and impartial jury

(43:22):
in Cobb. I was pretty surprised when they moved it.
But it was moved because of all the coverage, all
the news coverage, not just the podcast. That's for sure. Today,
you know, the defense may have had a better result.
That's easy to say, obviously, because they moved to Brunswick,
which is a very conservative area to be It's not

(43:43):
it's not a defense lawyer's preference to be trying a
case as a prosecutor's dream that area. So, you know, hindsight,
I think they did the right thing and trying to
move it because I remember one juror she said she
would give them that she wanted him to have the
eth penalty when she hadn't heard of single word of
testimony that kind of described how some people thought about him.

(44:06):
She was excused, of course, but the antipathy of him
in Cobb County was ferocious. Phil. I think she referenced
Breakdown in context with a lot of other news media
when she moved the trial and she referenced Breakdown, she
was using that as an example of how how closely
the case was being followed by the news media, and

(44:30):
she was right about that. I think it's very safe
to say that the true crime podcasts are becoming as
they become more and more popular, and they are very
popular because you know, some of these podcasts are having
millions and millions of downloads. I think they're becoming very influential.
And I think it's very safe to say that Ednn
Sayed's attempts for a new trial would never have received

(44:52):
such careful scrutiny by the courts in Maryland had it
not been for the attention on the case by serial
and undisclosed those podcast and the prosecution in the Tera
Grinstead case. And you know, tiny Ascilla initially ordered a
sweeping gag order of that I had never seen in
my life, not only telling people that not to talk

(45:15):
about the case, but having no access to documents, which
he since eased quite a bit. But it had to
be because of the popularity of the great popularity the
up and vanished podcast because you know, not many people
were really covering the case, and that's it paid such
close attention to it, and that's I think, especially people

(45:36):
in that small area we're listening so and the judge
knew that. And I guess I would hope also that
Breakdown's first season played a role in how Justin Chapman's
murder case was received by the courts and prosecution long
after he'd been sent to prison. You know, I did
that podcast on Justin Harris many years after he had

(45:56):
been convicted. The drive to court in Brunswick during rush
hour was a breeze. So but but I guess the
bad thing was spending so much time away from my
family and I think everybody involved in the case I
felt that. But I think as for making the podcast,
it presented a lot of challenges for me. I mean,
I had to most Breakdown podcast or made in a

(46:19):
studio we have here in Atlanta, but I didn't have
that down in Brunswick. So I I made a makeshift
studio in my condo bedroom closet, draped quilts over my
head and I hung close up and all around me.
So I recorded the podcast in a little cocoon setting
so I could try to have the best sound quality

(46:39):
as I could. You know, my dad worked for the
Atlantic Constitution. He died about ten years ago. He worked
for the Atlantic Constitution for twenty five years. I can'tnot
imagine what he would think, you know, if he'd known
I'd done that as a newspaper reporter. We also had
some very interesting developments while we were in Brunswick. We
had Hurricane Matthew rumble through and the governor ordered the

(47:04):
evacuation of the Georgia coast. I remember I left at
five o'clock in the morning on the day he declared
a state of emergency, and I guess by the end
of the day, lines of traffic going down I sixteen
West were bumper to bumper. I left early enough to
miss it, but that was crazy, you know. We also

(47:25):
had half a day because of the presidential election, and
I tell everybody during the trial, I saw Donald Trump
get elected in the Chicago Cubs win the World Series,
so it was all very interesting. Do you have any
predictions about how long the appeal might take in this
case or what it might look like. The first thing

(47:45):
that happened will be the motion for new trial hearing
that Justin Russ Harris is Lawri's have already filed, but
he has a a new quarter, pointed attorney, Mitch Durham,
but he can't proceed until the trial transcript is finished.
And from what I understand, and we're now nine months
later and the trial transcript is yet to be prepared,

(48:05):
it's not unusual for lengthy murder trials to for the
trial transcript to take a year or even longer. So
I would think once the transcript is prepared and the
motion for new trial is litigated, that could take a year,
I would think, and then you would appeal to the
Georgia Supreme Court. After that, again you have to prepare

(48:26):
the trial transcript on the hearings for the motion for
new trial. I don't know how long that will take,
but the Georgia Supreme Court will hear the arguments and
it takes two terms. It could take two terms of
its court to decide the case. That could be another
half year to nine months, So I think we're talking
three years. I don't think that's unreasonable. Justice doesn't move

(48:48):
that quickly sometimes. Well, I always tell people that you
certainly don't want to put all your eggs in the
appellate basket. Your best hope to win a case is
that the trial court level, because if you lose, then
the appeal could last a really really long time. And
if it's not a murder case and you have a

(49:09):
much shorter sentence, oftentimes you've served your sentence before the
appeal even begins. UH motion for a new trial is
heard by the judge who oversaw the trial. That would
be Judge Mary Stanley Clark, and it happens sometimes, but
I think it's extremely rare for a judge who oversaw
the trial him or herself to order a new trial.

(49:31):
I think they would affirm the conviction and he will
have an automatic appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, and
I'm sure that's where the case will ultimately to be decided.
Is there anything that you think that you might want
to add that you think is important about the trial
from the inside looking out? I think Veronica covered it

(49:51):
pretty well. Who's the guy? Um, the TV guy who
you had that was Vinnie Politan Benny. I thought he
said it very well. I felt the same way. I
thought Harris needed to testify, even though I knew Chuck
Boring would have skinned him alive, but I think the
jury needed to hear what he had to say. From

(50:12):
what I would think Maddox and Carlos and Brian felt
like his videotaped interview, you know, the secretly recorded interview
at the police station, sufficed to that. But I personally,
I would have liked to have heard what he had
to say because, like I said at the podcast, there's
really only one person who knows whether he did it

(50:35):
or not, despite how strongly. Another thing about this case
is just how strongly and fervently the pros, both the
prosecution and the defense, believe they're right. You see that
in trials, you know, where the defense will say I
know my client sent us, and the prosecution will say, no,
he's guilty. But a lot of that is bluster. I

(50:56):
don't believe this was bluster at all. I think that
Maddox Ogre thought Justin Ross Harris was absolutely innocent. He
never meant to kill his son. I think Chuck Boring
believed in his heart of hearts that he did so,
and like I said, there's only one person who really
knows for sure, and that's Justin Ross Harris and the
jury didn't get to hear from him. And I can

(51:17):
understand why they didn't put him on the stand, but
I guess, like asking to move the jury to Brunswick
instead of keeping it in Cobb, hindsight, maybe it would
have been good for the jury to hear him explain
what happened that day. Well. You know, that's one of
the things that stood out to me from the very

(51:38):
beginning of this case is how each side was seemingly
two convinced that their side was the right side. I
believe you're right. I believe the defense in their hearts,
believes he's innocent, and I believe that the prosecutors in
their hearts believes that he's guilty of malice murder. And ultimately,

(52:02):
at the end of the day, it had to be
the jury to make up their mind. I would say,
I bet the jury would have loved to have heard
from him on the stand if any of them had
any doubts at all. You know, seeing his demeanor, heard
his explanation, see his sorrow in his grief, did it
seem as though the defense strategy was really too fiercely

(52:25):
defend the murder charges or the charges related to his
death and not really focus on the overwhelming evidence that
was presented regarding the sexting allegations. My impression was that
the defense basically completely admitted to all the sexting allegations,
and I think Maddox said in his opening statement, like

(52:49):
I believe he played in the last episode, he was
a moral and he admitted to everything. I think absolutely
the defense basically laid down on the sexting and child
porn charges. There was really no defense they had to
combat those charges. They had it all in texts and
on computers. There was no defense to it. Really. I

(53:12):
think their main focus was on the malice murder charge.
They absolutely didn't believe that he meant to kill his son. Secondly,
the criminal negligence charged, their argument was because he did
not know Cooper was in the car when he left
the car, he couldn't have been negligent. He would only
be negligent if he knew Cooper was in the car

(53:32):
when he left. Of course, the prosecution argued that he
absolutely knew he was in the car, but the defense
argued that this was just a tragic mistake, so he
could not be guilty of murder. That was their main focus.
Throughout the whole trial, described for us what the atmosphere
was like when we knew there was a verdict that

(53:54):
was about to be read, and what it was like
inside that courtroom. I was not surprised that the jury
found him guilty of malice, murder and criminal negligence, just
because you know, when cases go to trial prosecution, the
prosecutor usually wins. And I thought this was a pretty
conservative jury, and I thought that the sensationalism about the

(54:20):
sexting was tough to overcome from her defense perspective. But
when Judge Staley handed her clerk the piece of paper
and he stood up to read it, you know, you
could have heard a pen drop, and the anxiety and
the tension in that courtroom was palpable. There's nothing like
a verdict being read in court, especially after a strongly

(54:44):
litigated trial that's received national attention. So it's one of
those moments I'll never forget. Without question. Well, we heard
from the prosecution, we heard from the defense, we've heard
from journalists who covered this once in a lifetime trial,
and we've even heard from one of the two living
people most affected by this tragedy, Cooper's mom, Leanna Taylor.

(55:08):
Now it's time for me to share with you my
final thoughts. The truth is, I do have some thoughts,
but I'm not sure that their final thoughts. This case
and this trial literally consumed whatever part of my life
wasn't spent with my family or my law practice. I too,
was part of the media that was glued to every

(55:31):
single part of this case, from arrest to verdict. We
were there for it all, gavel to gavel, working sources,
planning how we were going to cover various aspects of
the proceedings. Where would be the best place to set
up a live shot for television. I guess I'll let
you in on something of a little secret. Something many

(55:52):
people don't know is that I was the first person
subpoenaed as a witness for the defense in the case
of the State of Georgia versus Justin Ross hare Us.
That's right, you see, the defense filed a pre trial
motion seeking for the courtroom to be closed during subsequent
pre trial hearings in order to protect their client from
pre trial publicity while evidentiary matters were discussed. The defense

(56:16):
felt like they needed a witness, a talking head like me,
to testify that there would be extensive media coverage of
all pre trial matters, and that people like me would
dissect every aspect of those proceedings and broadcast them to
the pool of potential jurors. Of course, media lawyers, as

(56:37):
they always do in situations like this, intervened, and ultimately
I was released from my subpoena, and that was a
good thing. I didn't mind being on the news, but
I certainly did not want to be the news. Now.
You won't find a stronger advocate for open courts than
I am. But I get why the defense did this.

(56:57):
They were trying to protect their client, Maddox Killgore and
his team. Well, they were doing their sworn duty, their
duty to be zealous advocates for their client. But Maddox
really didn't need me to tell the judge about pre
trial publicity. She could see that with her own eyes.
After all, the courtroom was packed with the reporters and

(57:18):
cameras and microphones everywhere, so she could see this with
her own eyes, and by the way, she did not
close the courtroom. But in all of this, the truth
is that I really still cannot get my head around
the idea that a father would intentionally murder his son
in such a horrible way. To this very day, when

(57:41):
I think about this case, I don't think so much
about the evidence. I don't think so much about the
probable cause hearing that caused so much controversy, and I
don't think about the trial or even the verdict. It
is true that the initial probable cause hearing against Mr
Harris made the state's case seemed quite strong, and it's

(58:02):
also true that the evidence at trial was very different
and the state's case didn't seem quite as strong by
that point. In fact, I've heard from people who watched
the entire trial who had not seen the probable cause hearing,
and these people mostly were stunned at the verdict at
least as to the murder convictions. To most of us

(58:22):
that followed this case closely, there was never any real
doubt that Ross Harris was headed to prison. The charges
against Mr Harris that were not related to murder, those
charges were factually basically indefensible. On top of that, justin
Ross Harris had a second indictment returned against him for
indecent images allegedly located later on his electronic devices. If

(58:46):
convicted of those charges in that second indictment, he was
facing a lot of prison time. But in the end,
when I think of this case, what I think of, well,
who I think of mostly is Cooper. The death of
a child is always terrible, but the way Cooper died
is something I can't really fathom, not as a person

(59:07):
and certainly not as a father myself. My hope is
that Cooper's death was not in vain. At a minimum,
I hope that his death raised awareness, awareness of the
dangers of leaving kids in hot cars, and I hope
that his death reminds the rest of us of the
dangers of risky behavior and unhealthy addictions. I hope that

(59:28):
Leanna and others who knew and loved Cooper can find
some peace and hopefully eventually some closure. Finally, I hope
that Cooper rests in peace. If you have kids, give
them an extra hug today in memory of Cooper Harris.

(01:00:02):
Yes Because You Sworn is produced by Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta.
Story production and sound design by Payne Lindsay Executive producers
Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, and if you have it yet,

(01:00:24):
please check out our sister podcast, Up and Vantaged that
follows the investigation into the disappearance of Georgia High school
teacher and beauty queen Tera Brinstead Up and Vantaged is
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(01:01:09):
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