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Body Bags: A Drive With Daddy · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. When it comes to vehicles,
0:23
Speaker 1: we think about them as a means to transport us
0:26
Speaker 1: to work, to go by our daily life, to convey
0:31
Speaker 1: us from one spot to another during good times and
0:34
Speaker 1: bad times. Do you ever really think about a vehicle
0:39
Speaker 1: being used as a weapon. I'm not just talking about
0:44
Speaker 1: a vehicle being used to run somebody over. I'm talking
0:47
Speaker 1: about a vehicle being used to heat somebody up to
0:52
Speaker 1: the point where they actually die. Today we're going to
0:57
Speaker 1: talk about the death of Cooper Harris. I'm Joseph Scott
1:01
Speaker 1: Morgan and this his body bags back with me again
1:09
Speaker 1: today is my good friend Jackie Howard, Executive producer of
1:12
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, Well, can you tell
1:16
Speaker 1: us about Cooper Harris Joe on June eighteenth, twenty fourteen.
1:20
Speaker 1: First impressions are that Justin Ross Harris is a loving
1:25
Speaker 1: parent who made a terrible mistake. His son, Cooper, just
1:29
Speaker 1: twenty two months old, was to be dropped off out
1:32
Speaker 1: of daycare. His dad took him to breakfast at Chick
1:35
Speaker 1: fil A before intending to drop Cooper off at the daycare,
1:38
Speaker 1: which was right down the road from where Justin Ross
1:41
Speaker 1: Harris worked, but in that distance of a mile between
1:46
Speaker 1: the Chick fil A and where he should have turned
1:48
Speaker 1: to go to the daycare, Justin Ross Harris says he
1:52
Speaker 1: forgot that he had his son. He parked his vehicle
1:57
Speaker 1: and went into work for the day. During the hours
2:00
Speaker 1: of June eighteenth, Cooper, twenty two month old Cooper died
2:05
Speaker 1: of heat stroke. Now Harris told police that he realized
2:09
Speaker 1: his mistake when he was driving away from work after
2:14
Speaker 1: getting back in the car at the end of a long,
2:17
Speaker 1: hot day to go home. That is when he noticed
2:20
Speaker 1: his son was dead in the car. He immediately pulled
2:23
Speaker 1: over into a parking lot called nine one one. What
2:27
Speaker 1: was found during the investigation is that Justin Ross Harris
2:31
Speaker 1: was a serial womanizer. He was in the midst of
2:34
Speaker 1: several extramarital affairs. Harris had been involved with multiple women
2:38
Speaker 1: and had been sending explicit sexual messages, sexting, some with
2:44
Speaker 1: nude photos with at least six different females. In fact,
2:49
Speaker 1: some of them were underage girls. It was also found
2:53
Speaker 1: that he was viewing an Internet page called child Free
2:57
Speaker 1: and reading articles on how to survive in prison, looking
3:01
Speaker 1: up how hot a car needed to be to kill
3:04
Speaker 1: a child looking up what it would be like to
3:07
Speaker 1: live an unencumbered life, Joe. So what we find out
3:12
Speaker 1: when the autopsy is completed is that Cooper Harris died
3:17
Speaker 1: of heat stroke after being left in this car where
3:21
Speaker 1: temperatures topped easily one hundred degrees. So let's start there, Joe.
3:27
Speaker 1: What is heat stroke? Heat stroke itself in the medical
3:31
Speaker 1: communities referred to as hyperthermia, hyper meaning high temperature. And
3:36
Speaker 1: then of course we can have hypothermia, you know, if
3:38
Speaker 1: people are exposed to cold, cold weather for a protracted
3:41
Speaker 1: period of time. But in this particular case, we're talking
3:44
Speaker 1: about this young boy, this toddler, this baby essentially that
3:50
Speaker 1: was strapped into this car seat and left in this
3:54
Speaker 1: hot car for a protracted period of time and I
3:58
Speaker 1: think one estimate that at one point in time was
4:01
Speaker 1: up to seven and a half hours perhaps that he
4:04
Speaker 1: was there. And what happens with hyperthermia, it's a diagnosis,
4:09
Speaker 1: it's not you know, when we think about things that
4:12
Speaker 1: we do in forensic pathology and in medical legal death investigation,
4:16
Speaker 1: we think about trauma, don't we We think about things
4:18
Speaker 1: like bludgeoning and strangulation and gunshots and knife wounds and
4:23
Speaker 1: all those sorts of things, and relatively speaking, those are
4:26
Speaker 1: kind of easy diagnoses to make. But with hyperthermia, this
4:30
Speaker 1: is this is a diagnosis of what's referred to a
4:33
Speaker 1: diagnosis by exclusion, So you have to have a lot
4:36
Speaker 1: of circumstantial evidence that's coming in to theme the forensic
4:40
Speaker 1: pathologists to make this determination. As a matter of fact,
4:44
Speaker 1: when the m made the diagnosis of hyperthermia, he didn't
4:50
Speaker 1: list a manner of death initially. And you know, as
4:53
Speaker 1: fans on bodybacks have learned, you know, there's five manners
4:57
Speaker 1: of death, you know, the homicide and suicide and undetermined
5:01
Speaker 1: and natural and accidental. In this case, initially the manner
5:06
Speaker 1: of death was left undetermined. And what that says is
5:10
Speaker 1: that the doctor knew, based upon just the information that
5:13
Speaker 1: was coming in, that this was going to be a
5:16
Speaker 1: heat related death. He just didn't know how to qualify.
5:19
Speaker 1: And it took more information coming in from the police,
5:22
Speaker 1: that circumstantial information to kind of put all of the
5:26
Speaker 1: pieces together. At the end of the day, the Emmy
5:29
Speaker 1: listed this as a homicide. Now that's what left all
5:34
Speaker 1: of us, I think, kind of scratching our heads and saying, well,
5:38
Speaker 1: if this is a homicide. If this is a homicide,
5:42
Speaker 1: then you have this child that is a lockdown inside
5:46
Speaker 1: of this vehicle, Jackie. That means that you have intent,
5:51
Speaker 1: that his dad had specific intent to literally use the
5:55
Speaker 1: interior of this vehicle, the heated interior of this vehicle,
6:01
Speaker 1: as a means to bring about his son's death. And
6:03
Speaker 1: that requires thought, doesn't it It requires thought that you
6:06
Speaker 1: would have to think something like this out. It does.
6:09
Speaker 1: And we know that temperatures that day reached ninety two
6:12
Speaker 1: degrees and experts are saying that inside the car the
6:17
Speaker 1: temperature was close to one hundred and twenty five degrees.
6:22
Speaker 1: So let's talk specifically about what heatstroke is going to
6:27
Speaker 1: do to a body. I want everybody in the sound
6:30
Speaker 1: of my voice to just imagine this for a second.
6:32
Speaker 1: Think about the summertime, and you go out to your car.
6:36
Speaker 1: Maybe it's in a parking lot after you've been shopping,
6:38
Speaker 1: maybe it's outside of your home. Car's locked up. You
6:41
Speaker 1: go to get out there in the middle of the day,
6:43
Speaker 1: you unlocked the car, and you get in. You ever
6:44
Speaker 1: grab the steering wheel, and steering wheel will almost sizzle
6:47
Speaker 1: the palms of your hands. That's how hot it is.
6:50
Speaker 1: Until you can equalize the temperature by moving down the
6:53
Speaker 1: road with your windows down, perhaps turning on the air let.
6:57
Speaker 1: The air kind of catch up and you know, dispel
7:01
Speaker 1: that heat that's in that environment. Cooper didn't have that opportunity.
7:06
Speaker 1: He was inside of this environment. In one estimate that
7:09
Speaker 1: I heard, they top into the temperature at about one
7:12
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty degrees inside of this vehicle. And let's
7:16
Speaker 1: just talk about some of the contributing factors here. First off, yeah,
7:20
Speaker 1: he's inside of a vehicle. But the vehicle is parked
7:24
Speaker 1: on an asphalt surface, and what do we know about heat?
7:27
Speaker 1: Will heat rises? Did you know that the interior of
7:31
Speaker 1: that vehicle is actually going to be impacted by rising heat?
7:35
Speaker 1: That vehicle, even though it is insulated, it is going
7:37
Speaker 1: to take on that heat and it's going to be
7:39
Speaker 1: transferred to the interior. Not to mention, the vehicle is
7:44
Speaker 1: completely surrounded in glass. What does glass do. Well, it's
7:49
Speaker 1: like a partly sunny day and that glass is acting
7:55
Speaker 1: to magnify the heat within the vehicle, so the heat
7:58
Speaker 1: is gradually creeping up. We know that the vehicles parked
8:02
Speaker 1: roughly nine ish nine thirty ish I think in the
8:04
Speaker 1: morning and then it sat there. It sat there. As
8:08
Speaker 1: the sun began to rise, it got hotter and hotter
8:11
Speaker 1: inside of that car, and all the while, little Cooper
8:14
Speaker 1: is back there. Now he's positioning in this car seat
8:17
Speaker 1: so that he's facing rearward. He's not facing forward. And
8:21
Speaker 1: it's not a big car, it's actually a kind of
8:25
Speaker 1: a compact suv. And in this position, he would have
8:30
Speaker 1: been looking rearward and he would have had nobody there
8:34
Speaker 1: to soothe him. Can you imagine his anxiety level increasing,
8:38
Speaker 1: Probably his pulse rates increasing. I don't know about his
8:41
Speaker 1: blood pressure, but certainly his pulse rate. Anxiety is kicking in.
8:45
Speaker 1: And we all know what it's like to be strapped
8:47
Speaker 1: into a seat of a vehicle as an adult. But
8:50
Speaker 1: can you imagine, with almost like a four point in
8:53
Speaker 1: restraint in this car seat, this young child is pinned
8:57
Speaker 1: down in this thing, and no matter how much he
8:59
Speaker 1: struggles and anxiety is increasing, he doesn't have his mommy
9:02
Speaker 1: and daddy to soothe him. And he begins to sweat.
9:04
Speaker 1: He begins to sweat, and he's starting to feel the
9:06
Speaker 1: effects of the interior environment heating up. Mouth is becoming dry,
9:12
Speaker 1: the body is trying to cool itself down. But here's
9:16
Speaker 1: the problem. When we get hot, we can replenish, can't we.
9:20
Speaker 1: We can take on a classical water, maybe something to
9:24
Speaker 1: replace electrolytes. Cooper didn't have that opportunity. He's sitting there
9:28
Speaker 1: and he is sweating, clothing is becoming super saturated. But
9:31
Speaker 1: even that saturation of his clothing is beginning to evaporate
9:35
Speaker 1: in this heat. And with every second that ticks off
9:39
Speaker 1: the clock, With every second that ticks off the clock,
9:44
Speaker 1: for Cooper, he's losing hope. As time is going by,
9:49
Speaker 1: mouth is getting dry, and then soon at one point
9:52
Speaker 1: in time, he'll start to have kind of some intestinal discomfort.
9:56
Speaker 1: Many times with people that are suffering from hyperthermia, they
10:00
Speaker 1: begin to have stomach cramps, and not just stomach cramps,
10:04
Speaker 1: but also when they begin to heat up, your muscles
10:08
Speaker 1: begin to cramp up as well. We see this with
10:10
Speaker 1: athletes out on fields, and you know, folks will say, well,
10:14
Speaker 1: he's got a cramp in his leg. Well, they have
10:16
Speaker 1: somebody to run out and attend to them, not Cooper.
10:18
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being pinned in the seat, superheated in
10:21
Speaker 1: that environment, and suddenly the major muscles in your legs,
10:25
Speaker 1: maybe they begin to cramp up. You've got knots in
10:28
Speaker 1: your stomach where you feel as though that your stomach
10:31
Speaker 1: is really upset. Sometimes you'll have severe nausea, vomiting. There's
10:37
Speaker 1: there's also opportunity for to develop acute acute diarrhea in
10:42
Speaker 1: these cases as well. It is a total and complete
10:47
Speaker 1: a sensation of discomfort all the while. It's very torturous
10:51
Speaker 1: as time goes by. And then finally, what is going
10:54
Speaker 1: to be happening as a result of this imbalance of say,
10:57
Speaker 1: the electrolytes in the body, the dehydration, and you will
11:02
Speaker 1: have individuals that will begin to seize. They will have
11:05
Speaker 1: seizures many times. And finally what's going to happen is
11:09
Speaker 1: that you'll you'll have a fatal cardiac event because the
11:14
Speaker 1: systems are so out of balance at this point in time,
11:17
Speaker 1: the child's heart just stops beating. And that's what happened
11:19
Speaker 1: to Cooper. Interestingly enough, we believe, we believe based upon
11:25
Speaker 1: what I saw and what I heard in testimony, the
11:29
Speaker 1: Cooper was probably alive. He was probably alive for maybe
11:33
Speaker 1: four four and a half hours. I want to talk
11:36
Speaker 1: a little bit more in depth, Joe about some of
11:38
Speaker 1: the things that you just brought up. Whenever it is
11:40
Speaker 1: suspected that someone is experiencing heat stroke, the recommendations are
11:45
Speaker 1: to get the person into the shade or indoors, to
11:47
Speaker 1: remove access clothing, and to cool the person down by
11:51
Speaker 1: whatever means necessary quickly, and to get emergency services. Some
11:56
Speaker 1: of the symptoms of heat stroke, and you named some
11:58
Speaker 1: of them is the high court body temperature, the nausea
12:01
Speaker 1: and vomiting. You have a flushed skin as your skin
12:06
Speaker 1: turns red because of the body temperature, rapid breathing, a
12:09
Speaker 1: racing heartbeat, a headache, and it causes confusion, agitation, slurred speech, irritability,
12:18
Speaker 1: and the seizures that you talked about. It can even
12:21
Speaker 1: put a person into a coma. And all of these
12:24
Speaker 1: things combined together damages the heart, the kidneys, the muscles,
12:29
Speaker 1: the brain. So you said, at that point, the heart
12:33
Speaker 1: just stops. But what is it exactly that we're seeing here, Well, Jackie,
12:38
Speaker 1: it's going to be a depletion of several things, and
12:41
Speaker 1: it's some of the things that for our cardiac proceeds
12:45
Speaker 1: to operate effectively. Remember I talked about the absence of
12:48
Speaker 1: electrolytes and when you're bleeding electrolytes out. You know, you're using,
12:53
Speaker 1: you're losing things like sodium, potassium, and magnesium, and these
12:59
Speaker 1: keep our systems and balance. And as these are exiting
13:01
Speaker 1: the body and you're not replenishing them, that's why you
13:04
Speaker 1: see these events like the nausea that we talked about,
13:09
Speaker 1: certainly the disorientation, the dizziness, and eventually it leads to
13:14
Speaker 1: a severe cardiac problem. And if you're not if you
13:17
Speaker 1: haven't gotten assistance quick enough, it can lead to brain damage.
13:21
Speaker 1: And of course that's you're an unrecoverable flat span there physiologically,
13:26
Speaker 1: there's no way to kind of recover from it. And
13:28
Speaker 1: what makes this particularly insidious, Jackie, is the fact that
13:34
Speaker 1: this is something that was researched, the fact that his
13:39
Speaker 1: father would have an awareness of this at least that's
13:42
Speaker 1: what the jury believed, that this was something that was
13:45
Speaker 1: intended to have happened, and that he was found guilty of.
13:50
Speaker 1: And with all of that knowledge, all of that data
13:54
Speaker 1: relative to that, he subjected this child to that. And again,
14:00
Speaker 1: and this is what kind of sends a shiver up
14:02
Speaker 1: your spine as to how cold and callous this event.
14:05
Speaker 1: You know, and we had you know, I remember during
14:07
Speaker 1: the course of this trial, we had a visceral reaction
14:10
Speaker 1: from people when they began to understand what this child
14:14
Speaker 1: had endured. There's one image that really really captured me
14:21
Speaker 1: that that came about from an evidentiary standpoint, and that's
14:25
Speaker 1: when Cooper was actually removed from the car seat by
14:28
Speaker 1: his father and he was laying there on the ground.
14:31
Speaker 1: Actually he was laying in a parking lot and his
14:34
Speaker 1: dad had pulled over into the back of a shopping
14:37
Speaker 1: center and had removed Cooper from the car was screaming.
14:42
Speaker 1: A couple of witnesses stated that Harris had attempted to
14:45
Speaker 1: do a couple of compressions on Cooper and walked away.
14:49
Speaker 1: Another gentleman took over. But you know, Jackie, when's crime
14:52
Speaker 1: scene people got there and they were observing Cooper's body,
14:55
Speaker 1: This image will always stick with me. He was laying
14:58
Speaker 1: on his back and his leg x were benet and
15:00
Speaker 1: knees and contracted upward. Do you know why, because he
15:04
Speaker 1: had sat in the seats along that Riger Morris had
15:06
Speaker 1: set in that he had been there for at least
15:09
Speaker 1: four hours post mortem, probably because Riger appeared to be
15:13
Speaker 1: fixed in his legs, And that gives you that image
15:17
Speaker 1: is so ghastly that it really stuck with me over
15:20
Speaker 1: all these years, you know, since this case happened, and
15:24
Speaker 1: the fact that this event was so horrific, to the
15:28
Speaker 1: point where you have a father that's searching the internet
15:31
Speaker 1: looking for the impact of what the causative agent that
15:37
Speaker 1: could bring about death in this environment, and it would
15:39
Speaker 1: seem on one level, if in fact he had planned
15:43
Speaker 1: this out like the court says he did, that it
15:49
Speaker 1: was to him it seemed as though it was going
15:51
Speaker 1: to be a perfect crime Jackie, that you're not going
15:53
Speaker 1: to leave behind much evidence other than the fact of,
15:56
Speaker 1: oh I forgot, And that's what it essentially that it
16:00
Speaker 1: comes down to. You know, it's very it's very difficult
16:24
Speaker 1: to get past the knowledge of what this child went through.
16:28
Speaker 1: But you know, the people that were at the scene,
16:30
Speaker 1: the people that worked this case, they had to drive
16:32
Speaker 1: on through, including the medical examiner personnel that handled this
16:35
Speaker 1: case at the end of the day, and and of
16:38
Speaker 1: course they took Cooper's remains back and did an autopsy
16:41
Speaker 1: on him, and they wanted to find answers and many
16:44
Speaker 1: times there's just not a lot you can see with
16:47
Speaker 1: a death related to hyperthermia. Well, speaking of that, Joe,
16:52
Speaker 1: what's actually going to show up in an autopsy. Well,
16:54
Speaker 1: you know, with autopsies, Jackie, the thing that we will do,
16:58
Speaker 1: and I'm going to talk in general kind of about
16:59
Speaker 1: auto tops it's real quickly at autopsies, what we're gonna
17:02
Speaker 1: do is it's not just about opening a body and
17:06
Speaker 1: examining the internal organs and drawing talkic college. We look
17:11
Speaker 1: at the totality of everything, you know, we look at
17:13
Speaker 1: the external condition of the body, including the clothing. And
17:19
Speaker 1: when Cooper's body came into into the medical examiner's office
17:23
Speaker 1: and they were preparing to do their examination, they noted
17:26
Speaker 1: that Cooper was clothed, it was clean, with the exception
17:32
Speaker 1: that he was still wearing a diaper and the diaper
17:35
Speaker 1: was saturated with urine, which again, you know, going to
17:39
Speaker 1: the hyperthermia, you know your your body is still going
17:42
Speaker 1: to be avoiding during this period of time. You still
17:45
Speaker 1: have a need to avoid and he would have urinated
17:50
Speaker 1: on himself and had to sit there in those last
17:52
Speaker 1: few hours of his life. And his body was weighed
17:59
Speaker 1: examined thoroughly and there was no external trauma. Okay, it
18:02
Speaker 1: looked like he had been well cared for as a
18:05
Speaker 1: matter of fact, when the investigators with the Medical Examiner's
18:09
Speaker 1: office began to kind of dig into the medical history
18:13
Speaker 1: of Cooper, essentially there was none. He was basically allergic
18:17
Speaker 1: to one drug, which I think may have been an antibiotic,
18:20
Speaker 1: but nothing else. He had no previous medical history, So
18:23
Speaker 1: you had no reason for this child just to have
18:27
Speaker 1: spontaneously died. And that's one of the questions that we
18:30
Speaker 1: ask in the medical legal community. Is there any other
18:34
Speaker 1: possibility here, particularly when you have a case that, as
18:37
Speaker 1: I had mentioned that hyperthermia is kind of a diagnosis
18:40
Speaker 1: of exclusion. You know, when you've gone through everything else,
18:43
Speaker 1: you have to consider everything else before you can arrive
18:47
Speaker 1: at that at that moment in time to make that
18:50
Speaker 1: final diagnosis, which course is bolstered by circumstantial evidence. For us,
18:55
Speaker 1: he had no medical history, had nothing to indicate that
18:58
Speaker 1: he had some kind of unknown blood disorder or heart disease,
19:02
Speaker 1: or some type of neurological impairment or anything like that,
19:06
Speaker 1: congenital problems that had been passed along. There was no
19:09
Speaker 1: evidence of that. So at the end of the day
19:12
Speaker 1: when the medical exam was doing the autopsy, really the
19:16
Speaker 1: only significant finding that they found with Cooper's body is
19:21
Speaker 1: that he had swelling or adema as they put it,
19:25
Speaker 1: in the lungs, and he had a diema also swelling
19:30
Speaker 1: in his brain. And that was really the biggest manifestation
19:34
Speaker 1: they could see. And that's that's kind of something that's
19:37
Speaker 1: peripherally associated with hypothermia because the body is struggling so much,
19:41
Speaker 1: you know, the process oxygen to try to keep your
19:44
Speaker 1: own heart pumping. The brain is starved essentially of all
19:49
Speaker 1: of its necessary nutrients to go on, and the brain
19:53
Speaker 1: begins to swell and eventually it shuts down. And so
19:56
Speaker 1: that's from what we referred to as a gross examination,
19:59
Speaker 1: which means with the unaided eye, that's all they found
20:02
Speaker 1: at that point in time. And then they did a
20:04
Speaker 1: microscopic examination, which is called histological examination, and then that's
20:09
Speaker 1: all I found as well. His toxicology screen was clear
20:12
Speaker 1: as well, Jackie. There was no evidence that there was
20:14
Speaker 1: any kind of drugs on board or anything like that.
20:18
Speaker 1: What was evidence though, was the fact that you know,
20:21
Speaker 1: when we go back and we think, you know, his
20:22
Speaker 1: dad had stopped off that one last meal at Chick
20:26
Speaker 1: fil A there in an area called Vinings, Georgia, to
20:30
Speaker 1: get him a biscuit, and there's actual image of the
20:35
Speaker 1: two of them inside of the restaurant on CCTV and
20:39
Speaker 1: there was evidence of food and a stumbach. Joe, you
20:42
Speaker 1: were talking about the edema. Is the edema a cause
20:47
Speaker 1: of Cooper's death? Or is it an effect of Cooper's death?
20:52
Speaker 1: Understand my question? Oh? Yeah, perfectly. And that's an excellent question, Jackie.
20:56
Speaker 1: You've been studying. It's not it is a result of
20:59
Speaker 1: high perthermia. It's it's something that can at least, like
21:03
Speaker 1: I said, be peripherally evidenced. As a result, you have
21:06
Speaker 1: to ask the question why would this have occurred? Because
21:09
Speaker 1: normally a child of this age is not going to
21:12
Speaker 1: walk around with an idemitist brain and ademitis lungs. That's
21:15
Speaker 1: just not in the card. So the causitive factor bringing
21:20
Speaker 1: this about is the evidence of hyperthermia. And it also
21:25
Speaker 1: goes to a bigger picture. It gives you an indication
21:28
Speaker 1: of this kind of final struggle that Cooper's little body
21:33
Speaker 1: was in, you know, as he's he's headed toward death,
21:36
Speaker 1: towards this fatal event, if you will, as he's strapped
21:39
Speaker 1: into this car seat. And one more thing that was
21:41
Speaker 1: noted at the autopsy by the medical examiner is that
21:47
Speaker 1: on Cooper's back, essentially the left upper back and just
21:52
Speaker 1: over the left buttock, he had what's referred to as
21:55
Speaker 1: a parched abrasion, which gives you an idea that this
22:00
Speaker 1: is a dried abrasion and may be consistent, uh say,
22:03
Speaker 1: for instance, with something that had recently happened, or maybe
22:07
Speaker 1: given the fact that he's suffering from this state of dehydration,
22:10
Speaker 1: it may have happened during the struggle as he's trying
22:13
Speaker 1: to break free of these of being restrained in this
22:16
Speaker 1: in this car seat. He wouldn't have known anybody he's
22:18
Speaker 1: at child he's thinking, he's just struggling to get loose. Uh.
22:22
Speaker 1: There's also another area of a parched abrasion that's found
22:27
Speaker 1: over his left tricep area. Folks at home will just
22:30
Speaker 1: put your put your hand over your left triceps. It's
22:34
Speaker 1: the back area of your arm. So again, these back
22:38
Speaker 1: points of contact, if you will, where he's kind of
22:41
Speaker 1: struggling with his lower back, over his buttock and that
22:45
Speaker 1: left tricep area he's struggling. He may have abraided that
22:49
Speaker 1: area in the struggle as he's in the final throes
22:51
Speaker 1: of death. So let's talk about what evidence would have
22:54
Speaker 1: been found in the car itself. In the car seat.
22:57
Speaker 1: You said that he had foided, but he would have
23:00
Speaker 1: also defecated to correct when the body dies everything kind
23:04
Speaker 1: of let's go, well, that's not necessarily always the case.
23:08
Speaker 1: You know, there's a there's a bit of um. I
23:12
Speaker 1: don't know. It's kind of an urban legend that goes
23:15
Speaker 1: about that says that people actually do defecate themselves at
23:19
Speaker 1: the time of death. And yes, it does, in fact happen,
23:23
Speaker 1: and but it's not necessarily always the case. The medical
23:29
Speaker 1: examiner had reported that they saw evidence of urine in
23:32
Speaker 1: his diaper, but it's not like he had had some
23:36
Speaker 1: kind of explosive bowel movement or something like that at
23:38
Speaker 1: that moment in time. Now, quite interestingly, one of the
23:44
Speaker 1: officers that had arrived at the scene made this this
23:49
Speaker 1: kind of comment that that really struck people at the time.
23:53
Speaker 1: He said that he smelled the smell of death within
23:56
Speaker 1: the car at that point in time. And I never
23:59
Speaker 1: really understood what was meant by that, because Cooper really
24:04
Speaker 1: didn't have time to to decompose at that point, you know,
24:09
Speaker 1: to the point where you would actually it would be
24:12
Speaker 1: manifest to the point in a classic sense of decomposition.
24:16
Speaker 1: I think that it was more maybe and I hate
24:19
Speaker 1: to put words into this person's mouth, but maybe just
24:22
Speaker 1: the sense of what had gone on in that vehicle.
24:25
Speaker 1: Maybe there was the heavy smell of urine that was
24:28
Speaker 1: hanging in the air, the sweat that had issued forth
24:34
Speaker 1: from his body during these moments of struggle, and this
24:37
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But you know, we would look for
24:40
Speaker 1: things like vomitous, we would look for things like feces,
24:44
Speaker 1: all of those sorts of things. But you know, at
24:46
Speaker 1: the end of the day, Cooper's body was actually very
24:49
Speaker 1: well cared for. It was clean, it didn't you know,
24:52
Speaker 1: he didn't look like he was unkempt, if you will.
24:56
Speaker 1: And as far as what was voided from his body,
24:59
Speaker 1: according to the medical examiner, it was simply urine. So
25:01
Speaker 1: what do we have seen on the rest of his body.
25:03
Speaker 1: I would have to imagine that he struggled to get
25:07
Speaker 1: out of the car seat that he was strapped into.
25:11
Speaker 1: So would we have seen scratches, Yeah, you can, and
25:14
Speaker 1: particularly when individuals are in fact restrained to the point
25:20
Speaker 1: where they're fighting. Remember, there was a he would have
25:24
Speaker 1: been in a panic. Remember I used the term kind
25:28
Speaker 1: of anxiety ridden at that at that moment in time
25:31
Speaker 1: where you're you're fighting against this restraint that is holding
25:37
Speaker 1: you back. One interesting um note here, though, is that
25:44
Speaker 1: when they reflected or began to examine Cooper's neck on
25:51
Speaker 1: the left lateral neck. If folks at home will put
25:54
Speaker 1: their hand on the left side of their neck, there
25:58
Speaker 1: were some evidences of particular hemorrhage, and there were some
26:03
Speaker 1: evidences of particular hemorrhages there. That gives you an indication
26:09
Speaker 1: that maybe, in fact, he had struggled to the point
26:12
Speaker 1: where some of the blood vessels may have given away.
26:15
Speaker 1: You know, many times we see that with people that
26:18
Speaker 1: are are being choked out. If you will and this
26:21
Speaker 1: can happen, you can develop PATIKII in any number of instances. Actually,
26:27
Speaker 1: women that are in labor present with potiquii many times
26:32
Speaker 1: because of the strain, and that gives you an indication
26:34
Speaker 1: of this kind of rigidity that goes on. You'll have
26:37
Speaker 1: people that have gastrointestinal problems where they have trouble going
26:42
Speaker 1: in the bathroom. They'll develop potiqui I many times. So
26:44
Speaker 1: they're not always associated with a specific trauma where people
26:49
Speaker 1: are putting hands on somebody or are doing a ligature strangulation.
26:54
Speaker 1: When they did do this kind of examination on him
26:59
Speaker 1: at the topsy they did note that there was a
27:02
Speaker 1: slight light green discoloration on Cooper's abdomen. Now you can't
27:12
Speaker 1: say definitively, but many times with a green discoloration that
27:17
Speaker 1: is the very very early signs of decomposition. It begins
27:22
Speaker 1: with the bowels many times where you'll see this presentation,
27:25
Speaker 1: but it would not have been to the point where
27:27
Speaker 1: it would have been producing the odor that we can
27:31
Speaker 1: generally associate with decomposition. Many folks are asking, you know,
27:56
Speaker 1: at the conclusion of ross Haires's trial, how did this happen?
28:01
Speaker 1: Exactly what took place? How are you absent unawareness that
28:06
Speaker 1: you have this precious little life that's in your charge,
28:10
Speaker 1: and not just in your charge for that one moment
28:13
Speaker 1: in time, but father and son are involved in a
28:17
Speaker 1: daily routine. It's baffling, isn't a jackie. It has baffled
28:21
Speaker 1: everyone that has been following this case. Joe first off,
28:25
Speaker 1: in the one mile distance from breakfast to the parking
28:31
Speaker 1: lot where Justin Ross Harris worked, he says he forgot
28:36
Speaker 1: that he was supposed to take this child to daycare.
28:41
Speaker 1: I don't know of a child yet that, out of
28:45
Speaker 1: the excitement of getting food, is not babbling and talking
28:51
Speaker 1: for the less than ten minutes that it would take
28:55
Speaker 1: to go that distance. How would he have not Number
28:58
Speaker 1: one seen the child in his review mirrors, seeing the
29:01
Speaker 1: car seat to remind him. And what's the likelihood that
29:05
Speaker 1: the child fell asleep in that amount of time? That
29:07
Speaker 1: bit of knowledge kind of hitch in the chest like
29:09
Speaker 1: a ten pound sledgehammer when you begin to think about it.
29:11
Speaker 1: I remember earlier I had mentioned that when they were
29:15
Speaker 1: at Chick fil A, and they were at Chick fil A,
29:18
Speaker 1: they were not in the drive through at Chick fil A.
29:21
Speaker 1: They were in line at Chick fil A. Matter of fact,
29:24
Speaker 1: this particular restaurant's a restaurant that they had gone to
29:28
Speaker 1: in the past. People had seen them there in the past.
29:32
Speaker 1: And the cct TV images that are there are you know,
29:39
Speaker 1: they seem kind of be nine when you look at them,
29:41
Speaker 1: but given in total context, it's shocking because he's standing
29:46
Speaker 1: there with his precious little life in his arms, in line.
29:49
Speaker 1: He's caught on camera there and this is in you know,
29:52
Speaker 1: I don't know how it was to say it in
29:54
Speaker 1: the twinkling of an eye. It's a very short period
29:56
Speaker 1: of time that this is occurring in where they go
29:59
Speaker 1: into the restaurant, father and son. They stand in line,
30:02
Speaker 1: they get their food, they ingest their food, and then
30:04
Speaker 1: they're into the car. And you know, right, you are
30:08
Speaker 1: Jackie about you know, talking about the child falling asleep.
30:11
Speaker 1: It's not like it's at naptime at two o'clock in
30:14
Speaker 1: an afternoon. Kids had enough at that point, they're going
30:17
Speaker 1: to drift off. They've got a full tummy after lunch.
30:19
Speaker 1: That's not the case we're talking about. This child is
30:23
Speaker 1: awakened from a full lunch of sleep, supposedly, gotten dressed,
30:26
Speaker 1: gotten ready to stimulated his nose. He's going to school
30:29
Speaker 1: or daycare, that's what they do. How could he have
30:32
Speaker 1: gone to sleep at that point in time? How could
30:35
Speaker 1: that have happened? You know where he's not making any
30:37
Speaker 1: noise in the back seat That dad doesn't have any
30:39
Speaker 1: awareness is that he is back there. Remember this is
30:42
Speaker 1: not like some gigantic suv. This is a hyunday two
30:47
Speaker 1: soon twenty eleven. I think there's not a lot of
30:52
Speaker 1: room in this thing. I've been in one. It's it's
30:55
Speaker 1: bucket seats in the front and then right over your
30:58
Speaker 1: right shoulder if you're the driver that car seat. When
31:02
Speaker 1: you look at the at the images from the scene,
31:04
Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, Harris is a big guy,
31:07
Speaker 1: it looks like it would have been almost touching the
31:10
Speaker 1: outer aspect of his right shoulder. How can you not
31:13
Speaker 1: be physically aware that, first off, that seat is there,
31:18
Speaker 1: and that your son that you just placed back in
31:21
Speaker 1: it is there as well, and that your memory collapses
31:26
Speaker 1: just in that very short period of time where you
31:28
Speaker 1: don't go to the daycare but instead you drive. I think,
31:33
Speaker 1: I think when I clocked it, it it was there's a
31:34
Speaker 1: couple of different routes you can go. It's like seven
31:37
Speaker 1: tenths of a mile in one direction, and you take
31:39
Speaker 1: another direction. It might be a mile to the headquarters
31:43
Speaker 1: where he worked. How's how's that even possible? And I
31:47
Speaker 1: think that that's the big head scratcher here. You park
31:50
Speaker 1: your car off on one end of the parking lot,
31:55
Speaker 1: you leave it there all day long. You go in,
31:58
Speaker 1: you know, you you close the door up, you leave
32:02
Speaker 1: your kid in the car, You walk across the parking lot,
32:07
Speaker 1: maybe you wave at people you see and all the
32:10
Speaker 1: while you remember he's been found guilty. All the while
32:13
Speaker 1: in your mind, you've your baby's back there in the car,
32:17
Speaker 1: and you're walking toward the office. How do you forget that?
32:21
Speaker 1: How is that that that happens? And you know, while
32:27
Speaker 1: Cooper is struggling. Remember we're talking, you know, we there's
32:32
Speaker 1: a time element here. Maybe he had been down for
32:36
Speaker 1: I don't know, three hours, maybe three and a half hours.
32:41
Speaker 1: By the time his dad comes back out, he's gone
32:44
Speaker 1: to lunch, he stopped by somewhere, bought a pack of
32:47
Speaker 1: lightbulbs and physically walked over the car and placed the
32:50
Speaker 1: lightbulbs in his car. He rode with somebody else, I believe.
32:55
Speaker 1: How is it that at that point in time, at
32:59
Speaker 1: that point in time, you didn't see Cooper. There's maybe
33:03
Speaker 1: a high probability that at that point in time, Cooper
33:07
Speaker 1: may have been seizing at that moment, because you know,
33:11
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, he was there for
33:13
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, one estimate, it was like
33:14
Speaker 1: seven and a half hours. So if you split the
33:16
Speaker 1: day in a half, if it took him four hours
33:19
Speaker 1: to die in that heat, maybe his stomach is cramping up.
33:25
Speaker 1: Maybe his legs are cramping up. Maybe he's trying to
33:28
Speaker 1: double over in pain with his abdomen because he's in
33:31
Speaker 1: such severe pain, he's disoriented, he's sweating profusely, he's nauseated.
33:36
Speaker 1: All the while, he's crying out for his mom and
33:38
Speaker 1: daddy in the best way that he can in his
33:40
Speaker 1: own little boys that moment, nobody is answering. So one
33:44
Speaker 1: of the other questions that people really wanted an answer
33:47
Speaker 1: to Joe was the fact that Harris bought lightbulbs while
33:53
Speaker 1: he was at lunch and put those lightbulbs in the car.
33:57
Speaker 1: How would you, as you mentioned this little boy had
34:01
Speaker 1: lost control, and you have that urine smell, even if
34:05
Speaker 1: it's not a lot, in just a regular ninety degree temperature,
34:09
Speaker 1: in a very short period of time, the smell of
34:12
Speaker 1: urine gets extremely strong. How are you not buffeted by
34:15
Speaker 1: that as you open the door to get back in. Yeah,
34:19
Speaker 1: I mean, you know lots of times. You know, some
34:21
Speaker 1: people have equated the smell of your in a very
34:24
Speaker 1: mild sense, at least to the smell of ammonia in
34:26
Speaker 1: a mile sense, not like you're cracking up in a
34:29
Speaker 1: bottle of ammonia that you buy at the grocery store
34:32
Speaker 1: or or smelling salts. But it does have that that
34:38
Speaker 1: pungent odor to it. And the longer kind of festers
34:41
Speaker 1: in the heat like that, and the more pungent it becomes.
34:44
Speaker 1: How do you not have that awareness? And where did
34:47
Speaker 1: you place these lightbulbs? You know, again, he's a big guy.
34:50
Speaker 1: He occupies a lot of space. Did you just reach
34:53
Speaker 1: in and drop them on the seat and you didn't
34:56
Speaker 1: pay attention to anything else? Because you had to work
34:59
Speaker 1: the lock in order to get into the vehicle. You
35:02
Speaker 1: had to you had to manipulate the door handle in
35:06
Speaker 1: order to gain access. After you've unlocked the vehicle, you
35:09
Speaker 1: have to bend over at the waist and drop the
35:11
Speaker 1: light bulbs in. Then you have to stand back up,
35:13
Speaker 1: You have to lock the door, you have to close
35:15
Speaker 1: the door. Then you have to turn on your heel
35:17
Speaker 1: and you have to walk back to the office. How
35:19
Speaker 1: is it at that moment time you were not aware
35:21
Speaker 1: that your child was in that car? How does that happen?
35:25
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that I have the calculus
35:28
Speaker 1: to figure that. You know, Other than the fact that
35:32
Speaker 1: he was found guilty of this, the people in jury
35:34
Speaker 1: obviously felt as though that he had kind of thought
35:37
Speaker 1: this thing through, that this was the plan all along. Well, Joe,
35:42
Speaker 1: we may find out for sure because justin Ross, Harris's
35:47
Speaker 1: attorney say he deserves a new trial in this case,
35:51
Speaker 1: that the sexual messages that he was sending does not
35:55
Speaker 1: make him a killer. So all of these things that
35:58
Speaker 1: we've been talking about today, if he gets a new trial,
36:02
Speaker 1: would be rehashed all over again. What do you think
36:07
Speaker 1: we're going to see, Joe, I think that, Okay, I'll
36:11
Speaker 1: put it to this way. Out of all the cases
36:12
Speaker 1: I've covered and all the cases I've worked in my career,
36:16
Speaker 1: I've never come across a case where somebody utilized a
36:20
Speaker 1: motor vehicle in order to facilitate a homicide. And that's
36:23
Speaker 1: what this is. This is pure murder. He was found
36:27
Speaker 1: guilty of malice murder. I've never seen this. And the
36:33
Speaker 1: one thing, the one thought about this is that it
36:36
Speaker 1: seems so nutty. It seems so unhinged the fact that
36:42
Speaker 1: someone would have used the utility of a heated vehicle
36:45
Speaker 1: in order to take a small child's life. There might
36:48
Speaker 1: be a chance he's going to get a new trial
36:50
Speaker 1: because this is not like he you know, he struck
36:55
Speaker 1: this child, or he shot his child, or even poison
36:58
Speaker 1: this child. This is something so far off the beam,
37:02
Speaker 1: if you will, relative to the thought of committing a homicide,
37:07
Speaker 1: that there might be enough. There might be enough here
37:13
Speaker 1: for the courts to decide that maybe this needs to
37:18
Speaker 1: be taken a look at one more time. He might
37:20
Speaker 1: get another trial. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.