So in case you didn t know, my Mom s side of the family is composed almost entirely of white trash, with very few exceptions. Some of the extended famil.
My Turn: Bringing in the working class JACOBLUND JACOBLUND
Published: 3/10/2021 6:34:38 AM
Cousin Katie calls and after talking for a while about family and childhood memories, she says, “So what’s this ‘white privilege’ all about anyway? We sure didn’t have any privilege!”
I know not to get into this with my cousin, we’ve always had political differences and so we tread lightly or stay away from talking about our liberal and conservative points of view. But I do understand why she is saying this and I respond, “Yes, we worked hard when we were growing up.”
Coming from a large family of cousins and siblings, we all had jobs from about 13 years old and it was understood that when you left home you’d support yourself. Securing a good stable job was the most important thing and if you wanted to go to college, that would be wonderful, but you’d have to work during those years and maybe get scholarships too. It’s just the way it was in a working class fami
there s his toys, his pictures. it s not real if she doesn t go inside. reporter: katie says leanna was numb without her child and her husband. did she go through that emotion at any point, i m angry at you? how could you do this? i don t know that she was ever angry at him. reporter: because you go through that scenario as a parent, what if my spouse did this? would i be able to understand? but she s such a composed woman. and her faith, i don t think, would let her be angry at him for something that he did not do intentionally. reporter: as cooper s family began to grieve, detectives started building their case against ross harris. and what they found convinced them this was no simple case of negligence. they believed this was premeditated murder. coming up did he lie in. he absolutely lied. there were a whole lot of
he said it while he was talking to leanna that, you know, he was dreading how cooper was going to look when he got him out. reporter: almost like he knew what was there. exactly. he knew what was going to be found. reporter: they were also struck by how calm leanna seemed to be. and by this surprising question. did you say too much? reporter: detectives wondered what she meant. they came back into the room and told ross he wasn t going home. he s going to jail. he s being charged. reporter: investigators thought they had enough to prove ross had been negligent by leaving his son in the car. his negligence caused the death of your son. reporter: and their investigation was just beginning. later that night, when katie reached leanna on the phone, she told her she d been sitting outside her home on the sidewalk. and she s told me that, you know, as long as she sat outside, she could pretend like this wasn t happening. because once she goes inside, you know, there s
ross harris, the man whose ex-wife says never met a stranger, was about to have his future decided by 12 of them. how were you all feeling as the jury went out to deliberate? i didn t think there was any chance of them coming back with guilty on anything that had to do with cooper. reporter: ross cousin katie said nothing she had seen at trial had swayed her belief in ross innocence. you could hold a gun to my head and tell me that i had to say that ross hurt cooper on purpose, and it will never come out of my mouth. will never come out of my mouth. reporter: ross best friend billy was equally confident. the prosecution did not do well at all. they did not prove motive. i mean, they didn t get close to it. in fact, i feel like their witnesses could have been defense witnesses. reporter: the jury took its time to deliberate the charges. not only multiple counts of child cruelty and murder. ross also faced charges related to exchanging sexually explicit images with a minor