in tuscaloosa, alabama, and that s where his close friend, billy kirkpatrick, met him. you called him a massive dork? massive dork, yes. reporter: why did you call him that? because he s a massive dork. reporter: billy says ross was a lot of fun to be around. he remembers one beach holiday in particular. ross took his guitar and, like, walked up to people on the beach and started conversations because that s who he is. reporter: was he playing for them, too? he was. they didn t ask him to. but he was playing. reporter: but ross seemed to settle down when he met his wife, leanna. she encouraged him to get his college degree. his cousin katie, who quickly became leanna s best friend too, says leanna made ross want to be a better man. we ve said that without leanna, ross would ve probably been a lost little, puppy. reporter: after six years of marriage, they moved to atlanta when ross was offered a job as a web developer at home depot. cooper was born a few months late
oh, my boy. reporter: but it was something else ross told leanna that really got the investigators attention. i was up and down, dreading he was going to look terrible. 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 hom
know, as long as she sat outside, she could pretend like this wasn t happening. because once she goes inside, you know, there s an empty bedroom where cooper s supposed to be. reporter: an empty crib? 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.
his son. the father, may have been negligent in forgetting cooper was in the car but were his actions intentional? here again is andrea king. reporter: the day after cooper s death, ross harris sat in the cobb county jail. his family and friends were in shock. billy was a pallbearer at cooper s funeral. you have to carry that that little casket. you know? reporter: katie says the family grieved in full view of the media. i felt like it was a circus and we were the monkeys. everybody was watching us. reporter: police were watching, too. prosecutor susan treadway. we have to review all the evidence. we have to see where it leads
here with the conclusion to our story is andrea kane. reporter: 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.