what i wanted to hear most is, you know, we can bring cooper back. you can t get that from it though. reporter: three weeks later, a judge sentenced ross harris to life in prison. sentence of the court is life to serve in confinement without parole. reporter: his defense team has already filed an appeal, arguing among other things that the judge never should have allowed all that testimony about sex into the murder trial. and the defense says inaccurate information released early on about ross computer searches made it impossible for him to get a fair trial. our personal belief, not lawyer talk, our personal belief and knowing ross and knowing this case better than anybody in the world, ross harris is an innocent man. reporter: are you going to keep fighting? this case is far from over. reporter: having seen the appeal, vic reynolds, the top prosecutor in cobb county believes it won t change the outcome.
forum for people interested in living a child-free life. a monstrous pore tras was emerging. but even after weighing all the allegations, ross friends were still convinced he never meant to hurt cooper. did you ever hear ross get frustrated with cooper? no. reporter: treat him like he was a burden at times? no. reporter: because you know there are times when kids can get on our nerves. no. no. there are times when you definitely need a break. okay? but he loved that boy. reporter: ross harris family enlisted the help of defense attorney maddox kilgore and his team. the entire case was a house of cards. we felt that, despite public sentiment, and despite the bravado of the state and the charges, we felt extremely confident that that house of cards was going to collapse in trial. reporter: in october, 2016, more than two years after the death of his son, ross harris went on trial for murder. death. deception.
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 see what s out there. we have to review all of the evidence. we have to see where it leads us. reporter: investigators pulled surveillance video from the chick-fil-a restaurant where ross said he took cooper for breakfast. there they were, father and son. nothing really seems out of the ordinary.
couch and ross is just goofing around with him and get on the floor with him. and it s hilarious. any extra thing that cooper could do, any milestone that he hit, he would share it with everyone. one of the conversations i had with ross, he said that it was so cool that cooper knew his name. and he said, and he loves to yell it at me. so instead of saying dad. he would just go ross. and he would yell ross at him all the time. reporter: it was ross who took cooper to day care most mornings. and that was where leanna expected to pick him up on june 18th, 2014. here she is arriving at the day care. she got to the day care and cooper wasn t there. reporter: leanna called ross to see if there had been a mix-up, but he didn t pick up. and then she had a worrying thought maybe ross had
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. 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 later. what was it like for you, the first time that you that you saw cooper? oh, man, he was so beautiful, just blonde hair, blue eyes. just tiny little perfection. i just had this vision of, you know, ross