A Drive With Daddy

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

A meal with Daddy at Chick-fil-A... that's what 22-month-old Cooper Harris enjoys the June morning that he dies. Father Justin Ross Harris, 41, takes his son to breakfast, and then instead of turning toward the daycare to drop off his son, Harris drives to work, parks his SUV in the lot and heads inside. The little boy is still strapped in his car seat. The temperatures that day are over 90 degrees outside, and 125 degrees in the car, according to experts. Cooper Harris suffers heatstroke and dies. Justin Ross Harris returns from lunch, stops to put a purchase inside the car, but doesn't see his son inside. The discovery of the body happens that evening as Harris is driving home. He pulls over into a parking lot, unlocking the lifeless body of his only child from it's restraints. Harris is charged and convicted of eight counts including malice murder. A judge sentences him to life without parole as well as 32 more years in prison. Now the killer dad is asking for a new trial. Today on Body Bags, former death scene investigator and forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan walks us through the terrible details of this case.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	When it comes to vehicles, we think about them as a means to transport us to work, to go
0:28.1	about our daily life, to convey us from one spot to another during good times and bad times.
0:36.8	Do you ever really think about a vehicle being used as a weapon? I'm not just talking about
0:44.0	a vehicle being used to run somebody over. I'm talking about a vehicle being used
0:49.4	to heat somebody up to the point where they actually die. Today, we're going to talk about the
0:58.0	death of Cooper Harris. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.
1:08.2	Back with me again today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories
1:13.5	with Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you tell us about Cooper Harris?
1:18.3	So on June 18, 2014, first impressions are that Justin Ross Harris is a loving parent who made
1:26.0	a terrible mistake. His son Cooper, just 22 months old, was to be dropped off at a daycare. His
1:33.2	dad took him to breakfast at Chick-fil-A before intending to drop Cooper off at the daycare,
1:38.3	which was right down the road from where Justin Ross Harris worked. But in that distance of a
1:44.8	mile between the Chick-fil-A and where he should have turned to go to the daycare, Justin Ross Harris
1:51.8	says he forgot that he had his son. He parked his vehicle and went into work for the day. During
1:59.6	the ensuing hours of June 18, 22 month old Cooper died of heat stroke. Now Harris told police
2:08.7	that he realized his mistake when he was driving away from work after getting back in the car
2:15.8	at the end of a long, hot day to go home. That is when he noticed his son was dead in the car.
2:22.2	He immediately pulled over into a parking lot called 911. What was found during the investigation
2:29.2	is that Justin Ross Harris was a serial womanizer. He was in the midst of several extramarital
2:35.8	affairs. Harris had been involved with multiple women and had been sending explicit sexual messages,
2:43.2	sexting, some with nude photos with at least six different females. In fact, some of them were
2:50.5	underage girls. It was also found that he was viewing an internet page called Child Free and
	...

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