The women who encountered Ross Harris in his secret life took the stand Thursday to testify about their sexually charged relationships, online and in person, with the former Home Depot web developer.
Prosecutors sought to establish Harris' obsession with sex, a compulsion the state alleges led him to purposely leave his 22-month-old son Cooper inside a hot car to die. The defense insists it was just a tragic mistake.
Jaynie Meadows testified she was 18 when she and Harris began a series of online chats that, she said, blossomed into love.
“He told me that he loved me every day,” said Meadows, now 21. They remained in close contact until the week of Cooper’s death though met in person just one time, in August 2013.
Meadows testified Harris once told her “if the situation were different, he’d be with me instead of (then-wife Leanna).”
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore reminded Meadows that she told Cobb County police that Harris stayed in his marriage because “he wouldn’t do that to Cooper.”
“He loved that little boy more than anything,” Kilgore said. Yes, Meadows responded.
Like Meadows, all of the women who testified Thursday were at least 10 years younger than Harris, now 35.
Alexandra Swindell said she was a student at the University of Alabama when Harris contacted her in an online chat room. In early 2013, she said, Harris drove to Tuscaloosa to pick her up from her dorm room. They went to a secluded area where she said she performed a sexual act on Harris.
They never met again but, three days before Cooper’s death, Swindell testified they were discussing another rendezvous.
Molly Sims, 22, said she and Harris exchanged sexually explicit chats for two years although they never got together in person.
Elizabeth Smith, 24, said a series of sexually explicit message exchanges led to a sexual encounter in a parking lot off I-75. They last talked in the early morning hours of June 18, 2014 — the day Cooper died. At 7:25 a.m., Harris messaged Smith and asked her if she would meet up with him and have sex. Smith was out of town.
