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Video shows defendant confessing to hurting 3-year-old with wrestling move
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
An hourslong videotaped interview at the Warren Police Department shows the moment when Arthur Harper told his common-law wife, Judith Owens, he was responsible for her son’s death.
Tuesday was the first day of testimony in the murder, felonious assault and child-endangering trial of Harper, 45, of High Street Northeast. He’s accused of killing Russell Cottrill, 3, by causing head and spinal-cord damage to him Nov. 28, 2015, at their home. The trial resumes this morning before Judge Peter Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
A half-hour before the videotaped interview, Harper confessed to a Warren police detective he had used a professional wrestling move on Russell that left the boy unresponsive. Harper told the detective he wanted to be the one to tell Owens the truth.
Most of the day’s testimony related to the two interviews Detective Nick Carney had with Harper. The jury watched both of the interviews, including the hourslong second one Dec. 2 during which Harper finally admitted the boy’s injuries were not from Russell falling off his bed while taking a nap.
What happened, Carney asked again and again, insisting it was not possible for the boy to sustain the type of head trauma Russell suffered from falling off a bed less than 2 feet off the floor.
Finally, Harper said, “a mistake.”
“His head was down too far,” Harper said. Russell’s head hit the floor while they were “play rasslin’,” and Harper erred while using a wrestling move called a “piledriver.”
Harper explained he held Russell upside down with Russell’s head between Harper’s legs and Harper falling back onto the floor. It was about the fifth time he and Russell had done it that day, Harper said.
He said Russell started “shaking” after that, apparently having seizures.
Owens testified Harper told her the first time his error caused Russell’s injuries in the police interview room.
“He says he has something to tell me,” Owens testified.
“He basically tells me he was playing with Russell and his head was in the wrong position and something went wrong,” Owens said.
“I stood up at that point. Everything was gone,” she said. When Harper asked for a hug, “I basically gave him a right cross. A detective pulled me into the hallway,” she said.
Harper said he and Russell wrestled every day, but Owens testified she would never have allowed Harper to do a piledriver on her son. “It’s dangerous,” Owens said.
Harper’s lawyer, John Juhasz, told jurors in opening statements Harper is guilty of killing Russell, but “it wasn’t murder.”
“Russell and Arthur did something they’d done a zillion times before,” Juhasz said.
Harper could get a life prison sentence if convicted of murder.