Justin Ross Harris 'seems like a monster,' longtime friend says

Justin Ross Harris, who remains jailed without bond following the death of his 22-month-old, Cooper Harris, was popular and funloving growing up but now seems "like a monster," a former friend of his told  NBC's "Today" in a stunned and sometimes emotional interview Friday morning.

"It blows my mind that the Ross Harris I knew is capable of doing any of the things I've heard," Ben McRea said.

Harris had lots of friends growing up in Tuscaloosa, he said.

"He didn't seem like the settling down type" in his youth, McRea told "Today." "He seemed very wild and almost to a point that you would say probably irresponsible."

He said Harris and his wife, Leanna, "seemed like the perfect couple" and that he was a groomsman in their wedding.

"As far I as I know both of them wanted kids," he said.

But his friend seemed to have a wandering eye. Harris would visit his friend at work and comment on the attractive young women working there.

"I'm like, 'dude, stop checking these girls out,'" McRea recalled.

They are no longer friends, and he was stunned to learn the allegations he now faces.

"It just makes you sick to your stomach," McRea said. "Stunned, angry, disgusted. It made me literally pull over and throw up. ....It's like he's just a different person. It seems like a monster."

He also said he doesn't understand the reaction of Leanna Harris, who recently hired her own attorney. She has not been charged with any wrongdoing but her behavior on the day of her son’s death has been heavily scrutinized by investigators.

When informed by workers at her son’s day care facility that Cooper had never been dropped off, she calmly responded, “Ross must have left him in the car. There’s no other explanation,” Cobb Police Det. Phil Stoddard’s testified during Justin Ross Harris' probable cause hearing.