Whenever a mass shooting happens, people take one of two positions. One – gun control. Two – mental healthcare. We may never know what the better option is, however when we talk about James Holmes, we can agree that the mental healthcare system let everyone down.
On July 20, 2012, 24-year-old James Holmes went to the midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. After purchasing the ticket, he entered the theater and promptly propped open an emergency exit. With that door open, he was able to slip out and prepare for what would come next.
About thirty minutes into the movie, Holmes re-entered the theater, donning a ballistics helmet, bulletproof vest, bulletproof leggings, a gas mask, and gloves. He was also armed with smoke bombs and four weapons which he would use on the unsuspecting viewers.
First, he detonated multiple smoke bombs, and then proceeded to open fire, unloading four weapons’ full of ammunition into the crowd of hundreds of movie goers. He proceeded to exit the theater where he stood guard, shooting innocent people as they attempted to flee.
Within minutes, police were on the scene and they were able to quickly apprehend Holmes, noting his full riot gear and his weapons – an AR-15, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a .40 caliber Glock handgun, and a fourth handgun, which was located inside his vehicle. Some criminals would choose to remain silent while they were being arrested, but not Holmes. He went on to tell his arresting officers that he was “The Joker”.
70 people were injured, 12 died.
But why? Who is James Holmes, and what made him shoot up a movie theater?
Holmes was born on December 13, 1987, in San Diego, California. His father, Robert, is a mathematician, and his mother, Arlene, is a registered nurse. His family moved to Monterey County, near Castroville, California where he grew up a seemingly normal kid. At the age of 12, his family moved back to San Diego, and that’s when things started to change.
He became more withdrawn and, according to his lawyer, Daniel King, even attempted suicide at age 11. Despite this, he still participated in sports, playing soccer and running cross-country in high school, and attended Peñasquitos Lutheran Church with his family.
Outside appearances don’t always reflect what’s inside, and Holmes was struggling with depression. Additionally, throughout his childhood, he found himself frightened of what he called “Nail Ghosts” that would hammer on the walls at night. He also saw what he called “flickers” that fought each other with firearms.
Somehow, he was able to persevere despite these issues and managed to graduate high school in 2006, and even earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Riverside, in 2010, graduating with the highest honors. But that was not the end of his educational journey. He enrolled in the University of Colorado to pursue a graduate degree in neuroscience. That’s when he moved to Aurora, Colorado.
From the outside, he seemed perfectly normal. He lived on Paris Street in a one-bedroom apartment in a building with other students involved in health studies at the University of Colorado. He described himself as “quiet and easygoing.” He was on Myspace, Match.com, and Adult Friend Finder. According to sources, he even hired sex workers and left reviews of their services on an online message board.
In October 2011 he began dating a fellow student. According to her, he wasn’t quite “normal.” He made jokes that made people uncomfortable. When he expressed his desire to kill people, she recommended he get professional help, although she didn’t take him seriously. When they ultimately broke up in February 2012, something snapped. He reportedly told a state-appointed psychiatric physician that “their breakup contributed to his violent depression.”
He sought help at the student health clinic. It only took one visit with social worker Margaret Roth, for her to refer him to a psychiatrist for further help. According to psychiatrist Lynn Fenton, he was depressed and “obsessed with killing for over a decade.” At his trial, Fenton testified that she was worried about his homicidal ideation expressed in their last meeting.
Over the course of three months, Fenton saw Holmes seven times, twice with a male psychiatrist. During their sessions, she grew concerned about his fantasies about killing as many people as possible and his reluctance to discuss any details about his plans. He also refused to let them talk to anyone else.
They made suggestions for treatment, which he rejected. In fact, in June 2012, he sent her a threatening email, after which she activated a threat assessment team to help her formulate a plan for him. She expressed concerns about his social phobia and “psychotic-level thinking”. One of the psychiatrists he saw even considered placing him on an involuntary mental health hold, but ultimately decided against it, noting that she believed he was “borderline” and the commitment would only serve to inflame him.
One of the psychiatrists believed he was dangerous, and in June 2012, Fenton even went to campus police to report that he had made homicidal statements.
Fenton believed he may have suffered from schizoid personality disorder. She consulted with his mother who confirmed that he had long standing social problems. When he lost his insurance, the center offered to continue treating him, but he chose to leave.
While he was at the University of California, Holmes excelled, graduating at the top of his class. By 2012 at the University of Colorado, his academic performance plummeted. After scoring poorly on a comprehensive exam in the spring, he moved to withdraw from the university.
Two weeks prior to the Aurora theater shooting, James Holmes sent a text to a graduate student. In the text he asked if they had ever heard of the disorder “dysphoric mania”. He went on to warn the student to stay away from him “because [he was] bad news.”
On May 22, 2012, Holmes purchased a Glock 22 pistol at a Gander Mountain shop in Aurora. On May 28, he bought a Remington 870 Express Tactical shotgun at a Bass Pro Shops store in Denver. Then on June 7, hours after he failed his oral exam at the University of Colorado, he purchased a Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport rifle. He purchased 3,000 rounds of ammo for the pistol, 3,000 rounds for the M&P15, and 350 shells for the shotgun over the internet.
His weapons purchases were all legal, and he passed his background checks.
On June 25, Holmes emailed an application to join a gun club in Byers, Colorado. Over the course of the next few days, the owner, Glenn Rotkovich, called him to invite him to a mandatory orientation, but all his calls went to voicemail. According to Rotkovich, Holmes’ voicemail greeting was “bizarre”, “freaky”, “guttural”, “spoken with a deep voice”, “incoherent and rambling”. His staff was instructed to inform him if Holmes ever showed up, but he never did.
On July 2, he ordered a Blackhawk Urban Assault Vest, two magazine holders, and a knife online.
On the day before the shooting, July 19, 2012, Holmes sent his notebook, which detailed his thoughts and plans during the weeks leading up to the shooting, to his psychiatrist. The notebook was later found in an undelivered package in the Anschutz Medical Campus mail-room.
As a final plea for help, James Holmes called a crisis hotline just before the shooting. He hoped that someone would talk him out of the heinous act he was about to commit, but the call was never answered and he hung up after just nine seconds.
We all know what happened next. Holmes followed through with his plan, injuring 70, killing 12.
Movie goers initially thought the smoke and gunshots were part of the movie, until they spotted Holmes standing in front of the screen. According to one witness on ABC News, “You just smelled smoke and you just kept hearing it, you just heard bam bam bam, non-stop. The gunman never had to reload. Shots just kept going, kept going, kept going.”
Another witness said, “I’m with coworkers and we’re on the floor praying to God we don’t get shot, and the gunshots continue on and on, and when the sound finally stopped, we started to get up and people were just bleeding.”
On a personal note, many of my coworkers were in the theater that night. I was supposed to be there as well, but opted to stay home and finish up some last minute work instead.
According to Arapahoe County District Attorney, Greg Brauchler, Holmes chose the Century 16 theater for his attack because he liked movie theaters, and that specific one had doors he could lock – allowing him to increase the number of casualties. He also believed the location was ideal, as it would take police longer to respond.
You could argue that he had some good in him, when it came to his reasoning as to why he chose the midnight showing. Apparently he believed fewer children would be present, and he didn’t want to kill kids.
Holmes considered other locations for his mass shooting, including an airport, which he ultimately ruled out due to the level of security presence. He also believed that an attack at an airport would be confused with an act of terrorism. “”Terrorism isn’t the message. The message is, there is no message” he wrote.
Other things he considered were using chemical or biological agents, or explosives, but they posed too great a risk to himself. He also considered foregoing the mass shooting and becoming a serial killer, but ultimately ruled it out, believing it was “too personal, too much evidence, easily caught, few kills.”
During his arrest, officers noted that he was initially “calm and detached” but became interested in watching the aftermath of his work while seated in the back of a police car.
Holmes also informed police that he had booby-trapped his apartment with explosives. The next day, police bomb squads and agents from the ATF went out to his apartment. There they found a large number of explosive devices and trip wires. The hazmat team went in with caution, and video from a bomb squad robot showed gun powder, gasoline, and motor oil spread out across the floor. The video also revealed dozens of black spheres with fuses connected to them as well as pickle jars filled with liquid and bullets.
The first booby-trap they encountered was a fishing line tripwire. One end of the line was connected to the door jamb, the other end was connected to thermos full of nearly pure glycerin, placed recklessly on a frying pan containing the chemical potassium permanganate.
According to an FBI report, if the glycerin had fallen into the potassium permanganate, it would have ignited an explosion big enough to blow up the entire apartment.
Altogether, more than 20 bombs and incendiaries were recovered.
He was initially taken to the Arapahoe County Detention Center in Centennial, Colorado where he was placed in solitary confinement and under suicide watch.
At his first court appearance, on July 23, 2012, he was denied bail, and given a mandatory protection order. Witnesses described him as being “dazed” and “confused,” fueling speculation as to his mental state.
Formal charges were brought on July 30 and included 24 counts of first degree murder, 116 counts of attempted murder, possession of explosive devices, and inciting violence. For each person killed, he was charged with one count of murder with deliberation, and one count of murder with extreme indifference, making up 24 counts for 12 victims.
On September 19, the prosecution filed a motion to add 10 new charges and asked to amend 17 others. The additional charges would bring the total counts Holmes faced to 152.
Court dates stacked up, with the defense and prosecution going back and forth over what evidence could be presented, and debates over his mental state at the time of the murders. On March 27, 2013, Holmes’ attorneys tried to make a deal; he would plead guilty, if they took the death penalty off the table. The prosecution declined. Instead, on April 1, they announced they would be seeking the death penalty.
On May 7, Holmes’ attorneys came back, filing their intent for him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. This spurred even more back and forth, over whether the state’s insanity-plea rules were constitutional or not. In the end, on June 4, 2013, the presiding judge accepted his plea of insanity. On August 5, he was then transferred to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.
On February 27, 2014, Arapahoe County District Court Judge, Carlos Samour, set the start date for the trial to be October 14. But the defense delayed and delayed, asking for continuation after continuation to evaluate Holmes’ mental condition and to further prepare their case. But they couldn’t hold it off forever, and jury selection started on January 20, 2015, after their latest request for a continuance was denied.
The jury selection process took three months, and saw over 9,000 candidates, making it the largest jury summons in U.S. history. As of April 15, they finally had their jury, made up of nineteen women and five men. Even with that many candidates, their final jury continued to give them pause. At least two of the twelve primary jurors, and twelve alternates, had ties to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting with Juror 535 being an aunt of a survivor, and Juror 737 had been a student at Columbine at the time of the shooting – and also happened to have been a former friend of the shooters. Despite this, the trial went on.
The trial began on April 27 with both the prosecution and defense making their expected arguments. The prosecution explained that Holmes went into the theater with intent to kill as many people as possible. The defense agreed that that was what happened, however they added that he was mentally ill with severe schizophrenia, and was never in control of his right mind.
The prosecution had a mountain of evidence, including survivors and the notebook Holmes had sent to his psychiatrist. The notebook itself detailed not only Holmes’ thoughts, but also his attack plans, proving that the attack was premeditated. The defense argued that the notebook was a clear indication of his severe mental illness.
In his notebook, he questioned life and death, and included an odd symbol resembling a combination of an infinity sign and the face of an alien. He referred to the symbol as “ultra-ception”, and went on to explain that it meant, “Any problem can be solved with death.” And, as you may expect, he questioned the meaning of life, and death.
In a section called “Self-Diagnosis of a Broken Mind”, he listed maladies from schizophrenia to Asperger’s to restless leg syndrome. He complained of fatigue, catatonia, insomnia, social awkwardness and isolation, hyperactivity and problems with his eyes, ears, nose – “constant dripping” – and even his penis, which he said he injured as a child. He wrote that he studied himself and his “physical shortcomings” in the mirror obsessively.
Regarding his choice of studies, he wrote “Neuroscience seemed like the way to go but it didn’t pan out. In order to rehabilitate the broken mind, my soul must be eviscerated. I could not sacrifice my soul to have a ‘normal’ mind.” He claimed that he “fought and fought” until the end, when he made a choice, “The last escape, mass murder at the movies.”
The court appointed a psychiatrist to evaluate Holmes’ mental state. Dr. William Reid interviewed him for a total of 22 hours, and in his testimony declared he was mentally ill, but legally sane – completely derailing defense. According to Reid, he was suffering schizotypal personality disorder, which is characterized by constricted behavior and difficulties relating to others.
Holmes even told Reid that he had ‘regrets’ over the theater shootings, especially about the death of 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who was struck with four bullets. “I think it’s wrong to kill children,” Holmes said. “I chose to minimize child fatalities by choosing a midnight showing of a PG-13 movie. I felt sad that a child had died. It wasn’t my intention to kill children or leave them parentless.”
His mental illness did not prevent him from forming intent and knowing the consequences of his actions. At this point, the defense called for a mistrial, claiming that the jurors had heard an unprompted opinion that complicated the legal standard for judging the sanity of a person. The judge denied the request.
On May 29, video of Reid’s interviews with Holmes from 2013, were shown to the court. In the videos he spoke about his social awkwardness and his violent, paranoid thoughts. For example, he spoke about his belief that federal agents had been following him, and he had hoped they would apprehend him at the theater before he could open fire.
By June 9, problems with the jury halted the proceedings when the judge had to dismiss three jurors for violating orders to refrain from talking about news reports regarding the trial. One of the jurors had even begun discussing sensitive details of the case with the other two jurors outside of the court, which was absolutely against their instructions. Just two days later, the defense requested the dismissal of a fourth juror, after her brother-in-law was shot during a robbery the previous day. She was dismissed on June 15, and on June 17, a fifth juror was dismissed, after the judge was notified that she personally knew a wounded victim of the shooting.
On June 19, the prosecution called their last witness, Ashley Moser, the mother of Veronica Moser-Sullivan, the little girl who had been shot four times, including in the chest (fatally), limbs, and lower right side. On July 9, Holmes was given the opportunity to testify, but he chose not to.
On July 10, the defense played their final card. While they could not use the insanity plea, they could still argue that he wasn’t completely culpable for his actions. They chose to show two videos to the court of Holmes’ behavior in his jail cell. One video showed him running and slamming his head against the wall before sitting down. The other video showed him tethered to a bed while naked, attempting to cover his head with a blanket and then a sheet.
Closing statements were made on July 14, with jury deliberations beginning the next day. The jury took just over twelve hours to reach a verdict. James Holmes was guilty on all 24 counts of first-degree murder, 140 counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of possessing explosives, and a sentence enhancement of a crime of violence.
When it came time to decide on sentencing, the jury ruled that he had acted in a cruel manner, was lying in wait and ambushed his victims. But in his defense, they agreed that he did not attend to kill any children. His family fought for him, pleading for his life, reiterating his severe mental illness. His defense did the same.
On August 26, James Holmes’ was sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murder charges, and an additional 3,318 years for the attempted murder and explosives possession charges. He was spared the death sentence, after jurors failed to unanimously agree.
As he handed down the sentence, Judge Samour stated that it was “the intention of the court that the defendant never sets foot in free society again,” and added that “the defendant deserves no sympathy.”
Holmes was ordered to pay $955,000 in restitution to the victims, with $851,000 of the restitution to be sent to the state victim compensation fund, and $103,000 to be paid directly to the victims.
In September 2015, Holmes was officially moved to the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City, though authorities were not certain that he would remain. The prison is charged with keeping its inmates safe, which is difficult to do when a prisoner has such notoriety. Notoriety that likely led to his assault on October 8. Holmes was not allowed to interact with other inmates, but when a guard inadvertently opened a gate separating Holmes from Mark Daniels, a car thief, Daniels attacked.
Holmes was subsequently moved to an undisclosed location outside of Colorado, though it is believed that he currently resides at USP Allenwood in Gregg Township, Union County, Pennsylvania.
24-year-old Jessica Ghawi (also known as Jessica Redfield), a sports journalist, had been shot six times, four in the torso and limbs and once in the head. During the trial, her mother told reporters that it was difficult to hear Holmes attempt to justify what he had done. “It’s excruciatingly painful. He’s so devoid of any human kindness, expression, empathy. That’s hurtful,” she said. “When you’re considered collateral damage as a parent who has lost their child in the theater, that’s hard to sit and listen to.”
Jessica’s father, Lonnie, added, “It’s adding insult to injury when you have to go through this. He decided he wanted to live. He didn’t want the pain and misery. He wanted to protect himself, and it’s all about him.”
In the aftermath of the Aurora Theater Shooting, we should remember the 70 injured people, and lives of those lost.
- Alexander C. Teves, age 24, (shot once in the head)
- Jonathan Blunk, 26: (shot once in the back (fatally) and once in the head)
- John Larimer, age 27, (shot twice in the chest and abdomen (both fatally))
- Micayla Medek, age 23, (shot once in the chest)
- Alex Sullivan, age 27, (shot once in the chest)
- Rebecca Wingo, age 31, (shot and shotgunned in the head (both fatally), shot once in the torso, and once in a limb
- Jessica Ghawi, age 24, shot six times, four in the torso and limbs and once in the head (fatally)
- Matt McQuinn, age 27, (shot nine times, including in the chest and neck (both fatally))
- Alexander J. Boik, 18, (shotgunned once in the head, chest, and shoulder)
- Veronica Moser-Sullivan, age 6, (shot four times, including in the chest (fatally), limbs, and lower right side)
- Gordon Cowden, age 51, (shot once in the chest)
- Jesse Childress, age 29, (shotgunned once in the torso (fatally), both legs, and right arm)
We’re left to wonder what could have happened had someone picked up that crisis hotline. There is no debate that we need better mental healthcare. Check out this story about Richard Chase.
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