James Holmes (mass murderer)

• 1. Introduction

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  James Eagan Holmes, an American born in 1987, made a phone call to a mental health crisis hotline in the moments before he carried out the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. By his own account, he hoped someone might talk him out of it at the last minute. The call was disconnected after nine seconds. On the 20th of July 2012, an attack at a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killed 12 people and injured 70 others. Holmes had no known criminal background. Before the night was over, he also admitted that his apartment had been rigged with explosives. How did a graduate student with glowing academic records reach that theater? Who noticed the danger along the way, and what did they do about it? And how did a jury decide whether he would live or die?

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• 2. A Promising Student

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  Holmes was born on the 13th of December 1987 in San Diego, California. His father, Robert, is a mathematician and scientist, and his mother, Arlene, is a registered nurse. He has a younger sister. The family lived for a time in Oak Hills, a community in Monterey County near Castroville. When Holmes was twelve, they returned to San Diego and settled in the affluent Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood, where he reportedly began to decline socially. He played soccer, ran cross-country, and attended Peñasquitos Lutheran Church with his family.

  In 2006, the year he graduated from Westview High School with high academic honors, Holmes interned at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. His supervisor described him as stubborn, uncommunicative and socially inept. He was assigned to write code for an experiment and presented his project to the other interns, but he never finished it. His college application essay told a different story. In it he wrote that completing the project and presenting his model was "exhilarating."

  At the University of California, Riverside, Holmes earned a neuroscience degree in 2010 with highest honors. He joined Phi Beta Kappa and Golden Key. Recommendation letters sent to another university placed him in the top 1 percent of his class, with a 3.949 grade point average. Those letters called him "a very effective group leader." On the Graduate Record Examinations he scored in the 98th percentile for verbal skills and the 94th for quantitative skills. His analytical writing score landed at the 45th percentile. In the summer of 2008, he worked as a counselor at a residential camp in Glendale, California, looking after ten children aged 7-14 without any disciplinary problems. A co-worker at a pill and capsule-coating factory in San Diego County, where he worked in the fall of 2010, remembered something odder. She said she once found him staring at a blank wall, answering her question only with a glance and a smirk.

  In June 2011, Holmes enrolled as a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. A National Institutes of Health grant of $21,600 was paid to him in installments from July 2011 to June 2012. The university added a $5,000 stipend. He had also been accepted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which offered a $22,600 stipend and free tuition. He declined without giving a reason. Reviewers there remembered his application partly because it included a photograph of him with a llama. In Aurora, he rented a one-bedroom apartment on Paris Street, and on his rental application he called himself "quiet and easygoing."

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• 3. Signs Nobody Stopped

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  As a small child, Holmes told people he feared what he called "Nail Ghosts," which hammered on his bedroom walls at night. His lawyer, Daniel King, later said the mental health problems began in middle school and that Holmes attempted suicide at age 11. Another account described him as depressed and obsessed with killing for more than a decade.

  In October 2011, Holmes began dating a classmate from his biology course. She later said he made deadpan jokes that left other people uneasy and that he once told her he wanted to kill people. She did not take him literally but urged him to seek professional help. The two split, resumed their relationship in early January 2012, and parted again in February. Holmes told a state-appointed psychiatrist that the breakup contributed to his "violent depression."

  By then, Holmes was seeing shadows and flickers at the edges of his vision that fought each other with weapons. After the breakup, he went to the student health clinic. Social worker Margaret Roth saw him once and passed him to psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton. Fenton met with him seven times over three months. At the last meeting, he voiced homicidal thoughts that worried her. After he sent her a threatening email in June 2012, she convened a threat assessment team. She listed her concerns, including his social phobia, his "psychotic-level thinking" and his long-standing fantasies about killing as many people as possible. She spoke with his mother, who confirmed lifelong social difficulties. Another clinician considered an involuntary mental health hold. She decided against it, believing Holmes was "borderline" and that a commitment would only inflame him. The center offered to keep treating him even if his insurance lapsed, but he walked away from treatment.

  His studies were collapsing at the same time. Holmes performed poorly on his spring comprehensive exam and failed a key oral exam in early June 2012. Three days later he dropped out without explanation. A month before the shooting, Fenton told campus police that he had made homicidal statements. Two weeks before it, Holmes texted a graduate student to ask whether the student had ever heard of a disorder called dysphoric mania. He added a warning to stay away from him "because he was bad news."

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• 4. The Preparations

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  On the 22nd of May 2012, Holmes bought a handgun at a Gander Mountain shop in Aurora. Six days later he bought a shotgun at a Bass Pro Shops store in Denver. On the 7th of June, only hours after failing his oral exam, he bought a rifle. All three purchases were legal, and background checks were performed. Over the Internet he also acquired thousands of rounds of ammunition. On the 2nd of July, he ordered a tactical vest, two magazine holders and a knife from an online retailer.

  On the 25th of June, Holmes emailed an application to join a gun club in Byers, Colorado. Its owner, Glenn Rotkovich, phoned him several times to schedule a mandatory orientation and reached only an answering machine. Holmes eventually left one voicemail, which Rotkovich called "bizarre," "freaky" and "guttural." He remembered a deep voice, incoherent and rambling. Rotkovich told his staff to alert him if Holmes ever appeared. Holmes never came and never called back. Looking back, Rotkovich said, "It was like somebody was trying to be as weird as possible."

  On the 19th of July, just hours before the attack, Holmes mailed a notebook to his psychiatrist. It laid out his thoughts and plans from the preceding weeks. It never reached her. Investigators later found it in an undelivered package in the mail-room at the Anschutz Medical Campus. Prosecutors and the defense would eventually fight over whether a jury should see it at all.

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• 5. Myths and Motives

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  Within days of the attack, the Los Angeles Times quoted a classmate saying Holmes was a fan of superheroes. The paper also cited an anonymous law enforcement official who claimed his apartment was "decorated with Batman paraphernalia." Later reports described an apartment that was relatively empty, with a single Batman mask. George Brauchler, the Arapahoe County district attorney who prosecuted the case, said after the trial that nothing suggested an obsession with Batman. Dr. William Reid, the psychiatrist who interviewed Holmes after the shooting, said Holmes "picked that movie simply because it was guaranteed to be full."

  Another connection surfaced through Dave Aragón, an actor from the MTV series Pimp My Ride. Aragón wrote, directed and starred in an upcoming film called The Suffocator of Sins, about a vigilante who shoots criminals. He said Holmes phoned him twice in the month before the shooting and showed interest in the film's trailer.

  Brauchler offered a colder explanation of the choices Holmes made. Holmes liked movie theaters, he said, and the Century 16 sat in an area where police would take longer to arrive. Holmes picked a midnight showing because he believed fewer children would attend, and he did not want to kill children. He had weighed other targets, such as an airport, but rejected it because of heavy security. He also wrote that an airport attack would be mistaken for terrorism. "Terrorism isn't the message," he wrote. "The message is, there is no message." Serial killing, he concluded, was "too personal, too much evidence, easily caught, few kills."

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• 6. Arrest and Charges

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  Police found Holmes standing beside his car behind the theater, and he surrendered without resistance. Officers who testified at his trial described him as "calm and detached" at first. Once he sat in the back of a police car, he grew interested in watching the aftermath unfold. Officers recovered several guns from the car and the theater. Holmes also told them he had booby-trapped his apartment before leaving for the theater. Police confirmed the explosives, and a bomb squad defused them one day later.

  Holmes was held at the Arapahoe Detention Center under suicide watch and in solitary confinement, a routine precaution for a high-profile prisoner. On the 23rd of July 2012, he made his first court appearance in Centennial, Colorado, before Judge William B. Sylvester. He said nothing and never looked at the judge. News outlets described him as "dazed" and "confused." No bail was set, and the Colorado State Public Defender was appointed to represent him.

  On the 30th of July, prosecutors filed 24 counts of first degree murder, 116 counts of attempted murder, and charges of possessing explosives and inciting violence. Each victim who died accounted for two murder counts, one for deliberation and one for extreme indifference. On the 19th of September, prosecutors moved to add 10 more charges and amend 17, bringing the total to 152. The next day Holmes appeared without his dyed-red hair, which had been cropped to show its natural brown.

  In November, his lawyers filed an emergency motion saying he could not attend a hearing because of "developments over the past 24 hours." He had made suicide attempts described as "half-hearted." On the 7th of January 2013, 9-1-1 recordings and theater videos were presented in court for the first time. Three days later a judge ruled the evidence sufficient to try him on every count.

  On the 27th of March 2013, his attorneys said he would plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Prosecutors called the offer a ploy to delay the trial, and on the 1st of April they announced they would seek death. Holmes then entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity on the 31st of May. After a ruling that Colorado's insanity laws were constitutional, the judge accepted the plea on the 4th of June. In August 2013, Holmes was transferred to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.

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• 7. The Trial

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  Judge Carlos Samour first set the trial to begin in October 2014. Defense requests for more time to evaluate Holmes pushed it back to December and then beyond. Jury selection finally opened on the 20th of January 2015. Over three months, 9,000 candidates were summoned, the largest jury summons in United States history. Selection ended on the 15th of April with nineteen women and five men. Concerns arose because two of the chosen jurors had ties to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. "Juror No. 535" was the aunt of a survivor. "Juror No. 737" had been a student there and was a former friend of the shooters.

  On the 27th of April, the prosecution told jurors that Holmes went to the theater intending to kill as many people as possible. The defense opened by admitting he was the shooter, then argued that severe schizophrenia left him never in control of his right mind. From the 28th of April, survivors testified about the lasting damage.

  On the 26th of May, jurors finally saw the notebook Holmes had mailed to his psychiatrist. Prosecutors said its attack plans proved premeditation. The defense said the writing showed mental illness. The next day, Dr. William Reid, a court-appointed psychiatrist who had interviewed Holmes for about 22 hours, testified that Holmes was mentally ill but legally sane. He diagnosed schizotypal personality disorder. Holmes told him he had not targeted children, which was why he chose a PG-13 showing. He also said he felt remorse when he learned children had died. Videos of the interviews followed. In them, Holmes said he believed federal agents were following him and hoped they would stop him at the theater. He tied his shift from suicidal to homicidal thoughts to the breakup with his girlfriend. On the 8th of June, a second psychiatrist, Jeffrey Metzner, testified after 25 hours of interviews. He also found Holmes legally sane but diagnosed schizoaffective disorder.

  On the 9th of June, the judge dismissed three jurors for discussing news reports about the trial. A fourth was excused on the 15th of June after her brother-in-law was shot in a robbery. A fifth was dismissed on the 17th of June because she knew a wounded victim. The prosecution's last witness, on the 19th of June, was Ashley Moser, the mother of the slain Veronica Moser-Sullivan. Moser had been critically injured and left paralyzed. On the 9th of July, Holmes told the judge he would not testify. The defense played two jail cell videos the next day and rested.

  Closing statements came on the 14th of July, and deliberations began the next day. On the 16th of July, after more than twelve hours, the jury found Holmes guilty on all twenty-four counts of first-degree murder. It also convicted him on 140 counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of possessing explosives, and a sentence enhancement for a crime of violence. The question of his sentence began on the 22nd of July.

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• 8. Sentence and Prison

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  Holmes declined to make a statement to the jury at the start of the sentencing phase. On the 23rd of July 2015, jurors found three aggravating factors: he acted in a cruel manner, was lying in wait, and ambushed his victims. They also decided he had not intended to kill children when he opened fire.

  On the 27th of July, Holmes's sister testified that he withdrew from the family after they moved from Salinas to San Diego during his early teens. The next day his father pleaded for his son's life, saying Holmes was severely mentally ill and did not deserve to die whatever his crimes. He showed jurors photographs of camping trips and family vacations. Defense lawyers made a final appeal on the 30th of July, asking jurors to weigh mental illness even though they had rejected the insanity defense. On the 3rd of August, the jury decided that mitigating factors such as mental illness did not outweigh aggravating ones such as the scale of the casualties.

  Still, on the 7th of August, the jurors could not agree unanimously on death, so Colorado law required life without parole. One juror opposed a death sentence because of Holmes's mental health, and two others were uncertain. On the 26th of August, Judge Samour imposed 12 consecutive life sentences without parole for the murders, plus 3,318 years for the attempted murders and the explosives charge. He said it was "the intention of the court that the defendant never sets foot in free society again." He added that "the defendant deserves no sympathy." On the 4th of December 2015, Samour ordered $955,000 in restitution, with $851,000 going to the state victim compensation fund and $103,000 paid directly to victims.

  In September 2015, Holmes was moved to the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City. On the 8th of October, an inmate named Mark Daniels, convicted of auto theft, reached him after a corrections officer inadvertently opened a gate between them. Daniels struck Holmes twice before staff subdued him. Holmes was then secretly moved out of state. He is now held at USP Allenwood in Gregg Township, Union County, Pennsylvania. The exact reason for the transfer to federal custody is not known, though the Washington Post speculated that heightened security played a part.

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