A Dark Night in Aurora

by Dr. William H. Reid

  Dr. Fenton may have misunderstood James’s explanation; he remembered it differently, or he simply changed his story. In his interviews with me, Holmes remembered feeling slighted by her miswriting his name but said that his emoticons showed her figuratively punching him in the eye.

  James talked about Gargi with Dr. Fenton that day. He missed their relationship and valued its memory, saying, “The thorn in the side was well worth the rose.” He mentioned his hiking date with Hillary Allen. He talked about his laboratory experiments and rotations not working well. He inferred things about Fenton, such as why she sometimes crinkled her nose: “You [Fenton] have an unconscious and that makes you do things.”

  At that point, Dr. Fenton wanted to get a second opinion. She asked James if it would be all right to have another psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Feinstein, join them for an evaluation session. He was reluctant, fearing that they would “lock him up,” but eventually agreed. His next appointment was a month later.

  During that first week in May, well before his next session with Dr. Fenton, Holmes purchased his first weapons, through Amazon.com. One was a Taser disguised as a cell phone, the other a large Smith & Wesson folding knife. He told me the combat style of the knife he chose was “random,” that he had no previous experience with weapons and was thinking of self-defense. He tested the Taser when it arrived: “It was a lot louder than I thought it would be.”

  Around the same time, he tried to buy a Glock Model 34 9mm handgun from TGSCOM, an online Wisconsin company. His credit card was charged, but the pistol was never delivered. He acquired what he described as his first “offensive” weapons on May 10, two grenade-style canisters of Clear Out tear gas. He bought a high-end gas mask with a special air filter on the same day, from another online site.

  Holmes’s first successful firearm purchase, a Glock Model 22 .40 caliber handgun, took place on May 22 at a local Gander Mountain sporting goods store. He used his real name for all his purchases, a credit card, and his “dsherlockb” e-mail address.

  Glock handguns are moderately expensive, popular for personal protection, and often used by law enforcement because of their simplicity, reliability, and large (fifteen-round) magazine. “22” is the model number, not to be confused with a much less powerful .22 caliber pistol. The Glock .40 caliber has fairly good “stopping power,” and its lethali ty can be enhanced with special “hollow-point” or “saber” cartridges. He purchased those as well.

  Two or three months after they started their “friends with benefits” relationship, James and Gargi broke up for good. He had been depressed for a time, and the loss of his hope for a relationship made it worse. I asked him if anything brought him hope. He replied, “… just the mission….”

  “The mission” was Holmes’s budding plan to kill as many people as he could. He believed strongly, but somewhat vaguely, that committing homicide would somehow stop what he had called “depression” and keep him from committing suicide. He expressed this odd logic in different ways at different times, and to different interviewers and investigators, but that part of his motivation is quite clear. Alleviating his perceived depression was one of two main drivers of his “mission.” The other, his belief that he could somehow acquire other people’s “human capital” by killing them (one point for each, but nothing more substantial than that), had its first subtle portent in March 2012 texts to Gargi.

  Holmes didn’t consider, or care much about, the fact that killing others would be trading their lives for his own comfort. As we talked two years later, he was able to see the selfishness of the concept but not to feel its enormous self-centeredness. He knew that killing others for his gain was against the law, but he told me matter-of-factly, “[I]t was necessary to do what was in my best interest.”

  James hadn’t been honest with counselor Margaret Roath or Dr. Fenton about all the reasons he sought psychiatric treatment. They viewed him, based on his own statements, as wanting help with anxiety and social problems. He knew, but his ambivalence wouldn’t let him reveal, that he wanted to be rid of his thoughts of killing others.

  That’s not quite accurate. A part of him, of his mind, wanted to be stopped. Another, competing, part would turn out to be stronger and exert more influence over his behavior during the next few months. That part of him wanted to be free to kill people.

  In late May, the university provided three or four weeks of open time for the first-year graduate students to prepare for their all-important preliminary examinations. James didn’t study at all for the exams. He gave two reasons for not studying: the subject matter was too broad to study effectively, and “I was focused on my mission.” At first, most of the reason for not studying was that he didn’t know what he should study. By June, however, his mission to kill people was filling a great deal of his time.

  Holmes sometimes told later interviewers that he viewed passing or failing the prelims as a matter of fate. If he didn’t study, fate would control whether or not he passed (and perhaps control his future). Around the same time, on the other hand, he seemed to be laying the groundwork for a second year of laboratory experience (“thesis lab”). The three first-year laboratory rotations had given students a chance to explore their interests and familiarize themselves with research procedures, and the professors got a look at them in order to pick those who might be useful in their projects. Each was to choose a willing professor with whom to work on a thesis project.

  On May 25, James wrote to Achim Klug of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics asking Klug to be his thesis mentor. Dr. Klug answered the next day, expressing concerns about James’s past lab performance and offering to discuss the issue. Rather than talk further with Klug, James withdrew his proposal and, on the same day, applied to Professor Curt Freed, head of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology. Dr. Freed was optimistic. They met a few days later and apparently agreed on a second-year plan. James notified program administrator Cammie Kennedy that he had chosen Professor Freed’s lab for the following year.

  On May 28, Holmes bought his second firearm, a Remington 870 12-gauge tactical shotgun, at a local Bass Pro Shop. “Tactical” refers to the gun’s external construction. Inside, the 870 Tactical is basically the same pump-action shotgun that many thousands of Americans use every year to hunt ducks, quail, and other game birds. It holds a few more shells than the usual hunting version (a total of seven rather than the standard three to five) and looks a little different on the outside. Except for a barrel shorter by ten inches and a slightly higher ammunition capacity, Holmes’s purchase was essentially a hunting shotgun; it lacked common law enforcement and military-style additions such as a sight/accessory rail, hand grip, much larger magazine, special “choke,” and blade front sight.

  James’s next psychiatric appointment was May 31, this time with both Dr. Fenton and the consultant she had mentioned at his last appointment, Dr. Feinstein. Dr. Feinstein was a professor of psychiatry at CU Denver, a well-respected clinician and published author in the professional literature whom many view as an expert on violence in psychiatric patients.

  The May 31 appointment context included something that had happened when James arrived for his previous appointment. On that May 1 visit, he had found the door to Dr. Fenton’s waiting room locked, not unusual but a first for James. He had to wait outside until Fenton opened it. During the ensuing session, he noticed a bag of some kind behind Dr. Fenton’s chair. James had a somewhat paranoid view of the door and the bag. He believed the locked door implied that Dr. Fenton was afraid of him and that the bag held “something conspicuous.”

  As we talked after the shootings, Holmes remembered the e-mail he had sent Dr. Fenton from the pharmacy and its emoticon that showed, on his smartphone, one figure punching another in the eye. He hadn’t realized until our interview that the emoticon wasn’t clear to Dr. Fenton (since her computer couldn’t translate it) or that she hadn’t known that it was meant to show him getting punched. During that appointment, James speculated
that Fenton had “a Taser or something” in the bag behind her chair, with which to defend herself if necessary.

  By the time we spoke two years later, he still didn’t discount the possibility of a Taser. He thought the bag had probably held something benign, such as a birthday gift, but he continued to suspect that she was frightened. Dr. Fenton had indeed been uncomfortable around Holmes, but the locked door and the bag behind her chair had been innocuous.

  During the May 31 session, James told Fenton and Feinstein that he had recently been playing video games about 100 hours per week, largely a strategy game called Diablo 3. He let them know that he wasn’t studying for his upcoming, critical, oral examinations. He said he hated “sheeple” (people who behave like sheep, allowing themselves to be mindlessly led by others) and their “shepherds.” He told Fenton and Feinstein that he had read works by nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and by Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber”) and had read about the Tylenol product-tampering murders of the early 1980s.

  There’s no evidence that Holmes ever actually read any of Nietzsche’s works or Kaczynski’s rambling “manifesto” or had any special knowledge of or fascination with the Tylenol murders. He later denied having been influenced by them or any other philosopher or mass-killing figure. Still, whether or not he had actually read Nietzsche, Holmes’s own writings before the shootings and some of his statements in postshooting psychiatric interviews suggest that many of his premises about worldview, right and wrong, and even existence itself, were similar to Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism and “perspectivism.” That’s the idea that there are no absolutes when it comes to ethics, morals, or even knowledge; they depend on each person’s individual viewpoint, and each person’s viewpoint is as valid as that of the next.

  Dr. Feinstein took a more psychodynamic approach in the session, examining various psychological hypotheses including the possibility that James might have been bullied as a child. (He wasn’t.) At the end of the session, Feinstein proposed that they talk again and perhaps consider antipsychotic medication, as Dr. Fenton had pondered for some time. James agreed to meet them again, and another session was scheduled for June 11. Both psychiatrists were concerned. James used vague, ominous words that raised suspicions, but they weren’t enough to, in James’s words, get him “locked up.”

  US laws governing involuntary hospitalization—being admitted to a psychiatric facility against one’s will—are very strict and heavily favor the potential patient. A long series of civil rights cases since the 1960s have made it very difficult to get help for severely mentally ill people who don’t realize that they need it (or, like Holmes, are tragically ambivalent about being hospitalized). The pendulum has swung, over roughly half a century, from allowing mental health agencies to act as a sort of kind “parent” and take over decisions on behalf of very sick patients to forcing doctors and hospitals to prove in court, clearly and convincingly, that a person is seriously ill and imminently dangerous.

  Had Dr. Fenton or Dr. Feinstein tried to commit Holmes to a psychiatric hospital based on what they had heard from him to that point, a judge would probably have stopped the process in its tracks.

  James continued his occasional texting with Hillary during early June. She invited him to hike again, but it didn’t happen. Hillary would say later that she saw him as friendly, if a little strange, but she wasn’t interested in a relationship with him. Holmes’s version of the reason they never got together again was that he didn’t want her to be the girlfriend of a murderer.

  Around that time, he ordered a pair of handcuffs, some road stars, and first aid supplies from Shomer-Tec, an online source in Washington state. (Road stars are small, jagged pieces of metal designed to be strewn onto a street or highway to stop cars by blowing out their tires. They look a little like large, sharpened jacks from the children’s game.)

  James took his preliminary oral exams, a critical hurdle for continuing in graduate school, on Thursday, June 7. He had told his friends that he wanted to see if he could pass without studying. He told me later that he had left it up to fate because passing was no longer relevant to him by that time.

  Professors Karl Pfenninger, Diego Restrepo, and William Sather questioned James for about an hour. Dr. Restrepo asked questions about auditory systems, Dr. Sather focused on cells and cell chemistry, and Dr. Pfenninger covered neurobiological development. Sather later recalled that James did all right at first but got nervous and a bit scattered as the examination progressed. He (James) seemed frustrated when he left. The professors graded his performance after he left the room and sent their decision the next day to Dr. Sukumar Vijayaraghavan, chair of the Graduate Training Committee.

  I asked Holmes to walk me through his examination experience. He described the three professors, whom he knew from earlier classes and labs, in a small conference room asking him questions about the material they had covered during the previous year. The interchange wasn’t abrasive or rapid-fire, but somewhat casual. His overall impression at the time was that he wasn’t answering the questions correctly. When I asked how he felt during the exam, he said, “I didn’t feel one way or the other … it didn’t matter if I passed or failed, [because] I was gonna complete my mission and get locked up or killed.” That very restricted outcome, the only options being to die or go to prison, had become clear to him “when I bought the shotgun,” over a week before the exams.

  A few hours after the examination, Holmes went to a local Gander Mountain sporting goods store and bought his third firearm, a Smith & Wesson M&P15 5.56mm (.223 caliber) rifle. M&P15 is Smith & Wesson’s brand of AR-15, in turn a civilian version of the military-issue M16 and M4 carbine. The M&P15 is semiautomatic rather than fully automatic. Often described by the media as an “assault” weapon, it uses the same ammunition as many hunting rifles (and can be used for hunting) but is sold as a light (partially plastic) high-tech sport or defensive weapon. Its “Picatinny rail” accessory platform allows lots of bolt-on modifications; Holmes would later purchase and install a special low-light sight (a Vortex Strikefire Red Dot with night-vision capability) designed for close quarters combat in the dark.

  Holmes bought his guns the same way millions of other Americans buy legally available firearms. He went to stores, looked at the selections, probably asked salespeople about the models, and said things like “I’ll take that one.” For each purchase, he was required to sign a form certifying that he had never been a convicted felon or a psychiatric inpatient and that he had no mental or physical impairment that would preclude safe use of the weapon. The clerks checked and recorded his identification and did online background searches using his birthdate, Social Security number, and driver’s license number. After a few minutes, not too much longer than it takes to verify a credit card manually, the background checks were found to be negative, and the purchases concluded. Video surveillance at Gander Mountain shows Holmes at the gun counter and then walking around, looking at other merchandise while his background check was taking place.

  The public often misunderstands, and news media commonly confuse as well, terms such as “assault rifle” and “semiautomatic.” “Assault” is not an official designation for firearms; it’s a popular term that can be used for whatever effect the speaker wants to create. It sounds aggressive. It sounds violent. It sounds as if one is describing a firearm that gentle, law-abiding folks simply don’t buy. But “assault” is just a poorly defined adjective, frequently used, justifiably or not, to make a listener or reader think something dreadful.

  “Semiautomatic” is clearly defined in the world of firearms. Although many writers and media presenters stress the “automatic” part of the word, it actually means not automatic. Fully automatic weapons, which are legally available only to a specially licensed few and not sold in ordinary stores or on legitimate websites, continue to fire as long as the trigger is held down and ammunition is available. Semiautomatic means that the gun fires only once when the trigger is pressed and will not
fire again until the shooter releases the trigger and presses it again.

  On Friday, June 8, the examiners notified Professor Vijayaraghavan of James’s failure. That afternoon, Vijayaraghavan sent James an e-mail asking to meet with him at noon on Monday. When James wanted to change the time, the professor wrote back,

  The prelims committee expressed a number of concerns regarding your performance … Please contact [Professor] Bill Sather asap … Come and see me anytime Monday afternoon. You and I need to talk regarding your prelim results and lab choice. Suke

  Less than an hour later, James got a routine e-mail from his father. He responded later that day but didn’t mention the exam. His mother e-mailed him on Saturday, concerned about news of bad weather in Colorado. James answered, but he still didn’t mention his prelims.

  Early Monday afternoon, James met with Dr. Vijayaraghavan, who told him that he had failed but also said that the university would let him retake the exam in a few weeks and that he (Vijayaraghavan) was confident that James would pass and move on to the second-year labs. James declined.

  James accepted the news of his failure with equanimity, expressing neither disappointment nor anger, and quit graduate school on the spot. Vijayaraghavan sent him an e-mail that day to confirm his decision to drop out. James responded just two minutes later.

  Dear Sirs,

  I regret to inform you that I will be discontinuing my graduate studies in the neuroscience program effective immediately.

  Regards,

  James Holmes

  Hillary texted James that afternoon to ask if he had passed. He texted back, “No .” She thought he was joking. He replied again, “Nope, I’m probably gonna quits.” She still thought he was joking:

  HILLARY: “Are u being serious?”

  JAMES: “I’m being James… I’m quitting fave red. Best o’ luck to yuh.”