Overview
James Eagen Holmes (Not the
hoax that Mohammed Alam was the shooter.) allegedly shot 70 people – 12 fatally – early Friday in an Aurora,
Colo., movie theater during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight
Rises.”
Background
James Eagen Holmes, 24,
was adopted by Mrs Holmes, 58, and husband Dr. Robert Holmes, 61,
who worked for San Diego-based HNC Software, Inc., a company that worked with DARPA to develop “cortronic neural networks” that enable machines
to translate aural and visual stimuli and simulate human thinking., They raised him as one of their own. James was an admitted
agnostic.
(Coincidentally,
Col. Robert Holmes, the grandfather of James Holmes, was a graduate Turkish language graduates of the Army Language School, later the Defense Language Institute, in Monterey, California (the same military
installation, incidentally, where alleged 9/11 hijacker
Saeed Alghamdi trained)).
Many friends and relatives, who said just a year ago
Holmes was seen as an ‘all-American boy’ with an affinity for his family.
Narrative
The theater, Cinemark's Century 16 multiplex had a 'no firearms allowed' policy. The town also had the strictest of gun control laws in the state.
Reportedly purchased a ticket to the film, left the theater after the
movie began,
- Multiple people and multiple shooters?
- Corbin Dates state that Holmes received a phone call from someone while
he was inside the theater and responded by moving to the emergency exit
- Dates also said he saw Holmes by the exit door “signaling somebody or looking for somebody to come his way.
- “From what we saw he wasn’t alone – he had someone with him. Because the
second can of tear gas didn’t come from his side….“We can only assume
that someone got him in because what he was wearing seemed thick.”
- A second gas mask different to the one Holmes was wearing was also found
hundreds of feet from where Holmes was arrested at the opposite end of
the theater car park, along with additional items.
- Police continued searching for other shooters.
- At 1:16am on the police audio recording from the scene, an officer
states, “Talking to people making statements, sounds like we have
possibly 2 shooters, one that was in Theater 8 seated, another one that
came in from the outside into Theater 9. Sounds like it was a
coordinated attack.”
“Every unit, possible 2nd shooter still at large… Keep the media away from them,” said another officer.
- Initial police reports that suggested the involvement of two or more shooters
“As I was sitting down to get my seat, I noticed that a
person came up to the front row, the front right, sat down, and as
credits were going, it looked like he got a phone call. He went out
toward the emergency exit doorway, which I thought was unusual to take a
phone call. And it seemed like he probably pried it open, or probably
did not let it latch all the way. As soon as the movie started, somebody
came in, all black, gas mask, armor, and threw a gas can into the
audience, and it went off, and then there were gunshots that took
place.”
– “Witness: Someone let gunman inside Colorado movie theater,” CNN, July 20, 2012
and returned through a back emergency exit, wearing a gas mask (
How could anyone positively identify him?), and riot gear in
what some described as a “full SWAT uniform.” setting off a gas grenade and then shooting as panicked movie patrons dove for cover or ran for the exits. Armed with a tactical helmet, bullet proof vest, an AR-15 assault rifle, a
Remington shotgun, two 40-caliber Glock handguns, as well as an
assortment of bomb-making materials
His weapon jammed.
- James immediately turned himself into the police
- Holmes informed investigators that his residence – part of an apartment
complex reserved for students, patients, and staff at the University of
Colorado Medical Center — was rigged with explosives. (Why did Holmes go to the expense and trouble of rigging his apartment
with an array of deadly explosives and then immediately tell police
about the bombs when he was arrested? Given the fact that Holmes was a graduate student in neuroscience, where
did he obtain the skills to create a maze of bombs so complex that it
took the FBI two days to disarm them? According to experts, the
intricacy of the bombs was reminiscent of war zones – how could Holmes
have set all this up without help from an explosives expert?)
- Misc odditites
- Speaking to the Denver Post, Salina Jordan, who was situated in the theater next door to where the shootings took place, stated, “15-20 minutes into the movie that’s when you start hearing the….gunshots, the bullets start coming over into my theater and about six people got shot.” “Five minutes after the guy comes running in and tells them that they’re shooting outside, you hear the alarm go off, it says ‘murder in the theater’ – like it’s just going off ‘murder in the theater’, ‘murder in the theater’ – it’s crazy that they got an alarm saying that there’s murder in the theater,” she added.
Investigation
He was
placed on a no-bond hold and has been held in solitary confinement and r
emains under 23-hour lockdown, leaving his cell just once a day at an Arapahoe County detention facility since 7/20.(Note: Aurora police chief
Daniel Oates" finished his 21-year career with the NYPD in 2001 as the commanding officer of the department’s Intelligence Division")
- Was arrested in the movie theater's parking lot, he sat wide-eyed and twitching and refused to cooperate with investigators
- Amnesia - He claims he doesn’t know why he’s in jail,” the worker said Thursday. “He asked, ‘Why am I here?’” Jail workers are convinced it's an act.
- Has been spitting so much at officers while he is held in police custody, they have been forced to put a face guard on him.
- 'He was spitting at the door and spitting at the guards,' a released
inmate said outside the jail. 'He’s spitting at everything. Dude was
acting crazy.'
- Sergeant Cassidee Carlson of the Aurora Police Department said police
were proceeding cautiously as Holmes booby-trapped his home in a
sophisticated and deliberate manner. A tripwire was at the entrance to
his third-floor apartment, she said
ABC News phoned Arlene Holmes at 5am PST
Trial
- The detail of the case have been sealed citing
- The judge has issued an order barring lawyers in the case from publicly
commenting on matters including evidence, whether a plea deal is in the
works or results of any examination or test performed on someone.
- "In weighing the public interests versus the private interests, the public interest would not be served by disclosing additional records," Arapahoe County Sheriff J. Grayson Robinson wrote in a response to Yahoo News. "Mr. Holmes could potentially be significantly impacted by the release of his records and any corresponding publicity," he continued.
Grayson said part of his decision was based on a pretrial gag order issued by Chief District Judge William Sylvester.
- Holmes has been assigned a public defender, Tamara Brady.
- He appeared drugged.
Quick note - This is
definitely a work in progress and will be updated massively.