You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together
with Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a
researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social
media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas. We're joined today by Carrie Droben, author of Aurora,
the psychiatrist who treated the movie Theater Killer tells her story. It is
a fascinating book and we are so thrilled to have you on the podcast.
Kerry, thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much for having
me. It's my pleasure. Start by telling us a little bit about your
professional background, because you've got a heck of one, thank you. I
think that my background as a criminal defense attorney really is it compliments my true
crime writing career very well. I was a criminal defense attorney for about twenty
five years, and I at one time specialized in capital litigation, so I
really knew the ins and outs of death penalty litigation, had many clients who
were some were serial killers other but so I really felt like I knew that
world, and I was well versed in that language and then that kind of
pathology, and so that was really my background before going into true crime.
But I started in poetry, of all things. So I spent a lot
of years studying poetry and trying to do the create of writing professor a route,
and then the recession hit and I wound up going into criminal work.
So it was a very weirdly circuitous way of getting into the true crime arena.
But as is often the case where people wind up writing true crime,
they have something in their history that leads them into that arena. In my
foray into first writing about outlaw motorcycle gangs and undercover investigations, I was also
very well versed in that because at the time I was married to an undercover
detective, and my background. I grew up with parents who were covert operatives
in the CIA, so I really had it was very well poised to be
in the world of true crime. And by the way, they're retired,
so I'm a lot of talk about it. You're not outing them at this
moment. I am not outing them. No, they've already out of themselves.
But it's an interesting path and I think it really marries well with what
I got into and why I can really speak to that and write about those
worlds. So what actually cut your attention in this rather amazing story of doctor
Lynn Finton and her work with James Holmes The Aurora mass shooter. Aurora is
a fascinating case on so many levels. I think at the time that Aurora
happened, and of course the anniversary of Aura was just this past July.
It was the mass shooting that occurred at a Colorado movie theater under li twentieth
of twenty twelve. To storymind, the listeners were James Holmes walked into a
movie theater and massacred twelve people and injured seventy two others. And what was
striking about his story is that he at the time was the only mass shooter
to have deliberately survived his shooting. He did this ostensibly so that people could
study his brain. So whether that's arrogance or your curiosity, who knows,
But that was really the impetus behind him doing this and plotting it and methodically
going about putting the whole thing together. Partly the fascination. The other extraordinary
thing about this case is that doctor Fenton is the only continues to be the
only psychiatrist in the history of psychiatrists who has ever been publicly outed as the
treating psychiatrist of a mass shooter. So we had an inside view of what
it was like to treat a mass shooter before he commits this heinous crime,
and so that was well worth delving deeply into that to find out what insights
can we learn from that. That's really the big question, why why does
this happen? Why is this now an epidemic in our country, and how
can we stop it? And so that was really the premise behind the book.
How do you spot in stop a mass shooter? The really sad response
to that is you can't stop one, but you can spot one, perhaps
with different criteria, so that on those levels it was really a fascinating book
and a fascinating study of criminal pathology, and fascinating too that you have it
from a psychiatrist who has taken an oath to do no harm and really advanced
this kind of extraordinary statement. Really, it wasn't a theory of the statement
that she believed James Holmes was evil and not mentally ill. And that's really
quite a powerful statement for a psychiatrists to make. Yeah, tell us a
little bit more, if you would, about how doctor Fenton was outed,
because this is so unusual. Usually doctor's psychologist psychiatrists remain in the background and
their treatment is confidential. How did this happen? So this was an extraordinary
moment in her career. She learned. There's a lot that led up to
it, But she had six sessions with James Holmes, and the whole time
that she's meeting him and treating him, she has no idea that he is
amassing an arsenal. And I should mention that James Holmes was a doctoral student
in the neurosciences program at one of the most prestigious universities in the country.
He was under the tutelage of many of the most prestigious professors in the country,
and doctor Fenton herself was highly qualified, in the top one percent of
her profession, so she was really the cream of the crop. So you
have just the perfect storm there. So she's outed when Holmes's defense attorney puts
her name in emotion to the judge, and that is never done. And
there was some speculation as I was writing this whether or not that was a
deliberate act on the part of the defense lawyer to maybe steer the attention away
from Holmes and put it on doctor Fenton, because that's certainly everybody wants someone
to blame. Everyone wants a place to put their race, and so she
was a perfect target and put her name in the motion, and the rest
was history, because as soon as everybody found out her name was outed,
her life was in danger. She received death threats, and the university had
to really hide her. She left the state at one point, she had
to wear a disguise, she had to wear a bulletproof vest, and her
whole life to upside down as a result of one attorney's motion. Yeah,
the passage where she's talking about being fitted for a bullet proof vest just sent
chills down my spine. I felt so awful for this poor woman who she
just went through hell. Talk a little bit about the media coverage and the
effect that that had on doctor Fenton's life and work. It was absolutely horrific
what the media did to her. Yeah, so I should mention doctor Fenton's
life prior to this. She was a very well respected, very reserved psychiatrist,
So she was not somebody that would go around. She was not on
social media. She took her work very seriously and being a psychiatrist was her
second medical degree, which is really extraordinary. She went back to medical school
because she believed so strongly in mental health, got a second degree, a
second residency. So she was really quite an extraordinary psychiatrist to begin with.
And so when she got outed, the media just hounded her to the point
where she was getting calls from every media station in the country almost on a
daily basis. She would get hang up calls and reporters that would stake out
her house, so she couldn't even go back to her house for a quite
a long period of time. She had to get special security. She had
people following her trailing her just wanting to get a statement. At one point
she had somebody kind of dressed or disguised himself as a homeless person sitting across
the street from her trying to get a statement from her. So her whole
life was upended by this, and she wound up going into hiding for a
little bit. And then when she decided she really she had to resign from
her position as the head of student mental health because she couldn't be in the
public eye. She thought she would be a danger to her students at one
point, so she just really her whole career was on the lurch. And
in addition to all the media tension, she also had probably the specter of
being sued, being sued from practice, being sued by a victim's families,
being sued by the Holmes family, any number of people coming out of the
woodwork. So for three years she was really under First of all, she
was under a gag order by the judge, so she couldn't even talk about
her experiences or what she did to try to prevent or at least thwart some
kind of attack. She had she had done every she had gone above and
beyond what a psychiatrist or any professional would have done, and yet she was
still targeted as so this is let's go winter. That's really what it was
mom mentality to make somebody pay for this sinous crime, and she was that
poster child for it. So he took her a very long time to not
only if you can imagine, it's bad enough that the victims' families relive this
nightmare every day. They have such a profound loss, such a hole in
their life that they cannot, in many respects, cannot recover. You've got
doctor Fenton, who is but in a different category, even though I would
argue she was also a victim and a target of this, but she's put
apart from it and has to endure this in silence, and she spends it's
almost a daily barrage from her own attorneys from the university where she is interrogated
over and over again. These six sessions become her life for three years and
beyond, so that if you want to talk about a ripple effect, that
is also a ripple effect of this crime is that she is hostage to these
sessions with homes that's all she can think about talk about. See, she
continues to relive his presence and so it's that was a fascinating and very disturbing
peace of this story that I don't think a lot of people realize until they
read the book or really get into that mindset. You cover other mass shooters
in the book, including the Columbine school shooters, Virginia Tech, and Newtown,
Connecticut, which is right close to where I live now, to name
some of the most notorious ones, and then you also mentioned some other lesser
known school shooters. Do you feel like there are characteristics that all of these
troubled individuals have in common. There are definitely commonalities, but it's impossible to
spot a shooter a mass shooter, and that's the rub of it. I
wish there was a a checklist. If you see X, Y, and
Z, then you know they're going to become a mass shooter, and so
therefore you take them out of the population, or can you remove them,
or you get them help. But unfortunately there really isn't. The common denominator
really among all of them is that they are males between the ages of eighteen
and twenty five. James Holmes was twenty four, Choe was I forget what
age he was, but he was a college student. You have that in
common. But what was surprising to me when I was researching these mass shootings
was that many of these mass shooters came from good for really like bucking the
stereotype here, they came from good families, oftentimes families that were intact families
that care about them. You're not going to in ninety percent of these cases,
you're not going to see these mass shooters in the mental health system.
So that's another really interesting misnomer people think they're and the homes happened to be
seen by doctor Fenton, but really just by pure luck made he was referred
to as social worker by his professors because as a component to his neurosciences program,
he had to give presentations, he had to explain to classmates what was
happening, and he really couldn't do it. It was almost debilitating. So
the professors thought this must be some kind of anxiety disorder, so they sent
him to a social worker on campus to say, maybe you could help him
or give him something, or help him so he can graduate. And so
it was the social worker who had the foresight to say, this guy needs
some help. We need to keep him in the system. And what was
really striking about Holmes is he didn't exhibit any of the characteristics that somebody might
exhibit if they were very nervous or stressed out or by as a presentation.
He wasn't like that at all. In fact, he was described as being
very robotic and mechanical and almost like a system in a sense to be studied,
which is really unusual and strange. So again, would you even know
he is described as odd? For sure, he looked odd, as mannerisms
were odd, But would you ever target him as a mass shooter? Probably
not show the mass shooter of Virginia Tech. Now he was an interesting situation
too. Here he is in creative writing classes. So how do you distinguish
between somebody who's being quote unquote creative and artistic and out there versus somebody who
might become a mass kular And then you know, I was a professor saying
we didn't know. Really, we really couldn't distinguish the difference. He was
not strange. He wasn't in the mental health care system, although later on
they discovered he had some mental health history, But it wasn't somebody that would
have been obvious other than he was weird and off putting and students didn't like
him, and so they had that in common. So it's very difficult to
pinpoint any type of checklist. Now, I will say this what I did
discover and what I think is corroborated by the cases, and the evidence is
that many, if not most, have some type of writing that they do,
something that they will do or leave behind to memorialize their intent, and
so that I would say if people n counter that to pay attention to it.
Holmes had a notebook that he wrote everything down, and of course nobody
saw notebook until laughter the fact, but it was an artifact that was there.
Choe had all of his writings, his plays, and his poems that
were very disturbing. Many others had manifestos. Some would post things on social
media that were disturbing. Other people had videos that they posted. But in
some way or fashion, they want to have their work recognized or acknowledged,
which is a commonality. But again it's a word of caution. It's hard
to know. How do you distinguish between the ones who are posting things and
not going to become many shooters and the ones that post things and record things
or write things and become those shooters. There really isn't a rhyme or reason
to it. And that's what's really striking and frustrating. People want to put
some kind of tag on it, saying maybe if they're in the mental maybe
we need better mental health care system, maybe we need matterlin control. But
it's unfortunately, there isn't one thing that people can point to to say,
if we had done XYZ, wouldn't have happened. And as a teacher who
goes into a high school every single day, I clearly do have a vested
interest in is there something we should be looking for here? Recently, earlier
in the month of January, we had a six year old shooter at a
school here in Virginia. At that point, it's like, what do you
even say to that You've done enough research at this point. Can you speculate
in any way about what might make a child that young resort to gun violence
or is it just as inexplicable to you as it is to the rest of
us. Again, it is inexplicable. I think there the youngest case that
we had in Arizona, it was a seven year old I believe, who
murdered his stepdad because the stepdad was molesting him. Now there you can see
a connection or something going on there, But still it's disturbing, it's chilling,
it's and there again people want to say, what is that lynchpin?
Do we blame the parents? Do we blame them? And really every case
is different, and I don't know that that's really fair to put that on
the parents because in many of these cases, and Columbine is a great example,
parents didn't know. They had absolutely no idea. From looking at it
from the outside, you would never guess that those two individuals were going to
go in and terrorize the high school. So it is really disturbing, and
it's very disturbing that the mass shooters are getting younger and so and I wish
I could even say that another commonality would have been that they're looking for places
where their public domains, where they can have mass casualties and good escape routes
and place Those were certainly the case in James home situation. He actually went
through that whole calculus. He deliberately didn't choose an airport because too much security
and he might have gotten caught, and his whole objective was to stay alive,
so he chose a movie theater because it had huge potential for mass casualties,
and he called it a kill box and people literally sitting in there like
sitting ducks, and so that's it's just disturbing on so many levels. And
I think the probably the most disturbing thing for me and writing the book is
that there wasn't a concrete answer. There wasn't a way to answer that question,
which Holmes himself poses in his notebook. He has a thirty five page
notebook and five pages of it are devoted to one question why, And that
word gets bigger and bigger as the pages turn, and so it's really haunting
and terrifying on so many levels. I will say, there are some things
that can be done to maybe not spot the killers, but to at least
not be sitting ducks. We've seen countless horrors of people just taken off guard,
surprised, unable to act, waiting for police to take action, and
when in so many of these cases, the police are going to be too
late. These shootings happen so quickly, the casualties are so huge, So
what do you do? And so there have actually been suggestions and I think
that this might be implemented in one school maybe more now where I think the
first thing that people have to realize is that we're living in this world now.
We can't suppose or imagine that it's going to be a different kind of
world. We have to accept the fact that this is happening. Students are
arming and going into schools and slaughtering people, and that's a reality as horrible
and horrific as it is. So one of the ways to work that is
to not take and definitely call it a stance where you're just waiting and you're
just sitting there waiting for somebody else to take action. So how do you
get into the kids' minds that maybe one person can be taken down. So
one of the suggestions that was made that was a little controversial was to have
a basket of rocks in each classroom where students could grab the rocks and just
start pummeling the mass here are coming in and so it was a way to
be proactive and to arm them quote unquote arm them with something that would be
able to stop somebody. People are coming up with with suggestions, and I
think they're worth at least discussing and having continuing conversation of what can we do,
How can we change this mindset that this is a reality and like it
or not, we have to now be proactive. Is I'm not opposed to
a box of rocks, not at all, But is that one step away
from insisting that every teacher in every American school be armed or do you feel
like there's a that's a big leap from the box of rocks to insisting that
teachers carry firearms as as if they're in law enforcement, when we actually should
be hiring them for their ability to inspire and educate our kids. I think
there are many steps that can be taken before you reach that extreme, and
I think that some of those are starting to be implemented, if not be
seriously considered. A lot of colleges now, for example, you can't access
the building unless you have a lanyard with your idea on it that has a
scancode. You know, the doors automatically locked behind them, they scan and
they're getting into the buildings. And of course this wouldn't stop show for example
Virginia Tech, but you know it might stop Evaldi Shooter for example. So
there are people that this could help. So that's one thing to implement.
Another is to have doors that are self locking, cameras outside that you can
see the whole campus or the whole area. But then again, we're talking,
we're limiting that to the school shooters and homes. Of course, wasn't
a school shooter, But so what do you do with these very big,
wide open spaces that just scream come get me. So how you bar that
people are starting to take those measures. There's metal detectors at concert venues,
there's people can't take in person. There are precautions that are taken. They're
taken at airports, they are taken at concert venues. They need to be
taken in schools, in my opinion, and so I just think that it
starts with a conversation that we're living in a different world and this is the
reality, and we need to take those extra preventative measures to try to help.
And arming a teacher, I think that's maybe that's in the future,
but I think there are steps we can take that kind of lead up to
that, And I think the basket of rocks at least empowers students and children
to say, Okay, I can do something about it. I don't have
to sit here and wait and hope that some major miscommunication the police department doesn't
happen, and somebody's coming to the rescue. And so I think that these
are very important conversations. They're controversial, they're tugging at the heart of for
who's in charge and who's going to take charge. And so, yeah,
he's a difficult book, but it's one of the reasons that I really wanted
to write this book. I wanted that conversation to keep going. You're listening
to Mind over Murder, will be right back after this word from our sponsors.
We're back here at Mindover Murder. And the sad thing is when I
wrote the book, I didn't think that we were going to have so many
more mass shootings, so they were going down the back. But now what's
happening now is there are so many that it's almost as if people are becoming
desensitized. And I think one of the reasons that I deliberately wrote Aurora in
such a graphic way. I mean, I had to really think about who's
going to read this book. Many of the survivors say something interesting which I
actually really agree with, and they said, you cannot dumb this down,
you can't dilute this, You can't use euphemisms or sugarcoated. This is what
happened, and it's graphic and brutal and horrifying. And if people don't have
these images front row center, they're going to forget, They're going to get
desensitized. And so I made a very conscious decision to make it realistic,
not sensational, but realistic. One of the extraordinary things about this was but
the judge, I think, had a similar viewpoint. He wanted the trial
to be public. He wanted people to be able to sit in and hear
the survivors and see the case. And it was really striking to watch it.
And I will say that it was a chance really for first responders,
for example, to get their story out because they also are part of this
ripple effect in this community where they oftentimes are not heard, their voices are
silenced. They do this extraordinary work, they're traumatized from it, and they
don't have a voice, they don't have a platform to say, hey,
this is what happens to people like us. And in the Amara case,
what happened, and what was really even compounding the tragedy was that the first
responders were the police officers. They were coming to the theater, not knowing
what they were going to face, just seeing the scene that many have described
as worse than a battle scene. It was absolutely horrific. And one of
the details that really struck me was they walk into this movie theater and it
is just a slaughter. But what they see on the ground are all of
the phones from the victims, from people that have fled out of the theater,
from the people that were killed. Their phones are lighting up from all
the loved ones that are trying to reach them. And that's a very eerie
scene if you think about it, because it's like this, it's so symbolic.
You can't reach them, it's the cry for help. But that's what
the first responders really faced, and they had to get these people out of
a movie theater that is already so contained and difficult to get out of,
and they couldn't wait. And that's again just the extraordinary courage of the police
officers who were in that theater and just responded. And they're not allowed to
transport victims in their patrol cars to hospitals, but they did that in this
case. Is they knew if they didn't, these people would lose their lives.
So they really were heroes and are heroes, and I think their story
is told through Aurora and one needs to be echoed because it's really it just
nobody hears that. Nobody talks about that, and nobody talks about the survivors,
the people that lived through that but weren't killed and are dealing with all
kinds of tragedy. And I mean from being a defense attorney and having defended
people like Holmes, it was also a very interesting experience for me to be
able to write this and say, oh my god, how many times have
I felt the way Holmes lawyers must have felt that you're appointed to represent these
really the worst of the worst. I'll say, you're pointed to represent them.
You have to have a job to do, you have to ensure that
they get a fair trial. And yet where do you put all of that
trauma? That's the thing that I think people just they don't realize it.
And so I think this book really gave me an opportunity to really address that
from not only a personal perspective, but this is this is what happens these
cases. It can be so easy, especially as a lawyer, to be
given so many cases and they start to become rope where you really stop and
think about, wait a second, each one of these cases, each one
of these people that I represented, had families like the victims and survivors or
homes, and it's worth taking a pause and saying, Okay, what's really
going on here? So it was very interesting from that perspective too. It's
a very good book, told you that off air before we started. But
it was a brutal book and it was very hard for me to read,
and by the time I was done with it, I had to go read
Pride and Prejudice for a little bit to kind of act it as a palate
conswer. Definitely, the most brutal but most necessary parts of it are the
ones that you just outlined, the trial, the first responders, the survivors.
It was I had to stop a couple of times and go get tissues
because it is very moving and affecting, and this isn't the sort of narrative
that you get to see when you're reading books about other mass shooters like Columbine
for example, from Day of Colin It is a very different kind of book.
But boy, it was a refereed for me. But I applaud you
for being able to spend this much time with that material. How did you
deal with living with this? This is tough? Yeah, yeah, it
was very very tough. It took me four years to write it, and
I think it wasn't It definitely affected me. I also had to walk away
several times. I would cry during many of the scenes writing, especially the
trial scenes. I was very moved and it would take me a while to
decompress and say, Okay, I'm writing about real people. These are their
lives. I can walk away and come back to it and create it,
but they're living with it twenty four seven and it's just so striking. And
I remember really even feeling for Holmes's mom and the moms of the Columbine shooters
and just being wow, these this is like a horrific thing to contend with
on so many levels. It's a ripple effect is so far reaching, and
I think that that is really where the mental health community can come in and
really do some good service, because that's where we need it. So I
think for me, there was a lot of decompressing, going and watching comedy
when I needed to, or going on hikes or doing what I need to
do to take it out of it because it was horrific and there wasn't And
the other thing about it is that it's not an easy book to put down
and then come back to. So when I was in it, I was
in it, and I had to watch the twenty four hours of interviews with
Holmes, for example, and it was very different for me than dealing on
a case, like a law case, because I really was coming at it
from a completely different perspective and trying to understand it from the harm that this
one individual did and the arrogance or audacity that he had to say, I
want people to study my brain. It's like to what end? To what
end? Because really in Doctor Fenton and she and I became good friends.
She her life has been destroyed. It's never been the same, and I
think it's one of those things where you just it's not even that you rebuild
your life, it's that you're literally you're starting like this is the new normal,
Like this is what it is. I'm not okay, it's not okay
to be not okay, but this is the new normal and we've got to
press through it. And I think that was a very sobering realization as well
that I heard many times before even starting writing this book that grief had a
cycle, right, the five stages of grief, And I don't actually believe
that writing after writing this book, I don't think there are stages. I
don't think that people get over things, and I don't think that they should
get over things. I think they just find another path, another way through,
in order to get through. And that I really gained a whole new
insight and respect for it because it was very difficult. I'm so glad to
hear you say that. I don't think I've ever heard anyone articulate the fact
that this five Stages of grief is a complete croc And the only people that
I know that talk that way haven't suffered this kind of profound loss. And
Kristin and I have both been touched by homicide, which is how we met.
We push back quite a bit our mind over murder, of this ridiculous
idea of closure. There is no closure. There's never going to be any
closure. I've talked to all of the other Colonial Parkway murders families. None
of them feel like there's been an ounce of closure. Now, maybe someday
we'll have a person or persons to identify and perhaps focus some of our rage.
But beyond that, there is no closure. There's the before and the
after. And I've talked to Kristen about this before. This type of event
changes your life from that moment forward forever, and you're never getting your old
life back, much in the same way you're not ever getting your loved ones
back. It's over and done, and your life will be forever changed.
I'm not saying you won't have moments of joy. I'm not saying there won't
be some times in your life when you will feel great happiness again, but
it's never going to be the same. I've never heard anybody counselor say the
five stages of grief really maybe aren't quite so legit. Yeah, it's a
very interesting point. Yeah, I think it's helpful to talk about it for
what it is. I'm very much a realist and I think that I don't
think it's very helpful to sugarcoat things or deny I think because it's a real
it's a raw, real emotion, and I definitely maybe because I've experienced it
myself, I can speak to that point. But I think it's Yeah,
I think again it's one of those These people have a hard time talking about,
hard time articulating, so they gloss it over. But I don't think
it can be glossed over should be glossed over, because I think that does
a disservice to not only that person who's suffering, but also the memories that
you're trying to keep intact. It's a very tough process, and it made
even tougher when it's a life taken by a killer. When you have a
community like Ara or Hellumbine, or really any community that's been touched by this
kind of violence, it clearly does change the community. You've mentioned ripple effects
a couple of times. What should communities who have suffered from a mass shooting
event like this do to help heal it? But I say heal it with
the quotation marks around it, because you can't really. But what can communities
do to come back together after such a tragedy. I think it's really important
to acknowledge the tragedy and to be a support system for each other. And
that doesn't necessarily mean reminding each other very minute that this has happened. It
just means really just being present for your neighbors, your community, understanding acknowledging
that so that people don't become or don't have this feeling that they're a pariah
in their own community. And I think that's unfortunately a common you call it
after effect of tragedy, where a lot of people don't quite know how to
approach people that have gone through this, and so they back then Unfortunately,
that just further isolates the people that have gone through it. So I think
as a community, it's really important to be united and to come together acknowledge
that this tragedy happened in your community, don't ever forget it, just be
a constant support. I know that. Here's an example. The jurors,
for example, in Holme's case, stayed in touch. They went through something.
And that's interesting too, because you don't really hear about that very often
interviewed on three eight hours or but you don't really hear what impact it had
on the jurors. And they are a community in and of themselves because they've
sat through this and they've sat in judgment and that's really difficult to do.
And then in Holmes case, oh my god, like one juror, one
hold out juror who didn't vote for that and imagine how that juror feels.
So it's I think it's just important to acknowledge that everybody has come together from
a place of horror, but that you can come together and make something new
and good out of that. And that's really hard to do, but I
think it's essential. I was very interested in one of the minor rabbit holes
that you discussed in the book is the idea about whether violent video games and
media leads to violent behavior, because I know that one of the things Holmes
was doing was playing a lot of first person shooter games, and we have
seen with other mass shooters. What are your thoughts on that, do violent
media and violent video games lead to violent behavior? I don't think that has
actually been proven. I think that the consensus is that if you are already
wired that way, that you're going to do whatever it is that you're going
to do. And I don't think that there's certainly plenty of what I call
quote unquote normal stable children teens who love to play video games and love to
enter into that other world. And I don't personally understand it, but I
think there is a sense of being able to be an avatar, for example,
or be another person this whole second life idea, be in that other
world and not have any responsibilities or any repercussions that you would in this world.
And I think that the consensus is that the majority of people can identify
or distinguish that difference that you're in that world for that period of time,
but that is not this world, the real world. And the people that
can't distinguish that, there are so many factors, so many things that are
going to trigger them to become the mass shooter. And because we can't identify
any one single factor, Certainly somebody like Holmes who already is fantasizing about killing
people and has had this fantasy from day one, and in fact comes up
with a human capital theory where he believes people have points and values. Certainly,
maybe that could have been fostered further by video games, but really he
had that philosophy and that theory before he ever touched a video game. So
it is interesting, but it's it's definitely a study and a comparison that continues
to be studied. There's not a definitive link necessarily, at least in the
research that I've found. Does experience of researching and writing the book does that
change your perspective as an attorney? For instance, would you take on a
case now defending a mass shooter. Let's just say, that's a really interesting
question. And I actually, I actually know no longer represent criminal defendents,
and I don't do capital work anymore. And I actually made the decision to
not do capital work before I embarked on AURA. It had such an effect
on my own view of the world that I just I couldn't do it after
a while, and I thought the people that can do it, and I
did it for fifteen years, and I just one day came to the conclusion
that I don't have I don't have the will anymore to do this. And
because I couldn't do it, I had to step down that I'm not going
to do a service to my client if I feel this way. But doing
homes certainly solidified that feeling that I just can't do this work. I believe
in the constitution, I believe everybody deserves a fair trial, but I had
seen too much and I just couldn't do it. And I recognized that kind
of later on in my career as I was reaching at the end of it
where I thought, I don't have that feeling that a lot of these people
over here, and then I'm fighting it, like they're really bad people and
they've done some really horrific things. And even though I believe there's mitigation and
there's rehabilitation, and really have come to the conclusion after Holmes that I don't
know how much I believe in that, and I don't know how much that
and I know the big thing is it is not to excuse a person's behavior,
it's to mitigate their sentence. But really I don't believe that anymore.
And so it really did affect the way I approached cases, and I had
to step down from criminal work for that reason. And it's interesting, because
I should mention this, I actually started as a prosecutor. So I started
in my law career as a prosecutor, and I did prosecution for five years
and then I switched over and did defense work and wound up in capital litigation
for a very long time. And so it's just interesting the flip flop.
You're back, And more importantly, it's good to see both perspectives, and
I'm really grateful that I have both perspectives. But I think because I am
in a position where I can choose. Now I'm choosing not to do the
criminal defendants. And if I pressed you on this, do you feel like
doctor Fenton that this particular defendant is evil? I actually do. I actually
do. And it was really interesting because when I started this project, I
really didn't have an opinion one way or the other. And I thought,
I'm approaching this from a very objective point of view, and I'm going to
interview people and I do the research. But from what I have researched and
know of homes, I really do think that hypothesis has a lot of support
and it's and this is the interesting ps to this. I am. I
did my thesis on the idea of whether or not there were people that were
born evil like the double Y chromosome. Oh well, And I just find
it so fascinating that it's come full circle on I have this project because at
the time it was very controversial and there wasn't a lot of evidence. But
I really do see how doctor Fenton came up with that belief, and I
really do think there's a lot of support in this particular case for it.
And I know that's a really controversial stance and it's a horrifying stance. There
is certain pathology, and I would say antisocial personality disorders, you the aka
psychopaths who really cannot be cured, and they really are those people that are
born evil in my opinion, So I think those are the chilling oftentimes the
type bundies, the people that just charm, the pants up people. The
homes was a category in and of himself. I believe it certainly wasn't charming.
He was one of those individuals but almost defied a diagnosis. Of psychiatrists
that came on board to diagnose them. We're having a difficult time figuring out
what was actually wrong with him, and so I think that doctor Fenton nailed
it. So after embarking on what had you been an absolutely horrifying and typical
book, what is your next project? Are you going to try to top
this? Or it's sort of it? Maybe? Yeah, back to poetry
now it's actually a dark another dark topic. Yeah, I'm actually just in
the very early stages of now, but it's dark and it's probably going down
the foray of more pathology, psychopathic pathology. So it's very interesting, very
dark, and I'm very superstitious. So as soon as I sell it.
I can talk about it, but it's another true crime and I'm very excited
about it. It's an area that I feel like I'm It's definitely in my
willhouse and I'm really interested in writing it. And I also think it will
have a huge impact in another arena, another domestic violence and that kind of
arena that I think is also needs and a lot of discussion on it.
Now. I'm intrigued, and we're going to have you. We're going to
have you come back and talk about it as soon as you can. Yeah,
I would love to. I'd love to. I'm very excited about it.
That is going to do it for this episode of mind Over Murder.
The book is Aurora, the psychiatrist who treated the movie Theater Killer, tells
her story by doctor Lynn Fentten and Carrie Droven. Carrie, thank you again
for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
It was my pleasure. That's going to do it for this episode of Mind
Over Murder. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production
of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and
Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is
by Kevin McLoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can
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you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas. Five six. Thank
you for listening to mind Over Murder.