Speaker 1: M h.
Speaker 2: A Wall Street line, shackle change, Oh weesome, gird it's
calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been
a tentery juice as the huge stream game Rango three,
Come here by me or die inside these walls, inside
the wild.
Speaker 1: And when the girls I.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody and Gola. I'm
Jim Chapman and I am back with another Fifty Shades
of Evil series episode, and this time we are going
to go to Colorado when on June twelfth of twenty twelve,
a twenty four year old mail by the name of
James Holmes entered a midnight movie screening of Batman The
Dark Night and he was armed with an AR fifteen,
a one hundred round magazine, as well as a twelve
gage shotgun and a Glock forty caliber pistol. He killed
twelve people, injured seventy others. And when you talk about evil,
this guy embodies it. So today we are going to
talk about what led up to this shooting, what became
of James Holmes, and we're going to go to the
state of Colorado to do it and tell you the
story of the Colorado Theater shooter and for James Holmes,
it all started in nineteen eighty seven, but it was
not in Colorado. It was in San Diego, California, where
he was born to parents, Robert and Arlene Holmes. And look,
his parents were very smart, educated professionals. His dad was
a mathematician and his mom was a registered nurse, and
they were super smart people, very affluent. And although he
was born in San Diego, he was actually raised until
the age of twelve about seven hours no of there,
in what's known as Castorville, California. However, at the age
of twelve, that family moves back to San Diego, and
by this time James had a younger sister who was
two years younger than himself. Now, up to this point,
he appeared to have a pretty normal childhood. His family
took vacations, they had fun together, but it was not
completely without its challenges. When James was just eight years old,
his parents sent him to a psychiatrist because he had
hit his sister. Now it could have been one of
those sibling rivalry things that maybe his parents overreacted, or
maybe they knew something was a little bit off with James.
But outside of that, everything up until this point appeared typical,
though he was a very shy kid when he was
very young. Now, one thing that was a parent was
that he he was smart, gifted. Even so, James and
his family they moved back to the San Diego area,
and James took this pretty hard, felt like he was
leaving his friends, and he was so upset about this,
in fact, that on that seven hour drive back to
San Diego, he attempts to cut his own rest with
a piece of cardboard, which really it was no big deal,
just barely broke the skin. And his parents kind of
looked at this as possibly some sort of reaction to
that move and something to seek a little bit of attention.
But this is the timeframe where James would say later
after his arrest to a psychiatrist that he felt he
was starting to become mentally ill. Now by the time
he was a teenager. His parents they tried to get
him out. They were good people. They went to several
different places to see psychiatrists. But the issue with James was,
although it just appeared something wasn't right, it wasn't the
warning signs that you would see where you would say,
oh my gosh, this guy needs help right now. Just
not huge things that would stand out. He just seemed
kind of disconnected, if you will, from the rest of
his family. Now, despite all this, he had a pretty
typical social life. He had a few friends, He played soccer,
he ran cross country, and in two thousand and six
he would graduate from high school with honors. Now, although
he would say he was never bullied during his high
school years, he would say later that he would overhear
people talking about him from time to time and that
they would say he was strange and just different. He said,
when this would happen, he would picture violent images in
his head. When he was asked about this, he said,
images like a saw going through whoever happened to be
saying these things about him. Now, that I would say
is quite the warning sign, right, but he would keep
that to himself. So, as I said, he graduates from
high school with honors. He attends the University of California
at Riverside, and he graduates from the University of California
at Riverside in twenty ten with a three point nine
to six GPA in neuroscience. Now, he would say later
that he chose neuroscience because he knew that he had
something wrong mentally and that he wanted to learn how
to fix his brain. Now, after college, he toiled around
with a few jobs and then decided he wanted to
go back to college to pursue a PhD in neuroscience.
And it was also at this point in time that
people he would work with if these odd jobs he
had worked at like a factory at one point in
some other places, they said he was very antisocial. He
would stay to himself a lot of the times, and
this would gradually get worse and worse for James as
we go along. So James applied to several schools to
seek this PhD and he ends up picking Aurora, Colorado
in the University of Colorado in which to get his PhD.
And he would actually get a girlfriend during this time now,
although they would eventually break up because she would say
she didn't want to have a long term relationship. And
although he didn't verbalize the fact that this crushed him
at the time, it crushed him and his mental state
was going down at this point, so it was a
blow that he didn't know how to deal with or
didn't have the tools to deal with at that time. Now,
they did continue to see each other, and I guess
you could describe it as maybe some kind of hook
up relationship, but they were not boyfriend and girlfriend, and
he had said later on in interviews that he was
absolutely in love with this girl. Now, it was during
this time that also his anxiety would get really bad
around almost everyone, so bad in fact, that while he
was in school he would go see a psychiatrist himself. Now,
she takes this appointment with James, and they have a
couple of sessions together, and she picks up that there
was a lot messed up underneath the surface with this kid,
so much so that she reaches out to a colleague
because she started to think this is beyond how I
can help him. So she emails this colleague and I'm
going to read you that quick email. This is from
psychiatrist Margaret Wroth to psychiatrist Lynn Fenton, and it was
emailed March nineteenth of twenty twelve. She said, I saw
a student late Friday who I would hope you would
be able to see as soon as possible. He is
the most anxious guy I have seen and has symptoms
of OCD. But most concerning is that he has thoughts
of killing people. Though I do not think he is dangerous.
He said he did not want to tell me everything
he was experiencing, as I might have to report him.
The reason I think might be best for you to
see him, as I think it might be best to
keep him in our system, and she means in the
school system. What do you think about that? I am
leaving right now to go get some work done on
my car. Should be back about noon or twelve thirty.
Thanks Margaret. So that was the email. And obviously these
issues are really surfacing to wear James, not that he
was attempting to hide them from other people, but he
was certainly attempting to hide them from the public. He
didn't hide them from a psychiatrist, say Man, doctor Lynn Finton,
she does agree to work with James, and this is
in late March of twenty twelve. And throughout these sessions
he would mention that he's having or was having homicidal thoughts,
and he would say these homicidal thoughts increased to about
three or four per day. He would start to express
hatred for people, and the doctor would note that he
was having increased psychotic thinking levels. She would prescribe zoloft
in Clonzipam for him. And what the doctor did not
know during these sessions is that toward the end of
their sessions, James started purchasing firearms. On May twenty second
of twenty twelve, he actually purchased his first weapon, a
glock pistol a week later, on May twenty eighth, a shotgun.
He was already planning something, but he wouldn't disclose that
to his psychiatrist now. Just prior to his last session,
on June seventh of twenty twelve, he purchases an AR
fifteen rifle, six thousand rounds of AMMO, a drum magazine,
and this drum magazine would increase the round capacity of
that rifle from thirty rounds in the regular magazine to
one hundred rounds. So it was on June eleventh that
Holmes goes in for a session and he tells doctor
Fenton that he failed a major oral exam and he
quit school on the spot. And not only that, he
also said he was quitting his therapy and she was
like why, and he said that he had lost his
student status, which also means that he would lose his
insurance due to not being a student anymore. So when
you're on your parents' insurance. You have to be a
student in college when you were the age of James Holmes. Well,
if he drops out of school, then he's not going
to be covered under that policy. And he said he
could not afford the four hundred dollars monthly fee that
she would be charging him. Now, doctor Fenton, she was
very concerned about this. Obviously, she sensed a lot wrong
with this kid, and she offered him free sessions. Hey,
we're not going to charge you anything, but he declined
those free sessions. And it's at this point you could
kind of tell that he was not gihon if you
will with doctor Finton. So on this day they did
have one final session and James was described by the
doctor as very belligerent during this session. The session was
very short and it was very tense, and he walks
out of doctor Finton's office that day and he never returned.
Shortly after, she said that he sent her threatening messages
and doctor Finton would be so concerned about this she
would actually contact James's mother out of concern for him
leaving therapy, as well as campus police. Now in his
mother's case, his mother would testify at the trial and
say the doctor never mentioned me, meaning doctor Finton, that
James had threatened or had mentioned that he had these
thoughts of killing other people. She said, had doctor Finton
mention this, I would have done everything I could to
pick him up that day. But the doctor never told
her that. The only thing she mentioned that I was
able to locate was that he was quitting his therapy
and she was concerned about it. But she did contact
campus police as well the doctor, doctor Finton, and they
deactivated his student ID cards. So he had one of
those student ID cards where he could swipe in and
out of buildings, and doctor Fenton was concerned he was
going to come do something to her, so they'd deactivated
his ability to be able to get into buildings. They
also ran his criminal record, but the issue was James
Holmes didn't have any criminal record, So once they did that,
they just kind of put the file to the side.
They figured, Hey, this kid dropped out of school. It's
not really our problem. We're campus police, and that was
where that stopped. Now. When doctor Finton took the stand
in the trial for this case, she did testify that
she did not alert James's mother nor the police that
he had made threats or exhibited any desires to kill anyone,
even though he told her he had this secret desire
to kill people. She testified in court it was due
to his lack of revealing any specific place, land or intent.
I don't know intent. When you tell somebody you've had
these thoughts, that's kind of intent to me. But I
guess what she was saying was he didn't sit down
with her and say, Okay, I plan to go to
a movie theater.
Speaker 4: For example, Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today?
Speaker 3: Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you
what happened in New York.
Speaker 4: It cannot be as crazy as the case I told
you about yesterday in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: You know what, we should do a podcast about it.
Speaker 4: And with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the
crime news headlines that have dominated the week.
Speaker 3: We cover trending crimes from all over the country and
even sprinkle in a few globally.
Speaker 4: Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to
your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link
in the description of this podcast. Now, because we are
on the subject of doctor finton I want to go
ahead and mention this. The day before this twisted individual
decided he wanted to go kill a bunch of innocent people,
James Holmes mails an entire notebook, a manifesto, if you will,
to the attention of doctor Finton. Now, inside of this notebook,
which was fifty six pages, it was front and back,
so it was twenty three pages both written front and back.
Every plan you could imagine in what I'm going to
tell you about that occurred later on. What did this
notebook contain? Well, I'll cover some of the ramblings, if
you will, that were inside of this notebook. There were
some philosophical ramblings. So basically this notebook opens with big
handwritten questions that read like a torment in philosophy student,
if you will, a journal of some sort, things like
what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning
of death? Can a person have both no value and
be ultimately good and or ultimately evil in value? These
were questions that were written inside this notebook. He had
wrote the word why two hundred and forty seven times
across eight pages, just the word why. He also had
some pretty cryptic lines in there, including the mind is
a prison of uncertainty. He had another one that said,
to all problems death death multiplying both sides of an
equation by zero. When mankind can't find truth, untruth is
converted to truth via violence. I mean, just some weird shit.
Another one said, the reason why life should exist is
as arbitrary as the reason why it shouldn't. Life shouldn't exist.
And these sections of the notebook were filled with like
stick figured doodles, symbols, They had fragmented sentences. They were
just very bizarre scribblings all over these pages. Now prominent
section of that notebook was labeled self diagnosis of a
Broken Mind, and Holmes list possible conditions that he had
kind of self diagnosed himself with, including schizophrenia, adjustment disorder,
restless leg syndrome, and other vague entries that he had
In there. He wrote in length about trying to rehabilitate
the broken mind through neuroscience, but he said he concluded
his soul must be eviscerated to fix it. He described
a decade long obsession to kill in a long standing
hatred of mankind. He called people sheeple, and he also
listed alternatives to death, and he put ignore the problem.
He talked about the obsession to kill, and he said
he considered nuclear or biological bombs, serial killings, and other
mass murder casualty methods before checking mass murder slash spree
as the winner, if you will, the one that he
had chose to do. He had a notation that said
maximum casualties easily perform with firearms, although prontive in nature,
no fear of consequences being caught is ninety nine percent certain.
Then under that he had venue options airport, and then
he had notes underneath that that said substantial security too
much of a terrorist history. Terrorism isn't the message. The
message is there is no message. Then he had national
force and he put rejected too personal and yields too
few kills. And then lastly he had movie theater, which
is obviously what he chose, and he put what better
place to case than that of an inconspicuous entertainment facility.
Then underneath that it said case the place. And he
was in this section detailing all this research he did
on what he was going to commit, and it said
south side of theater optimal fifteen screens theater ten and
twelve were circled as best targets in complex and then
he marked the best parking spot for his car. He
had victim clustering notes in there, saying many initial persons
packed into a single area. He even had mapped out
an escape route. He had even put in the response
time estimated by police, which he had three minutes as
the estimated response time. He would have stick figure victims
drew in this notebook he had theaters with and he
would have notes like too many exits. He would have
notes like reminders to practice shooting at the range, and
he even listed the weapons and the ammunition that he
had already acquired. So it goes without saying that at
this point James Holmes is completely off the rails, and
on July nineteenth of twenty twelve, he makes his final preparations.
He photographed his ballistic gear, if you will, including a
gas mask, two tear gas canisters, a bulletproof vest, a shotgun,
an AR fifteen, a glock pistol, as well as a
ton of ammo. He lays all this stuff out on
his bed and he takes a picture as if he
were freaking proud of what he was about to do,
and he wanted to memorialize this moment. This was at
five seventeen that day, at six point twenty two pm,
he takes a selfie and at this point he had
dyed his hair orange and he had twisted the front
of his hair to look like two horns coming out
of his head Satanic style. Right. He then goes about
the task of wiring his apartment home alone style, but
with real weapons. I'm talking trip wires that would set
off homemade bombs, et cetera. Just prior to walking out
the door, he does one more thing. He sets his
computer to blast techno music thirty minutes after he leaves
the house. Now, this is designed by plan in the
mind of James Holmes. He actually wanted to lure police
to his apartment and all those explosives that he had
set inside would go off as soon as they walked
in the door. And then at eleven thirty pm, James
Holmes arise at the Century sixteen movie theater. Now he
had three tickets to Batman the Dark Knight Rises and
it was showing in two theaters, most popular movie of
the summer, and this was like opening night for it.
In the theaters it was showing him were Theater eight
in Theater nine. Now, he had done a ton of
research on these two particular theaters, and in the end
he chose Theater nine to the ability to handcuff one
side of the double doors shut. However, the tickets to
theater nine were sold out. He tried three times to
get theater nine tickets, and he kept getting Theater eight,
thus the three tickets. And I want to explain that
real quick. He was buying these tickets online and it
wouldn't let you choose the theater. It was such a
popular movie. And this was twenty twelve, it's not today,
so you could choose tickets, but it would just automatically
give you what's available. And because Theater nine was sold out,
he just couldn't get tickets. He tried three times. So
at eleven fifty five he goes inside of that theater
and at twelve oh three am he's captured by surveillance
cameras walking past concessions into Theater nine. And the way
he explained this later on was even though he had
tickets to Theater eight, the concession stand was actually located
on Theater nine side. So he just went there and
mingled around that concession stand for a minute, and then
he went into Theater nine, because they only checked your
tickets at the front of the entire complex, not when
you get inside. So as he goes in Theater nine,
he spots an empty seat on the front row, and
he sits down for a few minutes, and the previews start,
and as they're playing, he gets up out of his seats. Now,
witnesses would say later that he appeared like he was
taking a phone call. Now we now know that this
is fake, that he made this up. He just kind
of picked up his phone, put it up to his
ear as if he was getting a call, and started
pacing out of the theater. It's part of the plan.
He then goes to the left side of the theater,
where it's like a cubby. No one else can see you.
And I want you to picture this. One side of
that hallway that cubby led to the lobby of the theater,
and the other side is an emergency exit, and he
goes out of that emergency exit and right in front
of it. Because he had planned all this out, his
car is part so as he's walking out that door,
he props it open just slightly with a tablecloth holder,
and that was obviously, so it would not shut and
lock behind him. Now, this is about twenty minutes into
the movie. Upon entering his car home, start changing into
that ballistic gear that he had photographed on that bed right,
a helmet, a gas mask, bulletproof vest, even bulletproof growing guards,
and leggings. He armed himself with all three guns the
hour or fifteen, the shotgun and the pistol. Now about
midway through changing in his cramped car, two employees actually
walk right by him to throw some trash out, But
James Holmes was well concealed. He had dark tinted windows
for his vehicle, and he had taken a sunshade and
he had placed that across the front windshield, even though
it was after midnight. And he would say later to
a psychiatrist that had they saw him, he would have
killed them. And he actually had his pistol trained on
them the entire time they were out there. Now, once
they went back inside, he completed putting on his gear,
and he did one final thing before he exited that car.
He actually dials and he calls a crisis hotline. Now,
James would say later he called in the hopes someone
could talk him out of what he was about to do.
He claimed no one answered, that he never heard anything.
He held the phone to his ear for nine seconds
and then just hung up. However, records indicates someone did
answer and that he hung up on that person. At
that point, he places in his earbuds and he turns
up techno music full blast, and he exits his vehicle. Now,
as soon as he steps out, he drops one of
the two tear gas canisters he had. Now, at this point,
he's geared up to the max. He can barely see
due to the gas mask he had on, and it
actually had scratches on it, so it really affected his vision.
So he kind of panics for a second. He hardly
looks around for this rolling tear gas canister of all things,
but he can't find it. He then proceeds back to
the emergency exit that he went out of, and there's
a little corner there where nobody can see you, and
he kind of stands there for about thirty seconds, almost
like he was debating do I really want to do
this or not? Well, he decides to do it, and
at twelve thirty eight am he re enters that building
through the emergency exit into the theater. Now as soon
as he steps back in that theater, he throws the
tear gas canister that he didn't lose into the crowd
in this place is freaking packed to the gills. Every
seat is taken in this four hundred seat theater by
this point. Now, many people saw this canister flying over
the crowd, and it had smoke coming out of it
at that point, but they assumed this was some sort
of teenage prank. I mean, you got this guy standing there,
he's geared up as if he's going to war, and
he's got orange hair, and he throws something in the
air with smoke coming behind it. I don't think anyone
would automatically assume it was as serious as it actually was.
They assumed it was like fireworks or a smoke bomb
of some sort. But that thought left everyone's mind in
there within just a few seconds, when Holmes opens fire
with that shotgun, he fires off all six shells that
were loaded in that shotgun in rapid succession. Then as
quickly as you could think, he switches to that AR fifteen,
which was loaded with one hundred rounds, and he quickly
fires off sixty five rounds before the gun suddenly jams. Now,
during this time, it is absolute chaos in that theater.
People are screaming, they're trampling over one another, trying to run.
Someone at some point trips a fire alarm, and with
the AR fifteen jammed, Holmes calmly retreats to the right
side of that theater hallway that leads out to the theater,
where he is just out of the line of sight
of those inside. And at this point a family of
three they see this as an opportunity. They think maybe
he left and they wanted to get the hell out
of there, so they make a run for it, thinking
that Holmes went out the emergency exit, and they turn
in the hallway to go run to the theater lobby,
and they run right into James Holmes. Now at this
point he's working on that AR fifteen, trying to get
it unjammed, but he has his forty caliber pistol in
his hand and he fires off three shots, hitting all
three people. They are all shot, but they managed to
escape past him. Now, at this point, literally hundreds of
calls are placed into nine one one, And initially I
was going to play a few of those calls for you. However,
these are so disturbing. I just decided not to. If
you want to hear him, a simple Google search will
pull up some nine one one calls and you can
listen to him. But it was just too disturbing. I
didn't want to put it out there. Now, the shooting
itself only lasted one to two minutes. It was that quick.
Police arrived just ninety seconds after the first nine to
one one call. But in this short amount of time
the damaged homes managed to inflect was staggering. He fired
off seventy six shots total from those three weapons. Twelve
people were killed, including a six year old girl. Now,
several of these people died while shielding other people from
the bullets. Seventy people were injured. Fifty eight of those
were injured as a result of direct gunfire. Another twelve
were injured as a result of the tear gas or
being trampled on. Out of that theater. Now, after the
shooting stopped, James Holmes simply strolled back out of that
emergency exited where two police officers walked right by him.
They assumed he was police due to being geared up
in all this ballistics gear. He walks to his car.
He lays his weapons inside and he raises his arms
in a surrender position in the air. Police took note
of this, realized this is the fucking guy, and they
place him into custody. Now. Once in custody, shockingly and
thank god, he did tell police his apartment was wired
with explosives, which, due to the use of robots and
some other means, it took police over twenty four hours
to even make entry into his apartment. They also found
in this car tire tax to pop tires, as well
as a first aid kit, alerting police that he had
planned on a police chase and he was going to
toss his tire tax out and he had a first aid.
He's a kid. I guess if he gotten a wreck
or something, he could doctor himself back up. So they
bring him into the interrogation room and they bag his hands,
and the reason that they do this is to secure
any GSR residue, gunshot residue that he may have on
his hands. And you can tell during this point the
cops they were doing everything they could not kill this guy,
and understandably so, I mean, you can tell they got
a ton of disdain for this clown. As they are
bagging his hands. So this punk is sitting there with
these bags on his hands, and what do you think
he's doing? He starts doing hand puppets back and forth
with the bags. Talk about someone that doesn't realize the
evil of what he just did. Now, they did attempt
to interrogate him. However, as soon as they read him
his rights in the interrogation room, he invokes his right
to remain silent. He basically said, I an attorney, and
I want a quarter pointed attorney. It requests a lawyer.
And at that point you got to stop questioning or
whatever he says is inadmissible in court. So police stopped him.
He got his lawyer. Eventually this goes to trial and
in the end he has found guilty and he is
sentenced to twelve life sentences plus three thousand, three hundred
and eighteen years in prison. And it wrapped up quickly
for a case of this size. That was in twenty
twelve that he actually got convicted. Now, in that trial,
key evidence, just a quick sypnosis of that. They had
survivor testimony, they had videos, they had that notebook that
I told you about. Obviously a ton of psychiatric exam evidence,
and you may wonder why no death penalty in this case,
And according to jurors statements after the trial, they failed
to unanimously agree on the death penalty due to his
documented mental illness. Whether you agree with that or not,
that was the case there and why he didn't get
the death penalty. Now, after his trial, he's in jail forever. Right.
He's initially held in Colorado's state facilities, and in twenty
fifteen he gets assaulted by another inmate, and so at
that point they move him. They transfer him to federal custody,
and he gets housed at USB United States Prison Allenwood
in Pennsylvania, and he was housed in what's not as
protective isolation due to his obvious notoriety. Look, people will
get major points if they kill that guy other prisoners,
so that's why he's housed there. He spends twenty three
hours per day confined to his cell. He has no
contact with other inmates and has it he has refused
any sort of visits, even from his own family. And
you know what, it's my opinion that he deserves every
single thing that he has gotten. This is one of
the most horrific individuals that I have covered yet. And
he deserves every bit of sitting in that cell twenty
three hours a day. In my opinion. Of course, families
were affected by this over you know, hundreds of thousands,
the whole community of Colorado was affected by this horrific shooting.
My thoughts, prayers, hearts go out to all of the victims,
all of the victim's family, friends, and everybody in the
Colorado community that was affected. What a horrific, senseless, fucking,
senseless tragedy taking place in twenty twelve in Colorado. But
there you have it. That is fifty shades of the
Evil Colorado. I want to thank everybody for listening. Check
out the Patreon for commercial, free early releases and more,
Patreon dot com slash Bloody and Gola podcast. And this
will be the last episode you hear before Easter, so
I want to wish everyone out there a happy Easter
with family and friends. And if you're in South Louisiana,
wet crawfish for Easter. So I'm looking forward to that.
Until next time for Bloody and Gola, I'm your host,
Jim Chapman, much love.
Speaker 2: Wall Street, Line, shackle Chain, It's calling by name. There
is no mercy and it's been a tentery, Jess, as
the hillstream game rangold the three.
Speaker 1: I'm in by mere to die inside these walls, inside
the wise, And when these I know it's oldbody, anglebody angle,
Pa and Bud