James Eagan Holmes (born December 13, 1987) is an American convicted mass murderer who perpetrated the 2012 Aurora theater shooting in which he killed 12 people and injured 70 others (62 directly and eight indirectly) at a Century 16 movie theater on July 20, 2012. He had no known criminal background before the shooting occurred. Before the shooting, Holmes booby-trapped his apartment with explosives, which were defused one day later by a bomb squad.
Holmes was arrested shortly after the shooting and was jailed without bail while awaiting trial. Following this, he was hospitalized after attempting suicide several times while in jail. Holmes entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which was accepted. His trial began on April 27, 2015. On August 26, 2015, Judge Carlos Samour sentenced Holmes to 12 consecutive life sentences plus 3,318 years without parole after the jury spared Holmes the death penalty by a single vote. In imposing sentence, Judge Samour declared "it is the intention of this court that the defendant never set foot in free society again."
Holmes was born on December 13, 1987, in San Diego, California. His father Robert Holmes is a mathematician and scientist with degrees from Stanford University, UCLA and UC Berkeley, and his mother Arlene Holmes is a registered nurse. He has a younger sister. Some of his father's ancestors came to the U.S. via the Mayflower, and thus he has some English ancestry.
Holmes was raised in Oak Hills, a community in Monterey County near Castroville, California, where he attended elementary school. At twelve years old, Holmes moved back to San Diego. There, he lived in the affluent Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood, where he reportedly began to decline socially. He went to Westview High School and graduated in 2006. Holmes played soccer and ran cross-country in high school. He attended Peñasquitos Lutheran Church with his family, according to the Lutheran church's pastor. According to Holmes' lawyer, Daniel King, Holmes began to suffer from mental health issues in middle school and attempted suicide at age 11.
According to Holmes, during his childhood, he was frightened of what he called "Nail Ghosts" that would hammer on the walls at night. Holmes saw social worker Margaret Roth once before she sent him to psychiatrist Lynne Fenton. Holmes was depressed and "obsessed with killing for over a decade".
Despite these issues, Holmes graduated from high school in 2006 with high academic honors and completed a bachelor's degree at University of California, Riverside with top grades, in 2010. He decided to pursue a graduate degree in neuroscience at the University of Colorado and moved to Aurora.
In Aurora, Holmes lived on Paris Street in a one-bedroom apartment in a building with other students involved in health studies at the University of Colorado. In a rental application for an apartment, he described himself as "quiet and easygoing", and in an online dating profile, Holmes identified himself as an agnostic. He left some digital footprints, like a university email address, an old Myspace photo, a dating profile on Match.com, and a profile on Adult FriendFinder, as well as a résumé at the employment website Monster.com. Holmes allegedly hired sex workers and left reviews of their services on an online message board.
In October 2011, Holmes began dating a fellow student in his biology class. Their relationship lasted until a Saint Patrick's Day encounter between Holmes and another man who talked to her during a date. She said that the episode made her feel distant from him, that Holmes often made deadpan jokes that made other people feel uncomfortable, and that he had expressed his desire to kill people. She tried to recommend his getting professional help despite not taking his claims seriously. They resumed their relationship in early January 2012, but it ended again in February. Holmes told a state-appointed psychiatric physician that "their breakup contributed to his violent depression."
In 2006, Holmes worked as an intern at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he was assigned to write computer code for an experiment. Holmes, who was described by his supervisor as stubborn, uncommunicative and socially inept, presented his project to the other interns at the end of the internship, but never completed it.
Holmes wrote of his experience at the Salk Institute in a college application essay: "I had little experience in computer programming and the work was challenging to say the least. Nonetheless, I taught myself how to program in Flash and then construct a cross-temporal calibration model.... Completing the project and presenting my model at the end of the internship was exhilarating."
Graduating from Westview High School in the Torrey Highlands community of San Diego in 2006, Holmes attended the University of California, Riverside (UCR). In 2010, he received his undergraduate B.S. degree in neuroscience with highest honors. He was a member of several honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa and Golden Key. According to UCR recommendation letters submitted to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Holmes graduated in the top 1 percent of his class with a 3.949 GPA. The UCR letters also described Holmes as "a very effective group leader" and a person who "takes an active role in his education, and brings a great amount of intellectual and emotional maturity into the classroom". Holmes scored in the 98th percentile on the verbal portion, the 94th percentile on the quantitative portion and the 45th percentile on the analytical writing portion of the Graduate Record Examinations.
In the summer of 2008, Holmes worked as a counselor at a residential summer camp in Glendale, California, which served children aged 7–14. There, he was responsible for ten children and had no disciplinary problems.
In the fall of 2010, Holmes was employed at a pill and capsule-coating factory in San Diego County. One of his co-workers later said that Holmes was unsociable, and once acted strangely at a laboratory work station by staring at a blank wall and not verbally responding, only making a quick glance and smirking, when his co-worker asked if he was okay.
In June 2011, Holmes enrolled as a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. He received a $21,600 grant from the National Institutes of Health, according to agency records, which was disbursed in installments from July 2011 to June 2012. Holmes also received a $5,000 stipend from the University of Colorado, Denver. Though Holmes received a letter of acceptance to UIUC, where he was offered a $22,600 stipend and free tuition, he declined their offer without specifying a reason. Reviewers of Holmes' application at UIUC remembered his application in part because he submitted a picture of himself with a llama.
Beginning in graduate school, Holmes would see shadows and "flickers" at the corners of his eyes, which would fight each other with firearms and other weapons. At the University of Colorado, Holmes sought help in 2012 for his mental state at the student health clinic after he broke up with his girlfriend. Because he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, his caregivers were allowed to testify at his trial. He was seen by psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton, who testified at his trial that she was worried about his homicidal ideation expressed in their last meeting. She saw him a total of seven times over three months, twice with a male psychiatrist. Holmes rejected their suggestions for treatment. In June 2012 after Holmes had sent her a threatening email, she activated a threat assessment team to help her formulate a plan for Holmes. She expressed concerns about his social phobia and "psychotic-level thinking" and believed he may have had schizoid personality disorder. She listed specific concerns, such as his long-standing fantasies about killing as many people as possible, his reluctance to discuss any details about his plans, his refusal to allow them to talk to anyone else and the unclear timeline; she didn't know if he was always that way or if this was a new behavior. She consulted with his mother, who said he had longstanding social problems. Although the center offered to treat him if he lost his insurance, he left treatment.