Theater gunman called crisis line before rampage
On tape, Holmes indicates he wanted to be stopped
CENTENNIAL, Colo. – James Holmes lingered outside a suburban Denver movie theater for a moment or two, thinking someone at a mental health hotline might talk him out of killing people he didn’t know, or that the FBI might swoop in and stop him, he told a psychiatrist last year.
But his phone call to the crisis line was disconnected after nine seconds, before anyone answered, he said in the videotaped conversation with the psychiatrist, which was shown to jurors in his murder trial Tuesday. The FBI never showed up, despite Holmes’ suspicions that agents were watching him.
So after hesitating a few seconds more, he walked inside, tossed a tear-gas canister and opened fire, he said on the video. He said he remembers hearing one scream and seeing one victim out of the 12 who were killed and 70 who were injured, but little else.
“At that point, I’m on autopilot,” he said in an eerily flat and expressionless voice.
Jurors are watching nearly 22 hours of Holmes’ videotaped conversations with Dr. William Reid, who conducted a court-ordered evaluation of Holmes after he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the July 20, 2012, massacre.
Defense attorneys say schizophrenia had distorted Holmes’ sense of right and wrong, and that he should be committed indefinitely to the state mental hospital.
Prosecutors argued Holmes should be convicted and executed. They said he didn’t meet Colorado’s definition of insanity: Unable to tell right from wrong or unable to form the intent necessary to commit a crime because of a mental disease or defect.
Reid has told jurors he believes Holmes was mentally ill but was legally sane at the time of the shootings.
Defense lawyers will begin making their case when prosecutors finish, in about three weeks.
Holmes said he thought FBI agents would rush in when he stepped out of his car, heavily armed and in a police-style helmet, in the lighted lot behind the theater where he had parked. The FBI has never said whether it was monitoring Holmes before the shootings, and an agency spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday.
Holmes also said on the videotape that he wished Dr. Lynne Fenton, a psychiatrist who treated him before the shootings, had placed him under a 72-hour police psychiatric hold.
Holmes also told Reid that he was careful not to let Fenton know he was planning the theater attack.
Fenton didn’t return a phone message Tuesday. She is expected to testify later in the trial.
Under questioning by District Attorney George Brauchler, Reid said Holmes’ wish to be locked up before the shootings was evidence he knew right from wrong.
“There’s a strong implication he wants to be stopped from doing something wrong,” Reid said.