CENTENNIAL | As he plotted how he could kill the most people in spring and summer 2012, James Holmes considered attacking multiple people in a national forest, but scrapped that idea because it was too personal.
The defendant in the Aurora theater shooting trial also considered attacking an airport, but he decided against it because people might think his attack was an act of terrorism — a message he didn’t want people to take away from his attack.
“The message is there is no message,” he wrote in the spiral notebook he mailed to his psychiatrist the day of the July 2012 Aurora theater shooting. That notebook was the subject of testimony Tuesday in one of the most horrific crimes in Colorado.
Eventually, Holmes narrowed his venue to the Century Aurora 16 theater a few miles from his north Aurora home.
The theater, Holmes wrote, was ideal because it would be easy to case and have lots of “random” victims. The fact that victims would be random was so important Holmes underlined the word three times.
“The cruel twists of fate are unkind to the misfortunate,” he wrote.
Details about the notebook — which has been sealed since police seized it from a University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus mail room a few days after the attack — were first unveiled Tuesday during day 19 of Holmes’ first-degree murder trial.
Prosecutors say the notebook details the elaborate planning Holmes underwent in the weeks leading up to the shooting, and it reveals a demented yet sane person.
Aurora police Detective Sgt. Matt Fyles said the notebook contained drawings of the theater with various auditoriums ranked from one to three stars. He cased the theater for some time, noting which theater he thought would produce the most casualties.
One theater was ideal, he wrote, because he could lock the doors and “increase casualties.” Another was a poor fit because it had multiple exits and there would likely be several “escapees,” he wrote.
He also paid attention to theater goers themselves, noting that most of them used the right entrance as a way into theaters that had right and left entrances.
He talked about failed relationships, saying that they were not the cause for him wanting to murder people, but that they were “expediting catalysts.”
Jurors were each handed copies of the notebook, and each juror appeared to read the books intently. The judge gave them 10 minutes, but they read for about 20 minutes before witnesses began commenting on the book. The court took the copies from the jurors but Judge Carlos Samour Jr. said they will have access to the notebook again when they start deliberations.
The only reference to the movie he chose was “Embraced the hatred, Dark Knight Rises.”
Holmes’ lawyers said the book reveals that he was sinking into insanity. In one section, he wrote about his “self diagnosis” of his “broken mind,” saying he believed he had schizophrenia. The defense has said several doctors diagnosed Holmes as schizophrenic after the attack, which left 12 dead and 70 more injured.
Holmes talked about episodes of catatonia that would last for hours sometimes. He said that on some mornings, when he knew the catatonia was imminent, he would tall himself, “Bambi, you must get up.”
He talked about pulling on his hair so frequently, for so many years, that he would cause bald spots, so he would alternate areas that he pulled on his hair.
Holmes sat quietly as Fyles detailed the notebook.
Prosecutors in the Colorado theater shooting closed testimony for the day by playing a panicked 911 call from a man who was wounded in the neck when bullets ripped through the wall of an adjacent auditorium.
Zackary Golditch, who was 17 at the time, testified Tuesday that he was in theater 8 when he noticed smoke near the wall and a man with a wound to his forearm. Golditch said he was then shot in the neck.
Golditch testified that he fled the auditorium and called 911 from across a parking lot.
Most of the carnage took place in theater 9, where James Holmes opened fire during a midnight showing of a Batman movie, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.
He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.