AURORA | In the weeks before the massacre at an Aurora theater last summer, accused shooter James Holmes left a trail of warning signs.
As his academic career at University of Colorado School of Medicine sputtered, he told his psychiatrist he thought about killing people — lots of them. And he later threatened that doctor, sending her emails and text messages after she stopped treating him.
CU officials — including a response team assembled to specifically look at threats to the campus — knew about Holmes’ behavior and the doctor’s concerns.
Despite the warning signs, CU did nothing to alert police or mental health officials. Holmes dropped out of the graduate school in June, and his contact with campus officials seemed to end.
The school’s response has already sparked one lawsuit from the family of a man Holmes is accused of killing in the theater, and the school expects about a dozen more lawsuits to follow.
Beyond the university’s pending legal trouble, last week’s revelations about the handling of Holmes before the shooting has led to even more questions about what CU did, what they could have done, and what they should have done.
“It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but for those who died, these are not small questions,” said Larry Barton, a former Harvard University professor who has taught threat assessment for 30 years.
Barton, who has trained threat assessment teams at nearly 20 universities around the country, said if the school dropped their concerns about Holmes simply because he was no longer a student, they could be facing serious criticism.
“If that was their logic — he is no longer a student therefore not our problem — then this would be considered a very serious situation that will be a challenge for them to defend,” he said. “Out of sight is not out of mind when you are dealing with a mentally ill person.”
The new judge in Holmes’ criminal case, Carlos Samour, Jr., unsealed 13 court documents last week that had been kept secret since the July 20 massacre.
The records say CU deactivated Holmes’ key card, barring him from some restricted buildings on the medical campus near his apartment, but school officials dispute that CU leaders took even that step. A spokeswoman said last week that Holmes wasn’t barred from campus because of the threats, he was barred only because he had withdrawn from the neuroscience program.
Details about what the school knew before the shooting have spilled out in bits and pieces since July 20. Citing a judge’s gag order, school officials have declined to discuss specifics about the university’s response, issuing statements that say the school is cooperating with the investigation but can’t say much.
But court documents — including those released last week, as well as a lawsuit against CU and
Holmes’ psychiatrist — combined with court testimony shed some light on the school’s handling of the case.
Holmes visited Dr. Lynne Fenton for a counseling session at least one time before she stopped treating him.
After meeting with Holmes, Fenton reported him to Officer Lynn Whitten with University of Colorado police.
Whitten later told Aurora police that Fenton reported Holmes’ comments because of his “danger to the public due to homicidal statements he had made.” The doctor also told police Holmes sent her threatening and harassing emails after she stopped treating him.
Fenton’s concerns made it to the University of Colorado Campus Wide Threat Assessment Team, and Whitten asked Fenton if she should arrest Holmes and put him on a 72-hour psychiatric hold. Fenton rejected the idea.
Under the state’s “involuntary commitment” law, Whitten likely didn’t need Fenton’s approval to have Holmes committed, experts say.
Mike Tapp, program manager of emergency services at Aurora Mental Health, said Colorado law gives a variety of people the authority to have someone committed for up to 72 hours, including police, social workers, some nurses, even park rangers and wildlife officers.
But, Tapp said, deciding to commit someone is always a tough decision. Psychiatrists or doctors have to balance the patient’s rights against any possible risk to the public or to the patient themselves.
“You are always walking a fine line,” he said.
Whether having Holmes
committed would have stopped the July 20 rampage is impossible to say.
Tapp said there is little tracking of patients who have been committed. There is no database that shows who has been placed on a mental-health hold.
In Holmes’ case, police have testified that he had already amassed most of his weapons — including the assault rifle and shotgun — before Fenton voiced her concerns in early June.
But experts say the fact that Fenton was willing to discuss Holmes’ threats with anyone, especially a police officer — breaking the doctor’s confidentiality pledge — show how alarmed she was about the threat.
“If a doctor takes that step, then that is a very serious thing,” said Dr. Steven Hoge, a clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University.
Laws on a psychiatrist’s responsibilities when it comes to a patient who may be a threat vary from state to state, Hoge said, and there is a gray area about when a doctor’s “duty to protect” the community kicks in. In malpractice cases, where the issue boils down to whether a doctor met that duty, experts on both sides will have differing views, depending on the case.
Whether CU’s threat team handled Fenton’s concerns appropriately isn’t clear.
Barton said it would be rare for a threat team to take a report from a doctor then ask that doctor again if the patient should be apprehended.
But the fact that Holmes talked specifically about killing people should have been a major red-flag for the team, he said.
“The more specific a person is, the more dangerous they are likely to be to themselves and others,” he said.
When someone reports a threat to the team — be it a psychiatrist or anyone else — the threat team needs to follow-up on the report, Barton said.
After Fenton reported Holmes to Whitten, it’s unclear what the team did.
“She did the right thing,” Barton said of Fenton. “The question is, did the university meet and interview her, or just say ‘thanks, and we will take it from here.’”
While Fenton stopped treating Holmes in June — and based on court testimony, it appears she may have only treated him for one session — Holmes maintained a bizarre interest in the doctor.
In July, he mailed her a package containing a brown notebook and $400 in burned $20 bills. The notebook was apparently a typical school notebook, with spaces on the cover for the owner’s name and the course it was being used for. Next to name, it said “James Holmes.” Next to course, it said “Of Life.” Reports have said the notebook contained stick figure drawings of people being killed and other details about the massacre.
And Holmes’ lawyer said that a few minutes before the theater shootings, Holmes called a phone number for Fenton listed on his patient discharge papers. He didn’t get an answer.