AURORA | James Holmes threatened and harassed his former psychiatrist at University of Colorado School of Medicine in the months before the July 20 theater rampage, according to newly released court documents.
Dr. Lynne Fenton, who treated Holmes while he was a graduate student at the university, told campus police that Holmes talked about killing people. She also told police she was reporting the comments because of Holmes’ “danger to the public due to homicidal statements he had made.”
Fenton has been at the center of controversy surrounding the Holmes case. According to a federal lawsuit filed by some of survivors, campus police asked Fenton if she wanted to put Holmes on a 72-hour psychiatric hold in June, but she declined.
Instead, university officials barred Holmes from the campus.
A school spokeswomen said she couldn’t comment on the newly released details Thursday.
The threats to Fenton were revealed Thursday after Judge Carlos Samour agreed to a request from several media outlets to unseal the arrest and search affidavits in the case.
Multiple media outlets have been asking the court to unseal the documents for several months, but Judge William Sylvester, who presided over the case before assigning Samour this week, sided with the defense and prosecution and kept the documents sealed.
Much of the contents of the affidavits, including the first contact between police and Holmes in the minutes after the shooting, were already discussed in open court at Holmes’ preliminary hearing in January.
Two officers responding to reports of shots fired at the theater confronted Holmes — wearing full body armor, including a gas mask and helmet — standing at his car near the exit to the theater.
As the officers stripped Holmes of his gear, they asked him if he was alone. “It is just me,” he told officers, according to the affidavit.
Inside the tactical pants Holmes wore during the shooting, investigators found an iPod in the front pocket. It wasn’t clear from the documents if they also found headphones or if police believe Holmes was listening to music during the rampage.
After police transported Holmes from the theater to a nearby police station and read him his rights, he asked for a lawyer and the interview ended.
At Holmes’ preliminary hearing, an explosives expert testified that he and an Aurora police officer interviewed Holmes the day after the shooting about the bombs and traps in his apartment. The ATF agent testified that Holmes detailed his traps to investigators, and asked at one point if the apartment building had been evacuated. Details about that interview were not included in the documents released Thursday.
In addition to the arrest and search warrant affidavits, the documents include meticulous lists of what Holmes had his booby-trapped Paris Street apartment.
In that apartment police found hundreds of bullets, unidentified powder, fuses, wires and other bomb making equipment. Police also recorded a “Batman mask” among the other items.
Among the hundreds of items logged by police including prescription bottles of sertraline, which is commonly known as Zoloft and is an antidepressant; clonazepam, known as Klonopin, a sedative; and loratadine, known as Zyrtec and is an allergy medication. Investigators also found bottles of hydrocodone pain medication and ibuprofen in addition to hundreds of other pills that were not identified. Police noted that Holmes had nearly 50 cans of beer, all types, in addition to bottles of high-proof rum and whiskey.
Other, seemingly innocuous, items dominate the 29-page document. Holmes had nearly 15 textbooks related to his schoolwork at CU and several popular video games including “Skyrim,” “Starcraft,” and “Oblivion.”
The walls in his small 1-bedroom apartment were littered with posters too, according to police. Posters from movies including “Pulp Fiction” and “Anchorman” were found, as well as a poster from “Soldiers of Misfortune,” a paintball movie. A chart of the human brain was also found and a paperback copy of “Starfist” a science-fiction novel was also retrieved.
The documents also shed some light on a brown notebook Holmes sent to Fenton around the time of the shooting.
According to the documents, Holmes mailed the notebook and $400 in burned $20 bills to Fenton on July 12, eight days before the theater massacre. A scene from “The Dark Knight” features actor Heath Ledger as “The Joker” burning stacks of money.
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.
Exactly when the notebook was mailed is unclear. The documents released Thursday say it was postmarked from a north Aurora post office July 12, but in court officials have said Holmes mailed the package the day fo the shooting. Investigators found the package in a mail room on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus three days after the shooting and it has sat in a police evidence facility since.
Prosecutors have asked a judge to allow them to see the notebook, but their requests have been denied amid questions about whether it constitutes privileged communication between a doctor and their patient.
The affidavit also shows investigators were preparing for a possible insanity defense from Holmes from the early phases of the case.
On July 23, in an affidavit seeking access to the package, police said they wanted the package because it could show details about the intensive planning and “the state of mind of James Holmes and his culpable mental state.”
Sentinel reporter Sara Castellanos and Aaron Cole contributed to this report.
If the “Good Doctor” Fenton is not considered partially at fault it will be a cover-up consistant with the Obama/Democrat current agenda. Additionally, the campus police should be carefully evaluated. There were plenty of pre-homicide warnings in this case. I would suspect that the medications were prescribed too.
Of course Obama and the Democrats have control over everything that happens and are definitely covering this up. – Right……