In two days of questioning by defense lawyer Daniel King, Gur said Holmes’ thoughts about killing other people had become an uncontrollable storm in his mind in the months before the attack.
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They called him Jimbo. He known as them Goober and Bobbo. After he left for graduate college, their communication was mostly confined to terse emails. But Dr. Raquel Gur was succinct when asked her opinion on the cause of the July 20, 2012 Aurora theater shooting, which left 12 dead and 70 others injured.
Her testimony is crucial as defense attorneys argue that during the shooting, Holmes was in the grips of a psychotic episode that rendered him unable to tell right from wrong – the threshold for an insanity verdict in Colorado.
Prosecutors say Holmes aimed to kill all 400 people in theater nine at the Century 16 multiplex in Aurora, and say he planned and carried out the rampage because he lost his girlfriend, career and goal in life. Defense attorneys say their fraying family ties reveal a man so delusional that he couldn’t bear revealing his struggle, even to these who could have helped. In this image taken from video, accused Colorado theater shooter James Holmes, on the far left, waits for testimony to resume during his trial, in Centennial, Colo., Monday, July 6, 2015.
“We have always loved him, and we do not want him to be executed”, they said in a statement in December.
Her findings also differ from those of two court-appointed doctors who studied Holmes in the months and years after the shooting and found him legally sane at the time of the attack. Holmes flashed them a quick glance Monday as they entered the courtroom. “All the characteristics of schizophrenia were present at the time of the commission of the crime”, she told jurors. They have made extremely couple of public statements in the almost 3 years given that the attack. They don’t cry or hang their heads. Arlene sometimes reaches for her husband’s hand during especially heart-wrenching moments, and he wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.
They have declined to comment during the trial, and court orders prevent reporters from approaching them. But Arlene Holmes says in a book she prays for the victims and feels self-guilt. “We are like no one particular else in the planet”.
Declared by the court an expert witness on the topic of schizophrenia when she began testifying on Monday, Gur went on to declare on Tuesday that admitted gunman James Holmes is not only schizophrenic, but was insane at the time of the shooting. Arlene Holmes was hoping the family could turn into closer, and she might have been struggling with depression herself, Holmes said.
Household therapy did not support in any case, since he by no means opened up for worry of seeming weak, Holmes told a psychiatrist conducting a sanity evaluation two years after the attack.
Gur said the discrepancy makes sense considering Holmes’ mental illness and his desire not to discuss it. Plus, she said, Holmes could have simply felt more comfortable with her than he did with other doctors.
The distance between them grew when he returned home from undergraduate school without a job.
Gur interviewed Holmes for 28 hours and studied his notebook containing plans for the massacre. When it came time to leave for his competitive neuroscience system at the University of Colorado, Denver, he turned down his father’s provide to drive with him. In his mind, Holmes had a mission to kill lots of people.
An expert in schizophrenia, she told the jury she saw numerous classic symptoms of the disease in him, including his flat affect – that he didn’t display any emotion.
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By then, Holmes had already assembled an arsenal of weapons. Holmes, who faces the death penalty, continues to believe his freakish theory that killing others will increase his self-worth, Gur said. Arlene mentioned them in her book. “A mother’s letters to her son should be personal, but I forfeit that right because the unthinkable happened”.
