The nine women and three men of the jury have already convicted her 27-year-old son on all 165 counts of murder, attempted murder and explosives charges, and must now decide whether he should be executed or serve life in prison.
Advertisement
Robert Holmes said he and his wife had no idea before the July 2012 massacre that their eldest child was mentally ill, or harbored impulses to kill.
“He was not a violent person”.
Throughout the proceedings, Holmes has shown little reaction as he sits, tethered to the floor below his attorney’s desk.
Questioned by her son’s public defender, Arlene Holmes said James slowly disconnected from his family over several months and prepared to withdraw from his University of Colorado PhD neuroscience program.
A week after James Holmes bought a gas mask and tried to buy a handgun, he called his mother for Mother’s Day.
“Of course I do”. “I told them I didn’t think there was any chance he was a terrorist”.
Asked whether she still loves her son, she said yes. “She didn’t, she didn’t, she didn’t tell me”, she wept. Brauchler will continue questioning Robert Holmes Wednesday. Might he have been posing, trying to appear insane?
Robert Holmes deflected Brauchler’s suggestions, saying he didn’t know anything about how the photograph was taken. They hadn’t known he was getting therapy, and thought perhaps he was depressed, or was suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, Robert Holmes said.
The CU psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton, testified earlier during the trial and described meeting with Holmes several times when she was medical director for student mental health services at the university’s Anschutz Medical Campus. During his first visit, Robert Holmes said his son “was clearly really messed up” with his eyes bulging and his pupils dilated. It would be too late.
Robert Holmes also walked the jury through his son’s early years, narrating family photos and home videos that depicted a typical childhood. As soon as Thursday, jurors could begin deliberating whether to sentence the gunman to life in prison or continue to the next phase and the possibility of a death sentence. But his defense is hoping at least one juror will agree that his mental illness reduces his moral culpability so much that he deserves the mercy of a life sentence instead. The younger Holmes never brought a girlfriend home, and his father rarely, if ever saw him with friends.
The two were thrilled when he started dating in graduate school, and they knew it wasn’t a good sign when that first relationship ended.
“We wouldn’t be sitting here if she had told me that”, Arlene Holmes said.
During a break in testimony Wednesday, Robert Holmes motioned to his son and mouthed that they were wearing the same blue dress shirt. Both parents said they were shocked by his state of mind, and later, by the wide-eyed smirk he made in a booking photo at the jail.
Advertisement
The father said he and his wife were still asleep at the time of the shooting and were woken up by a phone call from a reporter.
