MOTIVES For the Colorado Theater Murders ?

Hawkeye, I have you on "ignore", but when I see your posts quoted by others (e.g. David in this case), I truly worry about your level of sanity.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

DAVID wrote:
U think that there r so many sadists against the victims, huh ?

there are so many disfranchised young males, who all their life have been taught that men suck and who have few prospects for a decent life or even a decent ****. It will not take much to turn them to the dark side, to get them to use their talents for evil, as they have largely been denied the opportunity to use them for good.

Thay can 't vote??????
Well, I agree that we shud all vote regardless of age.

(Incidentally, no one ever taught me what u allege.)
I 've never seen a problem.

David

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@Lustig Andrei,

Quote:

Hawkeye, I have you on "ignore", but when I see your posts quoted by others (e.g. David in this case), I truly worry about your level of sanity.

There's that old newspaper guy shining through.

I wonder if I've got enough hearsay, rumors to file this. Yeah, no need to dig deeper, that'd just take effort. They'll pay me anyway.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Here's my take on it :

Firstly, we have to realise that this was NOT a crime of passion. It was well thought out, and prepared for over a fair period of time. He bought enough materials to booby trap his home. This would have taken time to research, buy equipment, have it delivered, andset up (including time to set up structures, test and troubleshoot). Thought would have been put into what sort of gun he needed to achieve his desires, including the magazine size (it held 100 shots), and enough bullets, plus backup firearms in case his assault rifle failed for any reason (which it did). This all takes time and planning.

Ruling out a crime of passion, it is then a crime of hatred / boiling and prolonged anger...or a dangerous and delusional paranoia (though usually these sorts of paranoia can't be hidden for long - especially when combined with acquiring weapons and booby traps, and so we would have to presume that someone would have noticed)

That his actions were aimed at a large group of strangers enjoying themselves means it was a crime that lacked empathy for others, so he has psychopathic tendancies (and may always have).

I've only seen two recent photos of him, and he does seem to have a very 'superior in my own mind' face. That was before I learned that he was in fact extremely intelligent (which doesn't mean he should have a complex of superiority)...and that combined with other factors has likely played a part in his actions.

The he dressed himself up as the joker means a part of him thought it would be a 'funny/amusing' thing to do.

I didn't read anything about a shootout with police, and so it was a suicide driven martyrdom syndrome. In the face of complete lack of empathy for others, a feeling of superiority, and not doing so to die, but apparently to be caught...I would think that he did it for the notoriety, and the feeling of superiority that he got from having the power of death over so many people.

Just my take of course.

1 Reply

He doesn't seem to fit into the descriptions most people in this thread have been suggesting.

The person cited in this article is the only one I've read about who really seemed to know him well and last saw him several months ago. He doesn't describe a person who is at all strange, or angry, or discouraged, or disappointed by anything.

Quote:

Colorado shooting: Suspect enjoyed video games, movies, school friend says
July 21, 2012

The alleged gunman in the Colorado theater shootings enjoyed the company of a few high school friends who liked to play cards, video games and watch movies together as teenagers.

One of James Holmes' friends was Ritchie Duong, a 24-year-old student at UC Riverside who had gone to school with the suspected gunman for more than a decade.

The pair went to middle school together, and got to know each other in high school over cards and Wii video games. They also attended UC Riverside together, where they’d see each other at least once a week to watch "Lost".

Holmes, suspected of killing 12 people and injuring scores of others, was part of something akin to a clique, and Duong was a member. Duong said he, Holmes and a few others got together as recently as last December in downtown Los Angeles to grab dinner and see the new "Mission Impossible" movie.

“He didn’t seem to change very much from high school,” Duong said. “We knew him as the same guy. We would call him ‘Jimmy James.’ We would laugh all the time about it.”

That leaves Duong and others close to Holmes trying to understand what happened Friday after midnight in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater.

Carrying an AR-15 assault-style rifle, a shotgun and two Glock pistols, the killer walked into a multiplex theater screening the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," with dyed red hair and saying he was the Joker, according to law enforcement. He wore a gas mask, a ballistics helmet and vest, and groin, throat and leg protectors. He released two smoke- or gas-emitting devices, and then opened fire, shooting at anyone who tried to escape. He was arrested without incident in a nearby parking lot.

Duong said he has thought a lot about what might have made Holmes snap.

Was it pressure from school? Holmes had been pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora for a year but had begun the process of withdrawing from the program last month, officials said.

“Everything came easy for him,” Duong said in a telephone interview Saturday. “I had one college class with him, and he didn’t even have to take notes or anything. He would just show up to class, sit there, and around test time he would always get an ‘A.’”

Duong said that he did not believe Holmes was on prescription medication. In fact, he called Holmes a “pretty athletic kid” who frequented the gym. Duong said Holmes had numerous friends and that he had no apparent problem with women.

“He did see girls,” Duong said, adding that Holmes had never introduced him to a girlfriend.

Duong had not heard from Holmes since their last meeting.

When he heard about the shootings, Duong said he read reports online and, at first, he misunderstood. He thought his friend had been shot. Then he read more closely and "it turned out” his friend was the shooter.

“I just don’t know what to consider him anymore,” Duong said. “Is he a friend? Or I don’t know what he is to me. As of now he’s James Holmes -- The Batman Shooter.”
Colorado shooting: Suspect enjoyed video games, movies, school friend says
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/colorado-shooter-enjoyed-video-games-movies-school-friend-says.html

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@firefly,

Hi Firefly, thanks for the article, but according to others, the guy only started collecting firearms in the last couple of months, and according to your article started withdrawing from a neuroscience doctorate in the last month.

The guy who they are quoting in your article hadn't seen him since 7 months ago. So I doubt he would know whether or not the killer was harbouring anger or not.

Also, serial killers (though this killer isn't known to be one, but rather a mass murderer) have been known to be quite sociable and charming...

...add the two together, and the article you posted doesn't really invalidate hypothesis of a guy with anger issues.

I'm sure the justice system will have him psychologically assessed.

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@firefly,

So far I have seen no reports of how he was doing in his first year of the program, all the talk of his brilliance and success are from before that . I doubt that he got dumb, but it might have been more work than he was willing to do or he totally flubbed orals in May. The concept that his dreams were coming to an end against his will has yet to be disproven. One outside the box possibility is that he was caught cheating and was allowed to leave rather than be punished for it. it would be helpful the know what form his orals took, if they were a review of his writing perhaps he was found plagiarizing.

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Just 10 days before the shootings--and after he had withdrawn from his doctoral program and after he had amassed his arsenal of weapons and ammo--he didn't seem flagrantly disturbed. He was at a bar and chatted with a neighbor.

Quote:

On July 9, Mr. Holmes stopped by Zephyr Bar, where he talked with Virginia Rosetta Jones, a neighbor from across the street who would often see him at the bar. They shared a beer and chatted.

"He seemed really educated and he talked about furthering his education," she said. "I told him to keep doing what he was doing."

Ten days later, law enforcement officials said, Mr. Holmes brought guns and a suit of ballistic body armor to a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" at the Century Aurora 16 in this Denver suburb.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443295404577543400613112424.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The entire article at the above link mentions what his behavior was like in the Ph.D. program he attended until June. He's consistently described as nice, smart, but not very talkative and not overly sociable--but there was absolutely nothing that would make people concerned about him in any way. He's not described as having any difficulty with his coursework.

I think I'll wait for more info. He is around the age where the major psychiatric disorders, like Bi-Polar Disorder or Paranoid Schizophrenia, most often show onset. And it is interesting that his area of study in that Ph.D. program involved the influence of the brain on behavior and mental illness, and it is possible he was drawn to that area because he had been having problems/symptoms that concerned him. But I think we aren't going to know much more about this man for a while--the police aren't talking about him, and he has a lawyer who will likely keep info under wraps as much as possible, at least for the time being, while they try to assess his competancy and prepare a defense strategy.

I can't guess at his motives, other than a possible grandiose desire for notoriety. But, why this way? And why at this point in his life? Nothing is even clear enough to speculate about.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

The concept that his dreams were coming to an end against his will has yet to be disproven. One outside the box possibility is that he was caught cheating and was allowed to leave rather than be punished for it. it would be helpful the know what form his orals took, if they were a review of his writing perhaps he was found plagiarizing

That doesn't seem to be it, Hawkeye. The man really had a very promising future. He was bright enough to handle any sort of graduate course work and he was a disciplined student. He wasn't heading for academic failure--that would have been apparent long before June.

He asked to withdraw, they did not ask him to leave. And he did not complete the final paperwork for his withdrawal.

More likely, the elaborate plan he was involved with, and the amassing of weapons and ammo, and the assembling of all the materials to bobby-trap his apartment, took his attention and mental energy away from his studies for at least the last month or two of the semester. And he might have withdrawn from the Ph.D. program in late June to devote himself full time to final preparations for his plan.

The question is whether his involvement with that plan was part of a descent into severe mental illness. Something happened to interrupt the functioning of this very bright and promising young man. And we don't yet know what it was.

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@firefly,

Quote:

That doesn't seem to be it, Hawkeye. The man really had a very promising future

Up till a year ago for sure, after that we dont know. The problem with your break theory is that even though this guy was a recluse no one seems to have noticed. Does anyone hide the mental illnesses that you think he might have that well ever?

A promising candidate resigning directly after his first year orals.....gotta figure that happens to people who get into a program but find out that they are not a good fit for the program. Sometimes this would be skill related. Sometimes work related, like he was so smart that he never before now had to work at it but now he could not breeze by and was lost....never before having learned study skills.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

The problem with your break theory is that even though this guy was a recluse no one seems to have noticed. Does anyone hide the mental illnesses that you think he might have that well ever?

He wasn't a recluse. He just wasn't overly social with the others in his Ph.D. program. But he had just moved to Colorado within the past year to attend that program. He seems to have had friends back in California.

And if one graduate program wasn't right for him, he could just have gone into another program. This man had options because he is very bright, so no matter what had happened in his Ph.D. program, if anything even happened, that would not have been a dead end for him.

Paranoid schizophrenics can sometimes hide it--at least for a while--particularly if they keep their mouths shut. And their thinking can remain highly organized--and this man's rather elaborate plans, for the shooting, and the booby-trapping of the apartment, were well organized, well thought out, and fairly effectively executed. This all took a lot of time and effort--over a period of at least two months. But was it all being driven by a delusion of some sort? That's a possibility.

The man could have been deeply involved in circumscribed delusions and fantasies that affected only one area of his life--and resulted in his involvement with this shooting and booby-trapping plan--but others who had only superficial contact with him, like in class, would have no inkling of that. Paranoid schizophrenics or people with paranoid delusional disorders, can appear quite sane and logical, until you tap into their area of craziness.

And for all we know, this man could have been in psychiatric treatment in the past, that others didn't know about, and maybe he stopped taking his meds and began to unravel. The business with his dying or painting his hair bright red was rather peculiar--and that might also have been a symptom.

He had good study skills, he didn't just glide through his undergraduate work. Someone this bright just doesn't get suddenly thrown for a loop by graduate course work--unless something else is interfering with his functioning. One possibility is mental illness. Another possibility is drugs, which can also precipitate mental illness in a predisposed individual. Another possibility is a severe stressor, but we have no knowledge of one in his case.

I just don't see this as a guy with anger issues--his plan was too elaborate and too long in the planning and too methodical to make me think he was acting out diffuse rage, but it's possible. And he doesn't appear to be a cold-blooded sociopath. Severe depression is a possibility, and maybe this was an elaborate suicidal swan-song, sort of going out in a blaze of glory.

We also don't know how in touch with reality this man was during the shooting and immediately afterward. If he said things like, "I am the Joker," you have to wonder.

We have too little info, and the little we have doesn't suggest or fit with any particular type or profile.

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@firefly,

Quote:

Aurora, Colorado (CNN) -- Colorado massacre suspect James Holmes applied to join a gun range in June, but the range's operator said Sunday that he was disturbed by the "weird and bizarre" message on Holmes' answering machine.
"It was weird," said Glenn Rotkovich, managing partner of the Lead Valley Range in Byers, Colorado. "I didn't know what kind of message was left by this idiot. We need to know if he's an idiot before we let him have access to our range."
Rotkovich told CNN that Holmes sent in an online application on June 25. Rotkovich said he called the number Holmes left on the form, only to get a message he said was largely unintelligible.
He said the voice was "guttural, freakish, maybe drunk. Just weird and bizarre -- a deep, guttural, forced voice.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/22/us/colorado-shooting-suspect/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Strange. Even stranger is that no one in his circle has mentioned hearing this message. Maybe mom did though.

One explanation for why what we know does not seem to fit any mold very well is that he is not either sick as you think nor lashing out and looking for fame as I think. He might have been like guys following the likes of Ram Dass and Huxley experimenting with altered states of consciousness. Normally this is done with drugs these days but it can be done with a willful twisting of the mind. This could be a very very bright guy who got bored and went off the reservation looking for excitement......or challenge.

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@firefly,

Quote:

The question is whether his involvement with that plan was part of a descent into severe mental illness. Something happened to interrupt the functioning of this very bright and promising young man. And we don't yet know what it was.

Have you met paranoid schizophrenics, or people suffering paranoid delusions? Their delusions are usually quite obvious, because they can't help speaking about them, or reacting to events in paranoid ways...and they don't make any sense.

I doubt that he suffered a 'severe' mental illness. Psychologists do differentiate between mental illness, mental disorders, and antisocial personalities. For example, without having checked it's status, I daresay they class psychopaths as having a mental disorder, rather than a mental illness.

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@vikorr,

Quote:

Have you met paranoid schizophrenics, or people suffering paranoid delusions? Their delusions are usually quite obvious, because they can't help speaking about them, or reacting to events in paranoid ways...and they don't make any sense

You can not for instance sit down with them at a bar for a half hour over a beer and have them seem perfectly fine just days before they shoot up a theater....a couple of months after they started to accumulate the materials.

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@vikorr,

Quote:

I've only seen two recent photos of him, and he does seem to have a very 'superior in my own mind' face.

So maybe he started to play around with altered states of consciousness thinking that he would take it to some point and then have his shear brain power to pull it back, but his lark spun out of control. He would not be the first to be betrayed by an over confidence in the power of the ego.

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@hawkeye10,

I don't know that one can make a big deal of a crazy answering machine voice.

Quote:

He might have been like guys following the likes of Ram Dass and Huxley experimenting with altered states of consciousness. Normally this is done with drugs these days but it can be done with a willful twisting of the mind. This could be a very very bright guy who got bored and went off the reservation looking for excitement......or challenge.

That crossed my mind too. And it would fit in with his area of interest in his graduate studies. It's another possibility.

Something sure sent him off the rails.

1 Reply

@vikorr,

Quote:

Have you met paranoid schizophrenics, or people suffering paranoid delusions? Their delusions are usually quite obvious, because they can't help speaking about them, or reacting to events in paranoid ways...and they don't make any sense

Yes I have met them, and what you're saying isn't necessarily true. Some are quite secretive or guarded about their "inner life", and they do not mention it, and they can be fairly high functioning, particularly if they are very bright, and they can sound very logical and rational in areas not related to the delusions.

They are all considered mental disorders--including the personality disorders. I used "mental illness" rather loosely.

He's not an antisocial personality. There is absolutely no indication of that.

He's an enigma. Mainly because we don't know enough about him.

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@firefly,

Quote:

And it would fit in with his area of interest in his graduate studies. It's another possibility

I think we need to know if he flubbed his orals in the sense that he slipped into an altered state on accident...that he could no longer hold it together under stress that long. They suggested professional shrink attention, he quit ( the "brain" is not going to stand for being told that there is something wrong with it...besides he is just playing at altered states of consciousnesses he thinks), and then the rest of my hypothesis as I gave it before fits.

This totally fits all the information as we currently have it.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

This totally fits all the information as we currently have it.

Don't be silly, no it doesn't. Most of that is pure fantasy on your part.

If he flubbed his orals, for some reason, he could have taken them over. That would not have been a big deal. But there is no indication, that we actually know of, that he was having any problems--with the academic work or with his general functioning. And he had to have hatched his deadly plans before the orals--it took him 60 days just to get all the ammo and guns, not to mention the explosive stuff for his apartment.

They don't know why he suddenly sent an e-mail saying he was withdrawing from the program. But he was likely too busy continuing to amass guns and ammo, and all sorts of explosive materials to booby-trap his apartment with, to think about school any more. Why bother going to school if you're actively planning mass murder?

The university is refusing to answer questions about him and they don't want anyone else at the school talking about him. They don't want to compromise a criminal investigation.

Since Holmes isn't talking, and he's allegedly not talking, the police claim they have no idea what motivated him. They said it could be months before they know--so that should hold the media at bay. He's been assigned the top public defender in the county to represent him, and that lawyer won't let him talk. No one wants to blow this legal case with leaks.

None of the bits and pieces of info about him form any coherent picture. And I don't trust the validity of some of it. We don't know how crazy, or not crazy, he is. All we know is he elaborately booby-trapped his apartment, took all his defensive gear, and smoke cannisters, and guns, and ammo, and went to the movie theater...and wound up trying to kill as many people in that theater, total strangers to him, as possible. And he could have blown up the people in his apartment building as well with his booby-trapped explosives. And without his telling us, or the police telling us, why he did those things, we're not going to know.

The crime itself doesn't make sense, and we don't have enough info to make sense of him. Maybe he had a definite motive--but we are nowhere near knowing it.

I do wonder when he dyed or painted his hair red--and why he did that.

1 Reply

@firefly,

Quote:

Yes I have met them, and what you're saying isn't necessarily true. Some are quite secretive or guarded about their "inner life", and they do not mention it, and they can be fairly high functioning, particularly if they are very bright, and they can sound very logical and rational in areas not related to the delusions.

Are you now referring to people who don't have the capacity to shoot up a cinema, because they only have mild paranoia? A bit pointless talking about mild paranoia in this thread isn't it?

The reason that people with severe/delusional paranoia can't hide it, is that they think it's the actual state of things, and they react to such...the reactions themselves give things away, let alone the statements they make.

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MOTIVES For the Colorado Theater Murders ?

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