James Holmes
Flickr/brett jordanArt from Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.
On July 20, 2012, one film held the midnight slot at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado: The Dark Knight Rises. The man who opened fire on the movie-going crowd, James Holmes, killed 12 people and injured 70 more that night. It marked the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado since the Columbine school shooting in 1999.
Holmes obsessed over the Batman franchise, and did not keep it a secret from others — even under police questioning. In talks with area police, Holmes claimed he was “the Joker” when asked to identify himself. His apartment was filled with Batman paraphernalia, including a mask of the superhero.
Upon his arrest, Holmes informed authorities that his apartment was booby-trapped with explosives — which included 30 handmade grenades and 10 gallons of gasoline. Thankfully, a bomb squad defused the threat.
Several weeks prior to the theater shooting, Holmes watched a trailer for The Suffocator of Sins, a Batman spoof. He contacted its creator, Dave Aragon, to learn about the motivation behind some of the violent scenes.
“He said he watched it a hundred times…he wanted to know if it was selected killing. Does he make a list of people he wanted to kill or is there just a mass body count throughout the whole movie?” Aragon said.
In addition, less than a month before the attack, Holmes left a disturbing voicemail for the owner of a gun club. Glenn Rotkovich reports Holmes’ voice during the call was “freaky,” “guttural,” and “incoherent and rambling”. “In hindsight,” Rotkovich told Fox News, “I would have gotten the Joker out of it”.
Though Holmes pleaded not guilty due to insanity, in 2015 a jury found him guilty of 24 counts of murder and 140 counts of attempted murder, and sentenced him to serve 12 consecutive life sentences. The booby-trapped bombs in his apartment add on another 3,318 years for the attempted murders of everyone in his building.
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