The Joker Killer: James Holmes and the Aurora Theater Massacre

The Joker Killer: James Holmes and the Aurora Theater Massacre

James Eagan Holmes murdered twelve people and injured seventy others during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises at a Colorado movie theater on July 20, 2012. The Aurora theater shooting investigation revealed a University of Colorado neuroscience PhD candidate who meticulously planned a mass shooting while simultaneously rigging his apartment with homemade napalm and thermite explosives designed to kill first responders. Holmes bought his arsenal the same afternoon he failed his doctoral exams, then spent weeks building what the FBI called a "jungle gym of booby traps" in his apartment.

The headlines about the "Joker killer" completely missed the real horror. Holmes developed something he called the "Human Capital" theory, a twisted philosophical framework where he believed killing people would transfer their value to him. He'd been hallucinating violent shadows fighting each other since childhood, saw things he called "Nail Ghosts," and told his girlfriend months before the shooting that he wanted to "kill people, of course." She thought he was joking. His psychiatrist knew he thought about homicide three to four times a day, but couldn't legally hold him. And when three young men heard gunfire in that darkened theater, they all made the same split-second decision to use their bodies as shields, saving the women they loved while dying in the process.

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