#382: Dark Knight Rises Massacre - Neuroscience Student Says Killing People Will Cure His Depression
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There's enough seats in the movie theater to fit about 400 people and almost all these seats are going to be filled by midnight. These seats are first come first serve so if somebody doesn't want to sit in the first few rows with their neck bent at an odd angle staring up at the screen the whole night then they're going to come earlier to reserve those spots. Now almost three years later some

Some of the same moviegoers from that night would be asked to come in and point out exactly which chair in which row did you sit at when it all happened.

But this auditorium they're in, they're not pointing at real chairs that you can sit in. They're not walking into a movie theater and saying, that's the chair that I sat in. In fact, it's this tiny little miniature model of Theater 9 that they're pointing at. There's tiny little rows of blue chairs that are lined up against each other. How big is it? I would say maybe like half the size of a carry-on suitcase.

Oh, wow. And every little, yeah, the amount of chairs per row is accurate. The amount of steps in the stairs are accurate. It's quite literally a miniature model of a specific movie theater.

Many of the same moviegoers, they walk up, they'll point and explain exactly how it all happened. But 12 of the people that were in the theater that night will not be able to tell the courtroom where they were because July 20th, 2012, the emergency exit door to theater nine would open in the middle of a movie.

and a man with bright orange hair wearing tactical gear would walk into the theater. This is the midnight premiere of Batman, The Dark Knight Rises, and he will open fire.

We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the 720 Foundation. Their mission is to honor the lives lost on July 20th, 2012 by being a resource and for advocating for other communities who experience that mental, physical, spiritual, emotional struggle after a mass tragedy. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team and we'd also like to thank our listeners for your continued support. As

As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Today's case is very heavy. We're going to be discussing a mass tragedy that involves firearms and juveniles. If that's a sensitive topic, prioritize your well-being. Try to show yourself some grace. Be nice to yourself.

And a few other content disclaimers. There are mentions of mental health self-exit as well as brief but very graphic descriptions of injuries. Again, this case involves mass murder of firearms, so please watch at your discretion. I also want to be clear that any mention of mental health that pertains to the perpetrator does not minimize any criminal intent, does not minimize or excuse their actions.

and last but not least statements and testimonies from publicly available media have been condensed for purposes of time so with that being said let's get into it if anyone were to look closely at the back parking lot of this movie theater they would see this small white car just parked by itself in the middle of the night and if you look closely the car is shaking but that's the whole point you know that it's parked there nobody's gonna see it rustling around the

The space inside the car is cramped. It's a tiny little white sedan and there is a full grown man inside of it changing out of his clothes and putting on new ones. He's quietly and as quickly as possible putting on a ballistic jacket, a belt with ammunition, 250 plus rounds around his waist, a tactical vest that would hold more than 400 more rounds, a gas mask.

a helmet, and he's grabbing three different things to carry. One, a shotgun, two, a semi-automatic rifle, and three, a pistol. Now he decides he's ready. But before he slips out of his car to complete what he calls his quote mission, he grabs his phone and he calls the University of Colorado Denver's student mental health emergency hotline.

This is 1230 in the morning and he's calling a university student mental health hotline. It's almost like a sick test he's playing. If someone answers, he's not going to do it. If somebody doesn't answer, he's going to do it. He would later say, I called for one last chance to turn back. I didn't hear anything for about 10 seconds. So I hung up.

Then he slips in his earbuds to play really loud techno music, rave music. Before both the earbuds are in his ear, he freezes and he sees somebody. He sees a theater employee throwing trash out in the nearby dumpster because this is the back of the movie theater.

This man in the car, he's got his hand on his pistol. He's holding his breath in from inside the car. The plan was clean and simple in terms of this guy's mind. Like this is his thought process. If this guy turns around and he spots him, if the movie theater employee, his eyes go big because he just registered what's going on, he's going to be shot and killed. There's no way around it. He said he felt calm and collected. He didn't even feel adrenaline in that moment, but the theater employee never turned around and he went back inside.

The man in the car continued pushing in his earbuds, blasting that music at the maximum level so he doesn't have to hear anything because he would say to him, none of this is personal.

Just three days later, July 23rd, 2012, the bomb squad arrives at the local University of Colorado's campus. They're swarming the mailroom. They locate this small, inconspicuous package. It doesn't look big enough to carry explosives or anything. And they examine it through the x-ray machine. They wipe it down for contaminants just in case.

A member of the bomb squad suits up in a special bomb suit that's supposed to protect him. And he slowly opens up the package and they slip out the contents. Inside of it is like the weirdest combination of things. A notebook, kind of like a diary, and a stack of $20 bills, $400 in total. But here's the weird thing about the $20 bills. All the edges are burnt. Like someone turned open a fire on a stove and just burnt the edges.

They flip open the notebook to one of the pages and they read the scribbled writing. It says, targets, random. The cruel twists of fate are unkind to the misfortunate. Method, bombs, question mark, too regulated and suspicious. Biological warfare, I'm too impatient, requires extensive knowledge, chemicals, and equipment. Serial killer, serial murder, too personal, too much evidence, easily caught, few kills. Mass killing,

Maximum casualties, easily performed with firearms, though a bit primitive in nature. No fear of consequences, being caught 99% certain. Venue, airport or movie theater? Airport, substantial security, too much history with terrorism. Terrorism isn't the message. The message is, there is no message. The movie theater then? Isolated, large, what better place to case than that of an inconspicuous entertainment facility? South side of theater, optimal, 15 screens.

Why would the killer that would target the Aurora Theater during the Dark Knight Rises send this package to a university psychiatrist?

July 20th, 2012 is a big day or it was a big day for Warner Bros. It is the premiering night of The Dark Knight Rises, the third installment to their trilogy where Christopher Nolan was Batman. Their second movie, The Dark Knight, broke a billion dollars in box office sales, which is in the top 20 highest all time box office movies ever.

The Century 16 Theater in Aurora, Colorado has multiple showings that night for the premiere. Now, one of the most anticipated sold out premieres was at 12:05 AM. Both Theater 8 and Theater 9 are going to be showing the movie at exactly 12:05 AM right next to each other in tandem, just five minutes after midnight.

Century 16 doesn't sell assigned seats, though. So you purchase a ticket for a seat in the theater and that's it. The seat themselves are first come first serve, which means by 10 p.m. The whole parking lot is just bustling with activity. Two full hours before the movie even starts. Cars are pulling up. The parking lot is packed. The attendants are standing at the theater nine down the hall, theater eight down the hall, theater nine down that way.

Everyone's rushing in. They're trying to get the best seat in the house, which sounds miserable, but it wasn't. I don't know. Maybe it has to do with the specific people or just the energy of that night or the excitement that it's a midnight premiere showing. Pretty much all the 400 seats in Theater 9 are taken.

nobody's going to get spoiled since it's not all over social media. They're going to be one of the first to see this movie. And adding to that, if you're coming to a midnight premiere of a movie, you're a good fan of that franchise. And so everybody has this shared common interest of this movie. It feels like pockets of families and friends coming out, but it does feel like one big community is what a lot of people said.

Because they're all really passionate about the movie. You don't go to a midnight premiere if you're just like, eh, whatever. Yeah, yeah. There would be one person standing up every 15 minutes screaming, one hour left, 45 minutes left.

minutes left. And then people would start cheering because they're so excited for the premiere. There would be people dressed up as Batman. There's one moviegoer by the name of Sully. It was actually his 27th birthday. And he's at the theater with all of his coworkers celebrating his birthday. He is this six, five, they call him like a huge teddy bear. That's what they said. And there's just a lot going on. It's his 27th birthday. It's two days away from his 14th

first wedding anniversary with his newlywed wife. He had brought this Batman hat to wear during the premiere and he saw this little boy who really wanted it. So he gave it to him. That's kind of the energy that night. Even during the Superman trailer, one of the guys in the audience would get up and he's wearing a Superman shirt and he would strike a little Superman pose and everybody's laughing. Everybody's just having fun during the previews.

Until the screen goes completely black, all the lights dim, and it's so dark that you can't really see anything but the screen. And you know the movie's about to start.

The audience naturally gets very quiet. All you can really hear are maybe some straws making that squeaking noise up and down. There's candy wrappers crinkling and people chewing on popcorn, but everybody is being respectful now that it's time for the movie. I mean, this is what most of the moviegoers have waited two hours for. At 1:27 AM, a netizen in Denver, Colorado is listening to the police scanner and he hears the Aurora police say through the radio, because anyone can listen to it, and

And they say, bring as much crime scene tape as you can. The police scanners had been going crazy the whole night. 315 and 314 for a shooting at Century Theaters. These are actual what they literally said on the scanners. They're saying somebody is shooting in the auditorium. There's at least one person that's been shot, but they're saying hundreds of people are running around. Two minutes later, an officer at the scene radios. 453, I have a party shot here. I need rescue. Another person outside shot in the leg, female. We got people running out of the theater. They're shot.

Then another officer. Somebody's spraying gas in here too. Another officer. Do we have gas masks available? Any units that can bring gas masks to Theater 9? Again, we need gas masks. Then another officer comes on a little more urgent. Get us some damn gas masks for Theater 9. We can't get in. We need rescue inside auditorium. Multiple victims. Then another officer. Do I have permission to start taking some of these victims via car? I got a whole bunch of people shot out here. No rescue.

Than a more urgent voice. I've got a child victim. I need rescue at the back door of the theater nine now.

Eugene was there with his fiancee Kristen and three of their friends. The theater was packed when they arrived, but the only available row with five seats right next to each other was the second row right next to the emergency exit door. But that's fine. I mean, their necks are going to hurt a little, but they're very excited regardless. Eugene just got off a 12 hour shift. He actually dozed off during the previews. That's how tired he was. He says, when the movie started, I kind of woke up, but I

I woke up not to the movie but more like something felt wrong to me but nothing was happening yet. I wasn't really sure what it was and I kind of blew it off. But then he saw this figure. Someone was walking in through the exit door right next to the movie screen. At the very front. Literally right next to the movie screen. The whole room is dark but Eugene can see him a bit clearer since they're in the second row and he said, "I've never seen anyone walk in the exit door." The next thing that worried me the most was seeing the gun strapped to his shoulder.

You could see the outline of the gun on the screen. Within moments, the figure pulls his arm back like he's about to throw a ball for a dog and throw something into the crowd. As it's flying over the moviegoers, some of them report hearing some sort of hissing noise. And then it explodes into a smoke. Tear gas.

Another survivor says when the hissing object was thrown, I remember there was this brief pause as soon as it hit the area of people. And then this surreal effect happened. It's like a drop of water hitting and this wave of people just erupted away from where the object had been thrown. I was kind of puzzled at first.

Another survivor said she thought it was a stink bomb. Those prank bombs that you throw that honestly should not be real, but mainly the biggest, worst thing that happens. It's a very, very bad odor. Maybe this is some teenagers version of a sick joke during the premiere.

but no smell came. Instead, something explodes with this flashing light, almost like a firework. A lot of the survivors said they genuinely thought someone threw a firework inside the theater, but then someone screams out, poison. Another survivor says, almost immediately, it filled the entire theater. Your lungs start burning. You feel like your eyes and nose are bleeding, even though they're not.

Another survivor said, I remembered feeling my throat was burning and itching. I couldn't breathe through my nose and I felt like I couldn't breathe at all. So even though I continued to hear the gunfire, I was trying to stand up because I couldn't breathe. And I thought that would help me breathe better. But thankfully, their friend realized that they were trying to stand up. So they climbed on top of them to throw them down under the seats.

There is just gunfire raining straight into the crowd. Eugene said, I didn't even know what was going on in that moment. I thought it was a prank. The next thing I know, I see red things coming out of the corner of the theater. Those little red things were little bursts of flame created by gunfire.

Eugene slams into the ground, pulling his fiance, Kristen onto the floor. He said, all I was thinking, if anything, I could put myself between her and the bullets. He tells her, don't move. Just stay still. Whatever you do, don't move. He starts pushing Kristen under the chairs and wedges himself between her and the shooter. The first shot Eugene takes is straight to the hip.

The reflex was to lift his leg up to the pain shooting through his leg. And that's when he sees pieces of flesh fly into the air because his knee was shot.

He says the hip hurt more. The knee was more through and through. I was just kind of freaking out about a dozen rows behind Eugene where Brent and his best friend, Jessica Brent says, of course, mass panic, chaos, people screaming. We stood up and we started to make our way to the right of our exit row. We got down one seat length and I realized that people weren't moving fast enough. So I pushed us onto the ground. At that point, I started to feel the spray of popcorn and soda just all around. And I noticed the

Jessica's tone. She went from screaming, call 911, someone call 911, to just screaming.

And I looked down and she had been shot in her right leg. I believe it was right above her knee. This is what Brenton is saying. As an EMT, I just finished my course, my training, and my first step from there was just to control the bleeding. So I applied pressure to her wound. There was a confused spray of popcorn and soda or whatever was going on. Shots continued ringing out. I noticed at this point Jessica's screaming had stopped. She had sustained a shot to the head, in which case brain matter was exposed.

It was at this point I crawled a little closer to Jessica and I prayed over her. I didn't really know what to do. It just felt right. I gave her the best send off I could. And at that point, my medical technician training kicked right in. He said he got up and he could hear people screaming in the crowd. Help me, someone help me. Help me, somebody, please. He told the voice, put pressure on it. Everybody put pressure on it. Help is coming. And it seemed almost right at that moment, personnel in uniform would enter the auditorium.

One survivor recalls being on the ground, the lights are off, taking cover, and feeling that her entire face was getting wet. She assumed it was soda that had spilled on the floor. But when the lights finally came on, she saw it was blood. It was somebody else's. It wasn't hers.

Another survivor said, at first I was in the fetal position laying on my right side with the front of my face facing the screen. Pops were still going off and so I just tried to cover my face and then for a moment the pops stopped. So I got up and I was going to try and leave and then all of a sudden I felt my side was soaking wet. It was warm and I knew that I had been shot.

I couldn't see anything but when I looked down at the time I was wearing a light gray t-shirt and I looked down and I could see just blood starting to pour out of my stomach then my intestines and my stomach actually fell out I had to bend down and actually catch my intestines and push them back in Are you saying like they got up and they got shot? Yeah Like after they got up? Yeah I saw the majority of my calf had also been basically fallen off it was just hanging on by a piece

Another survivor said they were laying on the floor after getting shot. They were terrified to get up. They looked down and saw their leg and they said, I saw a big gaping hole in my calf. It felt like somebody took a rusted railroad nail and was grinding it into my leg. I almost believed that my arm was completely blown off because of the pain.

The officers rushed to whoever they could find, whoever seemed like they needed the most urgent care. Katie was one of them. Katie was nine months pregnant and she was crouched over a young man's body near the first few rows.

The young pregnant woman, Katie, had been doing everything to keep her husband, Caleb, alive. He had been shot through his eye right in the head and she was screaming, he's breathing, but he's choking on his blood. He's breathing. She had poured a bottle of water on him to try and clear the blood because he was choking on it. And the police had to nearly rip her off of her husband to get her medical attention. They looked at Caleb and felt that his wounds did not appear to be survivable.

The priority was to get Katie and her unborn baby to the hospital. Katie said, I had to save our unborn child because I thought Caleb was going to die. And I thought to myself, that's going to be the last piece of him that I have. I have to save him. So I grabbed his hand and he actually squeezed my hand. And I told him that I loved him and that I would take care of our baby if he didn't make it.

We ran towards the exit. We jumped over people that were laying on the ground. I don't know if they were alive or not, but we jumped over their bodies. We ran to the exit and I was wearing flip flops. So I remember as we were running out the exit door that I slipped in blood. The cop actually caught me because it was a lot of blood. Katie and her friend, a girlfriend she had come to the movies with, along with her husband, Caleb, they had both been conscious and they were both told to wait at the curb outside of the movie theater near the back.

That is where they saw another couple that were in shock. And at one point, a girl walks over, sits down next to Katie and just whispered, I think my boyfriend is dead. I'm pretty sure he's dead. And Katie didn't know what to do. So she just hugged her because they were all in shock. And Katie said when she had put her arm around the girl and took her arm off, she just saw chunks of blood all over her arm.

Katie was told to wait and she was taking in this chaos. Officers are rushing in people into cars, loading them in. She says, I remember them loading one girl in and they said, I don't think she's going to make it. I don't think she's going to make it to the hospital. And then she sees Caleb, her Caleb, the father of her child, her husband getting pulled out of the theater. And she says,

I remember they pulled him on the sidewalk. I could see that he was still breathing. They laid him on his side because of all the blood was just pouring out and they didn't want him to choke and inhale the blood. The officers moved the girls again away from Caleb. She had no idea what was going to happen to him. Officer Grizzle sees Caleb.

He had already made multiple trips to the hospital since there weren't many ambulances ready to take them yet. And he's screaming, help me. Other officers rush over. They load Caleb into the back of the car and officer grizzle as he's loading Caleb. He thinks Caleb is gone. He said the injuries to Caleb's face, the trauma to his face was unrecognizable, but he's breathing. So there's hope. I mean, he's covered in

blood and quote gurgling on his own blood but he's breathing so he starts booking it he's driving as fast as he can to the hospital he says he made some of the most awful noises i've ever heard i could tell he was dying i could tell he was gurgling under his own blood and then he would stop

And then I heard nothing. So I would yell at him. I yelled at him. Don't fucking die on me. Don't fucking die on me. And he would start breathing again. And then I would start breathing again and then I would continue and then he would stop again. And then I would yell at him. Don't fucking die on me. We're almost there. And he would start breathing again. And then I got to the hospital. One part many survivors say they'll never forget is during the shooting for most of the shooting, most of the lights were still off and the movie was still playing in the back.

So it just made it harder to understand what was going on.

When officers had arrived at the scene, the chaos was really bad. They can see tear gas just permeating the whole building. That's how they describe it. A few of the officers were running straight towards the door while everybody is screaming, running out the door and they're screaming, get out the way, get out the way. The officer at the scene, Officer Butler said, I've got my gun in my hand. And as soon as you enter, you're like, all right, here. And the next 30 to 45 seconds is where I get shot. But here we go. We've got all these people running out and screaming. Who's the bad guy? I don't know.

And then it happens. Officer Butler is staring down the barrel of another gun, another uniformed officer. He said, your mind is going 100 miles a minute. But once we have that, oh, shoot moment when, you know, the two of us, two cops are pointing guns at each other thinking we're both the bad guy coming in opposite doors. It's kind of a mental reset.

So they join forces to find the shooter, but instead they run into another figure wearing tactical gear, SWAT gear. You know what the SWAT teams wear? The bulletproof vests, the tactical gear, black Kevlar helmet, gas mask standing beside a white car parked in the back of the theater. And the two officers thought, OK, it's one of their own, maybe SWAT team member until they realize the gas mask is not a police issued gas mask.

And then his body language, there's no sense of urgency in this man's body language. He's not rushed and on high alert like all the officers arriving. So they got outside and they just saw him standing there? Yes. Just watching? No, trying to get into his car. But he's not rushed. The figure is not an officer here to protect and save. He is the killer. Yeah.

They immediately arrest him, disarm him, and they said he pretty much, quote, surrendered. They had to take off all of his clothing to get rid of all the weapons he had strapped on. He smelt horrendous, they said. I don't know. That was the first thing they noticed. And his pupils were massive. They were heavily enlarged. Is there another shooter? Is there another shooter? They were screaming at him. And he just looked at them and smiled. He refused to respond.

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Halloween is right around the corner, which means sweater weather is in full swing. Recently, I've been cleaning out my closet and making room for all of my winter stuff, just generally getting rid of things I've outworn and donating them. Naturally, I like to push things like this off, but I've been so proactive this year and I think it's all because of Audible. My favorite recent title that got me through the sweater weather cleaning is this kind of ghost story.

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But the damage was already done.

On the other side of town, Tom Sullivan gets out of bed and he works at the post office, which means every morning he gets up at 2.40 a.m. to get ready for his 4 a.m. shift. The routine is set in stone. Get up, make coffee, pack his lunch, catch up on the scores. The TV is on and he's packing his lunch, but he's not watching sports. Instead, the news is playing. He sees all the police stationed outside the theater, police lights flashing, shooting in Aurora, Colorado. He's watching the coverage for a minute until it dawns on him, his son...

Sully, 27 year old Sully, who's there celebrating his 27th birthday with his coworkers with the Batman hat. He was there that night, but Tom isn't too worried. I don't think Tom knew the exact time the premiere was. And on his way out, he just left a voicemail to his son to let him know to call his mom when he wakes up because he just knows that his wife is going to be worried sick when she wakes up and sees the news. So just give her a call. You know, it's going to be fine. And by the way, happy birthday.

So on the way to work, the situation starts escalating. He starts seeing helicopters up in the sky. Radios are nonstop reporting increasing number of injured victims. He ends up driving by the theater to work. He likely didn't see any survivors waiting out on the sidewalk or the wounded being rushed to the hospital at this point. But he calls his son one more time because it seems like it

It just seems like it's getting bigger and bigger because when he was watching the news, nobody really knew what was going on yet. There was no confirmed news. And he leaves another voicemail. Hey, look, this looks pretty serious, pretty bad. Call me. I'm going to keep calling you every half hour until you call me because we need to know where you are.

AJ is not a son, but AJ was the first to get hit by the shotgun. AJ was there with his girlfriend, La, and she said, when AJ and I realized that something very bad was happening, we stood up. He grabbed my hand and we were getting ready to leave. And he turned around and he looked at me in the most shocked way. And then he hit the ground. The killer fired from various different weapons, one of them being a shotgun, which shotguns are...

Very dangerous because the bullets they're not just bullets inside of them are these little flaming hot pellets The point is even if you have really bad aim you're gonna do a lot of damage in the vicinity of where you shoot because Flaming hot pellets is enough to do a lot of damage and kill someone AJ had 14 pellets in his brain

Jansen was there with her boyfriend, Jonathan, and they had this cute little tradition where every time they'd go to the movies, they would get popcorn, a cherry Coke and sour punch straws. That was their order every single time. But 30 minutes into the movie, Jansen said he immediately grabbed me and said, Jansen, push me down under the seats in front of us and said, Jansen, we have to get down. Stay down. I popped my head over the seat and said, why? He pushed me down and said, get down and stay down.

I was laying flat underneath the seats and he was on my left side. So basically shielding her. Jonathan had his hands on Jansen's back and he just kept pushing her further under the seats using his body to almost cocoon and shield her. And she said he gave me one final push before I didn't feel his hands again. I just felt hot liquid and what felt like gravel being thrown at me. And I thought this is the moment that I die. I was down there for maybe about 10 minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

When I finally did slide out, John was there with his eyes closed. I started shaking him and I said, John, John, we have to go. We have to go. It's time for us to get out. Come on. He looked like an angel and he wasn't bleeding, but he was dead. By the time the police burst into Theater 9, the movie was finally cut off and stopped playing. The lights are on. And the first thing they do is they search for that child victim they received multiple 911 calls for.

They get to the mom first. Ashley had thrown herself on top of her six-year-old daughter, Veronica, to shield her. They were both shot. Ashley would be shot directly into her spine. She physically could not move since her nerves had been shot. In total, Ashley, the mom, had been shot three times. She could do nothing but watch the police carry Veronica's unresponsive body out of the theater. She couldn't run alongside them with her baby. She just had to watch them leave.

But once the authorities, they get little Veronica out of the theater, they realize her injuries are not survivable. One of the officers laid her tiny body down because they have to continue to help those in the theater. One officer said it was chaotic. Most of the ones I checked were dead, but I always remember that little girl. I had to step over her because I knew she was gone. It was the hardest thing I had to do. But my training, I had to save the ones that I could try and save.

One of the officers who saw Veronica's body laying at the scene said, I walked in there and I thought, this child, what the hell is this child doing here? Meaning like, why is she laying outside the theater? Not like, what is she doing at the theater? Because I've been dealing with adults. This is the first child I saw. I reached down. I saw the bullet wound. I felt for a pulse. There was none. I could tell she was dead. I've been doing this long enough. And I remember seeing Sergeant Hawkins saying, get her out of here. Take her out. Triage her. Get her out of here. She's not staying here.

Should she have stayed there? Yeah, by protocol, probably. But no, no child is going to stay in that scene. It was horrific enough without having my officer step over the body of a little girl near the rear door. That's just not going to happen. Officer Hawkins took the lead, scooped up little Veronica in his arms and drove her in his squad car to the children's hospital. Lights and sirens.

Meanwhile, Officer Grizzle had been transporting victims to the hospital in his squad car. He's the one that took Caleb just back and forth, back and forth. It wasn't easy. Their lives are on the line. And it almost felt like, I'm sure to him at that moment, it almost felt like how fast he could get them to the hospital is life or death. And maybe there's pressure, there's responsibility, there's guilt. He said one couple he had in the car died.

Ashley and Jameson, this is Veronica's mom and Jameson is her boyfriend. Jameson still had a daughter that was still in the theater. And the whole time he's driving, he's trying to jump out the car. He's like, I have to get to my daughter. And Officer Grizzle said, so now not only have to drive, now I have to grab him by his shirt and hold him from jumping out the car, knowing the entire time I just wanted to tell him she's gone, she's gone, but I couldn't do it. So we got to the hospital and unloaded the patients.

That night, Officer Grizzle was one of the first to arrive at the emergency rooms at these hospitals, and he would hand the first badly wounded patient clear gunshot wounds. He told the hospital staff, you're going to have a lot more victims coming in. Be prepared. Nothing was going to prepare them for that night. The emergency rooms were so packed and horrifically busy, the custodial staff were called in to assist. It was bad.

Katie would be one that was brought into one of the neighboring hospitals. When Katie called her family that night at the hospital, they all thought one thing. Oh my God, she gave birth because she's nine months pregnant. Katie said it was one of the hardest things to do to call her parents, call Caleb's parents to tell them, no, no, no, I haven't given birth. I'm not going into labor. Caleb's been shot and he's probably dead.

But soon after, Katie would go into labor for 40 painful hours without her husband, Caleb. She finally gave birth July 24th, 2012 to a healthy baby boy, Hugo Medley. Two floors above them, Caleb was having his third life-saving brain surgery. The shotgun pellets had gone through his right eye and damaged the right side of his brain. Nobody knew if he was going to make it to see and hold his son.

A few hours later, there's another situation in Aurora, Colorado. The police, bomb squad, SWAT teams are evacuating multiple buildings, an apartment building on Paris Street. There's something strange going on. Not only do they have all the residents rushed out at like two in the morning, but the five nearby buildings are also emptied. The three block area surrounding the apartment unit, because of one single one bedroom unit, everything is being evacuated and blocked off. What is happening?

25 minutes after the killer had left for the theater, loud music starts blasting out of his computer in his apartment unit. It's a timer. What? What does that mean?

So when the killer leaves his apartment, he presses play on his computer. There's 40 minutes of silence. And then after 40 minutes, just loud techno music at the highest volume is blasting. This would have been around midnight. Caitlin, a 20 year old college student lives in the same building, actually lives underneath that unit. And it's so late. She doesn't want to be a noise complainer. She's also a college student. But this is excessive.

She goes upstairs, knocks on the door. Nobody's answering, but clearly somebody's home having a blast.

She reaches for the door and instinctively she turns it and the door is unlocked. Now she can walk in and look for this person, ask them to turn down the music. But for whatever reason, perhaps privacy, Caitlin does not even peek inside or open the door. She just turns around, goes back down to her apartment and almost at exactly 1 a.m. the music stops. Had she walked in, had she tripped one of those wires, the whole place could have blown up.

What? He wanted this as a distraction. He wanted someone to blow up that whole apartment building so all the police, all the ambulances would be at that apartment building and he would have more fatalities in the movie theater. And that was, yeah, exactly what he wanted. In fact, he wanted it so much that

In the parking lot of the apartment building, he had a boombox also set on a timer. 40 minutes after he left, playing loud music in the parking lot. Now, if you were to listen to that, hear that, find the boombox, walk over, you would see three things. You would see the boombox, but you'd also see this weird remote control and a toy car next to it.

His hope was that someone would think that the toy car is controlled by the remote control. So they'd pick up the remote control and play with the toy car. But it's not connected. That remote control is only connected to the trigger points of the explosives in his apartment.

But when you see them together, you would pick it up and think, oh, this is a remote controlled toy car. Uh-huh. And you might want to play with it. That was his hope. Someone would play with it. Right. But nobody did? Nobody did. Someone actually did come and see and they just took the toy car. I think it was a younger person. They did not play with the remote.

Now, FBI agents, along with the police, they attach a camera to a 12 foot pole and push it inside the apartment. And the whole place is booby trapped. One wrong step, one wrong push, one wrong move. I mean, the whole place could have blown. There's several nearly invisible trip wires connected to one liter plastic bottles containing unknown substances that are a thousand percent explosives. The camera picks up 16 homemade bowling ball looking objects.

They have red and white wires connected to each other, just all sitting in the floor of the living room. There's 11 green soda bottles filled with gasoline and several pickle jars filled with homemade napalm, which is made of melted styrofoam and gasoline.

It's very dangerous. It's very explosive. It explodes and it sticks to your skin like syrup. Inside the pickle jars are also bullets. So if the pickle jars were to explode, they would send glass along with bullets, along with burning, flaming hot liquid exploding into whoever is standing nearby. There's nearly invisible fishing wire in all different entrances of the home that would trigger the detonation to further help speed up the explosives. There's white gunpowder just sprinkled around the carpeting of the apartment, as well as

two propane gas tanks. How did the police find out about this whole operation? He just casually told them after his arrest. I think like one or two residents called 911 to complain about the noise, but obviously there was too much going on in Aurora, Colorado. I don't think any officer is like, let me go there. Now, the whole place was booby trapped and he clearly wanted someone to set it off. He left his door unlocked so that someone could easily come in after hearing the loud music.

And in the kitchen, the police find between the refrigerator and the trash can, they find this poster board with the calendar. And July 20th, 2012, the date of the massacre, there is a marking and it looks like he calls it his logo, his symbol or whatever. It looks like someone writes the letter one or the number one and then draws an infinity sign on top of it and then encapsulates it in a circle.

And that is marked on July 20th, 2012. Now the strange thing is, the killer actually slept in this apartment while it was wired to explode. With, I guess, no fear.

I mean, what kind of person would do any of this? They have the killer in the police interrogation room and they're able to walk through his courses of actions, the steps that he took. He had parked his car in the back, nearly empty parking lot of the movie theater where the dumpsters were. He walked around to the movie theater entrance, walked in wearing very casual clothes, baggy pants, beanie, tan colored shirt,

On his way in, he even holds the door open for somebody. Nobody noticed anything strange about him because nothing was strange about him. His behavior is incredibly normal. He's not carrying a giant, big, oversized jacket in the middle of summer. He looks like every other moviegoer. His ticket is for theater eight, but instead he walks into theater nine.

And he sits at the right side front row near the emergency exit. When the movie began about 30 minutes in, he gets up from his seat pretending to take a phone call. So he's got his phone up to his ear. And a lot of moviegoers said, yeah, I saw that. And I thought, oh, he's leaving because he got a phone call. That's important. He walks out the emergency exit that leads into the parking lot where his car is parked. And a lot of moviegoers remember seeing him exiting, but they didn't know that

He lodged something in the door so that he could come back in through there because exit doors typically automatically lock once they're closed. He gets into his car. He takes painkillers. He said he took the painkillers in case he was injured or shot in the process so that he could keep going through the pain. He changes into tactical gear, gathers all of his weapons and reenters the theater. He throws in a canister of tear gas and then opens fire.

And now they have the killer. He's in the interrogation room and they're watching him. He's got this sweaty mess of badly dyed red hair. He slumped across the desk with the detectives and his shirt is half on. At one point, he's completely shirtless. But for a good portion, he's got his chest and one of his arms out. And the chilling part is he's very calm. That's the first thing you notice. He's so calm. He actually appears bored.

trying to find things to keep his hands busy. He's not anxious. It's not like he's fidgeting because he's so filled with anxiety. He just seems incredibly indifferent. Like he is waiting for the DMV to call his name.

even when they ask him to spell his last name which i saw people in the comments talking about how the detectives are dumb and they very well might be i don't know how they handle all their cases but in this particular case this is what they're supposed to do to show that he's coherent and sound of mind right after arrest so they ask him for his name they ask him for his birthday they ask him to spell his last name and he coldly responds like sherlock like he's basically saying that's how you spell my last name yeah can we get your name

Now, the interrogation is notably only four minutes long because almost immediately after the interrogator reads him his Miranda rights, he asks for an attorney.

How did they find out about this whole mailing thing that he mailed it? Oh, he tells them.

So he, during the interrogation, he does tell them some things. Yeah, but just like very blunt. Like also my apartment is like rigged. It's gonna blow. But he doesn't necessarily talk too much about the actual incident inside the theater, the crime inside the theater.

Now, inside of it, he writes about human capital. He writes the concept of worth, how much a person's time is worth, a surgeon's time is worth more than a janitor's time, right? But life is priceless. You can take away a life and your human capital is limitless. He explains that it's more important for a killer to kill more than just one person because it increases the worth of the person doing the killing in a mathematical way. He's saying like,

Time is money, right? And people have currency. There's money, but there's also human capital. How many lives you take is your human capital. Every life you take, you add to your human capital.

What? Okay. Yeah, the mathematical formula would be based on number of people killed, your own perceptions of what life is worth, your contribution to society in a meaningful and positive way. He states that he wants to kill because he wants to get out of his depression and increase his human capital. This is the way to do it because, quote, what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of death? If you destroy all life, then there is no question to be asked.

He admits that he hates humanity, but kind of like how one hates broccoli. Not in a fiery, angry, passionate hate. He says, well, I just don't want to eat broccoli. So I kind of avoid it, be averse to it. Instead of being like angry at broccoli and like chopping it up or something. I think it's just because I'm indifferent. It's indifferent hatred towards mankind. It's more of being averse to mankind, kind of wanting to be alone, solitary.

He states that his crime was less to do with his hatred for humanity and more so he just wanted to get out of his depression by increasing his human capital. The defendant's attorneys start working on the insanity defense pretty much right off the bat, which means there's not going to be a police interrogation that people can try to better understand his motives. Instead, here's what the public finds out after his arrest. This is what they know of the defendant at the time.

The defendant graduated with a bachelor's in neuroscience from the University of California, Riverside. He is now studying as a neuroscience graduate student in a very competitive neuroscience program. They take in at most six people per year. He is one of them.

Even in the group of six really smart students, one of his peers said about him in class, he didn't really take notes. So that was something that made me very jealous because I was always vigorously writing notes down. It seems like he got a lot of the work done in his lab and he seemed very successful. I remember thinking, wow, he's very smart. He's very intelligent.

She continues, he's kind of quiet and kept to himself. He did kind of have a quirky sense of humor. We were part of a group of scientists though. So I think that everyone's a bit odd. Maybe he was a little bit more odd than the rest of us. Maybe more socially awkward.

In his application to his grad school program at the University of Illinois, which he didn't end up going to, he went to the University of Colorado, Denver. He writes, I've always been fascinated by the complexities of long lost thoughts seemingly arising out of nowhere in a stream of awareness. These fascinations likely stem from my interest in puzzles and paradoxes as an adolescent and continued through my curiosity and academic research.

researching learning and memory interests me because these are the very cognitive processes which enable us to acquire information and retain it they're at the core of what distinguishes us as people due to the seemingly infinite vastness of indefinite knowledge we must be selective in our pursuits of knowledge this is why i've chosen to study the primary source of all things our own minds my lifelong goal is to increase the efficiency of how human beings learn and remember

Even in the academic world, his peers have described him as being socially reserved to the point of appearing disinterested and socially awkward to be around. Soon after, during the court proceedings and from people coming forward, we learn a little bit more about him. That he did have some weird conversations with his ex-girlfriend prior to the crime. But like a lot of his other friends, they all thought, yeah, it's odd, but also...

Everyone in neuroscience is kind of odd. Like all the scientists are a little bit odd. Perhaps he's trying to be overly philosophical or maybe he's even a pseudo intellectual trying to be edgy and thought provoking for the sake of being different. That's kind of how his text messages sound. He would be having a regular conversation with his ex about their favorite cuisine types. And he would just state, I don't know how there can be cannibal tribes. You don't know how there can be cannibal tribes? Wouldn't they just eat each other until nobody has left?

Haha, they only eat the weak though. Survival of the fittest. Also, they eat people like you. But the defendant responds to his ex-girlfriend. Weak is relative though. As soon as you eat someone weak, the next weakest is next. And then a few days later, he would text her, what's up buttercup? So again, insinuating, it's not that alarming because it seems like he's trying to be this edgy person. Or a few weeks after that, he texts again. How's it going? Really, really, really tired. Couldn't sleep much last night.

serial killers keeping you up? actually this time yes i was asleep for an hour and i had a serial killer dream and i couldn't sleep after that well i won't let them get you a few weeks after that he asks his ex over text if he should sleep, play skyrim the game, or read and she responds skyrim slay those damn dragons fuck the future for once do what you feel like doing it's sunday afternoon well what i feel like doing is so evil so i can't do that what do you feel like doing? video games are the next best thing through escapism

Wait, what is so evil that you want to do? Kill people, of course. That's why I live in the future. By the ex's response, it's clear that she doesn't really take it seriously, which a lot of people can see why. The tone of most of his messages are always very dark, but in a sarcastic tone. Kill people, of course, kind of sounds like, duh. It doesn't sound that serious. His ex responds, killing people is too much effort. You'll end up locked up. Most people are not worth what might happen to you because of the act. That's why you kill many people.

Even then, at least personally, I'm selfish and I have too much of an idea of self-importance. Most people aren't worth jack shit. Even if you go postal, what's it worth? What do you gain? There's no way to do it and not get caught. But the only way justice can be served is by taking away your time or your life. Why do you care so much about justice? If you wait till the end of your life, then there's nothing to lose. But why would you want to kill? As in, why would you decide this is the end and kill? When you could live more, experience more things, why would those people be worth ending your life?

It's the end though, no more experiences. Why? How do you get to decide that it's the end?

He doesn't respond. Instead, he asks if she wants to play a game with him, like a real video game. And she just tells him that she's busy and they end off on a very light note of like, let's catch up soon. That type of conversation. There was another classmate he was slightly interested in, which side note, the relationship was a bit odd. Apparently he would want to go hiking with this girl in the neuroscience program. And when they would go hiking, he wouldn't talk to her. He would just text her while walking next to her. Now, July 8th. So...

12 days before the crime, he texts her, the floodgates are open. It's in your best interest to avoid me. I'm bad news bears.

Around this time, the defendant starts seeing a university psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Fenton. This is the one who receives the package. And he starts telling the psychiatrist about his breakup with his very first ever serious girlfriend, the ex that was talking about Skyrim, the game and killing the one about the dreams of serial killers. They had broken up. And by all accounts, he's taking it pretty hard. He said that he loved her, but they had been drifting apart, which was

Leads him to start making these very bizarre profiles on dating websites like on adultfinder.com, match.com. He says that he's looking for relationships with women or multiple partners and a prison pen pal.

It's just weird. Nobody, nobody matches with him. Now his psychiatrist, Dr. Fenton is taking notes during their sessions and she's the director of student mental health services at the university of Colorado's medical campus in Aurora. She's also an assistant professor. And as the director, she sees anywhere between 15 to 20 graduate students per week. And she oversees a team of four clinicians and some residents who treat students as well. Dr. Fenton is going to be very important. Okay.

The defendant was one of her patients, and it seems like he has a case of trichotillomania. It's a hair pulling disorder that started in high school, mainly during stressful times, exams, interviews. He would just like pull at his own hair and that would lead to hair loss. Even if it's not visible, this is a diagnosis that people can get. It's just reoccurring, consistent pulling of one's hair.

The patient said that he felt no shame in his hair pulling disorder. He didn't feel embarrassed by it, which is odd because most people do. They try to hide it. And he said that, you know, I'm not embarrassed, but I would rather not people know because there's no reason for them to know. He does later write in his journal. First bald spot was in 10th grade on the back of my head. When someone mentioned that I was going bald, I switched locations. Sideburns, late high school, widow's peak, early college, under chin and jaw, late college, most recently eyebrows and eyelashes.

But the sessions weren't really about the hair pulling. They were about his feelings about his breakup and his intrusive thoughts of wanting to kill people. He stated he felt angry towards even his psychiatrist, Dr. Fenton, because she described him as not being a communicative person. He perceived Dr. Fenton as not wanting to communicate with him because she had already accomplished her goal from his perspective. He felt like the only reason she's seeing him is to prescribe drugs. He called her a mind rapist and a pill pusher.

He particularly got angry on one occasion when she refused to tell him her philosophical outlook to the meaning of life. And he told her, which his is, there's no right or wrong.

Yes, I don't. He has a very nihilistic view of life where he believes that there is no inherent meaning in life. There's no purpose or value. Typically, this means that there's also a rejection of moral absolutes, that there is nothing morally correct or wrong, good or bad, that humans cannot make that call because humans lack objective validity to even begin with.

which if you look at it super positively, you could say that nihilism means that humans should be free to create their own meanings and values without other people predetermining theirs. But if you look at it super negatively, which a lot of people do, it's just a very depressing, morally gray outlook on life of nothing matters. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. The defendant told a psychiatrist before the crime that he felt a level nine out of depression of a scale of one through 10. But after he starts putting his little plan for his mission, that went down to a five. So he starts writing in this journal that he titles insights into the mind of madness, where he had his little logo with the symbol in the circle. He called it the ultraception that represents quote an alternative concept or idea.

He scribbles it all over the journal and he writes about the death problem. So he says that he wants to self-exit. That's what he's writing about in his journal. But he's like, well, is there any way for me to live without self-exiting? One, ignore the problem. If the problem or question doesn't exist, then the solution is irrelevant. Didn't work. Forms of expression tried, including reading, TV, and alcohol. So he's saying, I tried ignoring depression. Two, delay the problem. Live in the moment without concern for answering the problem. Didn't work.

Three, pawn the problem. If one cannot answer the question themselves, get someone else to answer it. Didn't work. Everyone else didn't know the solution either. Four, love, hate. Despite knowing death is false and suboptimal response, I can't find a working alternative. If all of life is dead, then the question is, why should life exist? What is the purpose of living? Now,

a lot of people have tried to make out the defendant to be this genius madman because he's a neuroscience PhD student. Right. And I mean, generally speaking, it is very impressive accomplishment. He does have a relatively high IQ of like almost one 30, I believe, but nothing about what he writes is that of a tortured genius, which that we cannot understand. This just sounds like every other depressed person that I know, but with one caveat, he seems to be depressed and he wants to take it out on humanity. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He writes, the obsession to kill since I was a kid with age has become more and more realistic. First obsession on set started more than 10 years ago. So anyways, that's my mind.

It's broken. I tried to fix my mind. I made it my sole conviction, but using something that's broken to fix itself proved insurmountable. Neurosciences seem like the way to go, but it didn't pan out. In order to rehabilitate the broken mind, my soul must be eviscerated. I could not sacrifice my soul to have a normal mind. Despite my biological shortcomings, I fought and fought. There is one more battle to fight with life, to face death, embrace a longstanding hatred of mankind and overcome all fear certain death.

I mean, there's such a strong narcissistic trait in his notebook, the way that he writes just everything. He also writes, nothing is easily recognized, but can it be understood? As soon as nothing is described, nothing contains features of something. Even the very symbolic encapsulation of the word nothing is a description many people view it as black or darkness, but these are things in and of themselves. Nothing. Everything suffers the paradoxical quandaries as nothing.

What? What is he talking about? I think he is trying really hard to have a very unique life experience and believe that he is so far above humanity that he has these crazy thoughts that transcend regular people's thoughts and emotions. Hmm.

Some netizens have stated, this guy is not smart, okay? He's just a pseudo-intellectual. The next page he writes about being insecure about his private parts that were on the smaller side when he was a teenager. And then he writes, the weak are most likely to perish in trying times. Likewise, the strong are most likely to overcome. Why do the average and strong support the weak? This is easily answered. In trying times, the weak will fall. They act as a buffer. Furthermore, when the weak die, the average and strong become weaker.

So he's saying the only reason that people protect the weak is not because we have hearts and morals. It's because they are the buffer from other people getting weaker. Yeah, they're saying they're the buffer from their next. Yeah.

It's, again, a very bizarre, grim outlook that is, again, reminiscent of pseudo-intellectual talks. He writes, the mind is a prison of uncertainty. Trillions of cells guard it for eternity. Oh, where art thou, master key? Destroy the mind and be free.

He would later say that he hates sheeple people who behave like sheep, letting themselves be mindlessly controlled by others. And when he decides it's time to carry out his mission, he ends up packaging up all of his little notebooks and these burnt $20 bills and mailing it to Dr. Fenton. He knew that she wouldn't get it before the crime. So it's not like she can prevent the crime when he's asked later, why would you send this? He just said, because she had been my primary psychiatrist. She said she would be available.

One of the last entries in the notebook reads, cinema near me, isolated and large. Reason. The reason why life should exist is as arbitrary as the reason why it shouldn't. Life shouldn't exist. There have been conversations about Dr. Fenton's role in this. Not saying that she's responsible, but in the sense of a lot of netizens felt like she did not do enough because he straight up told her he had thoughts of killing people and she did not put him in a psychiatric hold. She did not commit him.

He also told her about having weird shadows he saw flickering around, very reminiscent of hallucinations. Now, the other argument here is that technically she didn't have enough information to get him committed is what she argues. I don't really know how it works. I'm sure it's a gray line. I'm sure it's not that cut and dry. I do think the things you were saying in therapy, I mean, I don't know the laws that psychiatrists abide by, but it's really alarming. Just truly so alarming. Yeah.

Because I don't know what more you would need to commit someone. Like, do you need them to write down and sign a sheet of paper saying that, yeah, this is my plan contractually. I'm going to do it. I don't know. So he mentioned having these thoughts, but nothing concrete. The defendant would say himself that he didn't want to tell Dr. Fenton about his exact plans because he knew that if he said anything concrete, he'd be committed.

So maybe he was trying to walk this very fine line that I'm not that familiar with. So he didn't say anything concrete, but he is opening up about all the...

The plan he had? No. So basically he would say, I want to kill people, which I thought is enough to get someone committed. And a lot of netizens feel like that's enough too, because some netizens are saying I was committed for way less. Like I what's that's crazy. Right. He would say, I want to kill people. But then when asked who he'd be like, he wouldn't answer. So she's arguing you need to have a concrete plan and a specific target.

I don't know. It's so, you know, it's just, it's a lot. So he did talk about killing people and having that come across his mind four to five times a day. He said he didn't want to talk to her about those things. He straight up told her, I don't want to tell you more basically because you would quote lock me up. Yeah.

I think the part that a lot of netizens are upset about is the fact that during these interviews, apparently Dr. Fenton would ask the patient who exactly he wanted to kill. And he would again, tell her again and again, I can't tell you because you would quote lock me up in a psychiatric hospital. So it's not that he doesn't have a plan. It's that he literally told her, I'm not going to tell you my plan. I'm not even going to tell you if I have a plan.

Dr. Fenton writes that her sessions with the patient became medication management sessions because he was unwilling to open up verbally with her. She prescribed him antidepressants, very commonly known as Zoloft. It's an SSRI to ease his anxiety and obsessive thoughts. That becomes a whole other thing later because Zoloft is actually known to have symptoms of, some people have reported that they had homicidal thoughts getting on Zoloft, especially in the beginning when you're in the adjustment changes. So

Some people also said it made their hallucinations worse. So it's not an antipsychotic. It's an antidepressant. So people are saying, is that malpractice? Because why, if she knew his symptoms and she knew what he was saying, again, this is not me accusing her of anything, but just what has been talked about by netizens and a lot of community members. Now she claims that she believed the homicidal thoughts were more so obsessive thoughts rather than real plans, that they were abstract and not concrete. Right.

March 19th, four months before the crime, a clinician under Dr. Fenton's team emails Dr. Fenton. I saw a student late Friday who I hope you would be able to see and soon if possible. He is the most anxious guy I have seen and has symptoms of OCD. But most concerning is he has thoughts of killing people, though I do not think he is dangerous. He said he did not want to tell me everything he is experiencing as I might have to report it. The reason I think it might be best for you to see him as I think it might be best to keep him in our system. What do you think?

Then another email. His name is, and he may email you because he has trouble talking on the phone. He said it's very hard to come in. Problems concentrating, anxiety around people, and public speaking. He says he wants to kill other people. It's very hard to interview him as he would just stare and take a long time to answer. Oh, side note, and the reason that I'm redacting his name is not because I think he deserves privacy, but because he did have a sense of he wanted to gain notoriety out of this.

Now, it appears March 2012 is the first documented time that the patient verbalized to the psychiatrist his thoughts of wanting to kill people. The part that people have a problem with is in both the emails, they literally state that he wants to kill people and they don't really do anything. They don't commit him. Hmm.

April 17th, 2012, 94 days, about three months before the crime. Dr. Fenton writes in her notes, following termination of friendship with girlfriend, increased obsessive thoughts, won't give any details, won't answer regarding plans, homicidal ideation, no self-exit ideation, angry that I won't tell him my philosophical ideas of the purpose of life. Patient will angrily say, I told you all of mine. Are you just a pill pusher?

Psychotic level of thinking, guarded, paranoid, hostile thoughts he won't elaborate on, very tentative therapeutic relationship, is taking some meds but reluctantly, is coming in for appointments, seems to be functioning at work. Safety, no evidence of imminent threat. I'm worried about homicidal ideation more than self-exit ideation in this patient, though he is very guarded and doesn't reveal much.

Then June 11th, 2012, about a month before the crime, another session concludes and Dr. Fenton's notes read, after I asked how his comp exam went, he reports he failed it. Test was last Thursday. He found out Saturday. As usual, he seems inappropriately nonchalant about this. He's basically quitting his grad program.

And

After about 20 minutes, Patience said he had to leave to go talk to his grad school advisor, got up and left without thanks, goodbye, or any other parting remarks as per his usual demeanor. Significant worries remained about the dangerousness of the student, particularly the potential for violence against others. Given his longstanding fantasies of killing as many people as possible, his caginess in discussing any details regarding methods, targets, timing, his refusal to give us permission to contact anyone who could give us collateral information or speak on his behalf.

unclear timeline of his mental health status and past history. Has he always been this odd and angry or is this new? Suggesting a psychotic break, substance related psychosis or a medical illness? Question mark.

That is crazy. And what's crazy is the bottom of that note reads, does not currently meet criteria for a mental health hold. He is not gravely disabled and has no evidence of self-exit ideation. Longstanding homicide ideation, but denies any specific targets. And there's no current evidence that he's angry at the school or anyone else for his failure. No evidence of past violent acts. A few days later, he was on internet forums asking people about their favorite bombs.

She would argue later in court for a mental health hold for somebody with homicidal thoughts. You need a couple of things. One is evidence that it's not just a thought that they have a plan and they're moving towards action on those thoughts. And the second thing is there has to be a specific target. And he all along had denied both of those. Yeah.

Now, many netizens felt Dr. Fenton is at fault to some degree in their opinions. I'm not making a legal personal statement here, but it got to the point where she had to wear a bulletproof vest for the trial when she testified. Her name was leaked. She was doxxed and she received countless death threats. But then in 2022, she was ripped apart again by netizens, though not nearly as severe because she published a book on the case titled Uncensored.

It was released nine years, 364 days after the crime, the day before the 10 year mark of the tragedy, which more than that, she starts every chapter of her book from a Joker quote, which a lot of survivors and victims families do not like the Joker comparison that was done by the media. On top of that, the killer himself stated he was not inspired by the Joker or anything.

Like that. He straight up stated he chose the Dark Knight Rises for the sheer fact that he knew it was a popular franchise. He knew people were going to be there for the premiere. He just wanted a packed theater. It didn't matter if it was the Dark Knight or any other movie. He said he knew very little about the contents of the movie. He claimed he dyed his hair because the whole orange hair was the thing. People thought he dyed it to be like the Joker, right? He said he dyed it because he normally kept it brown because, quote, I wanted to differentiate myself from who I normally was because I was not my normal self.

He did have a Batman mask in his house, but he claimed it was irrelevant. And I also believe that because, I mean, Batman is such a big franchise. A lot of people would just like buy it to throw on a cheap Halloween costume. You're like, okay, well, I forgot everything, right? He does have a quote in his book

notebook where he writes at the very end of his plans like a dark night rises but again it could be because he already chose that because it's the premiere yeah yeah yeah but she knowing this 10 years later still put a joker quote at the beginning of every chapter

And she's not really someone that is very well accepted by survivors and victims' families. And I would say the community, because I think there are some people who have sympathy for her and how she was getting death threats and went through a lot afterwards. And she was essentially doxxed. But a lot of people find that her book almost makes it seem like she's the biggest victim in all of this.

And then add to that the Joker quotes and add to that that a lot of survivors and victims' families members just didn't already like her involvement in the case because of he straight up told her. So it just was a bizarre choice.

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So because Dr. Fenton did not put him on a psychiatric hold, it just became a giant point of contention in the aftermath of the incident. So remember how I said the interrogation for the defendant was about four minutes before he lawyered up? Well, there is a 45-minute clip we have of him sitting in the interrogation room prior and after to being formally questioned, and they're just making him wait there. And it is...

bizarre to watch from, I guess, like a psychological standpoint. It's a very clear indicator of just how indifferent he is about what he did for a good chunk of it. He is shirtless. He is wearing nothing but like a black pair of undies.

He's so bored. He starts tearing the plastic label off his water bottle. He starts taking apart the paper cup in front of him. And again, none of his actions look like one of anxiety. It looks like I am so bored. I need something to do. Eventually, he gets so tired of that. He starts banging around the underside of the table like he's a Home Depot dad. He starts picking at things. Eventually, an officer walks in asking him, hey, what are you doing?

What are you doing? Removing staples. All right. Is that your shirt that you're not wearing? He lifts up his shirt from his lap and looks at it. It was. It was? How come you're not wearing it? Because they cut it. Oh, okay. You cold or anything? No.

The officer walks out and immediately the defendant goes to try and play with the electrical socket. He's using the paper cup, trying to stuff it inside. It does not appear that he's trying to get himself shocked or electrocuted. He honestly, again, seems very bored. Like he's waiting to get his driver's license renewed. Someone commented that it looks like he's waiting in the back room of a car dealership when the car salesman tries to negotiate with you and they make you wait. That's how indifferent he feels.

That's the energy he gives. When the officer comes back in briefly to tell him, hey, don't do that. When he's gone, it seems like the defendant throws a temper tantrum. He flicks the water bottle and the paper cup, all the junk off the table onto the chair and floor like a teenager slamming their door after a fight with their parents.

Then the officers, they placed paper bags on his hands to protect the gunpowder residue, to which he asks, what's it for? The authorities don't tell him straight up. They don't say that. They just ask him, what do you think it's for? And he responds, popcorn. What? They look like popcorn paper bags. The officer responds, could be used for popcorn, but not right now. When the officers leave, the defendant starts playing hand puppets with the paper bags on his hands.

He does this for minutes, multiple minutes, a full grown man for multiple minutes.

There's not more of this interrogation, like I said, because he lawyered up and he will be pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to 24 counts of first degree murder, 140 counts of attempted first degree murder and one count of possessing illegal explosives. Meaning for every victim's life taken, he was charged with two counts of murder because of quote extreme indifference. This is going to be a death penalty trial.

For each count, the defendant pled not guilty by reason of insanity. The attorneys try showing examples of how insane he must have been because his grandfather from his mom's side was diagnosed with psychosis. He was hospitalized after wandering around the yard naked. Apparently his dad's father, his other grandfather was also hospitalized for a major OCD and there are other people in the family that have schizoaffective disorder. His lawyer argued that the defendant quote, was blessed and

cursed by his genetics. He is smart and loaded for mental illness.

He did have what the court documents and psychiatrists have described as remarkable pupil dilation. So a lot of pictures you see of him, his eyes look very intense. That can happen because of psychiatric medications. That can happen when somebody is very stressed. It can happen for a variety of reasons. But in prison, it does appear that the defendant does start to lose his mind while waiting for the trial, which I do want to say again, this doesn't matter.

Because it's not about his mental state in prison. It's about his mental state at the time of the crime. So yes, while it does appear, he does seem to lose his mind a little bit in prison. There can be multiple different reasons for that. Now there are three types of thought manipulation, thought withdrawal. This is the paranoia that a patient might feel when they fear that someone is extracting their thoughts and feelings from their mind, feeling like someone is reading their mind.

Now there's thought insertion, the fear and perception that someone might make you think things without speaking to you. They're inputting it through waves or inputting it through frequencies to control your mind. And then there's thought broadcasting, the perception that your thoughts or feelings in your mind are somehow being translated and being portrayed on TVs and radios for others to watch broadcasted.

These are clearly not normal healthy perceptions. In prison, the defendant stated that they were experiencing thought withdrawal. He believed that everybody, the guards, the psychiatrists, the other inmates were reading his mind. So he would distract them by sitting in his cell so that they can't read his mind and he would scream out colors like blue, pink, red, green, so that they'd be so distracted by his actual words that they could not withdraw the thoughts from his mind.

He got onto the top bunk of his cell and he stood erect on the top bunk and fell backwards. At the very last second when he fell, the CCTV footage showed that he does lean his head up to protect the back of his head. He did fall twice. Yeah. Yeah.

So they're saying that behavior is strange. Yes. He stated that he was experiencing hallucinations. It could have been, you know, you could interpret this multiple ways. You could interpret it as him trying to pretend to be insane. You could interpret this as he is going through some sort of psychiatric condition, which is what a lot of his psychiatrists believe that he was actually going through something. Again, doesn't matter because insanity means at the time of the crime. It doesn't mean two hours later. It doesn't mean two months later. Mm hmm.

He was taken to what they call the rubber room.

where the whole place is just made out of really hard rubber. Yeah, he was put on self-exit watch and he would get naked and start smearing his feces on the walls. He said that he saw dancing shadows. He had feces caked in between his toes. He was just doing a lot of strange things. They give you a sack lunch when you're in the rubber room because you're not allowed to have utensils. So they hand you a sack of food that you really cannot harm yourself with because they're concerned and he wouldn't eat it.

He just refused to eat for multiple days. He didn't drink water for multiple days. At one point, he got the meat from a sandwich, like the luncheon meat, and he put it in between two paper cups and started eating that like a sandwich. So he's just eating paper cups. Just a lot of odd, different behaviors. Now, again, keep in mind, doesn't really matter.

The records read patient has been engaging in increasingly bizarre behavior, disorganized and self-harming behaviors. He's intermittently been refusing to wear clothing and eat or drink. He was noted to be licking the walls and defecating on the floors, smearing feces. The patient was noted to eat paper. He has also been bringing his head against the wall as well as ramming towards the wall and head butting it. Patient was noted to be talking to himself in jail and told people that he was not sure if they were real or not.

Later, when patient was asked why he was not eating or drinking, he said, I don't know what the juice is. I was in a box without any juice and I couldn't reach it. When asked why he was in jail, he said, because I pulled away from the people I knew and I drank their blood. I took the blood that was not mine and it was unfair. I was selfish. When asked about harming himself, he said that he, quote, bit his arm for food. And when he was asked what kind of food he said, proteinaceous food.

His pupils were dilated to five millimeters, which isn't necessarily the most alarming thing in the world. Now, there were concerns that he was attempting to self-exit in prison, but he said that actually, no, he was just having visual hallucinations. In fact, he told his psychiatrist one of his biggest fears, ironically, in prison was that he would be murdered in prison for what he did. Yeah. So the question still remains, was he insane at the time of the crime? Doesn't matter what he's doing in prison. It

In his notebook, he writes of his symptoms leading up to the crime, quote, symptoms. Now, keep in mind, everything in this notebook could be very well written with the intention of using it to support an insanity plea. He writes that he was experiencing catatonia for three to five hours in the middle of the day. He couldn't even move. The only words he hears in his head during that time are, Bambi, get up. You must get up. He has brief periods of invincibility where he feels he's moving at hyperspeed, interchanged with periods of extreme tiredness.

Later, during the interviews with his psychiatrist, he was asked, what should people know about you? And he responds that I'm kind of shy, I guess. Kind of a shy fella? Yep. He just has this weird smile the whole time. These interview tapes are available to the public. He never really blinks.

He never really breaks eye contact. It's a lot. Perhaps there's a medication element to it, but his demeanor is a little off-putting when you realize what he's just done. He sits there in his prison uniform with his hands on his lap. He's not frozen still, but he's calm. He's so calm. He's not shifting his weight. He's not feeling a guilty conscious. He's not feeling uncomfortable being surveyed. He's just sitting there. His face almost looks frozen. His eyebrows are slightly raised with a slight smile the whole time.

One that is in comments that it appears he's waiting to hear the punchline of a joke. That's the expression. Sometimes he does laugh and he'll quickly stop and he ends with a week like, ha ha. Okay. From a psychological standpoint, psychiatrists wanted to know, was he always like this?

Now, the defendant's teacher, when he was a kid, once called him a renaissance child, a child protege, very clever at everything, like just mastering everything, sports, grades, everything, but always a little distant. One soccer mom said, I could tell you a lot about every single kid on that team except for him. He was a lot more aloof. According to his friends, at one point, the defendant was one of the top five players at the game World of Warcraft in the world.

In the world? Yeah. So he, one of his former friends said, we were just all pretty nerdy people. So there seems to be two groups of people saying either he's very nerdy and kind of quirky or some people saying, oh, he's very, very off. Now, the defendant claims ever since he was 10, he struggled with the meaning of life, wanting to find a purpose and something meaningful to do. A lot of netizens, and I agree with this, is like,

He just seems like a normal kid indicating there doesn't seem to be any sense of psychological issues, but maybe he was just a little bit quirky. Like that doesn't mean anything. When asked why other people doesn't have similar struggles to him, he said it's because his mind is different.

When the defendant was eight years old, his parents brought him to a psychologist stating that he was not being nice to his younger sister. But the psychologist thought it was just very normal stuff, like very normal family stuff. He was sent home and they followed through with the psychologist's directions. He ended up fine. He had a little bit of a distrust towards authority figures, but nothing rare to see in an eight year old.

But as a kid, the defendant claims that he had a few small things that he did, like only chewing with the left side of his teeth. He said that he felt the need to preserve the right side of his teeth as well as his face. And every time he passed a mirror, he would check his hair about 10 plus times a day. He also writes about a frustration he had. And he says, quote, inability to communicate what I want to say, though I can understand it. Typically, I have an image in my mind, but I can't say images or draw them. Would be nice if there was some form of telepathy to transfer the image.

His communication seems to be very straightforward, but also not because he loves his pseudo intellectual philosophical rambles in his notebook. So just to give you an idea, one time a psychiatrist asked him, how close were you with your grandma when she passed? He responds, I was nine hours away. What? Like? Yeah. So the psychologist is clearly asking, like, how close were you emotionally to your grandma when she passed? But he says in distance. Like this is not him trying to be clever. We don't know.

I mean, the psychiatrist... So I guess either he's trying to be like a little smarty pants or he's genuinely just do not think about human connection. Maybe? I don't know. Yeah. Some people believe that he doesn't think of human connection because he has such a strong sense of superiority. Almost all of his responses...

point back to he thinks very highly of himself and not much of everybody else because my mind is different because I was pondering the meaning of life at 10 years old he very much believes that I think that a lot of the experiences that most humans have are unique to him

Yeah. Well, I do want to preface that the psychiatrist don't think that he was insane during the time of the crime. And the only reason that we're bringing up all these things is not to say that he was. I don't think he was. Nobody thinks he was. The professionals that personally evaluated him don't think he was.

A lot of netizens think it's good to know to see if there were any warning signs. Like him telling Dr. Fenton was clearly a sign that could have been prevented. Yeah, yeah. Now, he starts getting into massive multiplayer online role-playing games, which is, again, normal. But he played so often that people said that he became a little bit antisocial. Not a diagnosis. That's a very casual term that they're using. Mm-hmm.

He just liked to play games, okay? He liked to escape from reality. He would sometimes space out. He had this look so often that people said he appeared sleepy most of the time. He would read books in his closet. Again, nothing too alarming. The defendant would state in one notebook that he liked to zone out when, quote, in a boring situation when someone is giving a presentation or otherwise rambling about frivolous information.

So again, that superiority. Now there are some red flags though. When he was younger, his parents moved their family home. So they had to move cities. He had to start all over again with the same school and like different friends. And he said that he cut a piece of cardboard off of moving box, like one of those cardboard boxes. He cut it off and he sawed at his arms. There were no real injuries from it, but it is kind of alarming behavior. He did say around 10 years old, he started having these intrusive thoughts that a nuclear bomb would wipe out everybody.

Just visions of nuclear bombs killing everybody, detonating. He said these thoughts would come on a monthly basis. Sometimes they came more when he was stressed. Interestingly, psychiatrists have noticed that's a pretty extreme sense of superiority, grandiose thinking as a 10 year old. It's almost he believes he can do something to wipe out humanity is how they interpreted his thoughts.

that evolved into a saw decapitating anonymous people's heads. He said that he would see random people. So these are not people he claimed he knew in his personal life. And there would be this imaginary saw, like this vision in his head. The saw moved on its own. It was not connected to a hand. The saw did not represent him, he stated, but it would just decapitate people's heads. He said he saw shadows dancing in the corner of his eyes, which some people feel are very

hallucinations i don't know and he also oddly refers to all of his memories almost like internal videos like to him it's like an internal video is what the psychiatrist said yeah

But it does seem like he has a God complex. In his notebook, there's a page just covered with the question, why? He's written like a hundred times, just why, why, why, why, why? And when asked by a psychiatrist, the defendant just responds, why should I live? Why does anybody need to live? You can essentially ask why to any question. He said, if I could get to kill everybody in the world, that would put an end to the question of why people needed to be alive in the first place. That was the question I wanted to answer ever since I was a kid. I was at rock bottom. Things couldn't get any worse.

When the defendant is asked about how he felt afterwards, after accomplishing his mission, he reported feeling empty and mood, just lack of feelings and thoughts. He does try to fake having any semblance of humanity by saying he's really sad that he watched the news and discovered that he killed a six-year-old girl. He goes on to say that he specifically went to a midnight movie to avoid killing children because children deserve to live more than adults.

But he also says he does think, he does stand by the fact that his human capital increased because of the murders. So I...

Yeah, I think he's just an evil, vile person. In addition, he states that he feels sad he took someone's choice away on whether or not they wanted to live because he would want that choice for himself. But then at the same time, he believes his human capital increased. I mean, all of it is done very unconvincingly. The notes read, express very little anxiety, conflict, or regret regarding the crime. That's his psychiatrist note on him in prison.

Now, just like the Wade Wilson case, I'm so confused because women are sending letters to the defendant. No way. Not just letters, but sexual photos of them showing their cleavage in skimpy clothes, kneeling on the ground. I think within the first few months, he received $4,000 in his commissary account. Yeah, he put them all, all those sexy photos up on the board in his prison wall, along with the infinity symbol with the circle around it.

When asked later why he thought these random women were sending him these letters, he said he thought it was because they found his adultfinder.com, match.com profile. The trial would start April of 2015, nearly three years after the crime. And the jury selection would take three months, which is really long. It's not record setting. Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, his was nine months. But the trial was the largest jury summons in U.S. history, meaning they had to call more people to see if they could be a juror. Because the state...

The community, the people were still recovering and healing from Columbine, which is Columbine High School is a 34-minute drive from the Century 16 movie theater. Both are just on the outskirts of Denver. And to get people who are not biased after Columbine would be really hard. Not that anybody cared to clear all bias. There were 24 jurors, 12 official and 12 alternates. At least two of them had ties to Columbine. It was just impossible to find someone without ties.

One of the jurors called was a survivor of Columbine was like in the school when and survived. The testimonies were a lot. It was weeks of trauma and pain that was reopened for the whole community.

Two police officers, husband and wife, were working that night. So, I mean, just think about the ripple effect of these types of incidents. It's not just the people that were there. It's not just the victims' families or the survivors or the survivors' families. It's the first responders. It's the medical staff at the hospitals. It's everybody that knew these people. You're talking about

I don't know the spider web of effects. I can't even, I don't even know how one would calculate that. And obviously the whole nation too. Now, two police officers, husband and wife, were working that night at the theater. And Michael, the husband, said when he got home, he had to clean all the blood off his wife's uniform and gear bag. He said the victims were, quote, subjected to nothing less than the trauma of war. Caleb, the husband who had to have brain surgery while his wife gave birth, two floors below in the same hospital, said,

He does end up surviving. When he was recovering, there was a moment where the doctors didn't know how much he knew of what was going on around him. And when they brought him his son in the room, his heart rate and blood pressure rose. He moved his hand towards his baby to touch him.

He would appear in court in a wheelchair. He lost an eye. He cannot speak. He cannot walk. His dreams were of being a comic, a stand-up comic, and now he can't communicate as well as he used to. He could only testify in court by tapping out letters on a big white alphabet board balanced on the witness stand. The whole time, the defendant shows no emotions. He is so passive, in fact, that people questioned whether or not he was being drugged. He just had no reaction the entire time.

In the end, one of the defendant's reports reads by a psychiatrist, there is no question that the defendant at the time of the commission of the alleged act was capable of distinguishing from right or wrong.

They continue. It is in my professional opinion that the defendant was not so diseased or defective in mind at the time of the commission of the acts as to be incapable of distinguishing right from wrong with respect to those acts. He knew his crime was highly illegal. He planned and practiced to avoid detection. He planned, considered and implemented methods of distraction and escape. He carefully chose a method of killing that he reasonably believed would result in the maximum number of deaths.

He carried out the crime deliberately and methodically. He said he knew that his victims would suffer and would not want this. He never alleged that his arrest was unjustified or that his acts were somehow acceptable. During the trial, when the photos of the victims' injuries are shown, the defendant looks up at each and every single one of them with no indication of remorse. The jury saw a 45-minute police video of the crime scene. Media in the courtroom reported what they saw. The video was never made public, nor should it be, but...

Media in the courtroom reported, it is so graphic. There are bodies sprawled across the floor, aisle after aisle. Some bodies are contorted while other bodies appear to be in positions of trying to hide. Some are in fetal positions. There's still soda cups in cup holders, popcorn scattered everywhere, bullet casings littered all around the floor. The combination of something so innocent like a movie theater with art,

All the blood, all the leftover belongings, cell phones that were ringing. Officers said the abandoned cell phones rang inside the theater for hours after the crime. It was just so grim.

Ultimately, the jury found the defendant guilty on all 165 charges against him. The 27-year-old defendant was found guilty of first-degree murder, including extreme indifference. The judge almost breaks down into tears and states, it is a display of contrast. Whereas the defendant had a long-lasting hatred of mankind, the victims who have come in here and addressed the court have shown all that is good about humanity. And before adjoining the court, Judge Seymour states, get the defendant out of my courtroom.

Ultimately, he would be sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 3,318 years for attempted murder and explosive charges. The jury spared him the death penalty. There was one juror who did not want the death sentence and it had to be unanimous.

Six months later, the theater remodeled and was reopened. A lot of survivors and victims' families went, and they said it was a way to take back the control and not let the tragedy define them. Many first responders also attended. Honestly, I think they're so brave for going back. I can't imagine, nor do I think I would even have the strength to walk back through those doors. So these are very incredibly resilient people. Many of the survivors are clearly still suffering. I mean, I would say all survivors.

Many are dealing with severe PTSD, anxiety, depression, permanent physical injuries, paralysis, loss of control over bodily functions, amputations, chronic pain. Many still have pieces of bullets in them because it would be more dangerous to take them out. And it's likely that all of them deal with some level of guilt.

Not that they should, but the brain just works in those ways. One survivor said, I still wonder every day how I got out of there and how I'm a survivor and they're not. I think about them and I think about all the people that lost their lives every single day. 12 people would be killed from the events of July 20th. The last words Gordon Cowden was able to say to his two teenage daughters when they were separated in the theater in the chaos was, I love you.

he would be found dead. He was a father of four and his kids were his whole life. His son would say, "My dad taught me what it meant to be a man." He was a father first and last and always. That was all there was. We were trying to figure out what to say for his eulogy and such, but really it was just, he had us four kids and that was just the life he lived. That was all he was all about. His kids were his whole life.

John Larimer was at the theater with his girlfriend, Julia. Julia would later say, John's first instinct was to grab my head and cover me and tell me to get down. He was kind of guiding me where to go and he looked up for a split second to kind of see what was going on and I thought, I think that's when he got shot. He was holding on to me tight and I could feel he relaxed. I think that's when he died.

Julia survived but lost about 40% of her hearing and has severe PTSD. Even the scent of popcorn can trigger really terrifying memories, but she says she will never forget the love of her life that saved her in more ways than one. She said, he was one in a billion to me and a lot of people, and I hope that his heroism and his bravery can be honored forever and remembered forever. Which, by the way, his bravery extends beyond that night. He was also serving our country in the Navy. He said that he just wanted to protect our country and save others from danger and harm.

John was 27. Alexander Sullivan, Sully, was turning 27 that night. His parents searched for him for 14 hours and they pleaded with the press showing a picture of their son. Tell me where he is because all the hospitals were, nobody had answers. He kept screaming, tell me where he is. Someone call us. And they would not receive that word until hours later that their son had passed. Tom, Sully's dad, just remembered seeing him on the cold steel gurney in the morgue and he leaned down and he whispered,

Mom was worried. We'll see you again. And the place Sully's parents feel the closest to him is at the movie theater. They still feel a burning need for change and gun reform. Alex's dad, Sully's dad, who had never any dreams to become a politician, he was working at the post office, was elected into the Colorado State House in 2018.

Yeah, and he wore Alex's leather jacket every day as a reminder of who he is and why he's here. He is a Colorado state senator. 18-year-old AJ was there with his 19-year-old fiancee, La Samoa, or La. She said, when AJ and I realized something very bad was happening, we stood up. He grabbed my hand. We were getting ready to leave. He turned around, looked at me in the most shocked way, and then hit the ground. She said, my world, my whole identity was shook.

AJ was an award-winning ceramic artist who was on his way to go to college and his dreams weren't even to fill a museum. He just wanted to open up his own studio and be an art teacher. AJ's mom told the court, I am now a single mother of one child. I have lost half of what I was put on this earth to do. My life is basically half of what it was.

Jesse Childress was 29 when he threw himself over his coworker in the Air Force. She was his junior and she had only been in the Air Force Base for a month. Jesse was tasked with showing her the ropes. It would be said about Jesse, he was a very hard worker. There was never a job he left undone. He was very patient. He showed me everything, answered every single question I had when I got there. Since I was the new person, I needed to be shown around and he did all of this while still getting his job done.

Outside of that, he was just the nicest guy. 24-year-old Alex Teves would dive in front of his girlfriend when the gunshots went off. He was shot in the head. His wounds were so horrific that his parents were advised against seeing their son's body one last time. He had a master's degree in counseling psychology. 24-year-old Jessica Gwawi had been brought to the Children's Hospital in Colorado. She had severe injuries to her lower chest and abdomen. They worked to resuscitate her for over an hour, but...

She did not survive. She had gone to the movies with one of her best childhood friends, Brent Lowack, who was visiting town and they had known each other since they were little. And he probably knew of Jessica's eating habits. Jessica's family would joke, if there was something on your plate, you did not want Jessica to eat. You better put hot sauce on it. She was such a foodie. She was a sports journalist, a

And Jessica and Brent were sitting in the 12th row munching on popcorn when Jessica's mom had texted her. And she responded, go to bed, mom. Get some sleep. I can't wait for you to come next week. I need my mama. Her mom sent one last text message before going to bed. And it read, I need my baby girl.

The lights dimmed. The movie started. Jessica was shot six times. Brent was shot. He managed to crawl out while escaping. He called Jessica's mom and she could hear screaming in the background. And he told her, quote, there's been a shooting. It's random. I've been shot twice. I think Jesse's been shot twice, too. Jessica's mom remembers telling him, please just tell me she's not dead. And he just said, I'm sorry, I tried.

When officers went into the theater, they're pulling victims to the emergency exit and loading them into the squad cars. She was laying in the back seat when the officer booked it to the emergency room, but she was pronounced dead.

Jessica's mom would say, Jessica's friend Brent is a medical technician and firefighter. He had been shot as well, but he was one of the last to leave the scene. He was helping the injured with medical triage.

He suffers from permanent nerve damage. And the sickest part of all of this is that this wasn't even Jessica's first mass tragedy. She was in a food court in Toronto when someone opened fire. Well, she was in the mall. In total, six people were shot, two people died. And she wrote about it. She wrote, I was in the Eaton Center in Toronto just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court.

She was actually at the food court to eat sushi. That's why she came to the mall was to eat sushi in the food court. But for whatever reason, she changed her mind last minute and was like, you know what? I'd rather get burgers and poutine. So she left the food court. Moments later, someone opened fire right at that position.

She writes in her blog, who would go to a mall full of thousands of innocent people and open fire? Is this really the world we live in? I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don't know when or where our time on earth will end, when or where we will breathe our last breath. I say all the time that every moment we have to live is a blessing. My mind keeps replaying what I saw over and over in my head. I wish I could shake this odd feeling from my chest.

the feeling that's reminding me how blessed I am. Jessica's mom tried to comfort her after that experience and she told her, "At least you've seen the worst in humanity and you'll never see it again." Six weeks later, she was killed in Aurora. Sandy, Jessica's mom, now travels the country to build support networks for loved ones of gun violence victims. She built a relationship with the parents of Trayvon Martin as well as parents of children who died in Sandy Hook. She is a victim's advocate for the Brady campaign to prevent gun violence.

Rebecca Wingo had dreams of being a social worker. Very smart, very accomplished person. She was fluent in Mandarin and

and working for the U.S. Air Force as a translator. She wanted to help teens transition out of the foster care system. And the way that people describe Rebecca was she's a catalyst. She's a person that walks into the room and things happen. She is effective. She gets things done. She has this gravity to her. Everybody gets pulled in her direction. People love her. They said if she put her mind to something, she was going to get it done. What an example she set for her daughters.

She was able to connect with people and even animals almost instantly. Friends called her the animal whisperer. They said, our cat Kiki was a feral cat just running around Hawaii. She just calls to the cat and brings the cat home and they still have the cat to this day. Rebecca is survived by her two beautiful daughters and their father as well as her parents and siblings.

Jonathan Blanc was at the theater with his girlfriend Jansen. He had served in the Navy and he was taking EMT classes. He heroically shielded his girlfriend's body from the bullets and tragically passed away. He has survived by two beautiful children. Michaela Medic was 23 years old when she and her friends arrived at the theater. She wrote on Facebook before her passing, I'm a simple independent girl who's trying to get their life together while still having fun.

She was saving up for her bucket list trip of going to India. It's said that when her father found out, he was absolutely hysterical, quote, just sobbing, I want to get my baby home. I need to bring my baby home. I need to bring my baby home. She was known for loving Hello Kitty and many of her friends got tattoos of Hello Kitty in memory.

27-year-old Matt McQuinn was at the theater with his girlfriend and her older brother. Matt shielded both of them during the gunfire and was shot three times. He died protecting them. Everyone that knew Matt said, you need a Matt in your life. Someone who always keeps the morale up. He was always doing small things to brighten friends' and co-workers' days. And the 12th victim...

Veronica Moser Sullivan stood at four feet, four inches, 50 pounds. She was six years old. She would be the youngest. She was at the movies with her family, including her mom, Ashley. And Ashley had just found out hours before this movie that she was going to have a little sibling. Ashley was pregnant and she would lose both Veronica and her unborn baby in the tragedy.

Ashley herself would lose the ability to utilize her arms and legs. She is paralyzed and unable to walk. She suffers from anxiety and depression that is so severe that oftentimes she cannot even leave the house. Eugene and Kristen, they were in the second row. Do you remember? And, um...

When the nightmare started, they were engaged. Eugene had shielded Kristen but got shot in the hip and the knee. Both of them ended up surviving and so did their three friends. And on the one year mark of the attack, exactly a year later, they decided to get married. Just three miles from the theater. One of Kristen's bridesmaids along with two of Eugene's groomsmen were also survivors of the attack.

One of his friends was badly injured. He had to have his leg amputated. Eugene was actually the one that chose the one year mark. And Kristen at first didn't really get it. She didn't understand it, but they just wanted to reclaim the day. They wanted it to be about something good and not have this one day every single year that is just another tragic reliving through. But Eugene still has bullet fragments in him, but

That's the story of what happened July 20th, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado. I think it's so touching to hear that these, I guess the victims are kind of, I guess they're heroes because most of them are. Yeah, most of them passed protecting their loved ones. And it said that a lot of people were just trying to help everyone while getting out too.

Yeah, and I think even the community, how they rallied around them is... What are your thoughts? I just wanted to talk about it because recently I was talking to a few younger people and they didn't really know what happened. And it just, yeah. What are your thoughts on the case? Leave it in the comments and I will see you in the next one. Please be safe.