James Eagan Holmes was described as a quiet, standoffish, 24-year-old graduate student from San Diego who had earned a bachelor's degree in neuroscience in 2010 from the University of California, Riverside. Holmes then enrolled at the University of Colorado in June of 2011, taking graduate courses in neuroscience at the university's campus in Denver. He later dropped out of a doctoral program at the University's medical school, where he had been doing research.
In early 2012, Holmes had begun seeing Dr. Lynne Fenton, a University of Colorado psychiatrist, at a campus clinic. Holmes was seen by mental health professionals at the clinic eight times in 2012 between March 16, when he first walked in, and June 11, when he cut off therapy only
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weeks before strapping on protective gear, slinging an AR-12 across his chest and blasting his way through a Denver movie theater. Evaluating and determining the mental instability of a person not overtly an immediate threat to himself and/or others is not the police's responsibility. The justification and authorization for medical intervention in such cases falls on the shoulders of the mental health professionals. A police officer can only initiate an arrest based on probable cause. This means that stopping a potential active shooting incident is coming down to how well mental health professionals and law enforcement join together. Shortly before Holmes swathed himself in protective gear, booby-trapped his apartment and headed to the Century 16 theater on a mission to kill as many people as he could, Holmes sent a plain-looking composition book to a his psychiatrist.
The notebook was found in a University mailroom after the shooting. It had been described in search warrants as brown with a placard on the cover that said "James Holmes." Also written on the outside of the notebook were the words "My Life." Holmes used this notebook to address questions such as, "What is the meaning of Life?" and "What is the meaning of death?" Holmes also used the notebook to compare the relative merits of various methods of killing human beings, before settling on mass murder, in a movie theater. (Barber, 2015)
At the Century Aurora 16 complex in Aurora, Colorado, witnesses said that within minutes of a midnight premiere screening of the film “The Dark Knight Rises”, James Holmes slipped through an emergency exit door of the sold-out movie theater, propped it open, and returned armed with three guns and wearing a ballistic helmet, body shields, and a gas mask obscuring his face. He tossed two hissing gas or smoke canisters and calmly walked up the aisles open firing at moviegoers. (Crummy,
2012) James Holmes was arrested without resistance while standing next to his car behind the Century 16 theater shortly after the shooting and jailed without bail awaiting trial. Holmes was described by law-enforcement officials as in his mid-20s with no police record other than a traffic stop, no known connection to terrorism, and without accomplices. Once apprehended, Holmes had told the police that he booby-trapped his apartment with explosive devices before heading to the theater that night. Police later confirmed the presence of explosives in the apartment. Following his arrest, he was hospitalized after attempting suicide several times while in jail. Holmes had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which was accepted. He also had undergone two court-ordered sanity exams, which have not been made public. His trial began on April 27, 2015 and on August 24; he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A jury had agreed that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors for count one of the multiple murder charges. Holmes was convicted on 24 counts of murder and 140 counts of attempted murder for the 2012 Aurora shooting that had killed 12 people and injured 70 others. (Cannon, 2015) Members of the jury were unable to reach a unanimous sentencing verdict, which resulted in Holmes being sentenced to life in prison without out the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty. According to the testimonies that were made during the trial, Holmes was initially described as being "calm and detached" during the arrest, but became interested in watching the aftermath of the shooting after being placed in the back of a police car. Responding officers had recovered several guns from inside the car and the theater. The former medical student was accused of stockpiling these weapons and meticulously planning the rampage for months. Prosecutors who were seeking the death penalty said that Holmes had also wanted to kill police by leaving his Denver apartment booby-trapped with explosives before the shooting, which were defused one day later by a bomb squad. “We believe that the death penalty is morally wrong, especially when the condemned is mentally ill,” his parents Robert and Arlene Holmes had written in a letter pleading for him to be spared from execution. “He is a human being gripped by severe mental illness. We realize treatment in an institution would be best for our son. We love our son, we have always loved him, and we do not want him to be executed.” The Holmes’s said that their son should be sentenced to life without parole and that the attention that would have gone into a trial should be dedicated to victim recovery. The letter, which was provided to The Denver Post (2014), was the first time that the Holmes' had commented publicly about their son's actions and about the grief they have felt as a result. “Our family has not given interviews to the media because we do not want coverage for ourselves,” the couple wrote. “We mourn the deaths and the serious injuries and emotional trauma of the others who were in the theater. The focus should be on the injured and their healing.” According to a study done by the New York Police Department (NYPD), in many cases, active shooters like James Holmes, have been younger males that are generally loners but subject to defiant outbursts and emotional instability. They also tend to have a history of violence, exhibit high frustration levels, behave erratically, harbor extremist views, incessantly complain and blame others, and exhibit threatening behavior. In some cases, a person who becomes an active shooter will exhibit certain behaviors leading up to the actual attack, including changes in hygiene, paranoia, dramatic mood swings, obsessively thinking about weapons, or psychotic episodes. In many cases, active shooters have relationship problems and a history of social marginalization. Typically, they also experience a considerable amount of frustration and failure. Active shooters often engage in fantasizing about, planning and rehearsing their attacks for weeks, months or longer, prior to an attack. (Morag, 2014) It was learned after-the-fact that Holmes' psychiatrist feared him and did notify the school and campus police of her concerns. It appears that the University of Colorado did not consider Holmes' mental instability, its responsibility to address because he withdrew from the school. It must be recognized whether in a school setting, the workplace or a public setting, an active shooting incident can be prevented with the help of the citizens.
...mes’ lifestyle. Holmes, throughout his life was a criminal. Holmes desire to murder people was believed to come from from his desensitized feeling about dead bodies. This was due to his medical career. As mentioned earlier, when Holmes was in medical school, he had many dealings with cadavers and was very familiar with them. Later, when he began killing he did not look at the bodies as human beings, but as material or later, cash money. This relationship between crime and deviance is mainly why I choose this book. I feel that H. H. Holmes, although Holmes was a strange and demented man, was very successful. This success questions what makes people successful: is it your status, education, or was it his determination?
A review of Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City reveal that McVeigh grew up the All-American boy, who grew increasingly dissatisfied with the level of governmental control of individual’s freedoms and constitutional rights specifically the Second Amendment which afforded citizens the right to bear arms. A known gun collector and survivalist, McVeigh taking direction from the novel “The Turner Diaries” grew more paranoid in his perception of the government’s stance on gun control and the anti-semitic views expressed by the novel’s neo-Nazi author William Pierce who wrote of race wars and the bombing of a federal building. (BIO).
Brian grew up on a family farm in Scott City, Kansas. He was always out on the field after schools and on the weekends. Not only did Brian attend Kansas State University, but he also had intentions of pursuing a medical degree. After high school,
On page 39, it describes the moment in which bullies from his school force him to go face to face with a skeleton in a doctor’s office. Such a terrible experience truly could have scarred Holmes, but at the same time his comfortability with an representation of death could have prompted his killer roots. Also, the “accidental” death of Holmes’s childhood friend, at an event that Holmes was present, was another red flag in terms of potentially becoming a psychopath. We learn more of Holmes’s younger upbringing through the text in which it states,"He drifted through childhood as a small, odd, and exceptionally bright boy....in the cruel imaginations of his peers, he became prey" (Larson, 38) Holmes was essentially an outcast, a person who has been rejected by society or a social group. He was the target of many because of his oddness and rather unique characteristics. With no solid upbringing, and a probable fascination with death, Holmes was bound to be the infamous serial killer he became in his future.
On July 20th 2012 a lone gunman later identified later as James Holmes entered Century 16 Movie Theater in Aurora, Colorado to inflict deliberate harms against civilians with no identifiable reasoning. Holmes, dressed from head to toe in body armor opened fire on a crowd of 70 moviegoers, killing 12 thus labeling this event as a mass shooting. Within 60 seconds, James Holmes was able cause anarchy before police apprehend him. Though the events of the shooting were horrific it did spark a nationwide debate on how we look at the security of public places trying to prevent or minimize future incidents.
Holmes and Holmes developed this typology based on various characteristics of the crime scenes and the victims themselves of 110 interviews of selected offenders and serial murders (Canter & Wentink, 2004). David Canter and Natalia Wentink conducted an empirical test of this typology and developed several criticisms to their work. Their empirical test concluded that the features described for each category tend to co-occur within each other. For example, the characteristics of a lust killer include a controlled crime scene, evidence of torture, the body being moved, a specific type of victim, no weapon left at the crime scene, and rape; all of these features are also included for the thrill killer. This makes it difficult to categorize these
With all of the women in Holmes’ life it would seem Holmes had every opportunity given to him to settle down and live a normal life. So why would he continue down the path he was? Out of all the women in Holmes’ life it was his second wife, Myrtle Z. Bellman’s father Holmes tried to swindle and kill, he was unsuccessful (America’s Serial Killers).
Tom Sawyer, a mischievous, brave, and daring boy that goes through adventures in love, murder, and treasure. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is about a boy maturing from a whimsical troublemaker into a caring young man. In the "conclusion" Mark Twain writes, "It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much farther without becoming a history of a man" Tom is now maturing throughout a span of adventures in love, treasure, and everyday life that make him more of an adult, then a boy.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of the character Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. He was a Scottish writer and physician, he wrote many things in his life. Doyle did not just write detective mysteries he also fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. Even though he wrote many other thing he is mostly well known for writing all of the canon Sherlock stories. Doyle himself had a career in the medical field there he meet many influential people to base his characters from. A letter was found where he wrote to one of his colleagues whose name was Joseph Bell that the most important traits of his character Sherlock was mostly based on him. Bell himself had the career title of forensic
...he met the detective, fell victim to Moriarty’s games. “Moriarty is playing with your mind too. Can’t you see what’s going on!” (Sherlock). During Holmes’ last days before his faked suicide, he pleads with John to see reason through Jim’s manipulations, as does Desdemona with Othello’s accusations. Even Sherlock’s oldest friend Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade was doubting Holmes’ credibility.
Over the last decade or so, the United States of America has been shaken by an epidemic of terrifying mass shootings, devastating slayings of unexpecting victims, and unnerving annihilations of the innocent. There is no specific target, no explicitly sought-out group, nor definite individual. From a classroom of first-graders, to a crowded movie theatre, to a U.S. Naval yard, the location seems at most, random, other than that it is almost always a public place. The perpetrators responsible for these horrific murders also vary, and often surprise those who thought they knew them. However, while the occurrences of mass shootings are unpredictable and always shocking, most have one thing in common: the use, or rather misuse, of assault weapons-automatic or semiautomatic military style rifles. To ensure the safety, security, and well-being of the people of the United States, the government should ban assault weapons.
news in a BBC accent. No one will take the news seriously if its read
Using the Psychoanalytical approach, Freud might say that Holmes’s life long killing spree was caused by Holmes’s unconscious aggressive and sexual urges. When Holmes was a child, a mother who devoted herself to the Methodist church instead of her children raised him, and this could have some connection to why Holmes acted out the way he did. Holmes got pleasure from hurting others, and death did not scare him. This could’ve been caused because he never got the love and nurturing he needed from his mother. Aggression is something that children who have parents that don’t give them enough love and attention are more prominent to having. The child will begin to resent the mother and father, and I believe that this was shown through whom he killed and the way he did. Holmes could have picked victims only being female with blonde hair because they unconsciously reminded him of his mother, and he was letting out the resentment and aggression he felt towards her because of how she treated him in the early years of his life. This resentment towards his mother could have been so built up that she’s the reason he did not feel remorse when torturing and killing mass
Weber, Paul. “Fort Hood Gunman Sought Mental Health Treatment.” The Associated Press News Service [Texas] 3 Apr. 2014: n. pag. NewsBank Special Reports. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
Dr. James Sawyer, the first person I would see every morning in the band room for first hour, my freshman year. I have never met anyone with much wisdom and respect for all people. Doc, fills a room with joy and reverence, he can make someone smile without speaking. He was not only my band director for four years, he is a mentor and a friend, someone I trust and look up to. Everyday, he would enlighten us, give us advice on being better students and people in society. I have kept a moral that Dr. Sawyer constantly reminded us of. He told us that one of our purposes in life was to help others. In any way we could help them, whether it was opening the door for a busy person, or directing them to the correct location. It did not make a difference of how famous we would become before we died or how wealthy we were. So