CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Aurora theater shooter James Holmes said he committed mass murder to save his own life.
“I kind of transferred my suicidal thoughts into homicidal,” he said in a psychiatric evaluation interview screened to the courtroom Friday during his trial. These homicidal thoughts kept him from wanting to kill himself, he said.
The interview, conducted by psychiatrist William Reid over five days in late summer 2014, indicates that Holmes struggled with mental illnesses like depression and anxiety since middle school. The prosecution also intended to show that he knew firing into a crowded theater was a crime, which would make him sane—and eligible for the death penalty.
Months before his July 20, 2012 attack on the Century 16 movie theater, after his classmate Hillary Allen had her apartment broken into, Holmes bought a taser and knife online. He told Reid the items had been purchased for self-defense. But he avoided pursuing a romantic relationship with Allen because of the attack he was planning.Â
“I didn’t want her to be the girlfriend of a murderer,” he said.
Criminology graduate student Kathryn Boughton said in an interview that statements like these discredit Holmes’ insanity defense.
“He distanced himself from Hillary,” said Boughton, who is developing a thesis at Regis University about this trial and the insanity plea. “He was able to form the culpable mental state. It’s the second of the two prongs of legal sanity.”
She was referring to Colorado’s definition of insanity, which states someone is criminally insane if he “suffered from a condition of mind caused by mental disease or defect that prevented the person from forming a culpable mental state that is an essential element of a crime charged.”
Holmes also made other statements in the interview that point to his sanity, Boughton said.  One example is that he said he felt “nervous” about the impending shooting.
“That’s a slight indicator that he knew it was wrong,” Boughton said.
Further, Holmes was paranoid that the FBI was following him before the attack. “I was about to commit a crime, so I wondered if they knew,” he said during the evaluation.
“That’s huge,” Boughton said. “He knew it was a crime.”
Reid’s psychiatric evaluation marks the first time since opening statements that the courtroom has heard from the defendant himself. Jurors watched the evaluation video Thursday afternoon and, except for brief interjectory testimony from Reid, all day Friday. Next week, the prosecution will play the rest of the 22 total hours of video to attempt to demonstrate the defendant’s sanity at the time of his attack.
On film, Holmes answered questions with the characteristically blunt answers his professors and classmates have testified about previously. Reid often had to request specifics or ask questions multiple times to get the defendant to answer adequately.
Holmes said that his parents had a close and loving relationship, that he was mostly “a happy guy” during high school and college, and that his relationship with his first girlfriend was “a successful one.” However, he said that he has suffered from serious anxiety for much of his life.
Reid explained during his testimony that most people who suffer from social anxiety react with either fight or flight. Holmes, however, said he “freezes” when he feels anxious.
It was during these moments of social anxiety that he first experienced the compulsion to kill. “I would have violent images,” he said. “They just pop up randomly…since, like, high school.”
The images include acute violence like “saws going against other people,” Holmes said, and large scale nuclear explosions.
Though he categorized these images as compulsions, Holmes did admit that he willfully chose to imagine violence toward others to push out thoughts of self-harm. This tendency was exacerbated when he began plotting mass murder during a serious bout of depression in early 2012.
The defendant was recovering from mononucleosis, a painful breakup and academic failure. Instead of just imagining violent images, he began to accumulate weapons and protective gear. After buying a shotgun, he knew he would carry out the attack.
“I was committed,” he said.
Still, Holmes nervously expected FBI intervention even on his drive to the theater.
When Reid asked if he maybe hoped he was under FBI surveillance, Holmes said “Yes. So they could have done the right thing.” Reid asked what he meant by that.
“Locked me away before I did it,” Holmes said.
CU News Corps’ coverage of the psychiatric evaluation video will resume Monday, June 1.
Editors note: CU News Corps will honor the victims of the shooting in every post via this graphic.Â
