Early reporting of the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012 revealed that the alleged lone gunman, James Holmes, had intended a much higher death toll than he actually achieved because he had rigged his apartment off campus with home made explosives set to go off on anyone who opened his door. Aurora, Colorado, Chief of Police, Dan Oates revealed this information to the media in his first press briefing, stating that James Holmes allegedly told officers upon his arrest that he had booby trapped his apartment with explosives meant to go off on first responders. As you will soon see, however, the notion that the explosives were set to go off on first responders is highly unlikely and most likely an out and out lie.
According to the official story developing during the first week, James Holmes had left loud music playing at his apartment just around midnight on July 19, 2012 and had left the door unlocked. Only one song played over and over again on repeat. It would be an aggressive, annoying techno song intermixed with the sounds of gunshots, apparently meant to annoy neighbors into coming to the door of his apartment and opening his door thereby setting off a booby-trapped apartment full of explosives.
The Chief of Police had indicated to the press that the bombs were set to go off on first responders, but that makes little sense considering the music was playing about 40 minutes PRIOR to the start of the shooting. A much more logical conclusion, therefore, is that the shooter intended someone in his apartment complex to try his door in order to investigate the loud music, thereby setting off a massive explosion PRIOR to the shooting he planned to conduct five miles away. Had it worked out this way, perhaps this explosion would have pulled every available officer away from the theater so the shooter would have more time to conduct his shooting spree and perhaps even flee the scene before enough police response arrived.
Let’s set aside for a moment the seemingly flawed logic of taking the time to set a booby trap for first responders and THEN telling them about it before they actually set it off. Let’s also set aside multiple reports that the shooter was docile when he was arrested and in the same condition he was at his first court appearance two days later in which he appeared unable to say a word or understand what was happening to him. Despite these two things, here is what official sources revealed happened that evening and early morning.
The day following the shooting, Kaitlyn Fonzi would be interviewed by foxnews.com. Kaitlyn is believed to be a downstairs neighbor of James Holmes and was credited as one of the first who reported to have heard the music playing at James Holmes apartment on July 19th/20th around midnight. In an interview aired on local television, Kaitlyn claims to have lived in the same apartment complex as James Holmes and recalls how the music was so loud and annoying that she went upstairs to say something about it. In one taped interview Kaitlyn simply recalls banging on his door and being thankful he wasn’t home. In another interview she would claim to have knocked and, when no one answered, she tried the doorknob and found that it was unlocked. Then, for some unexplained reason, she suddenly had a “bad feeling” about opening the door and simply left. This much more dramatic version of the events surely led some to believe that a miracle had surely happened. Had she opened the door and set off the bombs inside, surely she and many others at the apartment that night would have been killed and all available police and fire units likely would have been called to the scene and therefore be miles away from the theater before the shooting started in theater nine.
The interview with Kaitlyn Fonzi certainly made for high drama, but does it really support the claim that the explosives were designed to go off on first responders? In an article by the Huffington Post posted July 21, 2012, for example, Chief of Police Dan Oates is quoted to have said to that the booby trapped apartment was rigged to kill first responders and that “It was going to be a police officer.” Further, he adds, “We sure as hell are angry.” So one has to ask the question, if James Holmes rigged his apartment to kill cops, why does he play music so loudly and leave the door unlocked so any neighbor could have opened the door? And, if he intended to kill cops, why does he immediately tell them about it upon his arrest? The story just doesn’t make sense to me. However, in the conspiracy world one possible explanation for why the shooter would give up information about his rigged apartment is that it no longer served its intended purpose, which was to create a diversion. Since it didn’t go off as planned perhaps the shooter found no reason for the trap to go off and kill cops.
Again, one must remember that some conspiracy theorists surmise that members of local law enforcement may have actually been in on the set up of the mass shooting and thus perhaps the conspirators didn’t want fellow officers being killed needlessly. There is NO proof of that, only speculation by conspiracy theorists. It is interesting to note, however, that the shooter did not fire on a single police officer even though Dan Oates admits police were there at the theater “immediately” after the shooting started. It is also interesting to note that the shooter was dressed identically to all the other police responding save for a non-regulation gas mask. It is also interesting to note that an older style police car vehicle was reported “fleeing the scene” in the early aftermath. Lastly, we are told the shooter warns police about his booby trapped apartment rather than allowing the explosives to kill police officers who may be sent to his apartment as first responders. It would almost appear as if the shooter only wanted to kill civilians, (either at the apartment or theater) but not police officers.
Also interesting to note is that this apartment on Paris street where James Holmes allegedly lived was NOT the same address listed on his vehicle registration. University of Colorado school officials would claim that James Holmes was starting the process of dropping out of school by June 10, 2012 based on an email James sent to “campus officials”. In the email he simply stated he was quitting school. There was no explanation given for his withdrawal and Barry Shur of University of Colorado would explain that it was “VERY unusual for a student to withdraw from our program.” We are going to explore the reasons James was dropping out of school in future posts. But for now it is important to note that James Holmes had, within the last month, started to drop out of school and planned to move off campus. By the first week of July, James Holmes was allegedly looking for an apartment off campus. While living on campus, James shared an apartment with a couple of roommates. He would finally settle into a new apartment on Paris street just weeks before the shooting.
What exactly led to James Holmes dropping out of school and moving out of his apartment with roommates into this new apartment on Paris is still a mystery. Much of James Holmes behavior and personality while attending the University of Colorado remained locked down under un unprecedented judicial gag-order. Students and staff at the Anschutz Campus who would have known Holmes or worked with him were literally ordered to remain silent. No friends of James Holmes have come forward from the school and some news sources spin that silence to suggest that he had no friends, ignoring the fact that anyone who knows anything about James Holmes had been court-ordered to remain silent. Neighbors who supposedly lived in the apartments with or around James Holmes, most of which had to be evacuated after the shooting due to his booby-trapped apartment, only vaguely remember seeing someone who might have looked like James Holmes coming and going from the apartment on occasion on a bike. At least one resident of his apartments that was interviewed on television claims that she knows EVERYONE in the complex and had never seen James Holmes, not even once. The news would spin this information as meaning that James Holmes was reclusive and didn’t talk to anybody in his neighborhood.
So to reiterate, just weeks before the shooting, James Holmes had mysteriously moved off campus and into this new apartment on Paris. According to a local newscast aired after the shooting, two residents of an apartment building a half block from where James Holmes allegedly lived claim that James Holmes approached them on July 4th asking if there were any vacancies in the apartment where they were staying. Carl Allen and Rosando Caselles both describe the event on camera, but it is Carl Allen who gives the most damaging report of James Holmes. Carl described James Holmes as having a “cold look in his eyes” the day he asked them about the apartment. He then says that when he and Rosando later saw James Holmes on television after the shooting that the hair on their necks stood up because they recognized him as the man who had come asking them about apartments just weeks before the shooting.
But here is where it gets interesting to a conspiracy theorist like me. Carl Allen would reveal on camera that he used to live in New York. The reader would do well to remember that Chief of Police Dan Oates also comes from New York city and is firmly in charge of the local investigation at this time. Carl would have nothing but high praise for the local police department and their handling of the case despite the fact that he himself was displaced while residents were evacuated in the days after the shooting and were left without power for days. More astonishing, perhaps, is that later Carl Allen would become an eyewitness to an arsonist setting a fire at his apartment building where two people would be killed a week after the shooting. Carl Allen would be portrayed as a hero, said to have rescued victims as they jumped out of windows to avoid being burned to death in the fire that the arsonist had set. That fire in itself is suspicious and I plan to discuss theories on that in a future post.
Going back now to the night of the shooting, it was around 3:30am, according to official sources, that attention was starting to turn toward James Home’s apartment. News reporters had discovered the location of his apartment and were now on the scene at Paris street in North Aurora. By 5:35am, the FBI would be reporting that the suspect James Holmes had told them he had explosives at his apartment. On Good Morning America later that morning the show hosts would mention that over 100 FBI agents were on the ground in Aurora already following the shooting. The early stories suggesting James Holmes self-reported his booby trapped apartment seems very unusual since other reports coming in from police officers themselves say the shooter was “not talking to anyone” and later that they had no clue what his motive was. One has to ask why a person who is looking for a large death toll and went to the trouble of rigging up his apartment with explosives would just openly tell them about it and not allow his carefully laid trap to be sprung.
Oddly enough, according to local 9News reporter Jeremy Jojola, for some reason James Holmes also allegedly rigged up a complex remote detonator and placed it on a remote control vehicle that he left outside of his apartment in hopes that someone would just randomly walk by and play with the car, setting off the explosion. If THAT information is true then again I will maintain it’s highly unlikely Holmes planned the explosion to go of on first responders. That statement by the police seems to be pure propaganda. The case will continue to be riddled with these kinds of inconsistencies in logic. Why for example, would James Holmes rely on some random stranger passing by at midnight to play with a remote control car if it was a critical part of his plan to draw police away from the theater?
Again, Dan Oates makes a point to say that the shooter intended the explosives to go off on first responders and that they are “mad as hell about it” but that simply seems unlikely. First responders would only have been in danger if they had been sent to the apartment AFTER the shooting and did not know of the explosives. The only other time “first responders” would have been sent to the apartment was if the explosives had ALREDY GONE OFF before the shooting and were sent there to respond to the injured. It seems clear, therefore, that the explosives were NOT set for first responders, but for civilians. And, as we have seen, when the explosives did not go off as intended, the shooter alerts first responders of the explosives at the apartment thereby actually protecting first responders from harm.
However, Garrett Gumbinner, a bomb tech for the FBI, would later testify at James Holmes’ preliminary hearing that James had told officers the evening of his arrest that he had intended the apartment explosion to divert attention away from the theater. That, to me, makes FAR more sense than the notion it was set to go off on first responders. I can’t reiterate this point enough. The Chief of Police tells us James Holmes intended the booby trapped apartment to go off on first responders and they were mad as hell about it. Later it comes out from the FBI that James admitted the purpose of the booby trapped apartment was to create a diversion. Why then did the Chief of Police lie about the motivation and try to paint Holmes as a cop killer? This is yet another in a series of false information coming out of the police department. Why?