024 – James Holmes, the Failing Student

In the summer of 2012, as the nation sought answers for why anyone on earth would want to shoot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and senselessly kill 12 innocent people, the media began presenting possible theories and motives. One of the early theories that was presented by the media, and the one that stuck in most people’s minds, was that James Holmes was simply a college drop-out with a mental disorder who couldn’t hack it any longer in grad school, and that quite possibly the recent break up of him and his unidentified campus girlfriend, was the final straw that pushed him over the edge. Today we will examine more closely ONE of those motives – namely, that James Holmes was a college drop-out who couldn’t keep up with his coursework and was failing out of school.

What you will find if you dig just a little bit into James Holmes academic history is that James had ALWAYS been an exceptional student. Friends and students alike, throughout his educational years, described Holmes as being so bright that he never even had to study in order to remain at the top of the his class. He was so smart, in fact, that he was courted by the US government for his superior intellect and was, at the time of the shooting, quite likely involved in secret government research projects. This latter point, of course, cannot be proven due to an unprecedented gag order keeping the public from digging too deeply into what Holmes was working on at the University of Colorado. Let’s review some of the indicators that lead me to conclude Holmes likely was working on government funded research.

For starters, James Holmes’ grandfather was, himself, a linguist employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This, in itself, means little other than to demonstrate that the Holmes family is not unknown to the US government. As you will soon see, James Holmes, himself, began working for the US government even in his high school years and there is no reason to believe that this relationship didn’t continue into his college years, especially considering WHERE he choose to attend college.

According to Jeremy Jojola, a reporter from 9News in Colorado, James Holmes was an exceptional student for as long as anyone can remember. For example, James’ 5th grade teacher, Mr. Paul Karrer, described then 10 year old “Jimmy” as a top student who “stood out” from the rest of the class. Mr. Karrer referred to Jimmy as a “really bright kid” and said that “everything he did he excelled in academically” The teacher remembers that even at the age of 10, young Jimmy would create websites using basic programming skills (this was before the days of cookie cutter websites) and was doing things that he as his teacher didn’t even understand. He referred to “Jimmy” as so bright that he trusted him alone on the computer to finish his work on his computer project.” He would go on to say that “There was no sign of darkness in him when he was 10 years old. Not a glimmer, just the opposite.”

Childhood friends interviewed by Mr. Jojola from 9News also remember Holmes as a “social kid who played soccer, attended birthday parties, and was competitive in class to get the best grades.” Friends described him as “off the charts smart,” and “ highly competitive with his tests,” When asked about his actions as as an adult they are recorded as saying they “would never expect him to do something like this.” Regarding his actions then vs now one friend added, “I can’t even compare the two. It’s like oil and water.”

Sometime shortly after James Holmes finished 6th grade, Jimmy’s parents moved from their upper-middle class neighborhood in Castroville, California where their son attended Castroville Elementary, to San Diego, California (about 450 miles south). There James Holmes would attend school from 7th grade through his high school years where he attended Westview High School, a school with a reputation for graduating a large percentage of students who go on to attend college.

Former classmate, Adam Martinez, interviewed on CNN, said of young “Jimmy” Holmes that he “excelled at academics…he was top of the class…and uh…even back then he was ahead of every student academically. His intelligence you could tell…he was ahead of every student at that time.” When asked if he was “pretty normal”, Adam responds, “He wasn’t a loner as I’ve heard him depicted later” shaking his head he continues, “…he was always with every…with kids…he got along well with everybody.”

CNN reporter, Drew Griffen, continuing to comment on their research of young Jimmy Holmes, tells CNN Correspondent Wolf Blitzer, “Wolf, I can imagine anybody along the line who knew James Holmes or interacted with him is probably having that same doubt in their mind…is there anything they saw…anything they could have done along the way that could have sparked them to call authorities.”    

Wolf Blitzer’s response is VERY interesting, “The picture I see emerging…uh..correct me if I’m wrong Drew because you’ve been doing some major investigating in all this…He may have been relatively normal…pretty normal…at least until he arrived in Colorado. Is that what you’re learning?”   

Drew responds, “It seems to be and it seems to be centered around this elite neurosciences program he was involved with, which is why it’s been frustrating for me and for many reporters to get such little information out of the University of Colorado’s medical school to see exactly how he was behaving….” 

I want to stop here and point out that much of the school records are supposed to be public information, but the judge in the Holmes case instituted an unprecedented gag order and ordered the University not to release any information about James Holmes, what he was studying, what he was working on, or how he was behaving prior to the shooting. I find all of that secrecy entirely unnecessary unless one has something to hide.

Going back to his high school years for a moment, in 2006, at the age of eighteen, James Holmes would serve as a research intern at the SALK Institute at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla.  The SALK institute is a private, independent, scientific research laboratory that was, at the time at least, the world’s TOP biomedical research lab and in 2009 was also ranked as the number one globally for neurosciences and behavior areas. At the SALK institute, young James Holmes would work in the Computational Neurobiology Lab under the direction of Professor and Laboratory Head, Dr. Terrence Sejnowski.  According to the SALK institute, Dr. Sejnowski’s team uses “sophisticated electrical and chemical monitoring techniques to measure changes that occur in the connections among nerve cells in the hippocampus during a simple form of learning. They use the results of these studies to instruct large-scale computers to mimic how these nerve cells work.”   In other words, James Holmes was so smart and well-connected that he was working at the largest and most prestigious neurosciences lab in the world.

It is interesting to note that in the previous two years before James Holmes joined the Salk Institute, the research lab was known to have partnered with a government agency known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.  DARPA, in conjunction with Columbia University, University of California at San Francisco, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wake Forest University and the Mars Company (the manufacturers of Milky Way and Snickers bars) would be working on a project to prevent fatigue in combat troops.  It is therefore plausible that James Holmes, himself, was somehow involved as a young intern in some of these projects that were researching how to make better, faster, smarter soldiers. James Holmes would graduate from Westview High School in San Diego in 2006.

At a summer science camp that year, James would give a presentation about some of the things he had been working on lately.  He was introduced to his classmates as having an interest in soccer and strategy games. His dream, they said, was to one day own his own Slurpee machine.  During his presentation to the science camp, James Holmes spoke about his recent work in the field of “Temporal Illusion”.  Temporal illusion, as it turns out, deals with the mind’s ability to recall events and perceive time.  Researchers in the field of temporal illusion use psychoactive drugs on patients to alter their sense of time and judgement. Different drugs can cause humans to overestimate time intervals or underestimate time intervals depending on the drugs administered to them.  Other techniques used by researchers in this field are using hypnosis and altered emotional states to affect a persons’ perception of time.  For me, this is HIGHLY freaking interesting! So James Holmes specifically admitted to being involved in research related to using psychoactive drugs and hypnosis to alter a person’s perception of time and memory!

After high school, James went on to complete his undergraduate work at a local area college. Timothy P. White, chancellor at the University of California, Riverside, where Holmes earned his undergraduate degree, once again confirmed the consistent story about James Holmes’ academic work. He confirmed for reporters that James Holmes, “..was at the top of the top” academically. James Holmes would graduate from the University of California, Riverside, with honors, in the top 1% of his class, with a GPA of a whopping 3.949. He would later graduate from the University of California in 2010 with a bachelors degree in neurosciences four years after enrolling.

During his time at the University of California, James Holmes would also be a member of the Golden Key Honors Society, an academic society that both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had once belonged to themselves. Crazy conspiracy theorists such as myself have long known that academic societies and secret societies usually go hand in hand and that many times members of military intelligence communities like the CIA are also members of academic or secret societies while attending college. Members of these organizations frequently maintain those connections and pledges of secrecy for years after graduating. Being invited to become a member of these types of societies in your college years is often a sign that rich and powerful people have their eyes set on you and are setting the young student up for success and leadership in government. While it cannot be definitively proven, you can almost be certain there were very powerful people who would be keeping their eye on this promising young man’s career. Jeremy Jojola would confirm that James Holmes’ General Test scores (or GRE scores that are often used for college placement) were extremely high and that colleges and universities were courting him “aggressively”.

Oddly enough, 9News reporter, Jeremy Jojola, would find it nearly impossible to find anyone who even remembers James Holmes attending college. Not even people who graduated with James Holmes in his same class seem to remember him (or at least wouldn’t talk about it). Unfortunately, and something that is really frustrating to us crazy conspiracy theorists, is that the one professor that Jeremy Jojola found who actually vividly remembered James Holmes, and even wrote a recommendation letter for him, could not go on record with the reporter about James Holmes at all because he was under a court ordered gag order that prohibited him from speaking about the matter.

James Holmes, at age 24, was freshly out of undergraduate school and was receiving multiple grant offers from various colleges. It it interesting to note that the University of Illinois offered James Holmes a higher grant offer than that of University of Colorado and even offered him free tuition.  For reasons unknown, however, James Holmes turned down the offer from University of Illinois in favor of attending the University of Colorado. Perhaps it could be that Holmes found better opportunities for him in Colorado considering his past government work for DARPA. Aurora, Colorado, for example, is located within 70 miles of a whopping 7 major military bases. In fact, reporters have now confirmed that at least four of the twelve people killed in the shootings in Aurora were military personnel.

In the fall of 2011, James Holmes would start a pursuit of his PhD in the field of neurosciences at the University of Colorado.  During his time at the University, he would be a resident of the Anschutz Medical Campus (formerly the U.S. Army’s Fitzsimons Army Medical Center), a military hospital and research center converted to the private sector and funded by a $91 million grant from the Anschutz Foundation.  James Holmes would be one of only six recipients of a National Institutes of Health Neuroscience Training grant in the amount of $21,600, notably just enough money to finance his approximately $20,000 in weapons and ammunition he would allegedly purchase in the months ahead.  

Limited information coming from the University months after the shooting confirms that James Holmes was working in a research laboratory at the Anschutz medical campus (former military hospital) where animals were housed, though as of yet the University refuses to discuss what exactly James Holmes’s research involved, citing privacy laws against releasing that kind of information.   Research physicians at the medical campus where James Holmes attended were later interviewed by detectives and told by them that James Holmes was a “brilliant student”. 

Sometime in May of 2012, just months before the shooting, James Holmes would give a presentation at the Anschutz medical campus at the University of Colorado on the topic of Micro DNA Biomarkers for a class entitled “Biological Basis of Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders.”  These highly scientific sounding topics seem a bit incompatible with the depiction of a drop out student having difficulty maintaining his grades.

As ordered by the court, the University of Colorado also has refused to say what exactly James Holmes was working on during his time at the University and/or what government projects he may have been assisting with in the field of neuroscience. We can, however, reasonably assume that Holmes was indeed working on government sponsored research based on what we know of his history.

As far as I can tell, in the months preceding the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado on July 20^th, 2012, James Eagan Holmes was a brilliant doctoral candidate with a superior intellect.  He was one of only half a dozen students accepted that year into the University of Colorado’s elite neurosciences degree program and was given a full ride scholarship.  As undergraduate in San Diego, California, James Holmes had graduated with honors and was universally well liked and well respected by his peers.  Just prior to the shooting, all indications were James Eagan Holmes had a long and brilliant career ahead of him. In just a few weeks before the shooting Holmes would inexplicably move off campus, email the school to announce he was dropping out, and would be reportedly seen with two new strange individuals who followed him everywhere. So what changed in the last few weeks before the shooting?