Arguably the single most damaging piece of information implicating James Holmes as the lone gunman came out in the first week following the shooting. It was only days after the event that we would first hear of the infamous “notebook” that James Holmes allegedly mailed to the University of Colorado. The official story goes like this.
According to FoxNews.com, on July 12th, 2012 (eight days before the shooting), James Holmes would mail a package to the University of Colorado. Inside the package was a notebook containing, among other things, stick figure drawings depicting the horrible deeds James intended to carry out in just a little over a week. The package, it was said, would be addressed to his university psychologist and doctor, Dr. Lynn Fenton and was portrayed by James Holmes defense team as a possible “plea for help”.
I want to stop for a moment here to address something that has not been brought up before. Yes, according to official reporting, James Holmes was seeing a university psychologist for possible signs of schizophrenia. In my research I have found that schizophrenia often presents itself for the first time in young, twenty something year old males, so the diagnosis is not out of the question. Having said that, one should remember by James Holmes own admission that he was working on things such as Temporal Illusions (or using psychoactive drugs to alter people’s perception of time and memory. I’ll have more to say about Dr. Lynn Fenton in a forthcoming blog. For the moment lets set aside James’ potential mental disorder and focus on the “evidence” presented against him.
According to the official story, the package James sent to his doctor a week before the shooting detailing his plans to kill innocent people, would somehow go undelivered to Dr. Fenton and be mysteriously just left sitting discarded in the University mailroom only to be discovered days AFTER the tragic event. The million dollar question everyone in the public was asking was, IF that package had been delivered as it should have been, could this whole tragedy have been avoided? Tragically, the University came under fire for sloppy handling of the mail and found itself being partially to blame for allowing it to happen.
It would later be revealed however, that the facts surrounding the date and method of delivery of the mysterious “notebook” were entirely untrue. At the heart of the confusion would be information obtained by Fox News from yet another undisclosed and secret “law enforcement insider”. Just like in the previous ABCNews false news stories, reporters stood by their erroneous information citing unnamed “law enforcement insiders” as the source of their false information. It is interesting to me how many times the media reported false and damning information coming directly out of law enforcements mouth. Why? At its best, it appears to be negligent police work or a loose tongue within the department. At its worst, the conspiracy will suggest blatant police corruption with evidence of law enforcement tampering with and even the possible planting false evidence to incriminate James Holmes for a crime he may or may not have committed.
The story behind the discovery of infamous notebook is almost too crazy to believe. First of all, the entire reason the notebook was found in the first place was supposedly due to a separate letter that was found slipped under Dr. Lynne Fenton’s door, allegedly from James Holmes himself. This letter prompted law enforcement agencies to suddenly swarm the University of Colorado mailroom looking for any OTHER mail or packages that might be there from James Holmes and thereby they simply “found” the mysteriously discarded and undelivered package from James Homes containing what amounts to a full blown confessions complete with hand drawn pictures of how he planned to do it.
It is super interesting to note by the way, that mysterious “letter” that prompted law enforcement to search the mailroom in the first place turned out to not actually be from James Holmes after at all. Despite the fact that the letter was SAID to be from James Holmes and was not, it was all the reason law enforcement needed to conduct a full blown search of the University mailroom and conveniently turn up the alleged notebook. The conspiracy theory community was skeptical to say the least and so many of us dug further into how this notebook suddenly appeared and went undelivered for over a week. In a shocking turn of events, it was later proven that the notebook was NOT mailed on the 12th as reported by FoxNews, NOR did it sit undelivered in the mailroom since the 12th as originally reported.
When it was reported in the news that the package containing James Holmes notebook had just carelessly been overlooked and had been sitting in the University of Colorado mailroom for over a week, the University responded by saying it was impossible and demanded that Fox News retract the story. Fox News, however, stood by their erroneous statement due to their firm faith in their law enforcement insider’s trustworthiness who had told them about it. As the controversy began to build around the delivery of the alleged notebook, an interesting thing happened. The U.S. Postal Inspector Greg McGahey went on public record and confirmed that the package containing the notebook was not postmarked until July 20th (the day of the shooting)!!!! Furthermore, what this meant to the Postal Inspector was that the package would have to have been placed in the mail sometime AFTER the last mail pickup on the 19th but sometime BEFORE the shooting at 12:39am the next morning on the 20th.
But stop right there! What’s being cleverly glossed over here is that the package could have been mailed at any time after the last mail pick up on the 19th and any time before the LAST pick up the 20th. The only reason the postal inspector says it has to have been mailed before 12:39am on the 20th is because he already believes that only James Holmes could have mailed that notebook. But in reality ANYONE could have placed that notebook in the mail at any time before the last mail pickup on the 20th and it would have still received the July 20th postmark! Think about that for a moment. In other words, if there is a conspiracy to set up James Holmes as the lone gunman in the shooting, the conspirators could have placed the incriminating evidence that implicates James Holmes (literally stick figure drawings of the shooting) at any time AFTER the shooting took place but before the last mail pick up that day.
When news reporter Jana Winter of FoxNews.com was confronted with the evidence that the package as not post marked until July 20th, unbelievably she stuck by her initial story that the package was delivered on July 12th, citing a “law enforcement insider” as her source. She refused to give up the name of who had leaked her that information even when the Judge in the case threatened legal action to get her to turn over the name. Eventually, Fox News would be forced to retract their story and apologize for reporting false information, but again, they stood by their faith in the law enforcement insider who gave them the information.
So now not only did we know that Fox News was caught falsely reporting the date of the mailed package (claiming it was mailed a full week before it was actually mailed) but we also knew that the source behind this false information came from law-enforcement themselves. This should call for a serious investigation into who the law enforcement insider is leaking all this false information but no such inquiry has ever been made.
To make matters even worse, despite there being a massive investigation ongoing, law enforcement officials later admitted that they “accidently” tainted the evidence in the case when they opened the suspicious package in the University mailroom from James Holmes without wearing gloves and thus got their fingerprints all over it! Colorado University Chief of Police, Doug Abraham, testified in court that he was the first person to touch the package on July 23rd after it was cleared by the bomb squad. When asked by the District Attorney in the case on December 10th, 2012 if he wore gloves while handling the evidence that day, the chief replied that he did not. When asked why, he simply said, “Because I was careless.” He also admits to leafing through the pages thereby getting his fingerprints all over the evidence. UNBELIEVABLE!!! If I were being overly critical of this whole notebook thing I would word it like this, “a suspicious package incriminating Holmes for the shooting shows up days AFTER the event and the police literally have their fingerprints all over it.” But that sounds nuts.
It would do well at this point to review some of the facts regarding the notebook. So far we know that a law enforcement “insider” reported the existence of a notebook to Fox News BEFORE it was ever officially even “discovered” by ANYONE. Then we find out that the notebook was not even postmarked until July 20th, 2012 (the same day as the shooting) and therefore could have been placed in the mail any time during that day before the last mail pickup (even well after the shooting). Lastly we have law enforcement admitting that their fingerprints are literally all over this key evidence!
Once the authorities had “seized” the notebook it was turned over to the prosecution in short order as part of the case against James Holmes. The defense argued for the judge to release the contents of the notebook immediately so they could review the contents themselves and prepare a proper defense but for inexplicable reasons the judge refused. Furthermore, Judge William Sylvester very quickly sealed the contents of the said notebook from the public as the defense argued over whether the contents of the notebook were protected under doctor/client privilege. Dr. Lynn Fenton would later even come to court testifying that the by the time the notebook was allegedly sent, she was no longer James Holmes doctor and therefore the notebook should NOT be protected under doctor/client privilege.
So, just who was this mysterious law enforcement insider who leaked information to Fox News? Perhaps we should look back at some of the other false news stories coming out from “law enforcement insiders”.