Just found this, new reports blaming his rampage on failing an exam, which he felt may have disappointed his daddy:
Did Dark Knight gunman snap after failing to meet expectations of brilliant academic father? Colorado killer bought arsenal of weapons after failing key university exam Last updated at 9:10 PM, 25 Jul 2012
James Holmes mailed a notebook 'full of details about how he was going to kill people' to a psychiatrist - but it wasn't discovered until after attack
Father Robert Holmes has glittering career and several degrees
Experts suggest stress of following in father's over-achieving footsteps may have caused him to snap
Former teachers and mentors of alleged gunman debunk idea he is a brilliant genius
Described as 'mediocre' and 'average'
The Dark Knight gunman bought a terrifying arsenal of weapons after he failed a key university exam, it was revealed today, leading experts to believe he may have snapped under the pressure of meeting the expectations of his brilliant academic father.
^topDetails emerged today about the glittering career of James Holmes' father Robert, who has degrees from Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley and currently works as a senior scientist at FICO in San Diego.
Police now believe they are moving closer towards a possible motive for the senseless massacre as just three days after the alleged gunman failed an exam, he dropped out of the University of Colorado's neurosciences program with no explanation as to why.
Experts have suggested that it may have been the stress of failing the exam coupled with the pressure to follow in his father's over-achieving footsteps which triggered an underlying mental illness.
Marisa Randazzo, a psychologist who studies targeted violence, told ABC: 'All of those things could actually make dormant schizophrenia come out, and come out relatively quickly.'
^topRobert Holmes, 61, is a statistician and senior scientist who received his PhD from the University of California.
Both he and his wife Arlene - a licensed registered nurse - are highly regarded and respected in their upscale area of San Diego, where Holmes grew up.
His younger sister Chris is a student at San Diego Sate University.
The street is filled with well-kept, two-story houses and most of the children who play sports on the street are those who grow up expecting to be sent to college.
It is a close-knit community where everyone knows each other. Neighbors have said they are 'floored' by the accusations against Holmes, who they describe as a quiet 'brainiac' from a church-going family.
Margie Aguilar told UT San Diego: 'His parents are really nice people, very personable. You’d never think it would happen to a family like that.'
^topIt also emerged today that Holmes mailed a notebook 'full of details about how he was going to kill people' to a University of Colorado psychiatrist before the attack, but it sat unopened in a mail room for as long as a week.
It was only discovered on Monday, according to Fox News, four days after the senseless massacre.
A search of the campus mail room turned up the package which had Holmes' name in the return address. It had been there since July 12 and is not clear why it had not been delivered to the psychiatrist.
A law enforcement source told Fox that once they obtained a warrant to open the package, its chilling contents were revealed.
^topHe said: 'Inside the package was a notebook full of details about how he was going to kill people. There were drawings of what he was going to do in it - drawings and illustrations of the massacre.'
Among the images shown in the spiral-bound notebook’s pages were gun-wielding stick figures blowing away other stick figures.
Though initial reports have portrayed the alleged Colorado gunman as a brilliant genius - just like his father - reports have emerged today debunking this and suggesting he was just an average student.
After graduating from Westview High School in 2006, Holmes went on to complete an eight-week internship at the Salk Institute and Miramar College’s biotechnology boot camp, which is known to draw bright, ambitious kids.
Neuroscientist and former researcher at the Salk Institute David Eagleman told USA Today Holmes' credentials were no better than those of an average student and had the reputation as a 'dolt'.
^top'He was just a second-year grad student,' he said. 'He didn't know anything. He wasn't any form of super scientist when he was 18.'
John Jacobson, another researcher at the institute, said Holmes 'should not have gotten into the summer program. His grades were mediocre. I've heard him described as brilliant. This is extremely inaccurate.'
He added that his high-school transcripts were a B average and he was only accepted on to the camp because he had done computer programming.
Though Holmes was one of six students admitted to the University of Colorado's graduate program in neuroscience last year, received a $26,000 federal stipend for it, Mr Eagleman said it should not suggest any kind of brilliance.
'Holmes is being depicted as some sort of brilliant researcher who won a rare grant,' he told USA Today. 'But there are thousands of research students in this country with such grants. Everyone has one. There is nothing elite about it.'
^topThe news comes the day after it emerged that Holmes has been forced to wear a face guard as he keeps spitting at the guards there.
It was also revealed that when authorities placed evidence bags over the 24-year-old's hands to preserve gunshot residue, he began playing with them as if they were two puppets, the sources told CALL7.
He is being held in isolation at the Arapahoe County Jail but the continual spitting has forced authorities to cover his face while he is being moved.
According to reports, the neuroscience graduate was adopted and Mrs Holmes, 58, and husband Robert, 61, a software developer, raised him as one of their own.
^topThe reports come just one day after Holmes's startling first appearance in court on Monday, where he rolled his eyes, stared directly ahead and swayed from side to side.
He also displayed a disheveled mop of orange hair, apparently fading from the red he had dyed it in an attempt to resemble Batman's arch nemesis, The Joker.
He stayed silent throughout the appearance at Arapahoe County Court and at times appeared as if he was under heavy medication.
But a jail employee has claimed that the 12-minute catatonic appearance was an act, not the result of any drugs.
'We don’t just hand out meds,' the Arapahoe County Detention Center worker told the New York Daily News. 'It just doesn’t work like that. If he was acting sleepy, he was faking it.'
^topThe source added: 'I heard he’s not cooperating. He’s trying to act crazy. I know the people here believe it’s an act, but only he knows for sure.'
Dr Joan Neff, a criminologist from the University of Virginia, told MailOnline that Holmes' appearance was consistent with someone who was suffering from a mental illness, such as schizophrenia.
She said this would also explain why he dropped out of his PhD so abruptly.
'We know that certain types of psychoses tend to have an onset in the early 20s; if that's the case he may be in the midst of coping with that. He may not know what's going on,' she said.
Alternatively, she said the conditions of his jailing - especially for someone who has never been in trouble with the law - may have brought on an episode.
^top'Sometimes that can be an experience in and of itself,' Dr Neff said. 'So his appearance is not very surprising.'
Jailors at the facility agreed Holmes has been acting bizarrely ever since arriving and 'thinks he's acting in a movie', they told the New York Daily News
'He was spitting at the door and spitting at the guards,' a released inmate said outside the jail. 'He’s spitting at everything. Dude was acting crazy.'
Mental illness is something the suspected gunman would be educated in, after completing a neuroscience degree before dropping out of his PhD program last month.
^topHolmes was previously awarded a $26,000 federal grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, part of the US Department of Health.
The sum covered a stipend and his tuition at the University of Colorado in Denver. He was one of six neuroscience students at the school to receive the money, WNEW News reported.
As well as mental illness, there have been other suggestions at a motive, including reports Holmes had recently split from a girlfriend and the fact he had been struggling in school before dropping out.
Whatever the cause, families are now reacting to the killings by unleashing lawsuits on the Century 16 Theater where the shooting took place, Holmes' doctors and Warner Brothers.
TMZ reported that Torrence Brown, Jr. was in the cinema when Holmes shot dead 12 people and wounded another 58.
^topOne of his friends, 18-year-old A.J. Boik, was killed in the massacre, and Brown is now suffering from extreme trauma, according to his attorney Donald Karpel.
His lawsuit, which has not yet been filed, will name the theater, for not properly securing the emergency exit and Holmes’ doctors, for allegedly prescribing medications, as defendants.
It will also name the studio Warner Brothers, claiming that Dark Knight Rises is too violent.
After his brief appearance on Monday, Holmes is back in solitary confinement - but the families of the victims said they saw enough.
'I saw the coward in court today,' said Tom Teves, whose son Alex was among those killed. 'Alex could have wiped the floor with him without breaking a sweat.'
Holmes is being held without bond and will hear the formal charges against him next Monday. The County District Attorney is considering whether to seek the death penalty.
Legal experts told the Denver Post that Holmes's attorneys are likely to pursue an insanity defense.
Video: Statement from the mother of Colorado shooting suspect
http://m.dailymail.co.uk/mobile/news/article.html?articleID=2178852
