Holmes Shooting Psychology

Holmes had been born into a wealthy New Hampshire family and was given the name Herman Webster Mudgett (America’s Serial Killers). “If Mudgett or his brother or sister were bad, their strict Methodist parents sent them to the attic for a full day without speaking or eating,. Mudgett’s father was especially abusive after he’d been drinking - which was often” (Spikol). However, his father was a wealthy and respected citizen and had been the local postmaster for nearly twenty five years (Taylor). It is surprising an important member of the community was a child abuser. The abuse of his father may be one of the

James Eagan Holmes was born December 13, 1987. Holmes is now identified as a mass murder after murdering 12 people and wounding 70 in a shooting that took place at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Heterotypic continuity best described James Holmes behavior throughout his life. His underlying developmental process impairment stayed the same, but the way he acted them out drastically changed leading to the mass shooting. This impairment being James’ antisocial behavior. I would look at James Holmes through Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory of social control. The three components of this theory are that structural context is intervened by informal family and school social controls, there is a continuity in antisocial behavior from childhood through adulthood, and that informal social bonds to family and employment during adulthood explain changes in criminality over the life span (Laub and Sampson 1993: 7).

He picked a highly intense part of the movie to perform his attack, which was filled with gun shots and explosions to blend the sound. This could only have been done by Holmes studying the film and deciding when he was going to attack. The second set of first degree charges involved murder with malice aforethought. Malice refers to acts obtained through evil or indifference towards human life. This is demonstrated by him single-handedly inflicting a massacre of innocent and defenseless spectators. The counts of second degree murders were represented in two different circumstances. The first was his attempt to murder to all of the moviegoers that he wounded in his shooting rampage. The second demonstration was in reference to his apartment, in which he lined with enough explosives to bring down the entire building. This is also where his charge of possession of illegal explosives is represented.

Lastly, Holmes has so much bravado.  As the creditors were swaying to arrest Holmes, “Holmes fled”(Larson 325).  This shows he won’t be a man and face the consequences. He won’t fight back. As Holmes fled, he shows the reader this fake courage and fake dignity.

One of the first things that come to people’s minds when they hear the word psychopath is Ted Bundy. Bundy spent most of the 1970’s killing 30 or more young woman who happened to resemble his ex-girlfriend in some way. The exact time and number of Bundy’s kills will likely never be known. Ted Bundy is what is considered a successful psychopath. Psychopathy is a form of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Not every person with ASPD is a psychopath, but every psychopath has ASPD. No one knows exactly what causes this disorder, but there has been some speculation over the decades. The two main ideas is that an genetic influence causes psychopathy or an environmental influence causes psychopathy. The neurotransmitter MAOA has been linked to several brain structural differences in the brains of a psychopath when compared to the brain of a non-psychopathic person. Multiple studies have linked childhood abuse to the psychopathy development. Both of these causes have been shown to influence psychopathy development but it is my hypothesis that genetics hold

On July 20, 2012 James Holmes enter a theater in Aurora Colorado and shot and killed 12 people. Attorneys tested Holmes and called for a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist stated that Holmes was so crazy that he could not distinguish what’s right and what’s wrong during the period he committed the crime. Dr Jonathan Woodcock interviewed Holmes during the time he was in jail on July 24 just four days after the shooting occurred for two hours duration. Holmes’s testimony drew questions from prosecutors that doubted his analyzation of Holmes being severe delusional during the mass shooting. Doctor claimed that they found Holmes suffering from severe mental illness and because of that it made him act violently. Holmes thought that if he snitch and went on and told the public of attempting to kill strangers he would be obligated to pay for the consequences. Doctors testified that one of Holmes delusion was to go out and do what he had to do. Woodcock was a witness by the defense to purpose the idea that Holmes was indeed crazy the moment he shot and killed people dead. Before the shooting occurred Holmes had already symptoms of mental illness disorder which made him anxious and stress and committed the crime.

To clarify, Henry Howard Holmes known as H. H. Holmes was America’s first serial killer. As a child, Holmes was terrified of the doctor, however a few bullies from his school forced him to touch the real skeleton in their doctor’s office which started his obsession with human anatomy. When Holmes was a teenager he interned at his local doctor’s office and later went to Michigan State for a medical degree and became a skilled doctor. Holmes took out fake insurance policies on the bodies he used in medical school after pouring acid on their face so they were unrecognizable in order to afford college. In 1889 Holmes designed and built a hotel to assist his murders.

4. Serial killers also show signs of a psychopath though this is not always the case. Psychopaths lack empathy and guilt, are egocentric and impulsive and don’t conform to social, moral, or legal norms. Psychopaths have a distinct set of rules for themselves. They appear normal and are often very charming and charismatic.

Holmes had told police that he had booby trapped his apartment, but, police were not sure to believe him or not. The next day police, bomb squad, and agents from the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms found a huge number of explosive devices in his apartment. The team had to be very cautious because it could blow James' apartment building and the ones nearby. More than twenty bombs and incendiaries were found in James Holmes apartment. Officials discovered that in the last sixty days leading up to the shooting James had purchased the four guns at local gun shops.

He had two children, one son and one daughter. He went out of sight for six years after abandoning Clara and his son. He would always somehow come up with some con as to where he was and what he was doing during the time of his victims' deaths. The police had always questioned him, but had never really pinned anything on him. No one wanted to believe that Holmes was an evil master mind. He was so handsome and charismatic. His tall stature and piercing blue eyes made women often swoon at the sight of him. He could also talk anyone into anything at the sound of his voice and the medical, knowledgeable jargon he used. He even got an old lady to give him her husbands pharmacy after his death sometime after he arrived to Chicago. Other sources said that he killed her and inherited the pharmacy without anyone knowing what happened. Either way the old woman should have been happy that such a noble man was running her pharmacy. He was always the perfect assistant, making sure that her money was going towards helping the company in any way. He would even meet up with venders, creating a stable environment for her and her dying husband. He eventually killed her but when others would ask he stated that she had moved to California, but had no forwarding address (Taylor, Troy).

The question of whether or not man is predetermined at birth to lead a life of crime is a question that has been debated for decades. Are serial killers born with the lust for murder, or are their desires developed through years of abuse and torment? Many believe it is impossible for an innocent child to be born with the capability to commit a horrible act such as murder. But at the same time, how could we have corrupted society so much as to turn an innocent child into a homicidal maniac? Forensic psychologists have picked apart the minds of serial killers to find an answer as to what forces them to commit such perverse acts. Their ultimate goal is to learn how to catch a serial killer before

It is often discovered that the shooters (almost exclusively men) are or were lonely, depressed, or angry. Many have or had diagnosed mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit disorder, schizophrenia, or Asperger’s syndrome. In fact, according to Rachel George of PolicyMic, of the 24 reported mass shootings since April 2007, 15 have involved a shooter officially diagnosed with some sort of mental illness (George). In addition to being mentally ill, shooters are often described as suicidal people, and many shoot themselves after shooting others. It would not appear, however, that the prevalence of mental disorders among shooters has any correlation with suicide (as eight of the 15 diagnosed took their own lives, with four of the nine undiagnosed doing the same, according to George). Cases in which the shooter did not commit suicide can lead to a trial. For example, James Holmes, a shooter who killed 12 in a Colorado movie theater, plead not guilty to all charges due to insanity. His trial will occur within the next year.

James Eagan Holmes was born on December 13, 1987, in San Diego California. He was weighing 7 lbs. 20 inches. His mother called him the miracle child (Oneil, 2015). Growing up, James was a cute, happy little boy from a doting family, a nice kid who was gentle with his dog and his baby sister. He was wanted, he was encouraged and he was taken to piano lessons and soccer practice and neighborhood birthday parties. He was at the center of a pack of exceptional boys who ruled his Northern California

Holmes recorded in his journal his plan of entering the town’s large midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises armed with an assault rifle, pump action shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol, gas grenades, body armor, and ample ammunition to massacre the entire four-hundred person screening of the film. Holmes also considered an airport as his target, but with the tighter security, he selected his local Century 16 movie theater. Out of “hatred for mankind,” much like Frankenstein’s monster, Holmes entered the theater casually and unarmed, then proceeded to set his self proclaimed “mission” into effect. The movie began, and several minutes into the opening action sequence, Holmes left the screening room through an emergency exit, propping the door open so he could re-enter the densely populated room. He traveled to his car, where he stored his wide array of equipment, suited up, and made his way back into the theater. Before re-entering fully however, Holmes placed headphones in his ears playing music, to drown out the inevitable screaming that would come from his next act. He opened the exit door and threw smoke grenades into the audience to confuse and frighten them. Many believed the smoke to be special theatrical effects since it was the town’s special premiere of the film. Then

Now many of Holmes' emotions are related, though not limited, to his competitive nature. He wants to solve every case, and he will stay up all night if need be in order to solve a case. When he was competing with Moriarty, we saw a vulnerable side of Holmes. In