WATCH: Raw video clips from the first police interview with James Holmes
CENTENNIAL — Two hours after the end of gunfire inside an Aurora movie theater, James Holmes slouched in a police interrogation room, wearing only boxer shorts and a torn T-shirt.
He looked across the table at two detectives, who wanted to question him about the attack that left 12 people dead, including a 6-year-old girl. But Holmes, his voice flat and lethargic, first had a question of his own.
“There weren’t any children hurt, were there?” he asked.
That question, revealed publicly for the first time Monday, punctuated the start of the second week of Holmes’ murder trial. After an opening week focused on those wounded and slain in the attack and the police officers and firefighters who worked to save them, prosecutors on Monday pivoted toward the defendant and the evidence they contend proves he was sane when he opened fire in the Century Aurora 16 movie theater on July 20, 2012.
Witnesses testified about Holmes’ cellphone records, the address on his driver’s license and the contents of his wallet, which included $280 in cash at the time of his arrest. They testified that Holmes tried to join a private shooting range near Byers in the months before the attack and ultimately took target practice at a public range near the mountain town of Hot Sulphur Springs, his dyed orange hair distinguishing him from the locals.
“If he hadn’t had that hair, he would have just been like anybody else,” Theodore Maples Jr., who was a caretaker at the range, said Monday. “That really flagged us.”
For the first time in the trial, witnesses spoke Holmes’ name in testimony, as prosecutors slowly nudged their case into the technical and eyewitness evidence that could consume weeks of the trial.
But, as with much of the information presented so far, the testimony provided threads that remain unknitted.
The cellphone records, for instance, showed an outgoing call from Holmes’ number to the main switchboard for the University of Colorado Hospital that was made fewer than 10 minutes before the shooting began early on July 20, 2012. The call lasted only a few seconds. In an audio tape of the call played in court Monday, only the sound of rustling followed an operator’s greeting of, “How may I help you?”
But no testimony explained further what happened with the call or what its significance to the case is. An official from Verizon Wireless couldn’t even pinpoint the approximate location from which the call was placed.
Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to 166 counts of murder, attempted murder and other offenses, so his comments and actions immediately before and after the shooting loom large in deciding the case’s verdict. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
The video shown in court Monday of Holmes’ comments to detectives hours after the shooting provided a view into the crucial moments never before seen by the public.
The interview began at 2:44 a.m., and it lasted only a few minutes before Holmes requested an attorney.
“Can we get your name?” Aurora police Detective Chuck Mehl opened the interview.
“I already gave my name,” Holmes said.
“OK, I haven’t talked to anybody who has your name,” Mehl replied. “Could you just tell us what your name is?”
“It’s James.”
“James. OK. James what?”
“Holmes.”
“How do you spell that, please?” Mehl asked.
“Like Sherlock,” Holmes replied.
Detectives asked Holmes if he was injured. They asked if he needed anything.
“Oxygen,” he said. A detective offered him a fan. He declined.
“Are you having trouble breathing?” one detective asked.
“No,” Holmes said.
“Do you need us to get you some help or are you good to talk to us?” one detective asked.
“Help as in counsel?” Holmes asked in reply.
Detectives explained that they meant medical help, and Holmes said no.
It was then that Holmes posed his question about children, after saying he had seen signs in the police station for the department’s Crimes Against Children and Victim Services units.
“We’ll get to that,” Mehl replied.
Last week, jurors heard tearful testimony from survivors and first responders who spoke about 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, the youngest of the 12 people killed in the attack.
Prosecutors on Monday stopped the video shortly after Holmes’ question. Defense attorneys declined to ask Mehl questions about the video at this time, leaving the video’s broader significance hanging in the air.
It’s a theme likely to be repeated Tuesday, when an FBI agent who spoke to Holmes about bombs found in his apartment is expected to testify.
Prosecutors continued another theme on Monday, too. Shortly after lunch, they called to the stand two survivors of the shooting, Jennifer Avila-Arredondo and her husband, Adan.
They spoke of confusion as real gunfire intruded on a night at the movies. They spoke of terror, of hiding on the ground during the shooting, of bullets zipping so close overhead that a water bottle sitting in a cup holder just a few inches above them exploded.
Adan Avila-Arredondo said he didn’t scream during the shooting, not even when a bullet tore apart his leg.
“If he were to go up the stairs,” Adan said of the gunman, “I wanted to pretend I was dead.”
Both Adan and his wife, who was hit in the head by shrapnel, escaped during a pause in the shooting. A stranger helped carry Adan to safety. Several days later, doctors amputated Adan’s right leg. He now wears a prosthesis.
At a prosecutor’s request — and over the objection of defense attorneys — Adan Avila-Arredondo limped off the witness stand Monday and walked in front of the jury. He lifted up his right pant leg.
The jurors leaned forward to look.
Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jsteffendp
