CENTENNIAL — Her phone rang late one California afternoon, and Arlene Holmes answered it not knowing why her son’s psychiatrist in Colorado would be calling her — in part because she had no idea her son was even seeing a psychiatrist.
This was June 2012, one precious month before James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 70 others inside an Aurora movie theater. And Dr. Lynne Fenton, Holmes’ psychiatrist, was so concerned about her patient that she likely violated health care privacy laws by calling his mother to talk about his care without his permission.
But, testifying Wednesday in the sentencing portion of her son’s murder trial, Arlene Holmes said Fenton never told her that James had confided to multiple mental health professionals that he wanted to kill lots of people. She said Fenton never told her that her son was suffering from paranoid thinking. She said Fenton never told her that doctors suggested he should try anti-psychotic medication.
“Do you wish she had?” defense attorney Rebekka Higgs on Wednesday asked Arlene Holmes.
Arlene Holmes’ face ruptured with emotion.
“Of course I do. Of course,” she gasped between sobs. “We wouldn’t be sitting here if she had told me that.”
“Would you have been out here the next day?” Higgs quickly asked.
“I would have been crawling on all fours to get to him,” Arlene answered.
Her voice strangled.
“He’s never said he wanted to kill people.”
“She didn’t … she didn’t … she didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell me.”
Tears swallowed her words.
“She didn’t tell me.”
On Wednesday, Arlene became the 289th witness called to testify in her son’s trial and, perhaps, the last one.
Starting Thursday, jurors are expected to begin deliberating in the second step of the sentencing phase. The question before them will be whether the things that make the Aurora movie theater murders so heinous — the lengthy planning, the calculated shooting, the enormous suffering — outweigh the details about Holmes’ life that suggest mercy: his diagnosed mental illness, his trouble-free youth, his otherwise clean record.
Only if jurors unanimously agree that the “mitigating” factors do not outweigh the “aggravating” factors will the sentencing phase of the trial move forward to its final step. In that last step, relatives of those killed inside the theater will be allowed to testify about the shooting’s impact on them, and jurors will make the final decision on the death penalty.
But, if even one juror favors mercy at the current step, the trial will be over. James Holmes would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Wednesday began with the father, Robert, continuing his testimony from the previous day and facing cross-examination by a prosecutor. Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler zeroed in on the e-mails and phone calls Holmes had with his parents in the months before the shooting.
Robert Holmes said his son seemed to withdraw from the family, communicating more and more only through ever-shorter e-mail messages.
“We obviously had no knowledge with regard to the shooting,” Robert Holmes testified.
To prosecutors, that is key, because they say it shows Holmes was calculatingly hiding his plans to improve his self-worth through murder — evidence they suggest shows Holmes deserves the death penalty. Defense attorneys say Holmes’ mental illness prevented him from thinking clearly, something they say his parents can speak to best.
And, so, on Wednesday afternoon and after 14 weeks of trial, it fell to Arlene Holmes to sway jurors that her son shouldn’t die in an execution chamber. She walked to the witness stand and nervously spelled out her name.
“It’s very difficult and painful and tragic for everyone,” she said near the beginning of her testimony.
On the stand, she spoke of a child that she once thought of as a miracle — the first grandchild for both her and Robert’s parents. She smiled at baby photos now turned into trial evidence and displayed on courtroom video screens. She narrated as defense attorneys showed jurors childhood artwork or school assignments.
When she spoke of the months leading up to the shooting, she cried often. Like her husband, she said that her son became harder and harder to read in the months leading up to the shooting.
“I didn’t realize his loudest cry for help was his silence,” she said.
When Fenton called her on June 11, 2012 — exactly 39 days before the shooting — and said Holmes planned to drop out of graduate school, Arlene said she responded that she suspected he might because he’d been having trouble with course presentations. Arlene Holmes said she told Fenton she would try to talk to her son. She first left a voicemail then sent an e-mail.
Arlene Holmes said she tried to follow up with Fenton about a week later. Fenton — who is being sued by the widow of one shooting victim for not doing enough to stop the attack — never called back, Arlene Holmes testified.
But, despite the phone call, Arlene Holmes said her greatest worry about her son in the summer of 2012 was that he was depressed and spending his time playing video games. She and Robert, who live in San Diego, made plans to visit their then-24-year-old son that August.
They did. But, by then, 12 people were dead, 70 were injured and their son was being held on suspicion of murder.
“People say to me when your kid turns 18, you’re done,” Arlene Holmes said Wednesday, again breaking into tears. “It’s not true. You’re not done. We’re never done. That’s why we’re sitting here.”
Prosecutors asked no question of Arlene Holmes.
When her testimony finally ended deep into the afternoon, she stepped down from the stand wearily and walked into the courtroom’s audience. She slipped back into her seat in the gallery’s second row, next to Robert. He held out an arm, and their hands clasped together.
And they waited.
