James Holmes' Evolving Appearance

Today is the second anniversary of the The Dark Knight Rises shooting on July 20, 2012. That mayhem took place in Theater 9 at the Century 16, in Aurora, Colorado, and left 12 people dead, 70 injured.

At top is James Holmes, during a March 2013 court appearance, showing his "new look." The photograph below is from a June 2013 court session.

Holmes reportedly converted to Islam and prays five times a day, noted 2013 news items. (See here, as well.)

Holmes' presentation of self has evolved since his arrest. 

(July 2012 left, September 2012 right).

On July 17, 2014, Circa wrote:

Witnesses at a pre-trial hearing discussing evidence told the court in Oct. 2013, that when James Holmes' bedroom was searched after the July 20, 2012, theater shooting, police found that his calendar had the date of the shooting marked "with a unique symbol."

Thomas McGrath of Dangerous Minds wrote an article, "The Copycat Effect: Meet the Man Who Predicted the Aurora Shooting," which captures well my experience of the event.

The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting

"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere."

~ Charles Fort, Lo!, 1931.

The avant-garde blog, Dangerous Minds, has posted a concise overview about a recent segment of my work. The piece relates to the pre-event indictors I saw that resulted in me anticipating a significant violent event would occur with the opening and release of The Dark Knight Rises.

On September 17, 2012, Dangerous Minds published "Copycat Effect: Meet The Man Who Predicted The Aurora Shooting" by British writer Thomas McGrath. You will want to read it.

I thank the author for his respectful article, which in a few hundred words tries to capture 30 years of my serious research of the copycat effect. I also appreciate those readers who are open-mindedly digesting this material, with the understanding that forecasting human behavior is going to be the next leap forward in foresnic psychology and the prevention of suicidal and homicidal events.

I've been doing this research for a long time. It is not often that someone captures the essence of it as well as this British profiler did.

I realize that some people don't like the use of the word "prediction" in the article's headline, for I am clearly not a psychic and do not claim to be one. But it is a useful handle to quickly communicate a concept about pre-event forecasting that few people understand.

If you read what I said on July 19th, the reality is that I did write before the Aurora event, in seemingly "prophetic" tones for people outside this field, that something big and violent, tied quite specifically to the opening of The Dark Knight Rises, was going to occur on July 20, 2012. This was not written after the fact. It was noted before it happened. There was a great deal to what I said, about past patterns, Joker copycats, violence, and examples like the anniversary of the Norway shootings that took place when Captain America was released on July 22, 2011.

I appreciate the accolades and accords given to me by Dangerous Minds author Thomas McGrath. I thank him for his clear reading of my insights, which, while grounded in Fort's and Jung's works that I read over 50 years ago, were not held against me. 

We all start somewhere, as per the famed quote up top, and I'm delighted with my conceptualizations that have matured nicely since then.

The Copycat Effect

(NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004)