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“Dark Knight” Shooter James Holmes Called MTV Personality Before Aurora Massacre

Posted: August 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, Mental Health | Tags: , , , , , , , |12 Comments

Diggity Dave Aragon

More information trickles out about James Holmes odd behavior in the weeks leading up to the “Dark Knight” theater shootings. From LA Weekly:

In a creepy interview this morning (Wednesday) with CBS Los Angeles, Diggity Dave — a former “accessories master” for MTV’s Pimp My Ride who dabbles in alt-metal and campy horror films — says he believes his yet-to-be-released film The Suffocator of Sins may have inspired Holmes’ death rampage….

The L.A. singer/filmmaker tells CBS2 that a man calling himself James Holmes phoned him in June, acting all starstruck and claiming he’d watched the Sins trailer hundreds of times.

We quote:

“He would tell me what he really liked about the trailer. He kept pressing if I could give him more information on the story. He wanted to know how many people Batman kills. He wanted to know if it was selective killing. Does he make a list of people he wants to kill or is it a mass body count?”

From the CBS LA link:

In an exclusive interview, Pimp My Ride’s Diggity Dave told KNX 1070’s Charles Feldman that a young man who called himself “James Holmes” phoned him in June about his upcoming film, “The Suffocator of Sins.”

Dave wrote, directed and stars in the forthcoming takeoff of the Batman movie, which shows a young vigilante Batman shooting down evil doers. Some have said the YouTube trailer resembles a crowded movie theater. He describes the film as a “very sick and dark twist of the Batman movies.”

Here’s the trailer:

There’s a plot description at the LA Weekly link. Here’s another tidbit from Business Insider:

While he couldn’t completely, positively identify the man who called him as the true James Holmes, Dave said the caller introduced himself as such. What’s more, Dave said he thinks his caller was just looking for a friend.

“He was shocked I took his call,” Dave told CBS Los Angeles. “He couldn’t believe he was talking to me. I’m a pretty good judge of character and I knew the kid was lonely.”

Aragon also claimed that Holmes asked him about the Joker.

So we have a few more clues about Holmes’ state of mind. I’d have to say that watching the movie trailer “hundreds of times” is suggestive of paranoid schizophrenia. Holmes may have had delusions of reference–believing that he was video was communicating with him personally. Another suggestive symptom is that Holmes was apparently isolating himself from others It would be interesting to know if Holmes had been neglecting his personal hygiene. But, as I have said repeatedly, we still don’t have enough information to be sure what was happening in this young man’s mind. It sounds like he was able to communicate pretty well with Aragon on the phone.

12 Comments on ““Dark Knight” Shooter James Holmes Called MTV Personality Before Aurora Massacre”

  1. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    August 2, 2012 at 11:58 am

    Even if Holmes is schizophrenic, I doubt if his defense team will be successful with an insanity defense. Holmes clearly planned his actions for an extended period of time. Unless he’s too psychotic to help with his defense, he’ll probably be deemed sane for legal purposes–they’ll say he knew right from wrong.

    • Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)'s avatar Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
      August 2, 2012 at 12:20 pm

      Exactly. Didn’t he say in that online profile he put up just a few days before the shooting… something like “would you date/love me in prison?” He knew right from wrong in the legal sense.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      August 2, 2012 at 12:46 pm

      Wow. It simply amazes me the number of ways the human mind can alter reality and grab on to things like movies, religion, books cult leaders and go twist. There are so many people walking the street with issues, how do you know if this one will be a victim or a perpetrator? I wish there wasn’t such a stigma and a lack of resources for people with mental health issues and that getting help so they can begin to function didn’t isolate them in worse ways. I think our society just has created many ways to trip up people and enable their issues rather than help them with healing. I just think of the number of people who get involved with religious cults or survivor type cults and you wonder exactly what would happen if they had actual help for mental illnesses instead what would happen. Then there are all those that become homeless or wind up in jails instead of mental health facilities. We just don’t treat people very kindly in this country at all. It’s gotten so much worse since Reagan made it kewl and okay to stigmatize all kinds of people. Same with these religious people. It’s godly to stigmatize people you think aren’t following your Gawd’s rules.

      • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
        August 2, 2012 at 5:00 pm

        There are so many cults in the US. Mostly religious cults. And yes I’d agree that many of the cult members have mental health issues — but this country doesn’t recognize or treat mental health as a health issue. Psychologists who study the extreme forms of religions have found that identifiable personality types are drawn to cults. For instance the Moonies — and the mass marriage ceremonies — couples were selected by the Moonie organization — individuals paired up on the whim of the Moonie leadership.

        Most people do not recognize mental illness. Several years ago I was in a store when first responders and an Ambulance pulled up to the house across the street. The clerks in the store and I observed a woman being carried out of the house on a stretcher. Since we had nothing else to do until the street was cleared — the clerks started to talk about the abnormal behavior of the woman on the stretcher. They were describing text book Schizophrenic behavior — absolutely textbook. But not a single clerk realized that the woman was mentally ill.

        A gang had broken into her home and beat her almost to death. She would never call for help (paranoid and her past encounters with cops were terrible). A neighbor found her and called 911. In the days following the attack the newspapers confirmed my educated guess that she was a paranoid Schizophrenic. But no one in her neighborhood realized or even guessed that she had mental health issues. That incident really taught me how ignorant most people are about diseases of the mind — brain chemistry imbalances etc.

        I’m not saying lock up mental patients — but rather an awareness and encouragement to seek treatment. Community support systems and visiting mental health nurses would also help.

        When people are so far out of touch with reality — it would be ideal to call someone trained to deal with potential mental health issues. We can’t go back to the time when mental hospitals were filled with often just the odd balls and rebels. But we also can’t just house mental patients in jails and toss meds in their general direction.

        First goal would be to students about the symptoms of mental illness — which might be an impossible goal. The religious right nitwits often deny that mental illness even exists and blame deviant behavior on SIN. Or not believing in Christ. I know — I grew up in a religious cult.

  2. Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)'s avatar Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
    August 2, 2012 at 12:15 pm

    Truth…stranger than fiction. Thanks BB!

  3. surfric's avatar surfric says:
    August 2, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    He seems to me to be more the Asperger’s dude from Hell. Narrow interests. Very bright in a restricted range. Obsessions (with Batman for instance, and watching that trailer hundreds of times). Gamer. Uber geek. He even did a presentation in his grad program based on Worlds of Warcraft! That must have raised a couple of eyebrows. No relationships with any emotional depth. Perhaps most importantly, overwhelmed by change. Like the end of his academic career that could have made him decide, what the hell, I’ll get famous by killing a bunch of people I don’t care about anyway. That or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or both.

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