The Aurora theater shooter spoke to his ex-girlfriend, Gargi Datta, about homicidal thoughts in the months leading up to the July 2012 massacre that left 12 dead and 70 injured. Datta didn’t think he was being serious.
“What do you want to do?” Datta asked the shooter, James Holmes, by instant message. These messages were first presented in court during the prosecution’s opening statement.
“Kill people, of course,” Holmes wrote back.
“Why don’t you kill me and Ben?” Datta typed.
“I told you I can’t do that. If I did that I’d get caught and I couldn’t kill more people. I’d also lose the rest of my life,” the shooter replied.
Datta has been waiting for at least two days to take the stand in the trial that will determine the shooter’s fate: institutionalization in a mental health facility, life in prison or death. Today, Datta took the stand in the last hour of the day.
Datta and the defendant went to a film festival in Denver for their first date in October 2011. The relationship was meant to be casual, said Datta, who didn’t know that she was the first woman with whom the shooter had sex.
Datta estimated the couple saw each other for four to six months, during which time they went on hikes, played board games, watched movies at home and went out to dinner together. Datta said Holmes was very shy and quiet in class, but he was talkative and more open with her.
“Did he display a wide range of emotion?” prosecutor George Brauchler asked Datta.
Datta avoided looking to her right, where the shooter sat in concealed shackles just 10 feet away from her. In the time she knew the shooter, she said, he never displayed any highs and lows, he was usually very calm and friendly with everyone and he never showed any obvious changes in hygiene, appearance or behavior until their last interaction in late spring 2012.
The defendant wrote in his personal notebook — along with detailed plans of the mass killing and a self-diagnosis of mental illness — that he suffered from mononucleosis (the kissing disease) in the spring of 2012. His ex-girlfriend testified today that he never mentioned the illness to her nor did he exhibit any symptoms of physical illness. Datta, who was physically intimate with the shooter that spring, said she did not experience symptoms of the highly contagious disease.
Just before Datta’s testimony, former Arapahoe County Coroner Michael Dobersen took the stand to present the autopsy photos and reports of six of the 12 deceased victims: Jessica Ghawi, A.J. Boik, Matthew McQuinn, Rebecca Wingo, Gordon Cowden and Alex Teves. Family members and loved ones of most of these victims were in the courtroom, including Sandy Phillips, mother of Ghawi.
Phillips left the courtroom before her daughter’s autopsy photos were displayed. When she returned, her face was red and her eyes were puffy.
“Can I get you anything?” somebody asked the grieving mother.
“A guilty verdict,” Phillips said.
Datta’s testimony will resume tomorrow morning. The defense is expected to begin making its case at the end of this month and aims to persuade the jury that the defendant was severely mentally ill at the time of his crime, rendering him unable of forming a culpable state of mind or knowing right from wrong.
Editor’s Note: CU News Corps will remember the victims of the tragedy with every post via this graphic.
