Feature: Devastated young woman recalls shaking dead boyfriend in Colorado mass murder trial

Amanda Lindren loved her boyfriend Alex Teves so much that she changed her name to Teves, after she shook his dead and bloody body three years ago.

In a scene mirroring the legendary assassination of American President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, Amanda, like Jacqueline Kennedy, was sitting inches away from her lover when his head was split apart by a high-powered bullet.

"I was screaming Alex! Alex!" Amanda said in court Thursday, sobbing from the witness stand, on the 8th day of the dramatic trial for mass murderer James Holmes.

Holmes is charged with murdering 12 people and wounding 70 at the midnight showing of "The Dark Night Rises" on July 20, 2012.

Amanda testified that just after gunfire erupted from the front of the theater, Alex instinctively grabbed her and shoved her beneath him, in an attempt to protect her. Within seconds, a crouching Teves was hit in the head by a bullet.

"I was shaking Alex's tummy...but he wasn't answering me!" Amanda wept to the shocked courtroom.

Alex' best friend, Craig Enlund, a fellow-psychology graduate student at the University of Denver, was sitting a few feet away.

"I looked at Craig's face...it was covered in blood," Amanda's voice cracked, "What was on his face was the flesh of Alex," she said, again, breaking down.

Jurors, friends of the victims, and members of the media teared up, as Amanda, a 27-year-old, slender, attractive blonde woman, was escorted from the courtroom.

At that moment, unusual emotion came from Holmes' parents, who have sat stoically behind their son since the trial began.

Arlene Holmes closed her eyes. Her husband Robert's stunned face turned red in color. Both have sat virtually stony-faced, silent and unemotional, since they were first seen in court just after the July 20, 2012 massacre.

Their son has admitted to the shooting, but says he was suffering from a psychotic episode, linked to his lifelong struggle with schizophrenia, and has pleaded "not guilty by reason of insanity."

If found insane by a jury of 19 woman and five men, Holmes will avoid the death penalty.

Blood-spattered Enlund then took the stand, igniting court emotions by describing how he saw his friend Alex "slump to the ground" and then, within seconds, realizing that "Alex was dead."

Enlund, who himself was riddled with "fragments" somehow, grabbed Amanda and ran out during a pause in Holmes' shooting.

"I didn't want to leave him," Amanda sobbed, after seeing a picture of her lover and husband-to-be Alex Teves.

The 8th day of the dramatic Holmes trial also saw telling testimony from Emily Gibson, at the University of Colorado's Anschultz campus's Neuroscience Ph. D. Program, who worked closely with Holmes during his alleged rapid decline onto schizophrenia.

Gibson, senior research assistant in Harvard-trained Mark Dell'Acqua's CU lab that Holmes attended, painted a picture of Holmes never before seen.

Gibson said the elite CU program did not want somebody in the lab who was "not interested" and that she perceived Holmes in this category.

One time she saw Holmes "sitting at his desk using headphones and looking at his laptop," not engaging with professors or other students, a commonplace occurrence.

Gibson noted she had to tell Holmes several times how to perform "simple" lab functions, placing him "below average" in this ability.

In revealing testimony, Gibson looked at pictures of an orange-haired, "bug-eyed" Holmes, taken just after the massacre, and said he had seen this look before.

This admission damaged the prosecution's contention that Holmes only showed his crazy face when trying to cover up his attack.

Even rising super-star District Attorney George Brauchler seemed unnerved by the admission, stumbling through the cross-examination, when he asked the defendant: "That's the look...when (Holmes) didn't know what was going on."

Brauchler had previously done an excellent job in revealing Holmes' lucidity, stability and coherency leading to the massacre, all points toward proving he was "sane" and deserves to be executed.

In an unusual move, as the trial ended Thursday, Brauchler asked Arapahoe County Judge Carlos Samour, Jr. to reverse the decision of the previous judge, veteran William Sylvester, who ruled that some emotionally-powerful pieces of evidence, helping the prosecution, not be allowed in court.

Samour, lauded by all involved on the trial, said he would review the decision and get back to Brauchler, who was called one of America's top "40-Under-40" rising superstars in 2008.

Pundits predict Brauchler is headed for a U.S. Senate run in the future.

Brauchler hammered the point across relentlessly that Holmes was lucid, coherent and functional before the shooting.

The day's most interesting testimony came from Carol Crowe, a 19-year "expert witness" with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI)'s Department of Forensic Science.

Crowe has testified in 140 cases and has examined an estimated 7,000 pieces of evidence in her career, and is arguably the most impressive "expert witness" so far in the trial.

Crowe described in detail how she uses an "Electromagnetic microscope and an Energy-dispersive Spectrometer" to find traces of gunpowder.

Her investigation showed Holmes' gloves, gas mask and hands contained traces of gunpowder.

Also, strangely, Holmes removed his shirt, and one sock prior to entering the investigation room, then later replaced the sock, as witnessed by Crowe.

The prosecution spent Thursday morning showing jurors 70 photos of the blood-stained sidewalk leading from the theater, and Holmes' white Hyundai, filled with ammunition and other items, showing Holmes intended to flee the scene, and proving that he had spent considerable time planning the massacre.

One of the items photographed was an un-exploded tear gas canister, that apparently rolled under Holmes' car before went into the theater, and that Brauchler said in his opening statement saved lives and was "an act of providence."

Defense attorney Katherine Spengler tried to water down the prosecutions pictures of Holmes' gear and white Hyundai outside the theater.

Spengler pointed out that Holmes pointed his car front end in, that he had not tried to disguise or conceal his license plate, that he had only a small handful of spikes (used to deflate tires of pursing policemen) found in the center console of his car), and that the gear found inside the car was not for "sleeping overnight" or sustaining isolation in the wilds, or for escape.

The prosecution pointed to Holmes' "gun-cleaning kit," the spikes, and the 280 dollars of cash found in his wallet, that he was planning a getaway.

The courtroom also spent an hour in silence while the 24 jurors examined pieces of evidence found inside and outside Holmes' car, including tactical gear, unspent magazines and shotgun shells, an orange blanket, a disguised iPhone, sharp tacks to deflate car tires, and a stun gun. Endi