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Many staff at U.S. theater shooter's university aware of his plan beforehand

Xinhua, September 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

The university of convicted mass murderer James Holmes was forced to reveal Wednesday that many of its staff were aware Holmes wanted to kill people prior to his midnight movie rampage, but did little to stop him.

The new information was released thanks to an open-records request from and reported by the Associated Press, and is critical in the expected upcoming civil suit between the families of the victims and the University of Colorado (CU) where Holmes was studying for his Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2012.

One victim's mother has already sued the university for negligence in stopping the massacre, but that suit was delayed pending the Holmes mass murder trial decision.

Last week Holmes was convicted of 12 consecutive life sentences and 3,318 years in jail, and now that the trial has ended, it is expected more family members will join in a suit that is expected to be in the tens of millions of dollars.

The newly-released CU records say police chief Lynn Whitten only did a background check and deactivated Holmes' campus access cards after CU Psychiatrist Lynn Fenton told the chief that Holmes wanted "to kill as many people as possible," according to documents obtained by the AP.

Most significantly, Whitten's notes revealed said she had received a call from one of Holmes' professors who said that "Holmes indicated to Fenton that he liked thinking about (killing people)."

These notes further implicate CU in a lawsuit expected to dominate local news because several staff at the university knew Holmes was homicidal.

Fenton also said she declined to "detain" Holmes, who had "revealed no specific targets or threats," because she thought it would only "inflame him".

Fenton's concerns for Holmes seemed contradictory, once saying she feared he was on the verge of a "psychotic episode," but then writing the police chief that things were OK.

The released records also had a voicemail from Fenton to Whitten: "It's pretty good news on our guy James. It sounds like he's always been like this," Fenton said after talking to Holmes' mother Arlene.

In that one conversation, Fenton did not say Holmes had thoughts of killing people.

"I've talked to his mom," Fenton said reassuringly in the notes. "She and the dad are kind of putting some quiet support in place. They've got my number in case they need anything." Endi