Friends and neighbors described him as a clean-cut, well educated, shy, studious and a loner with a brilliant mind.
The FBI has revealed Holmes is a white male who is 6 feet, 3 inches tall and 24 years old, with a birth date of Dec. 13, 1987. Authorities have found no significant criminal record and no terrorist affiliations.
The son of a nurse, Arlene, and a software company manager, Robert, James Holmes was a brilliant scholar.
In addition to playing soccer at Westview High School he also ran across country.
Holmes graduated with highest honors in spring 2010 with a neuroscience degree from the University of California, Riverside, but he struggled to find work after graduating.
Holmes enrolled last year in a neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado-Denver but was in the process of withdrawing, said school officials, who didn’t provide a reason. The school later said in a statement that he left the program in June 2012.
There is no trace of Holmes that could be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter or anywhere on the Web. Authorities think that either he never engaged or he scrubbed his trails.
Jackie Mitchell, a furniture mover who lives several blocks from the suspect’s apartment building in Colorado, said he had drinks with Holmes at a bar on Tuesday night, though he showed no sign of distress or violence.
After Holmes approached him, “we just talked about football. He had a backpack and geeky glasses and seemed like a real intelligent guy, and I figured he was one of the college students,” Mitchell said.
When Mitchell saw Holmes’ photo after the shooting, “the hair stood up on my back,” he said. “I know this guy.”
Blood reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press contributors to this report include Elliot Spagat and Julie Watson in San Diego; Eileen Sullivan, Alicia A. Caldwell and Pete Yost in Washington; Tom Hays in New York; Amy Taxin in Orange County, Calif.; Colleen Slevin in Denver; and Eric Carvin and AP researcher Judith Ausuebel in New York.
