Therapist warned of serious threat

Friday, April 5, 2013

CENTENNIAL, Colo. - A psychiatrist who treated James Holmes told campus police a month before the Colorado theater attack that Holmes had homicidal thoughts and was a danger to the public, according to documents released Thursday.

Dr. Lynne Fenton, a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado, Denver, told police in June that the shooting suspect also threatened and intimidated her. It was more than a month before the July 20 attack at a movie theater that killed 12 and injured 70.

In the days after the attack, campus police said they had never had contact with Holmes, a graduate student at the university.

But campus police officer Lynn Whitten told investigators after the shooting that Fenton had contacted her. Whitten said Fenton was following her legal requirement to report threats to authorities, according to a search warrant affidavit.

Whitten added that Fenton said she began to receive threatening text messages from Holmes after he stopped seeing her for counseling, the documents said.

The new details were in previously sealed documents - including arrest and search warrant affidavits - that District Judge Carlos Samour ordered released Thursday.

The records also show that police collected more than 100 items of evidence from Holmes’ apartment.

Information for this article was contributed by Catherine Tsai of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 04/05/2013