CENTENNIAL — A little more than a month before his most struggling student opened fire inside a crowded movie theater, University of Colorado professor Sukumar Vijayaraghavan came up with a plan to save the student’s flagging academic career.
Vijayaraghavan — “Suke” to his colleagues — would offer James Holmes a chance to retake a key exam. He would continue working to place Holmes in a research lab for the next year. He would give him a new chance to succeed in the university’s prestigious neuroscience program.
Instead, in a meeting in June 2012 to present the plan, Holmes surprised his mentor. He quit.
“I don’t do well with oral communication,” Holmes said flatly, according to Vijayaraghavan’s testimony Tuesday at the Aurora theater shooting trial.
The testimony offered the best glimpse yet into the failed academic dreams that prosecutors argue provided a motive for one of the worst mass shootings in the nation’s history, an attack that killed 12 people and wounded 70 others at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater early July 20, 2012. Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and he could face the death penalty if convicted.
The testimony also raised new questions about that motive, as Vijayaraghavan said Holmes didn’t appear distraught over his academic struggles and never flunked out of school or was told to leave — contrary to what the prosecution suggested in its opening statement. Instead, Holmes specifically was offered an opportunity to continue.
“It’s our aim that we do everything we can to help them succeed,” the professor testified.
His testimony capped a zig-zagging presentation Tuesday that also saw prosecutors call to the witness stand three survivors of the shooting, a police detective and an FBI bomb technician.
Survivor Denise Axelrod recalled the moment shortly after midnight that she and her husband, Brandon, first saw muzzle flashes inside the theater and ducked to the floor.
“I told him that I loved him because I didn’t know if it would be the last time I would be able to do so,” she said.
The investigators’ testimony jumped forward about 15 hours, to the afternoon following the shooting when they talked to Holmes about the bombs found in his apartment. The conversation lasted about a half hour, during which Holmes detailed from memory two Rube Goldberg-esque explosive systems involving a chemical-filled Thermos and frying pan; a gasoline-soaked carpet; fireworks shells containing smokeless powder; a remote-control detonation system; jars filled with homemade napalm and thermite; and strips of lithium strewn about the floor.
Had someone unwittingly triggered the systems, FBI special agent Garrett Gumbinner said, it would have “made the whole apartment explode, killing or maiming whoever was inside at the time.”
Aurora police Detective Craig Appel testified that Holmes told investigators he set the bombs in his apartment — about three miles north of the theater — to distract police officers while he attacked the theater. A recording of the interview was played in the courtroom Tuesday but was of such poor quality that only snippets of conversation could be understood. A prosecution transcript of the recording is expected to be released Wednesday.
DOCUMENT: Read the James Holmes interview transcript
Vijayaraghavan’s testimony jumped backward in time, all the way to early 2011 when he first interviewed Holmes for admittance into the CU neuroscience doctorate program. Each year, about 75 people apply for the program, the professor said. Only about 10 are accepted.
“My overall impression was he was quiet and a little socially awkward,” Vijayaraghavan said of that interview with Holmes, “but definitely someone who had the caliber to be in the program.”
But, while Holmes did well in classes, he struggled with oral presentations and lab assignments where he had to interact with other students, Vijayaraghavan said. At the end of his first year — in spring 2012 — he flunked key oral exams that would decide whether he could continue in the program and hadn’t found a researcher willing to give him a lab spot.
To prosecutors, this is a key moment in the narrative, providing Holmes the motivation to attack the theater to elevate his sense of self-worth. Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler on Tuesday tried to cast Holmes’ future at the school as bleak, despite his professor’s offers of help.
“He was going to be given the chance to do these things he had already failed at doing?” Brauchler asked Vijayaraghavan.
To defense attorneys, who contend that Holmes was insane at the time of the shooting, the decline in his academic career paralleled his deteriorating mental health. Defense attorney Tamara Brady said the professor had once called Holmes “a complete mystery.” She showed Vijayaraghavan four photos of Holmes after his arrest — with his hair dyed orange and his eyes wide — and asked the professor whether he had ever seen his student like that. He said he hadn’t.
Another of Holmes’ professors at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus is expected to testify Wednesday.
Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jsteffendp
