The Dark Knight killer’s psychiatrist had expressed serious concerns about him both to university police and to a university threat-assessment team

On July 20, the day of the Aurora mass murder, in an entry entitled “The proximate cause of the Batman massacre identified, with almost 100 percent certainty,” James N. wrote:

Despite the efforts to make James Holmes conform to a stereotype which would be acceptable to one or another of our current political fever dreams (He’s a Muslim … He’s a tea-party guy … He’s a Democrat … He’s a gun nut … etc.), the truth is almost certainly that he’s a very crazy guy who scared lots of people and who, in a normal and rational society, would have been placed in, and remained in, a state hospital for the rest of his life.

On August 2 we learned from a report in People magazine that

Holmes had mailed a notebook with a detailed description, including drawings, of his planned massacre to a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado, and that the package with the notebook had been in the mailroom since at least July 12, eight days before the shooting, but that the package was not opened and read until this week.

And now we learn from ABC News (the article helpfully has no date) that

The psychiatrist who treated suspected movie-theater shooter James Holmes made contact with a University of Colorado police officer to express concerns about her patient’s behavior several weeks before Holmes’ alleged rampage, sources told ABC News.

The sources did not know what the officer approached by Dr. Lynne Fenton did with the information she passed along….

Fenton would have had to have serious concerns to break confidentiality with her patient to reach out to the police officer or others, the sources said. Under Colorado law, a psychiatrist can legally breach a pledge of confidentiality with a patient if he or she becomes aware of a serious and imminent threat that their patient might cause harm to others….

ABC news and affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver first reported Wednesday that Fenton had contacted other members of the university’s threat-assessment team about her concerns. The university-wide, threat-assessment team reportedly never met to discuss Holmes after he announced his intent to withdraw from the University nearly six weeks before the July 20 shooting that left 12 dead and 58 injured…. [Emphasis added.]

- end of initial entry -

I sent the entry to James N., with a note:

What can one say, James? You the Man.

James replied:

No, Lewis Glickman, my psychiatry teacher, who labored tirelessly in G Building at Kings County Hospital in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, was the man. I just listened.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 06, 2012 10:13 PM | Send