James Holmes may have Aspergers?

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If he has AS, then it's bad for us because of the bad publicity; but I'm pretty darn sure that he didn't do what he did because he had AS. Asperger's doesn't make you a psychopath.

I really hate that people are always saying that mass-murderers and such are "crazy". They may well be; but not necessarily. Most murderers are perfectly sane. People kill because they choose to kill. When someone who has a mental illness chooses to kill someone, their mental illness may have made it more tempting, or harder to think clearly; but they still made that choice themselves.

A well-planned mass murder like this takes a lot of relatively clear thinking. Being impaired to the degree of being unable to tell right from wrong would also mean being too impaired to carry out a premeditated murder of this sort.

Yes, he may have a mental illness. But that doesn't mean the mental illness caused him to kill.

This is someone who has spent a lifetime developing the sort of character that allows him to seriously consider killing innocents. That kind of a lifestyle predisposes you to mental illness because it severs your ties to other people whom you might otherwise depend on for support. Even if you spend all of your time with other people, you're always alone, because you simply don't care enough about them to bond with them. Then when you come down with depression or schizophrenia or something, you withdraw instead of seeking help, and that makes things worse. I wouldn't be surprised if many murderers, by the time they're arrested, have developed a mental illness of one sort or another.

So yeah, I could see him having a mental illness. But I don't think that means he's not responsible for what he did. That kind of planning requires thinking that's much too clear and logical to allow for the possibility that he was too confused to understand that he was killing real people.

Let's give him as much benefit of doubt as possible. Let's say he's a guy who generally cares about people, but he's totally off his rocker. He's got voices in his head telling him that these people are aliens and he's got to save the world (or something along those lines). But he's still thinking clearly enough to plan an elaborate attack, to look sane while buying guns, to set up booby traps without killing himself in the process. Well, somebody with a decent sense of morality, in response to that belief, would use that remaining ability to think clearly to try to find help. Truly believing that there's an alien invasion and you can't trust anybody, you'd want to try to recruit help or warn others. You'd start telling your loved ones about aliens. Or you'd call 911 and tell the emergency people about it. You might call the police or try to warn your friends. You might see someone in the supermarket and think they were an alien, and try to rescue the other shoppers from them... And once it became obvious you had a serious problem with delusions, you'd be hospitalized and that would be that.

(I have no idea if there was any delusion involved, alien or otherwise. I'm just trying to build the most sympathetic possible scenario.)

If your mental state were worse, you couldn't keep it a secret. If it were better, you'd be able to do enough of a reality check to stop from killing a bunch of people. It just doesn't match up.

Aspie or not, this guy did what he did because he wanted to do it.

My thought exactly.

More importantly, having AS and being obsessed with Batman would not predispose you to killing anybody. It would certainly predispose you to talking people's ears off about Batman, but the impetus for killing would have to come from some other source.

I just want to clarify again that I wasn't saying he is mentally ill, and I dislike saying that mentally ill people are violent. I had two things in mind when I said "diagnosable." One was psychopathy or sociopathy. The other was a brain tumor as someone suggested or perhaps other kinds of neurological damage.

I guess paranoid schizophrenia is a possibility, but I tend to think it's remote. Loughner was diagnosed with that, apparently, but compare how he implemented his assassination attempt with this situation.

Also, I want to clarify that I didn't say that most people can't kill. I think depending on circumstances, most can. But I think that it's highly unlikely that most people would do something like this.

(I don't think/know that Callista was addressing me, but since I had this discussion with Sweetleaf, I wanted to clarify)

http://kildall.apana.org.au/autism/articles/bryant.html

The evidence provided in the Wiki article on Martin, suggests he may have been autistic, but it was not the final determination of the source that wiki references above. If you have other evidence suggesting otherwise please present it.

A final official diagnosis, per court proceedings has not yet been provided for Breivik as 3 different diagnoses have been provided by three different diagnosing professionals.

Cho was never officially diagnosed with an ASD, regardless of what his grandmother's opinion might have been.

If you can provide any instance of a person conclusively diagnosed with an ASD that is a rampage killer, please provide a source, because I have not been able to find one.

I'm not suggesting it's not possible, there is just no definitive evidence that I have been able to find at this point. I would like to see that definitive evidence before altering my point of view, based on the evidence that I have found available to this point in time.

I've provided evidence that mental health conditions, that are officially diagnosed, are the greatest factor associated with rampage killings.

In the limited research that has been done on rampage killings there is definitely social factors associated, particularly the loss of a job. However that is research provided from over a hundred rampage killings, not just the points of view expressed in a few recent cases. Revenge is an associated factor in some cases that could be based on a range of circumstances from reality to a self generated illusion of reality. I don't doubt that being shunned from society could be a factor, but it is not the only evidenced factor. Particularly in conditions like paranoid schizophrenia, where the paranoia and associated behavior itself can lead to being shunned. Some mental illnesses are genetic in nature; that part of the issue is not societies fault.

These rampage killings are so extremely rare, that many factors must come together to precipitate this type of crime. At times there is no rhyme or reason, particularly if delusions or psychosis are associated. At this point the killings are increasing in frequency so there is concern of what new environmental factors may be associated with the increase.

Even an issue like the accessibility of prescription pain killers, per vicodin, could play a significant role in the last incident, as drug abuse and mental illness have been correlated with violence specific to some mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia.

Assault weapons can be taken out of the equation, to lessen potential casualties. The availability of the weapons them self may have no significant correlation to frequency of the incidences.

It was a general response--just my thoughts on the topic, and poorly organized at that.

There are some facts: Many criminals have a mental illness; but people with mental illnesses are not more likely to become criminals, once you account for other factors like socioeconomic status and drug abuse. And it's obvious that being convicted of a crime is a highly stressful event, once again a risk factor for mental illness.

But we have to make a distinction between "mental illness" and "legal insanity". A mental illness is a diagnosable condition; a medical term. Legal insanity refers to someone who is so impaired that he cannot understand that he is breaking the law and hurting people.

Only rarely are people with a mental illness also legally insane. Most people with mental illnesses are perfectly capable of understanding right and wrong, and thus are subject to the law. Those who are legally insane are usually also so impaired that they require full-time care. Morality is one of the last things that people lose when they have a mental illness or a brain injury. People do lose their inhibitions and become more impulsive; but things like "Don't hurt other people" are so deeply ingrained that by the time you lose that you've also lost the ability to take care of your own very basic needs, let alone buy a gun and get to a movie theater.

There's no way we can know yet whether he has a mental illness, but from what information we have, it seems that his mental health did not force his choices. If he has a mental illness, he needs to have access to treatment in prison, because leaving a person without treatment would be a form of torture. But unless there's some critical information that's not in the news, he was thinking far too clearly to have been legally insane.

Source please. I can't find any source refuting what the commissioner from the NYPD stated nor confirmation from the Colorado authorities stating that he did not say this.

As far as the red hair thing goes, in the previous Batman movie, the Joker wore a red wig, when shooting up a hospital.

And in the original batman TV series, Caesar Romero who played the Joker had brightly colored red hair, but I doubt that is where he got the inspiration from in that lighthearted version of the comic book series.

Considering that the Joker has for the most part had green hair, I'm not sure why someone would suggest he was the Joker, if he did not actually indicate it as such to someone.

The first thing I thought of was Ronald McDonald, but I didn't see the movie where the Joker had a red wig.

Dan Oates did not comment on what Ray Kelly claimed, but did say that Holmes was not dressed like The Joker:

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012 ... ght/?print



Right, while dressed as a female nurse. This is a very thin speculation to hang the supposition that he really thought he was the Joker on, though.





Because it happened at a Batman movie.

just a shot in the dark but it is possible that the red hair was a sort of artistic expression of the fire in his mind. ive done similiar with my own hair and various colors as well but just a guess. everything is always multi-layered in various metaphor

Sometimes dyed hair is just dyed hair.

I agree with most of what you are saying here, except for the part about clear thinking and decision making as it relates to some mental illness; delusions in schizophrenia may not be rational to anyone other than the person experiencing them but they can result in carefully planned actions associated with those delusions in some cases. Schizophrenia can effectively change reality for an individual that reflects little of their previous reality. The Unabomber is a good example as he could not escape his delusions to admit that he had a mental illness to even accept a defense of insanity.

A choice made under the influence of delusions associated with schizophrenia, is not the same as a choice one may have made before they started experiencing the impacts of schizophrenia. As one can see from the case of Loughner, he was not longer the person he was before he started experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia.

There is the potential though, in this case, that Holmes may never even see trial if he is determined not fit competent to stand trial, if he can no longer match his reality with the reality of the way the legal system works. For instance if he is hearing voices or having delusions that the judge or his defense lawyer are Super villains. These are not the kind of things that some schizophrenics have any control over because it has become there reference point of reality.

Medication is often effective so it may make a difference in whether or not he can stand trial, depending on what his diagnosis is.

While a successful defense of insanity is rare, this individual has provided nothing but evidence so far, that he is among the rarest of human beings and human behavior, per what little is known about his recent life history.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/07/24/how-james-holmes-will-be-evaluated-by-psychiatrists/

This may sound strange, but a close friend of mine mentioned a while back that the US Government plans on wanting to devise schemes to create gun laws in America. It has been speculated that the Port Arthur incident here in Oz was "set up" in order to make everyone want gun laws here and they used Martin Bryant to do this. Apparently parts of the story don't add up.

And now this situation in Aurora. I heard that witnesses are now saying that there were actually 2 other men who entered the cinema first and set off smoke bombs before James Holmes came in through the exit door.

Forgive me if I am wrong, I have no idea, but just curious if anyone had heard anything about this stuff? It is interesting that the biggest focus in the media (here in Aust anyway) is based around gun laws.... Plus the fact that he looked so drugged out ?

If he has any aspie tendencies, they're just one part of the genetic perfect storm that occasionally produces somebody so mentally toxic, if he were any worse he'd have died in the womb by actively killing his mother during the second trimester. In buffet terms, take a scoop of aspie, then bury it under a half-pound of paranoid delusion, add a few gallons of narcissism, then randomly add chunks of whatever else produces the (thankfully rare) individuals capable of making brief eye contact with a terrified child, then shooting them at point blank range without a second thought.

Although the "psychopath" word is likely to be next on everybody's lips, it looks more like he's kind of like the guy from Montreal who killed & ate his boyfriend last month... someone totally warped and devoid of any conscience or human decency, but even MORE of a narcissistic fame whore who wants to be the #1 news story for months, have his name on everybody's lips, and die with his own page on Wikipedia documenting his evil notoriety.

The best way to punish someone like him would be to just lock him in a cell somewhere on a distant Pacific atoll with enough food to last 10 years, surround the cell with an impenetrable concrete wall that only let in oxygen so he could breathe, then lobby the world's news organizations & historians to purge every reference to his name so he'd die unobserved, forgotten about, and rot in his concrete tomb for eternity, with little more than a page at Snopes.com to confirm that, yes, an unnamed guy has been officially exiled from the human race and forgotten about as punishment for his crimes. He could starve to death, kill himself, or die from a freak case of appendicitis. We'd never know or care. As a cruel joke, there would be a little brass plate (shaped like a cat head) next to the cemented-over entrance vestibule letting him know that his guard's last name is "Schrodinger". For someone like him, knowing that the entire human race had turned its back on him and erased him from its memory would kill and punish him more painfully than any firing squad, hangman, gas chamber, or lethal injection possibly could.

The Colorado Authorities are probably not at liberty at this point to discuss the details further, but considering there is no refutation of what the reputable Police Commissioner of the NYPD has reported, there really isn't any reason to believe that he is providing false information at this point.

If you had a source to refute the statement, there is no telling why he painted his hair red, as I see people walking down the street with blue or green hair, apparently for no other reason than they want to have blue or green hair.

But as far as Holmes goes, if he was experiencing delusions and actually thought he was the Joker, planning a rampage killing, it likely has something to do with the Joker, and the killing scene in the last movie with the red wig as a potential inspiration for a delusion, as almost anything could be inspiration enough for a delusion. I've also read about a rare comic book where the joker had red hair in an actual massacre in a movie theater, but I won't believe it until I see actual evidence of it. But if that is true, it could also be a scenario related to a potential delusion.

And it is also possible that he said he was the Joker, and the Red Hair was related to something completely different in his mind other than the Joker.

As I have heard no statements suggesting him stating I have red hair because the Joker had red hair in the Hospital scene or a rare comic book.

People with schizophrenia and delusions do tend to respond to those delusions in a way that's in line with their personality, though. Someone who wouldn't kill people if they really did wake up to find they'd metamorphosed into the Joker also wouldn't kill people if they had the delusion that they were the Joker. They'd probably be paralyzed by the fear that they would start killing people; or they'd believe that they had killed people and turn themselves in... etc.

Obviously you can't do the experiments to test it, but I think it's likely that when a murderer has schizophrenia, it is highly likely that he would also have become a murderer if he had never had schizophrenia. The delusions are extenuating circumstances, but the choice to kill is still there.

Those type of conspiracy theories generate a great deal of money for radio talk show hosts in the US, that have benefited greatly ever since 9/11. If there was any credibility to the theories, we would likely be hearing about them from credible sources, as freedom of speech is still allowed in the US, which protects the conspiracy theories in the first place.

I wouldn't be surprised if your friend heard about it on the InfoWars Site, Prison Planet, or Alex Jones whose media is syndicated world wide. He is making a ton of money off of conspiracy theories, survival gear for government take over, as well as many other money making schemes. Freedom of Speech provides the continued ability for people to say almost anything to get rich. Infowars is among the sources that continue to propagate vaccine conspiracies as well.

Some people in the US, believe every word of it, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Thanks for your reply. And yes, you are right, he does listen to Alex Jones, etc. What is with so many people wanting to manipulate others just so that they can buy more yachts to add to their collection?

Hey, I was just thinking, there used to be a poster here on WP who called himself Joker. Haven't heard from him in a while. Is he still around?