FBI: Holmes' booby trap included improvised napalm
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) - An elaborate booby trap system allegedly set up to pull police away from the Colorado theater shooting included improvised napalm and thermite, which burns so hot that water can't put out the blaze.
FBI bomb technician Garret Gumbinner described the system Tuesday at a hearing in which prosecutors laid out their case against suspected gunman James Holmes.
He said three different ignition systems were found in Holmes' apartment. There was a thermos full of glycerin leaning over a skillet full of another chemical. Flames and sparks are created when they mix, and a trip wire linked the thermos to the door.
Police said Holmes hoped a boom box on a timer would lure someone to the apartment.
Prosecutors are trying to show in what is expected to be a weeklong hearing that the attack that killed 12 and wounded dozens July 20 was a premeditated act and that Holmes should stand trial.
Defense attorneys say he is mentally ill.
Daniel King, one of Holmes' lawyers, on Monday pointedly asked a pathologist who had just detailed each of the fatalities: "You're aware that people can be found not guilty on the grounds of insanity?"
When officers arrived at the theater, they found Holmes standing next to his car. At first, Officer Jason Oviatt said, he thought Holmes was a policeman because of how he was dressed but then realized he was just standing there and not rushing toward the theater.
Oviatt said Holmes seemed "very, very relaxed" and didn't seem to have "normal emotional reactions" to things. "He seemed very detached," he said.
At one point, after arresting Holmes, Grizzle asked him if anyone had been helping him or working with him. "He just looked at me and smiled ... like a smirk," Grizzle recalled.
So far, the trial has focused on the horror Aurora police officers discovered at the theater. The magnitude of the attack could be heard in the first 911 call to police, played Tuesday in court. It lasted 27 seconds and police say at least 30 shots could be heard.
The call came in 18 minutes into the showing of "The Dark Knight Rises".
Police also played a 911 call from a teenage cousin of 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, the youngest person killed. A dispatcher tried to talk her through CPR but she sounded panicked and said she couldn't hear.
A bearded and disheveled Holmes stared straight ahead as the calls were played and didn't show any emotion.
Holmes also showed little emotion on Monday as police officers struggled to hold back tears during their testimony, reciting a litany of heartbreak: discovering a 6-year-old girl without a pulse, trying to keep a wounded man from jumping out of a moving police car to go back for his 7-year-old daughter, screaming at a gunshot victim not to die.
"After I saw what I saw in the theater - horrific - I didn't want anyone else to die," Grizzle said.
Holmes watched intently as one detective showed a surveillance video of him calmly entering the theater lobby, holding the door open for a couple behind him, and printing out tickets to the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" that he purchased electronically nearly two weeks earlier. Authorities did not show a video of the attack but say Holmes, wearing body armor, tossed two gas canisters into the packed theater, then opened fire.
The hearing will be the best opportunity yet for survivors to find out about Holmes' mental state and the sequence of events that led up to the attack. It comes weeks after a shooting at a Newtown, Conn., school killed 20 children and six adults and increased scrutiny on the combustible mix of firearms and mental illness.
Holmes is charged with more than 160 counts, including murder and attempted murder. The hearing will allow the judge to determine whether the prosecution's case is strong enough to warrant a trial, but it's rare for a judge not to order a trial if a case gets this far.
Legal analysts say that evidence appears to be so strong that Holmes may well accept a plea agreement before trial.
While prosecutors have yet to decide on whether they will seek the death penalty, such a plea could get Holmes a lesser sentence, such as life in prison; help the state avoid a costly trial; and spare survivors and families of those who died from the trauma of going through a lengthy trial.
FBI bomb technician Garret Gumbinner described the system Tuesday at a hearing in which prosecutors laid out their case against suspected gunman James Holmes.
He said three different ignition systems were found in Holmes' apartment. There was a thermos full of glycerin leaning over a skillet full of another chemical. Flames and sparks are created when they mix, and a trip wire linked the thermos to the door.
Police said Holmes hoped a boom box on a timer would lure someone to the apartment.
Prosecutors are trying to show in what is expected to be a weeklong hearing that the attack that killed 12 and wounded dozens July 20 was a premeditated act and that Holmes should stand trial.
Defense attorneys say he is mentally ill.
Daniel King, one of Holmes' lawyers, on Monday pointedly asked a pathologist who had just detailed each of the fatalities: "You're aware that people can be found not guilty on the grounds of insanity?"
When officers arrived at the theater, they found Holmes standing next to his car. At first, Officer Jason Oviatt said, he thought Holmes was a policeman because of how he was dressed but then realized he was just standing there and not rushing toward the theater.
Oviatt said Holmes seemed "very, very relaxed" and didn't seem to have "normal emotional reactions" to things. "He seemed very detached," he said.
At one point, after arresting Holmes, Grizzle asked him if anyone had been helping him or working with him. "He just looked at me and smiled ... like a smirk," Grizzle recalled.
So far, the trial has focused on the horror Aurora police officers discovered at the theater. The magnitude of the attack could be heard in the first 911 call to police, played Tuesday in court. It lasted 27 seconds and police say at least 30 shots could be heard.
The call came in 18 minutes into the showing of "The Dark Knight Rises".
Police also played a 911 call from a teenage cousin of 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, the youngest person killed. A dispatcher tried to talk her through CPR but she sounded panicked and said she couldn't hear.
A bearded and disheveled Holmes stared straight ahead as the calls were played and didn't show any emotion.
Holmes also showed little emotion on Monday as police officers struggled to hold back tears during their testimony, reciting a litany of heartbreak: discovering a 6-year-old girl without a pulse, trying to keep a wounded man from jumping out of a moving police car to go back for his 7-year-old daughter, screaming at a gunshot victim not to die.
"After I saw what I saw in the theater - horrific - I didn't want anyone else to die," Grizzle said.
Holmes watched intently as one detective showed a surveillance video of him calmly entering the theater lobby, holding the door open for a couple behind him, and printing out tickets to the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" that he purchased electronically nearly two weeks earlier. Authorities did not show a video of the attack but say Holmes, wearing body armor, tossed two gas canisters into the packed theater, then opened fire.
The hearing will be the best opportunity yet for survivors to find out about Holmes' mental state and the sequence of events that led up to the attack. It comes weeks after a shooting at a Newtown, Conn., school killed 20 children and six adults and increased scrutiny on the combustible mix of firearms and mental illness.
Holmes is charged with more than 160 counts, including murder and attempted murder. The hearing will allow the judge to determine whether the prosecution's case is strong enough to warrant a trial, but it's rare for a judge not to order a trial if a case gets this far.
Legal analysts say that evidence appears to be so strong that Holmes may well accept a plea agreement before trial.
While prosecutors have yet to decide on whether they will seek the death penalty, such a plea could get Holmes a lesser sentence, such as life in prison; help the state avoid a costly trial; and spare survivors and families of those who died from the trauma of going through a lengthy trial.
I suppose vigilantism is out of the question concerning this guy. Obviously evil, murderous, losers pretending to be crazy have more rights than innocent victims who didn't have a chance to determine their own fate.
@The Resistance Well said!
Napalm and thermite... I didn't realize that regular citizens could even buy those kinds of things...those sound like things that only our military would have access to... Â Of course, just because it's illegal for people to have, doesn't mean that someone determined to have it won't be able to find it somewhere (eg: underground marketplace)... I guess there's very, very little in this world that is not obtainable if the "right price" is deposited into the "right pockets"...
The Colorado shooter sounds to me like a full-blown sociopath... will probably be extremely dangerous as long as he's walking around...
@margay1 The thermit at the napalm were "improvised." That means home made. I would think if he had "access" to the real thing, that is what he would have used.
@Mechanic FFS. You make military-grade thermite with powdered aluminum (not going to tell you where to get it or how to make it) and iron oxide. Ie, a blowtorches steel-wool pad. I promise you if somebody dumps gasoline-liquified plastic on you and sets you on fire, you won't care if it's "the real thing,"Which is just mothballs and...but I'm not going to tell you that either.
 @margay1 To make thermite, all you need to do is take a steel wool pad and cook it to powder with a blowtorch. Add an equal part of aluminum powder, and I'm not going to tell you how to light it, but that's why the "thermite" theory of 9/11 is so ridiculous. All thermite is is powderized oxidized iron and aluminum. I have a couple of pounds of it. You never know when you're going to have to do some underwater welding. (Okay, factually speaking, it was for Battlebots but California won't let you burn tires.)To make "napalm" all you have to do is fill a coffee can part-way with gasoline and start adding styrofoam until you get the consistency you want. Magnesium powder helps it stay lit. If you want to stay hotter, you get magnesium from those survival kits but I'm not going to tell you how you powderize it without also burning it up. It's great for starting campfire but you'll never be able to cook on it without your food tasting like an Oliver Stone movie.Similarly, he could have gone to the university chem lab, stolen ingredients, manufactured black powder, gotten some pipe from Home Depot, put it in a plastic sack and dropped it in one of those concrete, grenade-like garbage cans in the lobby when a hundred people are packed together like tourists in a TSA line. Right where you'd expect somebody to toss their Wendy's bag before looking at his watch and walking out. For example.This is why people like me are trying to tell you there is no point in banning things. Your laws aren't going to prevent anybody from making thermite or napalm, gunpowder, bombs, AR-15 magazines (three pieces of stamped metal, one piece of plastic and a spring. C'mon)
 @Playanekes "...that's why the "thermite" theory of 9/11 is so ridiculous."
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Wouldn't the presence of it explain the molten metal found in the basement of the WTC?
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Three Weeks after the attack temps in the basement were still 1,000 degrees with molten metal flowing everywhere. I've seen jets crash into aircraft carriers and explode into a ball of flame, but never did it cause the ship's deck to turn molten and collapse within itself.
@Playanekes @margay1 Yeah, you can ban things, and we have to do it.
@Mechanic you can't stop a psychopath from making thermite or napalm, fool, unless you figure out how to ban gasoline, plastic, dishwasher detergent, iron and aluminum. You're not going to ban guns either because these are the sorts of things you'll have to deal with if you try. You think 2nd Amendment types don't also know how to make IEDs? Have you forgotten how many thousands of AR-15 types have dealt with them personally? What are you going to do, attack them with flower power?
 @Playanekes ~  Thank you, Playanekes... one cool thing about this forum is some of the unusual stuff I learn..!  Napalm and thermite aren't things that I've ever run across in my life; I honestly had no idea what they were made from... Â
I am in full agreement with you in re simply "banning" things... Our problems are not with inanimate objects; our problems are "people" problems, and unless and until we address those, we will continue to have the events like Colorado, CTC, and Newtown. Â The politicians will go for "feel good band-aids" that will not solve anything, but will allow them to pat themselves on the back, especially when they're campaigning...and then they can waste more tax money doing useless "studies" on all of it... Â
Our problem is: how do we get people into office who aren't afraid to tackle the REAL problems and do the work necessary to achieve REAL results..? Â Â
Is napalm and thermite banned?  Do we need more laws and longer waiting periods  :PÂ
A bullet should wipe that smug look off his face.
Where did he get the bomb making training?
What legal drugs was he on?
What was the neuroscience program he was involved in funded by the DOD?
Why were there reports of 2 shooters?
Why does the batman movie mention Sandy Hook?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p41_5KLhApg
@portlandborn83 "Why were there reports of 2 shooters?" Same reason people saw someone on the grassy knoll. Eyewitness testimony, especially in highly stressful situations, are notoriously unreliable.
@Mechanic ah, so, you were at the grassy knoll now, too.
 @portlandborn83 My bomb-making training started from a book called The Poor Man's James Bond by Kurt Saxon. Also, Chemistry 201. You learn about "thermite" reading Alex Jones conspiracy websites but it's trivially-easy to make.
I do believe he is mentally ill. There are many highly inelegant criminals. This guy happened to be a smart, cold calculating mass murder. He does not belong in a mental institution, or prison however. Six feet down, or ashes, ether works for me.
@WebFootSTi Ether? You'd five him an anesthetic?
Anyone ever check to see if the defense attorneys are "mentally ill"? Doesn't it take one to know one? Anyone who can concoct this type of premeditated booby trap can think clearly and logically plan out his actions. That does not strike me as mentally ill!Â
Even if he was mentally ill, it wouldn't make him less dangerous. Â But I don't believe he was, he was very methodical and knew exactly what he was doing. Â Execute.
There is no doubt he killed the people, there is no doubt he will never be safe to release on the streets... put. his. azz. down.
 @Peregrine I'd be okay with lobotomizing him if they find him insane, but only because the fear of a drill going into my brain and rendering me a vegetable is scarier than death. The insanity plea won't be so appealing then.
Why? Did they ever figure out WHY this guy created such a horrific event? Death Penalty is way too easy for him.
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I hope the LE and rescuers that came to help all those victims were able to get some mental health. I can't even begin to imagine the carnage.Â