The suspected Batman massacre gunman was seeing a psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia before the attack that killed 12 in Colorado, court documents showed Friday.
The motion named Lynne Fenton for the first time as defense attorneys sought to gain access to a package James Holmes had mailed to her prior the July 20 mass shooting, which also wounded 58 people.
Reports surfaced this week that Holmes — who recently dropped out of the University of Colorado — had sent a notebook to a university psychiatrist that included details and drawing of his plans to kill people.
There were conflicting reports about whether the package reached the school in time to potentially prevent the massacre, but officials remained tight-lipped due to a strict gag order imposed by the judge overseeing the case.
Judge William Sylvester unsealed some court filings Friday after defense attorneys argued that Holmes’s right to a fair trial had been violated and that the judge’s gag order had been breached.
In a preview of likely battles to come, the defense lawyers also argued that the contents of the package should not be used as evidence because communications between Holmes and Fenton were “protected.” The filing said Holmes was Fenton’s “psychiatric patient.”
Fenton teaches at the University of Colorado’s medical school and heads student mental health services there, in addition to conducting research in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
But the document did not indicate how long Holmes had been seeing Fenton or whether she was treating him for mental illness.
Prosecutors rebuffed the defense motion, arguing that news stories about the package contained significant “factual errors” and that there was no evidence the government was responsible for the leaks.
The reporting mistakes may indicate that reporters are “getting information from hoaxers, fraudsters or maybe from nobody at all by creating fake ‘law enforcement sources’ out of whole cloth,” prosecutors wrote.
They also indicated that a FoxNews.com report that the package contained a notebook “full of details” about the suspected gunman’s plans for a massacre was incorrect.
Holmes, who was studying neuroscience in a doctoral program at the University of Colorado Denver, is expected to be formally charged at his next court hearing on Monday.
