Three Famous Tragedies Still Raise Hard Questions

Black ice that nobody can find. A Boeing 777 that seems to vanish from the planet. A courtroom appearance that makes you say, “Wait… is that the same person?” We sit down and take a hard look at three stories that keep pulling people back because the clean, official version doesn’t fully satisfy the details.

First up, we dig into Cliff Burton’s life and death, from the promise he makes after losing his brother to the way he transforms the bass into a lead instrument that changes heavy metal forever. We walk through the Master of Puppets tour, the card draw that puts him in the wrong bunk, and the bus crash in Sweden where the “black ice” explanation gets shaky when you compare it to reported conditions and witness accounts. If you’ve ever searched for the real story behind Cliff Burton’s death, we lay out what’s known and why the unanswered parts still haunt fans.

Then we shift to MH370 and the reality of deep-sea search: why finding debris is not guaranteed, how pinger batteries and signal blockage can ruin a lead, and how ocean currents can separate surface debris from the wreck site by miles. We talk Inmarsat data, sonar scanning, recovered parts like the flaperon, and the theories that thrive when certainty is impossible.

We close with the Aurora theater shooting and James Holmes, including the documented timeline and the questions that come up when you zoom out on mental health, institutional decisions, and public narrative. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who loves mysteries, and leave a review, then tell us in the comments which piece of this feels the most unresolved to you.

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Transcript

Cold Open On Three Mysteries

SPEAKER_18 0:09

One of the greatest bass players to ever live passed away tragically. We'll find out what the true story is about Cliff Burton. Almost 14 years ago, moviegoers went through a tragic night of events at Batman Movie. What is the real story about James Holmes?

Welcome And What We Dig Into

SPEAKER_19 0:57

What's up, everybody? What's happening, everybody? Welcome back to thank you. What's a gift for joining us on the 18th century? Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_18 1:11

Thanks a lot. Yeah, we got some good stuff for you today. Everybody knows about the plane that went missing back in 2014, you know, the Malaysia flight MH370. A lot of really weird stuff that just kind of disappeared. There was like four different narratives of what the actual thing happened with it. You know, it's kind of crazy, but we'll dive into that. We also have some stuff about Cliff Burton, you know, we're obviously Metallica fans. I can see we're you know lifelong metalheads and everything. You know, pretty much before our time, we didn't realize how much of an awesome bass player Cliff Burton was, but we had some stories about kind of what happened the night and up to uh the night that he passed away tragically. Um we also have some stuff about the Aurora Theater shooting that happened back in 2012. Um I actually lived real close to this theater when it was happening. I had no idea what was going on while it was happening. Heard all the sirens and stuff, but uh I always thought something was a little fishy, man. Something didn't seem right about that guy, you know. It was like I saw him in court the next day when they had him in there, and he looked like he was so high, bro, like so drugged up, it was insane. So we're gonna get into that too.

SPEAKER_19 2:24

So it's a it's a weird one, and just like, you know, some of the some of the clips that uh uh you know we've seen, or I'm just like that. Seems very weird to me.

SPEAKER_18 2:32

Yeah, pictures, they don't seem like the same person. I don't know. We'll get into it, but first check out the stuff about uh Cliff Burton.

Cliff Burton’s Life-Changing Promise

SPEAKER_02 2:44

He was 24 years old. He was sleeping in a bunk he had won by drawing the ace of spades just hours earlier. And in less than 10 seconds, on a quiet stretch of Swedish highway, the greatest bass player heavy metal had ever produced was gone. But here is what almost nobody talks about. The official story of how Cliff Burton died falls apart the moment you actually look at it. The black eyes his driver swore was on the road was not there. The temperature was above freezing. The detective on scene said the tracks looked like a man who had fallen asleep at the wheel. And the most haunting part of the whole night happened after Cliff was already pinned beneath a 40,000-pound tour bus when a rescue crane slipped, and the bus came crashing back down on him a second time. This is the story of the most influential bassist in metal history. The kid from Castro Valley who practiced eight hours a day in his bedroom because he had made a promise to a dead brother. The man Metallica's own producer said was the real leader of the band, and the strange, contested, almost unbelievable final hours of his life. Stay with me because by the end of this video, you will never hear for whom the bell tolls the same way again. Number 12. The Promise to a Ghost. Long before he was Thrash Metal Royalty, Cliff Burton was a quiet kid from a quiet California town who liked classical music and books. His father, Ray, was an assistant highway engineer. His mother Jan taught children with disabilities. He had two older siblings, Connie and Scott. By all accounts, Cliff was introverted, gentle, and almost shy. The kind of boy who would rather disappear into a record than into a crowd. Then, in May of 1975, when Cliff was just 13, his 16-year-old brother Scott collapsed from a brain aneurysm and died. The family never fully recovered. Cliff barely talked about it. But three or four months after the funeral, he walked into the kitchen and told his parents he wanted to learn the bass. He told a few close friends something even more chilling. He said, Quote, I'm gonna be the best bassist for my brother. That sentence would become the engine of everything that followed. Every hour of practice, every sacrifice weekend, every show, every album. It was all for a teenage boy who never got to grow up. And if you think that sounds like a movie, just wait. Because the way Cliff threw himself into that promise was so extreme it scared the people closest to him. Number 11. The bedroom practice room. Cliff didn't pick up the bass casually. He attacked it. His sister Connie later said that if you wanted to talk to him, you had to walk into his bedroom because he refused to come out. He would emerge for meals carrying his bass and walk straight back in to keep playing. Six hours a day, eight hours a day. Even after he was already in Metallica, even after they were touring the world, he kept that schedule. His teacher Steve Doherty was a serious jazz player who pushed him to read music, study classical composers, and break the rules of what bass was supposed to do. There is a small, almost unbelievable detail from his childhood that ended up shaping his entire sound. As a kid, Cliff was hunting and fishing in the California outdoors when he tried to clean a carp with a knife and accidentally severed a tendon in his right pinky finger. That injury changed how he attacked the strings. He couldn't play like everyone else, so he played like nobody else. The ferocious finger-only assault that would later make Metallica fans lose their minds was born from a fishing accident. And his bandmates would later joke about a technique they called the floppy finger. But there's something even stranger about who Cliff was offstage. Number 10. The Cowboy Hat Kid, nobody understood. In a high school full of punks, jocks, and stoners, Cliff Burton wore a black cowboy hat, bell bottom jeans, and a denim jacket. He drove a beat-up green Volkswagen Beetle that he nicknamed The Grasshopper. He listened to country, classical, jazz, blues, southern rock, and Black Sabbath in the same afternoon. People made fun of him for the way he dressed. He didn't care. Friends remember him as the kid who refused to belong to any one tribe. He read. He studied music theory deeper than most college students. He was obsessed with Stanley Clark and Getty Lee and Phil Lennot. He worshipped Geezer Butler. He thought Lemmy was a god. And while every other metal kid in 1979 was trying to dress like Judas Priest, Cliff was rolling around Castro Valley dressed like a hippie cowboy who had wandered out of a 1972 photograph. That refusal to follow the rules of cool was the same thing that made his playing so revolutionary. He didn't care what a bass was supposed to sound like. And by the time he was 16, he was already in his first real band with a name you would not believe. Number 9. The band named after a strip club. Cliff's first band was called Easy Street. And yes, the name was lifted from a topless bar in the Bay Area. The lineup was insane in hindsight. On guitar was a kid named Jim Martin, who would later become the iconic guitarist of Faith No More. On drums was Mike Borden, who would also end up in Faith No More, and later behind Ozzie Osborne. Three teenagers in a garage who would each go on to permanently mark heavy music. After Easy Street, Cliff and Jim Martin moved on to a second band with an even weirder name, Agents of Misfortune. They entered the Hayward area Battle of the Bands contest in 1981, and the audition video survived. If you have ever seen it, you already know what's coming. Because in that grainy footage of three suburban kids in a Battle of the Bands tryout, you can clearly hear two pieces of music that would go on to become legend. The chromatic intro to For Whom the Bell Tolls. And the bass solo that the world would later know as Anesthesia pulling teeth. Cliff Burton wrote those passages before Metallica even existed. Before he had ever met James Hetfield. He was already inventing the future, alone in a junior college rehearsal space. But the moment that would actually change everything happened the next year. In a sweaty club in Los Angeles, on a night two scruffy unknowns happened to be in the audience. Number eight, the night Metallica saw

The Bass Sound That Shocked Metallica

SPEAKER_02 9:27

him. In 1982, Cliff joined a Bay Area band called Trauma. Trauma got booked at the Whiskey of Go-Go in Los Angeles, the same legendary stage that had launched the doors. Two members of a struggling local thrash band were in the crowd that night: James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. They were not there for Cliff. They were not there for trauma. But the second Cliff started his solo, both of them froze. Hetfield later described it as, quote, this amazing shredding. For a few seconds they thought they were watching an unknown guitar prodigy. Then they realized the sound was coming from the bass. They didn't even talk about it. They just looked at each other. And from that moment, they were going to do whatever it took to get him in their band. Their own bassist, Ron McGovney, was already on his way out. They went backstage, they pitched Cliff, and they offered him the gig. But Cliff had a condition that nearly killed the deal. A demand most struggling rock bands would have laughed at. He told them he would only join if Metallica left Los Angeles entirely. Number 7. The demand that moved a band. Cliff hated Los Angeles. He thought the LA scene was full of pretty boys playing dress up. He didn't want to live there. He didn't want to drive there. He wasn't even sure he wanted to play music there. So he told Hetfield and Ulrich the truth. If you want me, you move. To the Bay Area, where I live. And these two future Metal Titans, who at that point had nothing but a demo tape and a dream, said yes without hesitating. Metallica packed up and relocated to El Sarino, California, just across the Bay from San Francisco. That single decision rewrote rock history. Because the Bay Area scene was raw, faster, hungrier, and meaner than anything happening in Hollywood at the time. Metallica didn't just gain a basis, they became a Bay Area band. They absorbed the speed, the aggression, the underground ethos of that scene. And every band that followed, from Megadeth to Exodus to Testament, owes part of their DNA to a teenager who refused to drive south on the i5. But Cliff's fingerprints on Metallica went so much deeper than just geography. He literally named one of the most important albums in metal history, almost by accident. Number six, how he named Kill Em All. Their first album was originally going to be called Metal Up Your Ass. The cover was already designed. It featured a hand holding a dagger emerging from a toilet bowl. The label refused to release it. Distributors said retailers would never stock something that crude. The band was furious. They sat in a room arguing about what to do, throwing out names, getting nowhere. And then Cliff, half joking, half exhausted, muttered, We should just kill 'em all, man. Everyone went quiet. They looked at each other. Three days later, the title was Locked In. Kill Em All, released in July 1983, featuring the bass solo Anesthesia Pulling Teeth, which broke nearly every rule about what bass was allowed to do in heavy music. He used a wah pedal, a wah pedal. On bass in 1983. It was unheard of. Bass players were supposed to be invisible. They were supposed to lock in with the drummer and never raise their head. Cliff destroyed that idea on his very first album. And on the second album, he proved it was no fluke. Number 5. The Lead Bass Revolution. When Metallica released Ride the Lightning in July 1984, something had clearly shifted. Cliff received writing credits on six of the eight tracks. Six out of eight as a bass player on a thrash album. Listen to the chromatic intro of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Most people who have heard that song their entire life still think it's a guitar. It isn't. It's Cliff. Heavily distorted, attacked with a wah pedal, played with the same fingers that had been mangled by a fish years before. He turned the bass into a lead instrument. He invented techniques nobody had even named yet. Then came Master of Puppets. In March 1986, the album, most metal fans would tell you, is the greatest thrash record ever made. Cliff's instrumental Orion Alone is a piece of music that belongs in a conservatory. Arpeggios, harmony lines, chord voicings, a melodic sensibility that makes the song feel more like Bach than Black Sabbath. And here is the secret that the band's longtime producer would only reveal decades later. On those records, Cliff wasn't just the bassist, he was the boss. Number four, the true leader of Metallica. Producer Fleming Rasmussen worked with Metallica on Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, and And Justice for All. In a 2025 interview with Metal Hammer, he finally said what insiders had quietly known for 40 years. He said that Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield being seen as the leaders of the band, quote, didn't emerge until later. Back then, it was a four-piece unit. And Cliff was the oldest. The most musically educated. The one who could read music. The one who could explain harmony. And then Rasmussen said the line that changed how everyone looks at those albums. He said, quote, Nothing really happened in Metallica unless Cliff nodded yes. Think about that for a second. The band that would become the biggest metal act in human history was, in its most creatively explosive era, run by quiet consensus from a 23-year-old in a denim jacket. He was the vibe. He was the brain. He was the gravity. And he had no idea on the morning of September 26, 1986, that he had less than 24 hours left. Number 3.

Master Of Puppets Tour Final Night

SPEAKER_02 15:30

The Damage Inchor Tour was rolling through Europe behind Master of Puppets. The band was on top of the world. Their manager could feel it. The crowds were getting bigger. The reviews were unreal. Anthrax was opening for them. They had played London's Hammersmith Odeon six days earlier, and the after party was so wild that nobody slept. Now they were in Stockholm, Sweden, headlining the Solnahalen Arena. The date was September 26, 1986. The final song they ever performed with Cliff on stage was Fight Fire with Bayer. Nobody in the building knew it was the last one. After the show, the band climbed onto their tour bus to make the overnight drive to Copenhagen. The bunks on the bus were uncomfortable, narrow, and everyone was tired. So Cliff and Kirk Hammett did what they often did. They drew cards to decide who slept where. Cliff drew the Ace of Spades. He won the choice. He turned to Kirk and said, I want your bunk. Kirk shrugged. He answered, Fine, take my bunk. I'll sleep up front. It's probably better anyway. Kirk would spend the rest of his life replaying that sentence. Because the bunk Kirk had been about to sleep in was the bunk directly next to a long row of windows on the side of the bus. And in less than seven hours, those windows were about to become the most important detail of a tragedy that has never been fully explained. Number 2.

Bus Crash And Black Ice Doubts

SPEAKER_02 17:00

The crash and the black ice that wasn't there. It was just before 7 in the morning on September 27th, 1986. The bus was rolling south on European Route E4, about 12 miles north of Lungby, near the small Swedish village of Durarp. The band were asleep. James Hetfield was in the back lounge because his throat was sore. Cliff was up top in the bunk he had just won. Suddenly the bus began to swerve. It careened from side to side, then left the road, flipped, and rolled. Cliff, asleep in the upper bunk by the windows, was thrown straight through the glass. The bus came down on top of him. He never woke up. The driver ran from the cab in shock and told everyone the same thing: black ice. He had hit black ice. He had lost control. James Hetfield, half dressed and freezing, climbed out of the wreckage and walked the road in his socks and underwear looking for it. He never found any. The local detective Arna Peterson from Lungby told a Swedish newspaper that the tracks at the scene looked exactly like the tracks of a driver who had fallen asleep behind the wheel. A freelance photographer named Leonard Wenberg, who showed up at the crash site the next morning, said black ice was, quote, out of the question. The road was DRI. The temperature was around 36 degrees Fahrenheit, 4 degrees above the freezing point. Police inspected the scene. They couldn't find a single patch of ice anywhere. The driver was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. To this day, no one knows what really happened. Was he drunk? Was he asleep? Did he hit something? Was the official explanation a lie that was easier to live with? Forty years later, the surviving members of Metallica still don't have an answer. And what happened next was somehow even worse. Number one. The band crawled out of the wreckage one by one, alive, bleeding, terrified. They could see Cliff's legs sticking out from under the bus. Hepfield later said in an MTV interview, quote, I saw the bus lying right on him. I saw his legs sticking out. I freaked. A crane was called to lift the bus. Locals gathered. Cliff was already gone, but the band was praying for a miracle anyway, because they couldn't accept what they were seeing. The crane lowered its hook, the chain wrapped around the bus. The bus started to lift, and then the chain slipped. The bus crashed back down on top of him a second time. If anyone in the band had still been holding on to hope, it died in that instant. Hetfield went looking for the driver. He was not gentle about it. He has spoken openly about wanting to physically hurt the man, especially after he allegedly tried to pull a blanket off Cliff to use it for the survivors. Kirk Hammett, the man who had given up that bunk hours earlier, was destroyed. He later said he could remember almost nothing of the next three or four hours. What he does remember is being back at the hotel at four in the morning, hearing a voice in the street below his window, drunk, screaming. It was James Hetfield. Walking the empty streets of a small Swedish town in the middle of the night, sobbing, yelling, Cliff! Cliff, where are you? Hammett broke down crying in his hotel room, and the greatest metal band in the world was never the same again. What he left behind.

Grief, Replacement, And Cliff’s Legacy

SPEAKER_02 20:33

They didn't quit. Cliff's parents told them not to. They auditioned Basis and ended up choosing Jason Newstead from Flotsum and Jetsum. By November 1986, less than two months after burying their friend, Metallica was back on stage in Tokyo. Cliff's body was cremated, his ashes were scattered at the Maxwell Ranch in California. At the memorial, they played Orion, his instrumental, the one he had written. In 1988, on the album And Justice for All, they released a song called To Live is to Die. Buried inside the track is a spoken word poem written by Cliff himself, recorded before he died. The lyrics, Cannot the Kingdom of Salvation Take Me Home, are the words his family chose to engrave on the memorial stone that now stands near the crash site in Sweden. In 2006, on the 20th anniversary of his death, that stone was officially unveiled. In 2009, Metallica was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cliff was inducted with them posthumously. His father Ray walked on stage and accepted on his behalf. He told the audience that Cliff's mother Jan was Metallica's biggest fan. In 2011, a Rolling Stone Reader poll named him the ninth greatest bassist of all time. In 2017, the world learned that Cliff's parents had been quietly donating every penny of his posthumous Metallica royalties for years. The money was going to a music scholarship at his old high school in Castro Valley. Just funding kids who wanted to learn an instrument. No press, no announcements, they just did it. In 2018, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors officially declared February 10th his birthday, Cliff Burton Day. And in May 2022, in a quiet move that would have made him laugh, the Swedish must-stop near the crash site was officially renamed Cliff Burton's Memorial Stone. A teenage promise to a dead brother. A fishing injury that birthed a sound. A refusal to move to Los Angeles that bent the entire arc of metal music. A drawn card on the wrong night. And a 40-year-old story that still doesn't add up. The strange thing about Cliff Burton's death is not just that he died young. Plenty of musicians die young. The strange thing is how completely he had already finished the work. He was 24 years old, and he had already invented an entire approach to bass guitar that didn't exist before him. He had already co-written the riffs and structures that would shape thrash metal for the next 40 years. He had already changed Metallica into Metallica. There is a school of thought that says he was on a clock he could feel. That the kid who lost his brother at 13 and instantly redirected his entire life into a musical promise had some quiet awareness that he didn't have forever. That every six-hour practice session, every sleepless tour van, every demand that the band move closer to home was him squeezing the most out of a window he somehow knew was narrow. We will never know if that's true. What we do know is this the bus driver was cleared, the black ice was never found. The detective said it looked like sleep at the wheel. And 40 years later, three of the most powerful men in rock music still flinch when his name comes up. So the next time you hear that chromatic intro to for whom the bell tolls, listen closely. That's not just a bass line. That's a 13-year-old kid in a bedroom in Castro Valley, keeping a promise to his older brother, and it is still echoing all these years later, louder than ever.

Our Metal Memories And Paying It Forward

SPEAKER_18 24:20

Yeah, so that's crazy stuff, man. You know, I mean, I started listening to him pretty much right after he had passed away. After Newstead had joined the band.

SPEAKER_19 24:30

You know, I I I remember, you know, um my my sister, you know, and her friends had it uh um you know, listen to him, you know, especially when I think uh I forget what album it was, but I I I do remember, you know, my sister listening to him and and I kind of, you know, just being a kid, I was like, wow, that's some that's some good stuff. Yeah. I mean it wasn't it wasn't until I I think um really I was in the eighth grade where uh you know 14, 15 to where it was I I was found my true appreciation for Metallica and uh just uh you know and and that's where their influence had really started me in in uh the heavier metal. I mean I always liked you know Aussie and all that good stuff, but yeah, I mean I'd have to say, you know, Metallica was one of the bigger influences on me on the metal. It went from Metallica to anthrax, you know, um especially you know uh us boys that was hanging out with you know, seventh, eighth, eighth, eighth graders, and you know, metal came out and dude, it just mine was I was sixth, sixth grade, I think.

SPEAKER_18 25:27

My buddy Scott Pollock, what's up, Scott? Um I was friends with his little brother, and and Scott came over to pick us up at the pool or whatever one day. Yeah, and we were in the back of his pickup, you know, in the bed, and he had like a camper shell or whatever, and he was cranking, I'm the man. You know, and I was like, dude, what is that? You know, so he hooked me up with the little cassette. It was the one that had it was the single, so it had uh Sabbath's bloody sabbat on the other side. Awesome. And that was that was cool. And so I listened to that, but then you know, I'd hang out with s with Sean or whatever, and I'd be over there, and I I remember seeing Scott's jacket, and it had uh a Metallica Master of Puppets backpack. And I was like, Hey man, what's Metallica? And he was like, It's Metallica, idiot. You know, and he let me listen to some Master of Puppets, and I was like, holy crap, dude. That was and it was like the beginning of going from you know, like the the mainstream pop that you're told is rock and roll, um, and like the the kind of bubblegum y stuff like Def Leopard and poison type of music, not really poison because that was later on, but like that kind of genre, it went immediately from there to heavier stuff. Yeah, man. All the other stuff is can just get out. I don't need any of that hair metal and all that. Like I liked Winger, they had a couple cool songs, but it's like no, I'm not gonna be like the winger guy, but I am the Metallica dude, like on Beavis and Butthead, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_19 26:53

It's like I I still listen to some of the you know the hair. I mean I still have to do it.

SPEAKER_18 26:56

I'm not saying I don't hear it. I'm just saying that once Metallica and Anthrax hit, it was kind of it was all I'm all about the heavy, you know, after that point. Well, I prefer heavy metal music, you know.

SPEAKER_19 27:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_18 27:12

You know, I'll I'd like some country stuff like Conway Twitty, I like the old school real, you know, country stuff. Oh, yeah. I I'm not gonna jam it, but I'll listen to it, be like, man, that guy had some. It's not on my playlist. Right. Like there's some dude, Tom T. Hall, all these old guys, you know, like there was some good country back in the day, but I'm not gonna I'm not a country guy.

SPEAKER_19 27:34

Right.

SPEAKER_18 27:34

You know, but there's something I still can't stand.

SPEAKER_19 27:37

But I mean it's still, you know, I I I do um like you're saying, I mean, for especially from you know growing up, you hear it all the time. You you you you learn.

SPEAKER_18 27:45

I live with my grandparents and they were listening to country all the time, so but they didn't have any judgment towards me. They let me listen to whatever I wanted to, which was cool. Yeah. You know, my grandma was always rocking Metallica with me when we go to the orthodontist in the springs or something.

SPEAKER_19 27:59

You know, taking a road trip, grandma's tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, like Yeah, I I think a lot a lot of my uh uh um was the fact that my stepdad played it and I just you know can't stand that son of a p biscuit. And uh so I I fought it and wouldn't let it, you know, but as I got older and you know, I I learned to appreciate the I understand.

SPEAKER_18 28:19

It's hard when you associate bad things.

SPEAKER_19 28:23

And you're gonna put that block up that wall and you're like, hell no, that ain't getting in. And then as you know, getting older and you know, realizing life is still good, and that's actually, you know, a lot of it's pretty dang good music.

SPEAKER_18 28:34

Yeah. So I had a comic book because I started getting into like horror comics, you know, like Creep Show and Fright Night and stuff like that when I was young. Yeah. And so I saw a Metallica comic book at the comic book store. I was like, gotta have it. I don't care what it was. I don't care what's in it. They might not even talk about Metallica, but it's on the cover, you know. It's got like the dude from the jump in the fire.

SPEAKER_19 28:55

Oh yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_18 28:57

Um, but it was basically the story about all this stuff that you guys just saw, you know, like the life leading up, like how they kicked out Dave Mustaine for his alcoholism.

SPEAKER_19 29:06

I didn't know that. I didn't know that whole thing about his brother and all that stuff. I mean, that was kind of uh you know, awesome the fact that you know he was like, well, I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_18 29:17

And then for him to die at twenty-four, it's like that poor family dealt with a lot of trauma.

SPEAKER_19 29:21

Yeah, I mean that's uh I I I I know that the sister's still alive and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_18 29:26

Uh I think they're still donating all the uh royalties.

SPEAKER_19 29:31

Well, yeah, I think I think his dad um Well they talked about it in the video, they were that his dad was donating his donates it to uh um for so that uh music programs.

SPEAKER_18 29:41

That's what it should be. That's how the world should be. You know what I mean? Like my great grandparents, they migrated from Norway and one of their friends gave him a cow and some chickens. That's how they started. They sold milk and eggs, and that's how they started, and the only way to pay them back was to give it to somebody else. Not to give it back to the person that gave it to them, but to somebody else. And that's how you know it should work, and that's pay it for right, and that's why, you know, we like sharing music from the bands in here. We like sharing other people's stuff because it's like everybody gets to get some exposure and get some love, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_19 30:18

Yeah, man. Word of mouth too, you know. I mean, it's you know, we're gonna be able to do that. That's how the world works, really, man.

SPEAKER_18 30:22

You know, networking is how you really get by. Yeah.

SPEAKER_19 30:26

Well, and I I I remember, you know, it was speaking of the whole Metallica thing and stuff. I remember in interviews like, you know, even Lars was talking about that. It's like, you know, if they they would, you know, pass each other's tapes out and all that stuff, you know, like, oh check this out or check this band out. And uh, you know, i i it was just a word of mouth and it was it was uh helping the fellow man just to, you know, hey, check this guy out. They might like it, might not. So and we definitely appreciate y'all doing that same thing for us.

SPEAKER_18 30:52

For sure, you know, uh a lot of people have helped us out, you know. It's not like I mean I've done a lot of work with all this stuff, most of it's me, but I have to ask a lot of questions. I have to ask people that know, you know, and and get a lot of insight in some of these people. They don't have to give me anything, man. They could be in competition with me, they don't have to give me any knowledge, but they have, and I really appreciate everybody that's done that for us.

SPEAKER_19 31:14

Yeah, there's even you know, just uh spread the love about our you know, like, hey, check these guys out, man.

SPEAKER_18 31:19

So there's some like the MRJ metal guy that's dude hooked us up. Appreciate that. Like let them burn next door, hooking us up with some of their music. Um they got a show coming up on the 11th of July for anybody that's local here in Colorado. It's at Mo's Barbecue.

SPEAKER_19 31:35

Down over by the Gothic, if uh if y'all don't uh know where that's at, is that the right thing?

SPEAKER_18 31:39

Yeah, we're gonna actually be shooting some video that night, so we'll be bringing you some some of that. So that'll be cool. If even if you're not local, you'll get still get to check it out. Hell yeah. That'll be awesome.

SPEAKER_19 31:49

Dude, I gotta mark that on the calendar then. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_18 31:52

Yeah, you're you're you're definitely booked already.

SPEAKER_19 31:54

Oh, sweet. You just didn't know it. Oh, well, hey, you know. No, uh uh, I'll spread the word too, because uh that that's awesome that uh uh that's our coming. I was kinda wondering about that actually, because uh damn, that song was pretty badass.

SPEAKER_18 32:06

Yeah, that was a good song, man. Appreciate that, guys. Hell yeah, thank you. So uh up next we're gonna take a little break, but up next we'll talk about uh MH370 and what could have possibly happened to that airplane.

MH370 Disappears Without A Trace

SPEAKER_32 32:23

It's the greatest aviation mystery of all time. How can a Boeing 777 with 239 people on board simply vanish without a trace? The answer lies somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Imagine if we could empty the oceans, letting the water drain away to reveal the secrets of the seafloor. Now we can.

SPEAKER_07 39:54

You expect to see all sorts of objects actually uh which appointed which are released from the aircraft as debris.

SPEAKER_32 40:02

Surface debris is normally the first step to finding a missing aircraft, but it's not a guarantee. Before MH 370, the largest and most expensive search in aviation history takes place here, 8,000 miles away in the Atlantic Ocean. Hunting for the wreck of Air France Flight 447. What lessons lie amid this tangled wreckage for those searching for MH370?

Air France 447 And Deep Ocean Reality

SPEAKER_32 40:41

On June 1st, 2009, Air France 447 leaves Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew to Paris. Weather reports indicate severe thunderstorms along the flight path. Three hours and 45 minutes into the flight, as the plane nears the equator, its onboard computers send a burst of emergency warnings, then falls silent. Olivier Ferrand is in charge of the French search team. The warning signals are his first clue. But the search team has every advantage: a known flight path, an accurate final position, and then surface debris found within five days. And yet, despite initial optimism, it takes two years, four expeditions, and forty million dollars to find the plane. Immense water pressure, freezing cold, total darkness, and hidden dangers everywhere. Finally, at 12,800 feet, the shattered remains of Air France 447. Their twisted remains a testament to the force of the impact. Smaller, lighter objects stretch along more than a third of a mile of seafloor, equivalent to eight New York City blocks. And a critical realization: the seabed wreckage is nowhere near the surface wreckage. It's almost 24 miles away. Investigators spend about two years searching in this very challenging area, not realizing that ocean currents have carried debris far from the crash site. Even with debris and an accurate final Position when a plane goes into deep water, it's very hard to find. A sobering thought for the team searching for MH370.

SPEAKER_30 44:13

Air France was very difficult with our area of 17,000 square kilometers, but it's nothing compared to the surface that uh the search teams have to to search for MH370. It's it's much more difficult.

SPEAKER_32 44:33

In the southern Indian Ocean, investigators look for surface debris for over two weeks. Even with the aid of satellites, they find nothing.

SPEAKER_25 44:45

One of the greatest initial mysteries and that has transcended the entire period of time that we have we've been looking for this airplane. Where's the debris?

SPEAKER_32 45:00

With no debris, they need to find another way to narrow the search. So they focus on MH370's black box data recorders. Each has an underwater locator beacon, or ULB. In water, they emit an electronic ping with a range of just over a mile. Find the beacons, and you find the plane. But time is running out.

SPEAKER_07 45:32

Battery life on the ULBs is only 30 days, although they do last longer they fade out.

SPEAKER_32 45:39

By the time the specialized pinger locator technology reaches the search zone, there are just three days of battery life left. Investigators have only a few days to locate MH 370's black boxes before their locator batteries run out. Faced with a vast search zone, they decide to focus on commonly used air routes. Australian Navy vessel Ocean Shield steams to the point where the air route to Perth intersects the 7th Arc. The team looking for Air France 447 also used pinger locators in an attempt to discover the crash site. They begin listening for signals within days of the plane's disappearance. Ships scour the search area for 40 days, but hear nothing. The hunters wonder, are the locator beacons lost or destroyed? Returning to the remarkable drained seascape of the Air France 447 wreckage reveals the scale of the problem. The seafloor here is 12,800 feet below the surface. Deep in the mid-Atlantic ridge. And here, amid the wreckage, nestling in the remains of the tailplane, the black boxes, one with its locator beacon still attached. A search ship passed directly over here, but detected nothing. The metal wreckage may have blocked the signals, or they could have been damaged by the sheer force of the impact.

SPEAKER_30 48:11

I think uh they were unfortunately uh damaged at uh at that stage.

SPEAKER_32 48:21

Investigators listening for the MH 370 black boxes can only hope they'll have better luck. They monitor the ocean for 15 days using three ships equipped with sensitive listening technology while military aircraft launch sonar buoys. They do detect some signals, but conclude it's just random interference. It's another disappointment. But at this low point, there's a dramatic new lead.

Listening For Black Boxes That Fade

SPEAKER_32 49:02

A team from Curtin University in Western Australia runs a network of sensitive underwater microphones called hydrophones, positioned all around the Australian coast. They're designed to monitor earthquakes, Antarctic ice, and wildlife. And remarkably, one of them has picked up an unusual noise. One hour and 14 minutes after MH370's last communication with the N-Mar Sat satellite.

SPEAKER_31 49:39

When we looked at the data from that hydrophone, we found one signal that looked as though it had interesting characteristics.

SPEAKER_32 49:49

Is this the actual sound of MH370's final moments? Alec Duncan's team looks for other audio recordings so they can calculate a geographical fix.

SPEAKER_31 50:22

But you can't tell direction.

SPEAKER_32 50:27

Fortunately, other agencies are listening too. For the sound of illegal nuclear tests, with technology that can accurately pinpoint the source. Just off the coast of Cape Lewin in Western Australia, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization runs a listening post, specifically designed to detect and locate illegal nuclear tests. The station has three hydrophones set one and a quarter miles apart. They can determine the direction of a sound to within half a degree and calculate the distance to the source over thousands of miles. And astonishingly, this network has detected the exact noise heard by the team from Curtin University. But when the scientists crunch the numbers, the source of the sound is far to the northwest. So far beyond the current search area that it's considered not worth further investigation.

SPEAKER_31 52:18

Our conclusion was that the signal was most likely to be of geological origin, such as a small undersea earthquake. But we can't completely rule out the possibility that it came from something to do with the aircraft.

SPEAKER_32 52:39

Faced with a new disappointment, the search team moves to a different approach. Searching the seafloor itself using towed sleds carrying sonar scanners. But before it can even start, there's a new problem. This part of the Indian Ocean has never been surveyed in detail. The sleds will be close to the seafloor. And no one knows exactly what is down there.

SPEAKER_07 53:20

We knew we'd be operating vehicles very close to the seafloor, which necessitated knowledge of what was down there, and so that we could avoid collisions with terrain.

SPEAKER_32 53:31

The MH 370 team needs a simple way to create a snapshot of the seafloor across the vast search area. They find help in an unexpected place.

Mapping The Seafloor For The Search

SPEAKER_32 54:39

Mountains on the sea floor create their own gravitational attraction. Surrounding water is drawn towards the mass, creating measurable changes on the surface. What does the data reveal? Using the exact information gathered by Walter Smith's team, it's possible to drain away the Indian Ocean to show what the ocean floor actually looks like. As the water flows away, it exposes a world no human has ever seen before. Dramatic cliffs more than twice the height of the Empire State Building. Fault lines plunging almost 20,000 feet deeper than any canyon on land. A volcano-dotted valley running for a hundred miles. Operating underwater scanning vehicles in this terrain will take a huge amount of skill and luck. Armed with their new map of the seafloor, the search team deploys the latest in sub-sea technology. Traveling deep underwater, these towed sleds begin to scan the seafloor. And they will be guided by a game-changing new clue. It comes from further detailed analysis of the final Inmar Sat signal from MH-370. Engineers crunch the numbers and discover something shocking. In its final moments, the plane descends rapidly, almost certainly because after seven and a half hours in the air, it's run out of fuel. Boeing engineers then simulate what happens when a 777 exhausts its fuel, making it possible for the first time to recreate the likely final minutes of MH 370's mysterious flight. The right engine flames out first. Minutes later, the second engine flames out. Deep sea salvage expert Andy Sherrill analyzes all the data that's been gathered underwater.

SPEAKER_11 58:56

Oddly enough, when I first heard about MH370's disappearance, my wife was in labor with our first child. The news came on about the disappearance of the flight, and my wife looked at me and she said, Now that's a job you're not going to get involved with.

SPEAKER_32 59:13

Andy has been involved ever since. Using his knowledge from six previous investigations, including a search for Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra.

SPEAKER_11 59:39

So when you're reviewing the side scan, sonar comes down in a waterfall display, and you can see the different intensities of uh, you know, soft sand versus hard rock.

SPEAKER_32 59:49

Guided by the scans, the team investigates 80 locations in detail, but finds no trace of NH370. Then, in May 2015, the sonar picks up something new and exciting.

SPEAKER_11 1:00:08

It was a typical looking debris field that um definitely warranted uh more investigation.

SPEAKER_32 1:00:19

The debris field covers an area similar in size to the wreckage of Air France 447. Could this finally be the remains of MH370?

SPEAKER_07 1:00:35

Sonar paints a very good picture of the seafloor and what you've got there, but it's not perfect. It's not good enough to say with certainty that a certain item might be uh an aircraft debris field. You actually have to investigate with visual means.

SPEAKER_32 1:00:52

They launch an autonomous underwater vehicle armed with state-of-the-art sensors to take a closer look. Using the actual data it recorded that day, it's now possible to drain away the water from over the site, revealing the most hopeful discovery so far in the hunt for MH370. At one end, a pile of chains, then a 23-foot-long metal box, rusted machinery, and finally, three metal anchors. They've found a shipwreck. Its wooden hull long rotted away. The site strewn with coal, probably cargo, on its final voyage. They haven't found MH-370, but in these dark, uncharted depths, they're casting light on tragedies from a different age. The investigators discover three other wrecks, including this iron-hulled sailing ship, upright on the seabed, and a modern fishing trawler, nets stretched out across the seafloor, proving that their technology can locate and retrieve objects as small as a piece of coal.

SPEAKER_11 1:02:54

So all these factors give us really high confidence that the airplane debris field is not in that area.

SPEAKER_32 1:03:06

Still guided by just two key pieces of evidence: the NARSAT calculations and Boeing's flight performance data. Then, suddenly, a third line of inquiry brings hope of a breakthrough.

Debris Finds And The Fuel Runout Model

SPEAKER_32 1:03:24

On a remote island on the other side of the Indian Ocean, 3,000 miles from the search area, a piece of metal washes up on a beach. And it looks like it comes from an aircraft. Stumbles upon an unusual object on a beach. It's called a flapperon. There is one on each wing of a Boeing 777. Part of the mechanism that makes it rise or fall. Boeing quickly confirms that its serial number matches that of the missing plane. It's the first piece of physical evidence that MH 370 ended its flight in the ocean.

SPEAKER_23 1:04:26

It is my hope that this confirmation will at least bring certainty to the families and loved ones.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:58

And what I learned, what that niche was, was that there was no official search for debris that washed ashore.

SPEAKER_32 1:05:10

Blaine consults ocean drift experts who direct him to Mozambique, where he makes an immediate discovery.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

Clearly aircraft.

SPEAKER_32 1:05:56

Blaine has found it 4,350 miles. Miles away from the main search zone. Still acting alone, he continues to search.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:15

We just found on RiyakB this piece of debris. We have not picked it up yet.

SPEAKER_32 1:06:24

Almost 30 pieces of debris, thought to come from MH370, are recovered. All on the western side of the Indian Ocean. Blaine Gibson finds 15 of them. One piece stands out from the rest.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:42

The most significant to me, and also to the investigation, was the case around the TV screen on the back of the seat in front of you. This is the one that brought tears to my eyes. This is perhaps the last thing that somebody saw. This is what anyone who flies on a plane would recognize.

SPEAKER_32 1:07:08

Debris like this from inside the passenger cabin confirms that MH370 hit the water hard.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:17

Some of the items indicate that there was quite a uh a large amount of energy at the time the aircraft entered the water.

SPEAKER_32 1:07:26

Another piece of debris helped resolve a key question. Investigators already believed the plane ran out of fuel, but as it fell towards the ocean, was someone trying to save it with a controlled ditch.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:41

This section of main flap was found in Tanzania and in 2016, and um when imagery was passed to us, we realized it was pretty significant.

SPEAKER_32 1:07:53

The flap extends on an internal support track. Investigators discover that the track has left impact marks inside the flap. That can only happen if it's in a retracted position. Strong evidence that the plane was in its normal cruising state as it fell towards the sea.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:20

Hard physical evidence, uh, and our analysis showed that it wasn't a control ditch or there wasn't active control from the cockpit extending the flaps at the time that the flap separated from the aircraft.

SPEAKER_32 1:08:35

The flap supports the theory that the plane ran out of fuel and suggests that no one at that point was trying to ditch or save it.

Our MH370 Theories And Trust Issues

SPEAKER_19 1:09:23

Right, the pilot just taking off and he he just flew out over the ocean and just you know wanted to kill, you know, himself and everybody else.

SPEAKER_18 1:09:30

Just fly it until it flew out of gas or whatever.

SPEAKER_19 1:09:32

Yeah, and and I I know that there that that's happened in the past as well, is where the pilot, you know, is like screw it, you know, everybody's going, I'm going, where's all going? And you know, there there was also the uh uh there's a next uh Netflix uh I I do believe a documentary about it. And uh they talk about how uh there's also a thought of maybe the Russians were um on that plane and you know they they uh took it over for whatever reason they wanted to, which would make sense if you know trying to uh kidnap some of these scientists to uh get control of uh uh of that maybe.

SPEAKER_18 1:10:05

And you know, that's they that's definitely a theory that's been tumbling about.

SPEAKER_19 1:10:10

Well, i i in the in this military base I don't I don't recall um them talking about it, but but uh you know they they could have and I just don't remember.

SPEAKER_18 1:10:18

They didn't.

SPEAKER_19 1:10:19

No?

SPEAKER_18 1:10:19

No, that's what they were talking about was it's secret. They don't have you know, they don't really have a lot of civilian there's no civilian oversight, there's no media coverage, there's no nothing about this base. It's in the middle of the ocean, that's why they try to keep it secret. And that's what I'm saying, it's right in the flight path of where they said it went. And so it looks really good if you think about the plane just took off and then landed a couple minutes later. Right. And you're sitting there going, where's it at? Well, you know, you can create a big hoax like we were talking about it earlier. You could do anything with the right. Well, right.

SPEAKER_19 1:10:52

I mean I I mean, yeah, anymore. I mean, with the like uh you know, you were saying with the uh green screens and all that stuff. I mean, you could add anything to whatever you wanted to. You can make almost any anything, I I imagine.

SPEAKER_18 1:11:05

We could make this look like we're sitting in an office building, have a nice view over the mountains or something.

SPEAKER_19 1:11:10

That'd be crazy, but I I like our view, man. We got a really good view.

SPEAKER_18 1:11:14

A wall hopper.

SPEAKER_19 1:11:15

It's a good wall. It's a good wall. I like that wall. Yeah, it's a good wall. We have everything that we need up there.

SPEAKER_18 1:11:20

Right. Uh but yeah, it's it's insane. You know, this was 2014. So we're talking twelve years ago now, and there's still theories that are circling around when they could have literally just said, you know, it was the suicidal pilot, and that's what he did. And people let it go. But we don't even know for a fact, and I'm just gonna spit this out. We don't know for a fact that there was ever an MH 370. We're just being told this. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_19 1:11:47

I mean, you know, maybe yeah, they could have just I mean, like how we were talking about, you know, green screened it, you know, families, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_18 1:11:55

Who knows what the families that we and who knows if those people are even connected to the flight. Right. Nobody does. The reporters these days are not trustable. You know, they'll tell you what they want to tell you.

SPEAKER_19 1:12:06

Yeah, they feed us just the more lies that the government tells us right. That's exactly what it has become. That propaganda bill that you know Obama had signed into works that you know they they can do whatever they want to through the media, uh, just as long as they're controlling us once again.

SPEAKER_18 1:12:20

You know, faking a plane crash is not something that's new either. Right. They did that with the wasn't an Olympic team or it was a college team. They were gonna do that where they thought where they were gonna act like uh the Cubans took down an airplane that had all the college kids just board the plane and the kids never got on the plane. Right. That's it. But they wanted to make it look like they did so they could show it getting blown up in front of everybody so that we'd be really upset with the kind of like taking down a couple of towers. They that's kind of the same thing.

SPEAKER_19 1:12:50

Around the uh was it round the Bay of Pig areas where we were having all the conflict, and I th uh I and I I think they were saying that that's part of the reason why they took out uh Kennedy as well, because he's like, I'm not doing that.

SPEAKER_18 1:13:00

And I'm not right, and I'm not saying that that didn't happen. We were we all watched what we watched. We all saw what we saw. We all are in the same boat together. So I'm not you know, one's right and one's wrong. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is we don't know. Yeah, everything could be complete crap, dude.

SPEAKER_19 1:13:21

It could be complete crap, and it could I mean and it could be this is where they actually, you know, um that they wanted it to control. Yeah, to tell the Titanic, man. Yeah, that's happened, you know, before. One man wants all the riches, so he takes the other men out.

SPEAKER_18 1:13:37

Yep. Well, he wanted the Fed you know, and the other people were against the Fed. So JP Morgan had the Titanic taken down.

SPEAKER_19 1:13:46

You know, oh they hit an iceberg. I don't know about that anymore. It's funny, you know, you know, because yeah, they didn't want to do the uh whole reserve, right? And then uh JP Morgan was like, yeah, okay, we we could do it, but we just gotta take those guys out.

SPEAKER_18 1:14:04

Yeah, and who knows? I mean, these scientists had a patent that you know for cloaking technology and you're looking for something that has cloaking technology to be. It's like, hey man, this guy's uh invisible man, let's all go look for him. But he's invisible. Yeah, I know, let's go look for him.

SPEAKER_19 1:14:25

What are we looking for?

SPEAKER_18 1:14:26

The invisible man. All right. Well how are we supposed to find him? Just look for it. That's what it sounds like. It's an endless cycle of BS, and it keeps you just sitting there sniffing your butthole the whole time walking in a circle.

SPEAKER_19 1:14:45

Just waiting for him to feed you some more, I guess. Seriously. Yeah. All the distractions and all that. But this one's a good one. I I and uh um the whole uh I I'm more now on board with this one where they actually m uh they might have just landed, you know.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:00

Yeah, and it does. It seems like all these scientists, especially recently that we've noted that all you know, it's probably up to like twenty something now. Um, all these scientists that have anything to do with technology and the fact of like future technology, anti-gravity stuff, things of that nature all have seemed to disappear or have murdered have been murdered, they've been finding bodies like one of the scientists that's been missing for twelve years, they found her body finally up in the mountains. It's like they've been looking in those mountains for twelve years and they never found it till now.

SPEAKER_19 1:15:33

Yeah. All the snowpack and all that stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:37

Yeah. That's the story.

SPEAKER_19 1:15:39

Yeah, that's that's what they're gonna tell us.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:41

Always the story, but this whole thing about the Russians, I don't buy that either, man, because we've been told it's always the Russians our whole life.

SPEAKER_19 1:15:48

They they want to steal our steal our uh knowledge of stuff like that. And well well, I they should have said it was the Chinese, man. They should have said it was the Chinese. Because you know Chinese have everything.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:59

They should have said it was the aliens. That kind of sucks.

SPEAKER_19 1:16:08

The aliens. Yeah, I mean you never know, man. You never knew. You know, they they wanted it to uh keep their cloaking uh devices.

SPEAKER_18 1:16:16

Right. And I I mean who knows what it is, but it it's just it's fishy. Everything's about, you know, invisible stuff and cloaking technology, and we're supposed to go look for this. And so who knows, you know, who's abducting these scientists, who's killing them, right, what the point is, but eventually we're gonna find out, and when we do, it'll be too late.

SPEAKER_19 1:16:36

But I was gonna say, you know, maybe some of these scientists were actually uh uh lizard people and aliens came to, you know, they didn't want us uh humans to uh have that cloaking device stuff going on yet, and so they came and uh they kidnapped all their people back so that way we couldn't have cloaking.

SPEAKER_18 1:16:54

I'd be Morkin Mindy. All right, we're gonna take a little break, but up next we're gonna talk about James Holmes and how uh it looks a little fishy to me.

SPEAKER_26 1:17:29

What did you have for lunch?

SPEAKER_22 1:17:30

Oh my god, chili and peppers and onions and chicken.

SPEAKER_15 1:17:35

Sounds good.

Aurora Night That Turned Into Horror

SPEAKER_10 1:19:20

A late night apparently multiple shooting incident at a movie theater in Aurora. I'm gonna step out of the shot so that we can show you exactly where we are. We are on the northeast side of the Century 16 theaters, which are in the town center of Aurora.

SPEAKER_22 1:19:38

Um then I raised the shotgun and saw that people were getting up in like the back left corner. So I like shot up that direction.

SPEAKER_28 1:20:10

Roughly 20 minutes into the movie, James would fake a phone call and make his way to the emergency exit to his right. As he leaves, he uses a picnic table cloth clip to keep the door just slightly open, but not enough to arouse suspicion. Once outside, he walked over to his parked car, geared himself up head to toe in ballistic armour and a gas mask, whilst at the same time equipping himself with a Remington 870 shotgun, an AR-15, and a Glock pistol. Approximately 10 minutes later, James would walk back through that same emergency exit and like fish in a barrel would open fire on around 400 moviegoers, killing 12 of them and injuring 70. But how did we get here? A shooter with no criminal record, had no ties to any terror organizations, wasn't known to any law enforcement agencies, but was able to carry out a massacre that no one in recent American history had ever seen before. Let's rewind back to the 13th of December 1987, where James Egan Holmes is born to parents Robert and Arlene. He grew up in Oak Hills, Monterey County in California, along with his sister, and was said to have had a fairly decent upbringing in a good neighbourhood. Throughout his early years, he was described as a well-mannered, smart, and shy kid, but was fairly outgoing, being one of the 15 boys who played for his local football team with his dad as the coach. Family life at home was good as well. Both siblings had parents who supported them in every aspect of their lives, and James and his sister Chrissy were said to have had a close bond with each other. James's mother would even go on to say that it was a childhood to envy. Whilst attending middle school, now aged 11, James's mental health would begin to deteriorate. He would start to exhibit signs of chronic depression and even attempted to commit suicide. He would claim to see shadowy figures which he called nail ghosts accompanied by flickers in the corner of his eyes. These shadowy figures would hammer on the walls at night and would fight each other with firearms and various other weapons. But it is believed that James would have homicidal thoughts from the young age of 10 years old, where he would picture himself killing people who annoyed him or upset him. He would later on picture killing people who did nothing to him at all. The mental decline would further when a house relocation was made 400 miles away to San Diego. James recalls welling up as the car pulled away from what had been a somewhat happy life with many young friends. And it's believed on that car journey he would attempt to cut his wrists with a piece of cardboard. When he arrived in San Diego, he had trouble making friends and began to withdraw into his room where he'd spend most of his days playing video games. His mum would quite literally go door to door to look for playmates, but the boys in their new neighborhood weren't exactly the friendliest. After spending all of his time indoors now when not at school, he would go on to become one of the top five players in the world at the video game Warcraft 3. Although making this achievement, James's mother recalls around this time that he had lost his joy and felt guilty that no matter what she did, she couldn't make him happy anymore. Looking back, she chalked this behavior up to a tough adjustment, but she goes on to say realistically it was the early signs of his mental illness. Because although we've been over how James's mental health had started to deteriorate from a young age, this was all behind closed doors, and his parents were none the wiser to the breakdown of his mental health. Even though he had been reserved in his social life, James was still an exceptional student going on to achieve good grades throughout middle school, and he was even involved in trumpet classes and ran cross-country. This behavioural pattern would continue throughout high school. A special education teacher and coach of the Westview High School cross-country team would be quoted as saying this about James. He was not particularly a good runner and he lacked proper form and stamina, but he always showed up to practice. He rarely spoke, however, declined to take part in team building activities. Continuing, he was a part of us, but not a part of us. He was kind of like a shadow figure. In 2006, James graduated from high school, and seeing as both his father had degrees in mathematics and science, and his mother was a registered nurse, James wanted to follow a similar career path. So he decided that he wanted to study neuroscience at UC Riverside in California. Before the course had started, he wanted to have a taste of what it was like in that line of work. So in the summer, he attended a prestigious eight-week-long internship at Salt Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:05

Thanks, Claire. Alright, our next speaker is James Holm. He has gradu What school did you graduate from?

SPEAKER_27 1:25:12

Westview High School.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:13

He just graduated from Westview High School and will be attending the University of California Riverside. He will be majoring in neuroscience. His goals are to become a researcher and to make scientific discoveries. That's a good start. In personal life, he enjoys playing soccer and strategy games, and his dream is to own a Slurpee machine. These kids have been fun to work with this summer.

SPEAKER_24 1:25:38

Tiss, TIS.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:39

He won't let you show unless you can hear us.

SPEAKER_24 1:25:42

Really? Oh, okay. Well, the lab I work in is the computational neurobiology lab, or CNL for short. CNL is very computer oriented. Basically, everybody who works in CNL does programming of some sort. One division of the lab called MCell does mathematical models of the cell, such as that picture there. There's also computer simulations of hippocampal functions and neural network firings. And the knowledge that's gained is then made available to the public and the scientific community through the web. My mentor, John Jacobson, who works in CNL, is a philosophical type of guy. He's interested in how we perceive reality, specifically grapheme perception. And graphemes are basically just letters of the alphabet. And he wants to know how graphemes are mediated in spatial frequency channels. He also studies subjective experience, which is what takes place inside the mind as opposed to the external world. I've carried on his work in dealing with subjective experience. I've done it through flash programming. Flash is set up to make movies. There's a timeline, which is on the top there. And within the timeline, there are layers, and layers give the movie order and structure. And within the layers, there are frames, and text, images, and code can be placed in the frames to make the movie do things. And my main task was to write code. And I was writing code to show how our perception of causality can be tricked. And a major way humans learn is through actions and effects relationships. And to simulate this on a computer, we have a key press as an action, and effect is the appearance of an image. And actions and effects have logical progressions through time. That is, effects precede or seem simultaneous with the actions that cause them. Unless we have a temporal order judgment reversal, which I just call the illusion. And in the illusion, the effect seems to precede the action that it causes. So subjectively, you're causing events to happen in the past. And to implement this illusion, we insert a series of gradual delays in between

James Holmes Before The Headlines

SPEAKER_24 1:27:50

the actions and the effects. So we have a key press and then a 10 millisecond delay and then an image appearing. And then a key press and then 20 milliseconds and then an image appears. And we keep doing this over and over again? And then we increase up to around 200 milliseconds. And we do potential delay incrementations to um adapt the person to the modify their perception time. And then after we modify the perception time, we completely remove the delay and cause it the time solution. And potential applications for the solution? And reducing time accidents? And it might be possible to increase the reaction time. Also another application in the entertainment industry? Like video games? Gamers might have superpowers and let them have more fun. Any questions?

SPEAKER_28 1:29:10

When this footage started to do the rounds in the years that followed, people claimed that this behavior didn't match that of a socially awkward person who has serious mental health issues. Well, John Jacobson, supervisor of the lab, said that throughout his time he was there, he tried to sit down for lunch with James at least half a dozen times and tried to make conversation with him, but found it impossible because he was extremely shy. He also described James as an unusually bad intern. Jacobson said he repeatedly tried to explain to James exactly how to do the computer programming he had tasked him with, but he kept on insisting on a different approach, one that didn't work. James had been given a project on this eight-week internship and he never completed it. After the internship had ended, John had emailed James to ask if he wanted to try and complete the project, but he never got a response. Either way, James would finish the internship and attended UC Riverside, where he studied neuroscience, and in 2010 he received his undergraduate bachelor's degree with highest honors, but ended up skipping his graduation ceremony more than likely due to his social anxiety. After graduation, he applied to six top graduate schools to study for a doctorate in neuroscience. Although academically bright, his shyness and interviews appeared to work against him, and so he would go on to be rejected by all six universities. In 2010, after his dreams of going on to further study in his field had collapsed, he decided to move back home with his parents and seemingly had no purpose in life. He sleeps, eats, and plays video games all day, going back to his old ways, but now as an adult, he's pushed by his parents to go and get a job. He secured himself a job at a pill coating factory where he works from around 4 pm till 2 pm every day, Monday till Sunday. He was offered full-time placement, but in his own words, he couldn't see himself doing that line of work for the rest of his life. During this time, his parents continued to push him to apply for graduate schools, which he did. Iowa, Illinois, and Colorado all offered him interviews, but he still presented poorly. He was described as being aloof, quiet. They perceive him to be disinterested, not a good fit for the program. In fact, some people who interviewed him would go on to say, quote, do not take this guy under any circumstances. Even though he didn't seem like a good fit, Illinois and Colorado offered him a placement with him accepting the latter as they offered him more financial aid. And so it seemed as if James had his purpose back once again. He got into the competitive neuroscience program where only six students per year get accepted. The program consists of two things. The first would be classes in the fall and spring, just like any other course, but the other half is something called a lab rotation. You get three in one year, and this basically consists of a research project under the supervision of a faculty trainer. But if for whatever reason you don't get accepted into one after a somewhat trial period, then you get kicked off the program. All three would end up going badly for James, and when the time came to choose a lab, he decided to go with the first professor. He was described in his evaluation as having a lack of communication skills and again showing a lack of interest. Something that a student would need moving forward, so he was declined on that basis. During the first and second lab rotations, he started to see a go, but only a short while after the second lab rotation, they would go on to break up. After the deterioration of his performance and the breakup with his girlfriend, James decided to see the university counsellor. When he met the counsellor, she asked him if he was suicidal, to which he denied, but he did tell her he was having homicidal thoughts. The counselor would go on to say this wasn't a concern, as many students had came to her before with homicidal ideations. And because James stated he had no specific targets, he had no plans, no delusions, and no hallucinations in regards to these homicidal ideations, the counselor concluded that he wasn't a threat. He was eventually passed on to the university psychiatrist, Dr. Lynn Fenton. Similar things were reported, but when Dr. Fenton pressed him about the homicidal comments that he made, he responded, quote, People are my problem, and the only solution is to kill everyone, but that can't happen because it isn't realistic. She concluded that he might have OCD, so she gives him some medication and adds he doesn't pose a threat because he denied he self-mutilates, doesn't plan on committing suicide, and doesn't plan on killing anyone. That was all to save face though, because deep down inside of James Holmes, he had something cooking up that would fruition in the months that followed. You see, although he'd been telling Dr. Fenton he basically didn't pose a threat, in his journal it painted a whole different side of him. And if anyone would have known what was in this journal, I probably wouldn't be making this video right now. In his journal, he's quoted as saying he can't tell the therapists, who he called mind rapists, his plans, because if he did, his normal life would combine with his ideal enactment of working on his homicidal ideations and his plans would end up foiling. He said he would continue to have his guard up and deflect any incriminating questions. If they asked if he had a plan, he would continue to deny them because if he did go on to spill the beans, they would have him locked up and he wouldn't be able to go on and kill people. Around this time, he's emailing back and forth with his ex-girlfriend. You see, the two had kept in contact and were somewhat okay as friends. In this email, James would talk to her about his future prospects fading away and having a desire to kill people. She thought the latter was theoretical based on other conversations they've had in the past, so she engages in the conversation. For example, she says that killing people is too much effort and that he'd get thrown in jail for it. He responds, that's why you'd kill many people, and if you wait until the end of your life, there's nothing to lose. The conversation goes on for a while, but then the value of life becomes the focal point. James would go on to say, quote, there's nothing more valuable than a human life. You take away the life of a person, you take away the experiences of that person, and you take away all of their potential. His ex would prod him to open up about what he exactly meant, to which he responds, it's human capital. Again, when questioned what he's going to do with all that human capital from having taken away all of those people's lives, he responds, have a more meaningful life. But the thing is, James doesn't even know what that means to himself. All he can explain is that it's just what he wants to do. His ex would go on to explain it wouldn't fulfil his purpose, but he believes it will grant him a more meaningful life. By the time April of 2012 comes around, James decided to nip things in the bud with his ex-girlfriend, saying he just simply can't be friends with her anymore, and the two part ways. Around two weeks later, he's back to see Dr. Fenton once again, still sticking to his plan, keeping a guard up, and he denies having any suicidal thoughts and outright refuses to talk about any homicidal thoughts. But once again, Dr. Fenton sends him on his way saying he poses no threat. The following month in May, James continued to perform great in his exams, not so great in that third lab rotation, and because of this, he felt like once again his purpose in life was slipping away because of his bad performances at university, so he decided he would find himself a new purpose in life. In his journal, he begins to hatch a plan on how he could kill people to make himself feel better. His failed performance at school, he notes, would act as the somewhat catalyst for the motivation behind the killings. In this plan, his first thoughts were bombs, but he reckons they'll be way too suspicious. Later he thought about biological warfare but scraps the idea because it requires too much knowledge and chemical use. He ponders on serial murder heavily. His plan would be buy a stun gun shaped like a phone, equip himself with a folding knife, head over to National Park Forest Trails, and one by one pick off his victims. But no, it's way too personal. It would be easy to get caught, it leaves too much evidence, and most of all, it's not enough kills. So his last resort would be mass murder. And then the light bulb switched on, maximum casualties and can

Warning Signs And A System That Missed

SPEAKER_28 1:38:04

be performed easily with firearms, which would also mean it was less personal. He does know that there's a 99% chance of being caught, but he didn't mind because he said he didn't fear the consequence. Now that his type of attack is planned out, it was time to choose the location. He thought about an airport but quickly aborted the idea due to the heavy security presence and it'd be too linked to terrorism. You see, he didn't want people concluding this act of mass murder was based on terrorism because that wasn't his message. The message was he said, there was no message. He eventually chose the Century 16 movie theatre based roughly four miles from his apartment in Aurora, Colorado. It's the perfect location in his mind. It's proximal to where he lives, it's isolated, it's large, so what a better place to case and plan for mass murder than an inconspicuous entertainment facility. He started to map out the theatre in detail both outside and in, and he began assessing the different theatre rooms, talking about the best approach and quickly criticizing the ones that have too many exits. Theatre 9 and 10 became primary targets because in both theaters there's only one entrance and two exits. He noted that you can lock some of the theatre room doors with handcuffs, which equaled the maximum number of casualties. He would also do in-depth research about the Columbine massacre that happened years prior to see what the police response time would be and how much ammo he would need. The police response time would roughly be three minutes, and so we had to do something about that. Just bear that one in mind though, because it will become more relevant as the story continues. Throughout May, James would go on to buy various items that he would eventually use for the shooting, such as a Glock pistol, a shotgun, a gas mask, and tear gas. Then towards the end of the month, he continued to see Dr. Fenton, but this time she brought in Dr. Robert Feinstein, a specialist in violence and suicide assessment. Dr. Feinstein would take charge of this meeting to see if he could grasp what was going on with James. Ultimately, James was able to pull the wool over his eyes as well because after denying having any targets any suicidal thoughts and agreeing to come back for more counselling, he's let go once again and they know that he's showing signs of stability, hence why he's able to leave. At the start of June, James takes his preliminary exams but fails them. Of course, around this time he had also not been chosen to do a lab rotation, so he feels like quitting. He goes to see Dr. Fenton again, where he tells her he's going to quit the program to find a job in Aurora for the next few months because the lease on his apartment didn't end until November. She quizzed him on various things such as student debt to see if this would affect his mental health moving forward, but he didn't have any. In fact, he had around $10,000 in the bank. Dr. Fenton would ask James to continue to come back and see her even if he quit the program, to which he would go on to say that his insurance wouldn't cover it, and then he got up and left. That was the last time he would see Dr. Fenton. She would go on to call family members and program leaders to ask them about how James was, and although they claimed he was odd and had social problems, they agreed on one thing, and that was he wasn't a violent individual. But of course, they'd be proven wrong. So James decided to leave the course, and throughout June, he continued to gear up in order to act out on his plan, now only having one purpose in life. He bought an AR-15, laser sights, tens of magazines for his guns, a case for his rifle, a bullet blocker jacket, a helmet, tie puncturing devices, first aid dressing, and quite literally thousands of rounds of ammunition. In July he continues his shopping spree, buying ballistic trousers, rifle scopes, more ammunition, neck protection, arm protection, groin protection, and purchases a second handgun. He would also acquire Bluetooth headphones and an iPod as he didn't want to make the shooting feel personal, so he'd pop the headphones in so he could shoot people and not hear them scream. He decided to dye his hair red, not to match that of the Joker, like many people believe, rather to stand out where he later would explain it was exotic and it would look better than green or blue. Now remember how I said that he needed to do something about the quick police response time? Well, to combat this, on the 18th of July 2012, he booby-trapped his apartment building with various chemicals and flammables. The bomb itself was hooked up to some sort of wire that if the door opened it would blow up. Attached to the bomb were three jars filled up with bullet, gunpowder, and napalm. There was also broken magnesium on the floor. You see, magnesium fires are made worse by water. If water comes into contact with it, it lets off a lethal hydrogen gas, so if anyone wanted to try and put the fire out, they'd be making it 10 times worse. But how could he lure someone to set off the bomb? Well, there were two ways that this thing could be set off. First, an RC car was placed by some bins near his apartment building. He put a boom box by the car which would be silent for 40 minutes, and then that would be followed by loud music. On top of the RC car was a remote, but the remote wasn't for the car or the boombox, it was for the detonation system in the apartment. So in turn, a random person would walk up to this boombox, car and remote, trying to maybe turn it off. They might use the remote, but they've just blown the building up. The next way which James was banking on was inside the apartment itself. Again he set his computer to play loud music. Around 20 to 25 minutes after he left the building, this in turn would summon people to open the door and then blow the building up. This nearly worked but ultimately failed after a neighbor was awoken by the music and pounded on James's door to no response. She even touched the door handle and realized it was open, but for whatever reason she decided to go back to her apartment and call for the police. The only thing is though, all the police were heading to the Century 16 theatre to reports of an active shooter. And on a quick side note, the explosives would eventually be safely removed by the bomb squad and there would be no reported casualties in regards to the apartment

Buying Guns And Setting The Apartment Trap

SPEAKER_28 1:44:44

block. Rewinding the clock ever so slightly, and James Holmes would leave his booby-trapped apartment to head for the Century 16 movie theatre. He took a Vik at him because he feared he might get shot and the medication would make it less painful. Once arriving at the theatre, he parks around the back just outside of Theatre 9, then walks around to the entrance where he picks up his ticket from a kiosk desk. He hands it to the attendant and makes his way to the concession stand. He loiters briefly but eventually would make his way to theatre 9, although his ticket had been for theater 8.

SPEAKER_20 1:45:20

So you go in the theater or what's it like? What are you seeing and hearing as you go in the theater?

SPEAKER_22 1:45:26

I just went to the very front and sat down in one of the chairs. And then pulled out my phone to make it look like I had a phone call.

SPEAKER_20 1:45:35

I'm sorry?

SPEAKER_22 1:45:36

Pulled out my phone to make it look like I had a phone call. Okay. And then went out the exit for that reason.

SPEAKER_20 1:45:44

What else did you see in the theater when you first went in?

SPEAKER_22 1:45:48

Uh-oh. Well, it's just an aisle way. I'm sorry? It's just an aisle way to the stand. And I looked back in the stands and saw that they were all full.

SPEAKER_20 1:46:02

So you go out through some sort of exit corridor to the outside exit door, is that right?

SPEAKER_22 1:46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_20 1:46:10

Okay. Then what happened? Um then I went to put the stuff on and get all the weapons ready and any particular thoughts, preparations, getting ready, psyching yourself up, anything like that?

SPEAKER_22 1:46:31

Um I put uh my music on. On my headphones, on my wireless headphones. Okay. Then what happened? Then uh an employee came out of the dumpster and threw something away. But I had the tinted windows and the sunshade so they didn't see me. But I heard them and I heard them.

SPEAKER_20 1:46:58

You heard them come out. What did you think about when they came out?

SPEAKER_22 1:47:04

Um if they're gonna interrupt the process or not. But they didn't, they just went back inside the theater after they threw the trash away.

SPEAKER_20 1:47:17

If they had somehow interrupted the prox the process, what would have happened?

SPEAKER_22 1:47:22

I had a handgun in my passenger jewelry site that I could have used.

SPEAKER_20 1:47:29

Okay. Were you prepared to do that if necessary?

SPEAKER_22 1:47:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_20 1:47:35

At what point did you call the behavioral health hotline of some kind?

SPEAKER_22 1:47:40

Um like halfway through gearing up.

SPEAKER_20 1:47:46

From the car then?

SPEAKER_22 1:47:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_20 1:47:47

Okay. So that was something that happened in the car. If you if you can, I'd like to pretty much hear everything. I want to hear that.

SPEAKER_22 1:47:54

I called them, but I couldn't I couldn't hear anybody on the other line.

SPEAKER_20 1:47:58

What led you to make that call?

SPEAKER_22 1:48:03

Uh just one last uh chance to see if I should turn back or not.

SPEAKER_20 1:48:12

As far as you know, your reception was fine in the middle of town. Right. And you didn't hear any answer electronic or personal or otherwise on the other end? No. And you said nine seconds. Did you kind of count them off or did you show on the phone how long it was?

SPEAKER_22 1:48:31

It said like call ended after nine seconds. I'm sorry. It said call ended after nine seconds.

SPEAKER_20 1:48:39

You remember what you thought or felt or when nobody answered?

SPEAKER_22 1:48:47

Um shortly after I thought the FBI would stop me.

SPEAKER_20 1:48:57

You go in through the outer door, then what happens, and what do you see, what do you hear, what do you smell?

The Shooting Step By Step

SPEAKER_22 1:49:05

First I uh opened the tear gas canister while I was still outside the door, and it made a hissing sound, and then I went inside and tossed it over on the right side of the theater.

SPEAKER_20 1:49:20

How did it feel to be really doing it?

SPEAKER_22 1:49:24

Um then it was autopilot.

SPEAKER_20 1:49:28

Walked me through from there.

SPEAKER_22 1:49:31

Um then I raised the shotgun and saw that people were getting up in like the back left corner. So I like shot up that direction. And then I don't remember any of the other shots, so the shotgun. Any idea why those people were getting up in the back left corner? Well, they could see me all decked out with my guns and stuff. Okay.

SPEAKER_20 1:50:01

So you shot in that direction. Do you know whether you hit anything?

SPEAKER_22 1:50:05

Um I heard a scream. Yeah.

SPEAKER_20 1:50:10

You shot how many times toward the folks in the upper left?

SPEAKER_22 1:50:14

Uh I think the shotgun held five or six uh six shells. So I shot all six that are. But then I uh threw the gun down and switched to the AR-15. And uh I don't remember where I shot those ones either, except for like two people who tried to run away and I shot like three shots at them.

SPEAKER_20 1:50:45

There were many more people in the theater than the two who were trying to run away. Right. Did their running away prompt you to shoot them?

SPEAKER_22 1:50:54

It made me kind of focus on them or divert my attention to them. While you were firing, did anybody get out while you were firing? Yeah, the two people who ran away, and then afterwards uh four people I think carried a guy out and they got out the back exit, the emergency exit. I had uh a scope on it, but I I didn't use it to cite. I just got randomly.

SPEAKER_20 1:51:29

In the direction of people, but randomly would it plot. Randomly towards the people. Okay. At least some of the time you were trying to shoot specific people.

SPEAKER_22 1:51:42

Right, so those two people who ran were the specific people, and then there was one other guy, which they carried out who was a specific person I shot at.

SPEAKER_20 1:51:52

How about the sound? What did all that sound like?

SPEAKER_22 1:51:56

Um, well, I'd had my music in to drown out uh sounds. And I I guess I didn't hear much.

SPEAKER_20 1:52:07

How high was the music turned out? To its full volume. Full volume.

SPEAKER_22 1:52:12

I'm basically in that corner the whole time, except for once I go into the light, which is later. The lighted hallway. I uh was checking the weapon and I uh discharged the magazine that uh misfired and was trying to put a new one in. But they wouldn't go inside the they wouldn't click in there.

SPEAKER_20 1:52:43

So as you were what was your purpose of walking up that out?

SPEAKER_22 1:52:47

To be able to see, because I couldn't see very well in the corner. And it was a safer spot to reload. Um then I I walked out. I think before I went into the aisle, I I shot some with the handgun, but I don't remember shooting the handgun.

SPEAKER_20 1:53:08

Before you went into the aisle. Okay.

SPEAKER_22 1:53:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_20 1:53:12

Did you walk up the aisles at all and look down the aisles to see if there was anybody behind seats or anything like that?

SPEAKER_22 1:53:18

No, I didn't walk up into the stands. Okay.

SPEAKER_28 1:53:22

Bullets, blood, brains, and bodies is how the prosecution described the horrific scene that James Holmes left behind. In that short period of time, he opened fire on around 400 moviegoers, killing 12, the youngest six-year-old Veronica Sullivan, and a further 70 were injured. But words just simply can't describe the mayhem that was rained upon those innocent people that day. From the details we know, bullets flew across the theatre, hitting multiple people in their heads and bodies as they ran for safety and ducked for cover behind chairs. James would later say he specifically aimed for people who were escaping to deter more from doing so. Some of the victims had acted as human shields in order to protect their loved ones. This worked, but unfortunately, they wouldn't make it out alive on the 20th of July 2012. Bullets even penetrated through the walls, which in turn meant they went through to theatre eight. Some had been shot in the face, but they would go on to survive.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:27

Good evening, thanks for joining us. We'll take you back to the vigil that will soon start in just a moment. But first, the intense manhunt for the person responsible for the chaos at the Eaton Center last night when he opened fired in the crowded mall.

SPEAKER_28 1:54:41

One month prior to the shooting on the 2nd of June 2012, several people were shot, resulting in two deaths when a gunman opened up in the food court of the Eaton Center in Toronto, Canada. In attendance was aspiring sports reporter Jessica Gowie, who had reported on the incident live on her Twitter feed. Towards the end of the coverage, she tweeted an eerie tweet which read, A man dressed as Batman is charging tourists to take pictures outside the Eton Center yelling, My parents are dead. Very tacky and heartless. After surviving a mass shooting, she would be caught up in another one one month later, and this time she wouldn't be as lucky. Never thought I'd have to coerce a guy into seeing the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises with me, she tweets. Followed by, Of course we're seeing Dark Knight. Redheaded Texan Spitfire. People should never argue with me. Maybe I should get in on those NHL talks. Minutes later, she would be brutally murdered in that Century 16 movie theatre by none other than James Holmes. The shotgun had been used first and all rounds were fired into the crowd. Next was the AR-15, but 65 rounds in, it jammed on him. James would make his way to the hallway to use the light to try and sort the clip out, but ultimately he failed to do so. He ended off by using his 40 caliber Glock pistol. He fired five rounds, but after making his way back through that emergency exit, he would soon

Arrest, Aftermath, And Conflicting Reports

SPEAKER_28 1:56:10

be apprehended by officers after they spotted him standing by his car. Believe it or not, they had made it to the theatre in under two minutes, quicker than his prediction of three.

SPEAKER_26 1:56:20

Can we get your name? Okay, I don't like somebody who has me if you still need children.

SPEAKER_21 1:56:57

There wasn't any children hurt.

SPEAKER_28 1:57:01

I I I don't I don't know. Multiple movie goers were in critical condition, but there was a slight issue. There were no ambulances. You see, the ambulances were blocked behind parked cars, police vehicles, and the thousands of people who had just fled the theatre. So at this point, officers took the initiative to put multiple people in their cars and drove them to five nearby hospitals, and this in turn would save multiple lives. After all the seriously injured victims were taken by police, it allowed for ambulances to eventually come through, and the people who were less injured were then taken to hospital via ambulance. Of the 60 patients who were brought to hospitals, 27 went in police cars and 20 went in ambulances. Others were transported in private vehicles and one walked. There had also been reports that there were two shooters rather than one. Various witnesses had came up to tell reporters that a man had let another person in after going towards the exit. But with all the chaos and confusion, you could see as to why people would think that.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:05

For example, one woman would go on to say, the alarm goes after this, it's a murder in the theatre. Like it's just going off murder in the theatre, murder in the theater. It's crazy that they got an alarm saying that there was a murder in the theater, you know?

SPEAKER_28 1:58:18

But the alarm really said emergency in the theatre. So it just goes to show you that sometimes in a state of panic, you might think you've seen or heard something, but that might not necessarily be true. Eventually, though,

Trial Verdict And Life Sentences

SPEAKER_28 1:58:30

James Holmes would go on to be charged with quite literally hundreds of counts. He was hit with two counts of first degree murder for each of the victims he fatally shot, and then two counts of attempted murder for each of the 70 others who were injured but survived. He'd also got some charges for the booby trap department. He would go on to admit that yes, it was him who was the shooter that day, but he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecution wouldn't accept the plea, and so a trial went ahead in April of 2015. After months of witness testimony, evidence being presented to the court, and the cases of why James Holmes was either sane or insane, the jury would find him guilty on all counts, but it was now up to them to decide whether he should get the death penalty or not. Eventually, the jury failed to make a unanimous decision, and so the death sentence was thrown out, and all that was left now was the judge going on to sentence him.

SPEAKER_27 1:59:27

Running all of the set sentences uh consecutive and adding them all up, I believe the total comes out to 12 life sentences without the possibility of parole consecutive to each other and consecutive to 3,312 years in the Department of Corrections. Yes, actually it's 3,318, excuse me. I I realize that I have imposed the maximum sentences. And I somebody yesterday uh said, judge, I want to make sure that whatever sentences you impose, that you are 100% sure that they are just and fair. And I am 100% sure that these are just and fair. I want to make it clear that it is the court's intention that the defendant never set foot in free society again. The intention of my sentences is that he spend every single day of the rest of his life in prison and that he be imprisoned without the possibility of parole. If there was ever a case that warranted the maximum sentences, this is the case. One of the victims yesterday said the defendant does not deserve any sympathy. I wholeheartedly agree. The defendant does not deserve any sympathy, and for that reason, the court imposes the maximum sentences that the court can impose under the law. Sheriff, get the defendant out of my courtroom, please. Thank you.

SPEAKER_28 2:01:05

And so for the people of Aurora, Colorado, the 20th of July 2012 will be a summer's night they'll never forget. A time when friends and families were out just to have a good time, but ultimately would have their lives taken away with a man whose motive wasn't exactly clear. We can attempt to get into the mind of James Holmes and say that his motive was more than likely a failed path in life with no purpose. Mix that with mental health issues, and you've got your answer. All the warning signs had been there in the months leading up to the shooting, and it saddens me to think that nothing was done beforehand. You see, although we mentioned throughout the video that Dr. Fenton had let him go on multiple occasions, he actually told her that he wanted to become a famous killer as he wouldn't be able to make his mark in the science world. Dr. Fenton would go on to say that she lacked evidence to have him placed on psychiatric hold, but I think the more you look into those meetings, the more that it points towards evidence showing that he could have and he should have been put into place on a psychiatric hold. Had that been done, then maybe all of those innocent lives wouldn't have been taken away on the 20th of July 2012.

Our Local Perspective And Compassion

SPEAKER_18 2:02:49

Just real quick, anybody if if you're affected closely, if you're in there, you're a victim, really want to apologize. We don't mean to stir up any any traumatic stuff in any way. We're not trying to sensationalize or you know make this some kind of like, wow, check this out. It's nothing like that. Um we're very sorry to all the victims and families and everybody that had to go through all that.

SPEAKER_19 2:03:13

Right, we pray for healing for everybody. So for real. I mean, that was uh something that yeah took me.

SPEAKER_18 2:03:18

Um yeah, it's uh like I was saying to Eric a little bit before we started doing this, you know. I I remember because I lived a couple blocks away from it when it happened, that at the time I was drinking a lot and I was up late, you know, and when it was going on, I was telling the person that I was living with, I was like, man, it's like either the like this person that's dodging the cops is really good at it like in a high-speed chase because the the sirens just kept going and kept leaving and then kept going and then kept leaving, and it was like man, for you know, hours. It just was going on. I was like, what the hell? But never went outside. I'm not gonna go out there and check it out because I might end up in one of those cars, you know. So it's like I stayed inside, but the next morning when I woke up and saw the news and saw what what had actually happened, I was so shocked that you know something so terrible could happen you know, that fast, and you know, and and so unexpectedly. Right, you know, because nothing since 9-11 had really been that big except, you know, a few things here and there, but nothing like that so close to home. Um you know, we had the Columbine shooting here in Colorado, and so we've been through stuff like this, um, but it was so shocking. But then, like I was telling Eric to my point, was seeing James Holmes in court, you know, and with you know, his orange hair, yeah, but the way he was looking, how drugged up he was, it was like he wasn't even present, you know, and and the way the whole thing went down where this guy just went in, shot up a theater, and is found out back, supposedly that was the story, out back of the theater by his car, and they just took him and arrested him and didn't shoot him on site. You already know that this dude's been blasting people because of the phone calls, and you don't take him down, like that doesn't sound Aurora police ish to me.

SPEAKER_19 2:05:22

Well, I mean 'cause I'm from Aurora and I've seen and heard and Well my I I well supposedly what didn't they just like you know, he was out there, they shined the fucking light and he fucking dropped his shit, raised his hands like you caught me.

SPEAKER_18 2:05:34

That's what they say.

SPEAKER_19 2:05:35

So they say, I mean, I that's the story.

SPEAKER_18 2:05:37

You know, and so he looks completely different than what any of his mugshots look like. And the mug shot is what I from experience I know that that is your ID, man. That's how they tell who you are. You're a prisoner. Once you become a prisoner of the state, you're a a box on a shelf, is what you are, and they need to know what that box looks like. And so all these like crazy show us your big eyes, all these that's all identity stuff. And then you see him in court later on, that's not the same guy, man. I'm just telling you, he doesn't talk the same, he doesn't behave the same. When you see on the video, you saw where he was doing that presentation, and they're all ha ha and he's all looking kind of sideways every time he talks. He's not doing that. None of it. He's sitting there looking just straight, talking like that. It's it's so it doesn't seem right, man. It seems like MK Ultra stuff to me.

SPEAKER_19 2:06:41

Doped him up and all that stuff, so he can't res you know, be like, hey.

SPEAKER_18 2:06:45

His dad was being uh implicated in in uh in a black rock investigation in some way. Um indicted, that's what I meant to say. His dad his dad was indicted over a black rock incident and he was under investigation when all this was happening. You know, and and for a kid from California, you know, we've talked about this chaos book where they've got this whole mind control thing going on where they drug people up. It's always the kid that's withdrawn from everybody, the real smart kid. You know, just like Ted Kaczynski, the unibomber, same kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_19 2:07:21

That was a weird thing about his old uh uh uh pill coding job.

SPEAKER_18 2:07:26

Yeah, I mean, everything about this is weird, but yeah, and then worked at a pill coating company. I wonder like what if he could have and then was going to study psychology and neuroscience. Neuroscience came from California, had a perfect childhood until all of a sudden started having uh talking about like shadow figures having a battle or something like that. Like a lot of kids imagine things, could have been writing a cartoon in his brain or something, who knows? But all of a sudden he's some dark, dark kid. He was great, and then tomorrow he's like a totally different person. That doesn't happen, by the way.

SPEAKER_19 2:08:04

That's weird. Especially, you know, that's it it's it's an odd one to me. I where did where does it you know and they don't never talk about the whole you know they say with uh serial killers and people that do this shit, you know, have some kind of an you know, they they've beat up animals or they've killed animals in some sadistic way. Yeah, some kind of abuse, and he's never really the only thing is just that he said that he wished that people weren't around it. He hated people. Yeah, people are his problem, which I a lot of people have said things like that, you know. I've said it before. I've people I can't stand people, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_18 2:08:38

That's neither here nor there when you're talking to your therapist and saying, Man, I really wish I could kill him, but the the end result wouldn't you know benefit me because I would actually be, you know, either

Why Parts Of It Feel Wrong

SPEAKER_18 2:08:49

dead or in prison. Like, well, I mean, everybody thinks like, well, I'd like to do something, but I can't because I'll get locked up. But when you're talking about what how you would do it and what you would do, then the whole therapist thing, man, that really really stood out to me because you know, Charles Manson was constantly getting busted, constant stolen cars, underage girls, drugs, warrants, blah blah blah. They had a whole county sheriff department do a big ass sting on his ranch and got him, and they let him go in two days. Every time, every time he was out in a couple days, maybe a few hours. And the cops were pissed, everybody's pissed, and we all see how that turned out, and that was a mind control thing. It was all about that hate Ashberry, the free clinic, dealing acid. Well, it's weird because now they're doing it. It's all connected.

SPEAKER_19 2:09:48

They're doing all that even more now with the whole competency thing. It's like, oh, you he can't stand trial because he's not competent. He didn't know that he just murdered somebody.

SPEAKER_18 2:09:57

Yeah. You see that or somebody in Fort Morgan a couple of days ago just got out of jail and did it within hours. Mm-hmm. Drag somebody into an alley. And I lived there when I was a little kid, and like I told my wife, that could have been little Justin.

SPEAKER_19 2:10:13

Right.

SPEAKER_18 2:10:13

You know what I'm saying? That's legit. It was at the trailer park where I used to live.

SPEAKER_19 2:10:17

They let him out on a $500 PR box.

SPEAKER_18 2:10:20

This whole, you know.

SPEAKER_19 2:10:21

That's just disgusting to me, man.

SPEAKER_18 2:10:24

It's intentional. It's not, you know, coincidence. This stuff is insane, but you know to me, this looks like for one, a distraction, but two, it looks like uh exactly what the CIA and MK Ultra have always gotten away with. It looks exactly like it. Guy comes out of it all and then you put somebody else in there. It's not the same person. And everybody's like, Well, why would this guy go to prison for him? Like I was just talking about. If I made this place look like a a room in a police station and put a desk in here and never showed my face, but had me asking this guy over here questions the whole time and make it look like he's in jail if he's got the garb on. You know? Might not even be in jail. And I could be completely full of crap. All I'm saying is look at the eyes, look at the nose, and look at the ears. It's something isn't right about this whole thing. Nothing seems legit. The fact that they didn't take him out in the first place was the first red flag that I had. That was weird. The guy's packing that much heat, and it's the Aurora Police Department. I'm sorry. Nope.

SPEAKER_17 2:11:43

Stray flags, you may have never gone.

SPEAKER_19 2:11:55

Yeah. All right.

Jack The Baboon Gets The Job

SPEAKER_19 2:11:58

And then eighteen. A South African railway sink signal man lost both his legs in an accident. That had to suck. To keep his job, he bought a pet baboon named Jack and literally trained the animal to operate the train signals. When the railway company found out, they they were furious until they tested the baboon and realized that he was flawless. They officially hired Jack, paying him 20 cents a day and half a bottle of beer. Dang, half a but couldn't even give the monkey a full bottle, man. That's just jacked up. He worked there for nine years and never made a single mistake. So easy a monkey could do it. I wonder if that's where that term came from, man. I mean, is that insane or what? I mean, Jack the baboon. Like I say, man, you could have gave the poor monkey a frickin' full beer, man. I mean, he's out there busting his ass, man.

SPEAKER_18 2:13:06

Yeah, but just like being man, when you finish that whole beer, that's when you turn into the bad guy. Okay, but you know. Maybe he had a limit.

SPEAKER_19 2:13:15

But you know, and it doesn't tell you what happened to the other dude that lost his legs. Did he get to keep his job and they just hired both of them?

SPEAKER_18 2:13:22

Didn't he watch Jack?

SPEAKER_19 2:13:24

Well, no, they hired Jack, man.

SPEAKER_18 2:13:26

That's why I'm saying Well, how did it keep his job if he got you said to keep his job he hired a baboon?

SPEAKER_19 2:13:32

Well, no, he he yeah, the dude that lost his legs, he bought he he trained the baboon, he trained Jack to do his job. Uh-huh. So that's why I'm wondering, did they fire that mother trucker and just hire Jack? And paid him less and gave him half of it.

SPEAKER_18 2:13:46

I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_19 2:13:46

That's messed up, man. That's why I'm like, the world's a cold place, man. He hired Well Damn monkey. Damn monkeys. Took my damn job. Well, got it made.

SPEAKER_18 2:13:56

Wait, he lost his legs so he couldn't use his hands?

SPEAKER_19 2:14:00

He I that's what the thing says, man. I guess, you know. That is definitely a weird uh that's an even weirder question, right? See now you don't man, it says just lost his legs in an accident. I don't know.

SPEAKER_18 2:14:14

He lost his legs so he couldn't pull levers.

SPEAKER_19 2:14:16

Oh, but maybe he had a walk. It didn't say what kind of levers. If it's out on the trade train yard, huh? I know when they're hearing the thing it's it's yeah. But like a uh signal man, I would imagine maybe he's out on the uh I'm thinking this is one of those MH370 stories.

SPEAKER_18 2:14:34

You're telling me wild shit expecting me to believe it.

SPEAKER_19 2:14:38

So, but I'm thinking though, it's like when you have to go switch the the track, actually. Like back in the day. So I I could see that. So that you know you'd have to walk.

SPEAKER_18 2:14:48

That makes it even harder for a monkey to do it.

SPEAKER_19 2:14:52

I I unless they're a well-oiled machine.

SPEAKER_18 2:14:54

I'm way too over analytical. I know, man.

SPEAKER_19 2:14:57

Come on, man. Fucking baboo. Fucking baboo's fucking took some other fucking job. Oh,

Comments, Ideas, And Next Week

SPEAKER_19 2:15:05

shit. All right, guys. Well, thanks again for checking us out. Thank you.

SPEAKER_18 2:15:09

Don't forget, we would love some ideas. If you guys got something, anything, just throw us a comment. I it seems like everybody's allergic to the like button and comments. Comments. But it's we're not gonna bite, we're not gonna hurt you. Promise we're not gonna tie you down and be like, you said you were gonna watch us. Right. We're nothing like that. Just we would really appreciate it if you guys would just talk once in a while, say, hey, what's up? We've got a few, we got some really good loyal viewers, you know. We really appreciate everybody, but we really appreciate our loyal viewers. Thanks a lot. You guys are keeping us going. We do this for you guys. It's a lot of fun. We have a great time. Eric and I get to hang out, so it's always good times. So it's nothing, you know, like, well, dang, we gotta do this for you. Well, catch you like it. It's nothing like that. We love it.

SPEAKER_19 2:15:59

The crazier the better.

SPEAKER_18 2:16:00

Yeah, man. I love that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_19 2:16:02

Obviously, we're two freaking nuts.

SPEAKER_18 2:16:06

Yep. All right, guys, we'll see you next week.