Anticipating Aurora and Beyond (Cracking the Code of the “Lone Nut”)
July 27, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
What is next in our dawns? As I have mentioned before, Aurora means “dawn.” Unfortunately, I must predict a copycat outburst for Friday, July 27th. More on that in a moment.
First, Holmes appeared on the stage he desired today.
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.”
~ Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, 1892.
James Eagan Holmes’ middle name meaning of “fiery” matched his dyed bright reddish-orange hair today, for his first post-massacre appearance. Holmes sat in Judge William B. Sylvester’s court on July 23, 2012, in connection with the Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre Holmes allegedly carried out on July 20th.
Judge Sylvester set July 30th for the filing of formal charges against Holmes. The former neuroscience student at the University of Colorado has been held since Friday in solitary confinement at the Arapahoe County jail in Centennial, about 15 miles south of Denver.
When arrested, it has been reported, Holmes said he was the “Joker.” In the comics and generally in the Batman and Dark Knight films, the Joker is shown as a green-haired figure.
However, the Joker’s costumed henchman often wear orange-red wigs. The Washington Post also correctly pointed out today, “in The Dark Knight, the second film of a Batman series called the Dark Knight trilogy, the Joker character played by Australian actor Heath Ledger wore a nurse’s uniform and a red wig in one scene as he destroyed a hospital. Ledger died in January 2008, six months before The Dark Knight was released.”
The suspect’s name translates as James = “he who supplants,” Eagan = “fiery,” and Holmes = “holly” and/or “island in the river.”
The suspect’s genealogy goes back to the beginning of this nation. James’ grandmother, Mary Jane Crawford Holmes was descended not only from the Mayflower Pilgrims (she was the governor of the Monterey Bay Colony of Mayflower Descendants), but also was from a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, the first American militia.
The Rebirth of Pan and Weird America author Jim Brandon sends me these elusive insights:
Holmes has not been a highly noticeable name of interest, compared with say Fay or Nick, except secondarily in the frequent movie iterations of the British Sherlock Holmes persona, which of course was fictional. But a sensationally fatal real-life eruption occurred in the late 1890s with discovery of the famed “murder castle” in south Chicago. Disguised as a hotel, this was the work of a man who called himself H. H. Holmes and preyed mainly on women attracted to the then popular [1893 Columbian Exposition] World’s Fair, nearby on the lake shore. The total of his victims ranges from a confessed 27 to as high as 200 estimated.
Holmes, whose real name was Herman Webster Mudgett, had started as a medical doctor who however soon showed criminal traits. His “castle” was a virtually surrealistic affair with guest rooms set up with outside door locks, gas jets for asphyxiations and chutes to convey bodies to the basement. The facilities there almost beggar description, employed for corpse dismemberment, dissection of body parts and preparation of skeletons for sale to medical schools or other buyers who can only be imagined.
A number of writers have tackled this story, most recently Eric Larson in [the nonfiction 2003 book] The Devil in the White City, along with others.
Leonardo DiCaprio has purchased The Devil in the White City for a movie in development. DiCaprio’s last film was Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010). Nolan is the director of the Dark Knight trilogy.
One quotation haunts me. Here’s what I told Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, April 20, 2007: ”These people are psychologically competing with each other to increase the body count.”
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