• Tragedy compounded: Killers' parents become instant pariahs

    David Mcnew / Getty Images file

    Television news crews gather in front of the home of Robert and Arlene Holmes, parents of James Eagan Holmes, 24, who is accused of killing 12 and injuring 58 people in a Colorado movie theater shooting.

    By JoNel Aleccia, Senior Writer, NBC News

    As news crews swarmed outside the tile-roofed house of accused shooter James Eagan Holmes’ parents in an upscale suburb of San Diego, a stranger 1,300 miles away in Texas grieved for those inside.

    “I’ve been worried about the family,” said Lois Robison, 78. “I know what it’s like to find out your son has killed several people.”

    Last Friday, when Holmes allegedly opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., his parents, Robert and Arlene Holmes, were instantly thrust into a club that no one wants to join: family members of notorious killers.

     

    Like the parents of Tucson shooter Jared Loughner, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Columbine High School killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, they’re quickly becoming pariahs, publicly reviled for raising a monster.

    But a group organized on behalf of murder victims’ families urges compassion and understanding for the families of murderers, too. 

    They suffer in a different way than those who lose loved ones to violence, said Renny Cushing, founder and executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, or MVFHR, which has organized support sessions for killers' families.  

    “I became really painfully aware of the ostracism that takes place,” said Cushing, whose father was murdered in 1988. “Immediately, there’s this thought that families must have done something to cause this, that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

    That’s all too familiar to Robison, a retired third-grade teacher. Her son, Larry Keith Robison, was executed in 2000 in Texas for the grisly murders of five people, including an 11-year-old boy. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 21, three years before the 1982 murders. 

    Though it’s been nearly 30 years since the crime, Robison still clearly recalls the shock and horror of the early days -- and the reaction of some in the community of Burleson, Texas.  Reporters surrounded her home; in ensuing months, some parents asked to have their children removed from her class.

    No longer were they Ken and Lois Robison, the local schoolteachers.

    “We became the parents of a mass murderer,” said Robison.

    It’s a shift that happens quickly as a restless public searches for someone or something to blame for senseless acts of murder, said Cushing.

    Indeed, Arlene Holmes, 58, a registered nurse, and Robert Holmes, 61, a scientist, are being publicly reviled. Some Internet commenters have called them “abusive” and suggested that they are responsible for their son's alleged acts.

    Theater shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes appeared in court for the first time Monday where a judge explained why he was being held on no bond. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

    “Where were YOU Mother why didn’t you take care of him,” read one NBCNews.com comment. “To me it sounds like a bad mother.”

    Another expressed “pity” for the family -- but with a twist:

    “I know that if it had been one of my sons who did this I would be absolutely shattered (not that it could ever be one of them as there must have been signs.)”

    The Holmes family has expressed sorrow for the 12 people killed and 58 injured in the attacks, and, through their lawyer, asked for privacy as they grapple with the situation.

    They indicated they would stand by their son through the ordeal.

    “I think anyone can imagine how they’re feeling, anyone who’s ever been a parent,” said lawyer and family spokeswoman Lisa Damiani at a press conference Monday.

    Slideshow: Shooting at Batman screening in Aurora, Colo.

    Ted S. Warren / AP

    As many as 12 people were killed and 50 injured at a shooting at the Century 16 movie theatre in Aurora, Colo. early Friday during the showing of the latest Batman movie.

    Launch slideshow

    Families of murderers are grief-stricken after such a tragedy, but, unlike the families of the victims, they may feel they have no right to their feelings, said Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995.

    Welch met with Bill McVeigh, the father of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the crime.

    “It’s really difficult for them, it really is,” said Welch, a member of MVFHR, which opposes the death penalty for murderers. “Bill McVeigh can never say anything publicly about anything Tim did that was nice.”

    Instead, the family members of the killers struggle for the rest of their lives with shame and guilt over their loved one’s acts.

    “I said, 'Bill, you have nothing to apologize for. You did not do it. You did not contribute to it,' " Welch recalled.

    That message has provided some solace to other families of murderers. Welch met with the parents of Eric Harris, one of the two killers who led, and died in, the 1999 Columbine High School shootings.

    Public sentiment vilified Wayne and Kathy Harris, Eric’s parents, and also Tom and Sue Klebold, the parents of Dylan Klebold, the other Columbine shooter.

    “People were so angry. They said, ‘How were those boys raised?’” Welch said. “They weren’t raised any damn different than any of the kids in Littleton.”

    Lois Robison said she and her husband, Ken, now 81, have found comfort and empowerment in speaking out about their son's crime, and about the need for adequate care for mental illness. They had great support from family members and those in the community who knew them, she added.

    "When this happened, my husband said 'We can do one of two things,'" Lois Robison recalls. "We can crawl into a cave and pull a rock in there behind us. Or we can tell the truth and try to keep it from happening to someone else.'"

    Bud Welch said he’s tempted now to reach out to victims of Aurora, both the families of those who were killed -- and the family of the alleged killer.

    “These family members in Aurora, they’re going through so much grief. They need so much help,” he said. “The family of shooter? God only knows they’re going through hell, too.”

    More on Vitals:

    In the Colorado city where one of the worst mass shootings in American history took place, the massacre prompted many to seek firearms for self-defense. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

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  • Mass murderers often not mentally ill, but seeking revenge, experts say

    By Maggie Fox, Senior Writer, NBC News

    Those who commit mass murders are often angry and isolated, but usually aren't mentally ill, violence experts said Friday after a shooting during the midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. James Holmes was arrested as a suspect in the shooting that killed 12 people and wounded 59 others.

    “It takes a certain degree of clear-headedness to plan and execute a crime like this,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, who has written several books on mass murder and school violence.

    There are exceptions – Jared Loughner, who shot and killed six people in Arizona in 2011, gravely injuring then-member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Mental health experts say people with mental illness are not any more likely than anyone else to become violent, however.

    Mass murderers “often times feel that they are right and everybody else is wrong,” Fox said in a telephone interview. “They really tend to externalize blame, to see other people as responsible for their problems."

    They are often socially isolated. “They tend to be a failure at life,” Fox added.

    12 dead, 59 injured in Colorado movie theater shooting

    Such well-planned attacks are rare and not meant to make a statement, Fox said. “They basically want revenge,” he said.  “Contrary to the common misperception that these guys suddenly snap and go berserk, these are well-planned executions.”

    The film the victims were watching is loaded with violence but it’s unlikely that actually inspired the attacker, Fox said. The film was opening that night and it’s doubtful the attacker was familiar with the script.

    “It was just coincidental, although it just made the situation more ambiguous for the people involved,” he said. Some of those who were in the theater said they initially first thought the shooting was part of the screening. 

    Early reports suggest Holmes did not have a police record and the University of Colorado has confirmed he was in the process of dropping out of a Ph.D. program in neuroscience there.

    Former FBI profiler Clint van Zandt  told TODAY that Holmes was almost certainly acting alone. “Today, so far, he appears to be … the lone wolf,” Van Zandt said. The attack was carefully planned, both Van Zandt and Fox said, which fits the patterns of such attackers.

    “They typically plan carefully how they are going to do it, where they are going to do it, what they are going to bring and what they are going to wear,” Fox said. In this case, the victims were not deliberately chosen, although the place, a packed movie theater, probably was.

    The attack may encourage copycat actions but not necessarily, Fox said. “What bothers me in situations like this is to see lists of the worst mass shootings,” he said. “It encourages people to try to break records.”

    Dr. Victor Schwartz, medical director of the Jed Foundation, which works to promote mental health among college students, agreed. “The media needs to be really careful in these situations,” he said. “On the one hand, you need to report the story. On the other hand, there is the danger of sensationalizing it, almost romanticizing the drama here.”

    Schwartz also advises resisting any attempts to speculate on whether violent videos or movies may have affected Holmes. “The research slants both ways,” he said. Some studies suggest that children who watch and play violent videos may become desensitized to some aspects of violence, but there is not a clear consensus.

    “None of these things is caused by a single factor,” Schwartz said. “Obviously, these are always very complicated events. The impulse is to find a simple explanation for complicated situations. It is important to resist it.”

    Experts say it’s almost impossible to predict attacks like this one. “Neighbors will come forward and say it was no surprise,” Fox said. “But it’s all after the fact. Beforehand, even though someone may fit a profile, we can’t predict they will do this sort of crime. It’s a very rare event and not predictable. That’s part of what makes it so scary.”

    Former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt speaks with TODAY's Matt Lauer again, calling the Colorado movie theater shooter a "lone wolf," which he says is "the thing the FBI director and others are most worried about."

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