James Holmes: Inmate's strange tale of "confession" and suicide efforts

James Holmes: Inmate's strange tale of "confession" and suicide efforts

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Steven Unruh.

Steven Unruh is having a hard time convincing anyone that he spent hours talking to Aurora theater shootings suspect James Holmes
shortly after his arrest last July. Jail officials say there's no way
that Unruh could have had that kind of access. Yet certain elements of
the story -- which includes a description that resembles the headbanging routine
that sent Holmes to the hospital last week -- have been attracting
attention from law enforcement and even families of the shooting
victims.

"They're going to try to discredit my story," Unruh told Westword in a recent interview at the jail. "But I was able to have a four-hour talk with him. I talked him out of suicide."


There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the tale presented by
Unruh, a 38-year-old inmate with a long history of drug and theft
charges. To begin with, his account of what Holmes supposedly told him
is as bizarre as a William S. Burroughs fever dream. Also, Unruh just
got out of prison last January after serving six years for
methamphetamine and credit-card fraud convictions, and he says he's been
diagnosed as having a bipolar condition.


"It's always been meth with me," he says. "If I drink a beer or
something, I've got the voices in my head that drive me to do more
drugs. I'm really weak-minded."


He's going public with his account of an encounter with Holmes, he
says, only after first trying to interest the Arapahoe County District
Attorney's Office in his story. He's currently facing habitual criminal
charges and had hoped to deal his way into mental health treatment
rather than a twelve-year prison sentence. Although an investigator
visited him, "the DA hasn't been working with me," he sighs.

James Holmes.

What
Unruh can prove is that he was booked into the Arapahoe County
Sheriff's Office Detention Facility on drug and theft charges at 6:44
p.m. on July 19 -- just hours before the attack in Aurora at a midnight
showing of The Dark Knight Rises that left twelve dead and
dozens wounded. Unruh says he was still in the booking area when
officers brought in Holmes, whose head was initially covered with a
hood. Although Holmes was put into a cell by himself, Unruh says inmates
in the area are able to communicate by shouting through a small gap in
the cell doors, which move back and forth on rails.

"I didn't know who he was," Unruh explains. "I could hear some black
dudes yelling from the other side, 'You're a piece of shit! Kill
yourself!' I had been in prison before, so they said, 'Tell this dude
he's not going to be all high and mighty on the prison yard.'"


Unruh says he began talking to Holmes, explaining how poorly child
killers are received in prison. Jail staff quickly covered the window in
Holmes' cell door with a tarp, but Unruh says he heard him pounding on
the wall with his fists -- and then running, slamming his body and his
head into the wall. (Unruh described this action in an interview that
took place several days before Holmes reportedly engaged in similar
headbanging last week.)


"It went on for ten minutes before I couldn't handle it any more,"
Unruh says. "I told him, 'Don't be doing that. You need to repent to the
people for what happened.' He asked me to do an apology letter for the
kids."


Continue for more of our interview with Steven Unruh about his claims regarding James Holmes.





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Source:-
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/11/james_holmes_inmate_confession_suicide_aurora_theater_shooting.php