At peace with life sentence for Colarado cinema gunman
Their 27-year-old son, John, was among the dozen killed in Holmes’ movie theatre rampage, near Denver, three years ago. While other victims’ relatives had no wish to hear a plea for the shooter to be spared the death penalty, the Larimers never considered leaving.
Holmes was sentenced, on Friday, to life in prison, after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision in favor of execution. Often sitting side-by-side in the half of the public gallery reserved for the victims’ families, the Larimers were a constant throughout the 60-day trial.
“If the jurors were in there, my wife and I were in there,” Scott Larimer told Reuters a day after the verdict. The couple moved temporarily to Colorado, from their home in Illinois, to be in court each day. “We wanted to know everything that happened on July 20, 2012,” he said.
Seventy people were also wounded when Holmes donned a helmet, gas mask and body armour, threw a teargas canister and then opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, shotgun and pistol inside a crowded midnight screening of a Batman film.
John Larimer, the fourth generation of his family to become a U.S. Navy sailor, worked as a cryptologist at the nearby Buckley Air Force Base, in Aurora, a Denver suburb.
Described by friends as a movie buff, he had bought a cape and a Batman T-shirt to wear when he went to see The Dark Knight Rises at the Century 16 multiplex that night. He was with his girlfriend, Julia Vojtsek, and two Navy comrades.
When the gunfire erupted in the dark, Vojtsek testified during the trial, Larimer saved her life. “He grabbed my head and pushed me to floor,” she told the jury. “He was lying on top of me, protecting me.” Larimer was shot twice, in the chest and abdomen.
His fellow sailors, Bear Omundson and Greg McDonald, described how they tried to pull their friend out of the theatre during a lull in the shooting. They had to run without him when the gunfire started up again. “That was an agonising choice they had to make, to leave a buddy behind,” said Scott Larimer.
He turned 66 on July 16, the day Holmes was convicted by the jury on all 165 counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and explosives charges stemming from the massacre. Holmes’s lawyers said he was severely mentally ill.
Larimer said he and his wife are at peace with the life sentence. “We were more concerned with the impact on the other families and prosecutors (who wanted the death penalty),” he said.
The Larimers’ son was the youngest of five children. Testifying during the penalty phase of the trial, Kathleen Larimer told the court he was a bright boy, growing up in Crystal Lake, Illinois. He possessed a strong sense of right and wrong, she said, and could light up a room with his smile. “And it wasn’t just because of the thousands of dollars worth of orthodontia,” she said, drawing laughter in a rare moment of levity during the tense proceedings. It did not last long. Kathleen Larimer told the jury of nine women and three men that she doubted the rest of the family would ever take another photograph together again.
“Because every time you look at a family picture, it just jumps out at you who’s missing,” she said.
Her son earned a dual degree in history and political science at the University of Wisconsin, at Whitewater, which has named a scholarship for him. And the U.S. Navy posthumously created the John T. Larimer Mentoring Award for cyber-fleet service members who demonstrate leadership qualities.
Unlike some outspoken families who lost loved-ones in the Aurora rampage, the Larimers have shunned the spotlight, content to let others be the public face of the victims. Instead, they have worked quietly behind the scenes, meeting with other casualties of mass shootings.
In a tragic coincidence, the college where Scott and Kathleen met, Northern Illinois University, was the scene of a mass shooting in 2008, when a gunman killed five people and then took his own life.
They have since connected with victims of that attack.
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