By Keith Coffman
DENVER (Reuters) - Accused Colorado gunman James Holmes made threats to a university psychiatrist before a July shooting at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" that killed 12 people, according to court documents released on Friday.
The University of Colorado psychiatrist reported those unspecified threats to campus police before the shooting, according to a document filed with the court on July 27 that was unsealed by the judge in the case on Friday.
Holmes, a former neuroscience graduate student, is accused of opening fire on July 20 at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in Aurora, a Denver suburb. Fifty-eight people were also wounded.
University of Colorado psychiatrist Lynne Fenton, who testified at an earlier hearing in the case that she treated Holmes more than a month before the rampage, has said her professional relationship with Holmes ended in mid-June.
"The relationship was terminated after the defendant made threats towards who reported the matter to the University of Colorado (CU) police department," the newly unsealed documents said.
"As a result of these actions, university administration terminated the defendant's access privileges to all or part of the Anschutz campus," the documents said.
The documents released on Friday are heavily redacted, and Fenton's name does not appear in the document.
Prosecutors have depicted Holmes as a young man whose once promising academic career was in tatters as he failed graduate school oral board exams in June and one of his professors suggested he may not have been a good fit for his competitive Ph.D. program.
They have said that Holmes lost his access to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus after making unspecified threats to a professor on June 12, after which he began a voluntary withdrawal from his program.
They said Holmes began "a detailed and complex plan" to commit murder and obtain an arsenal of guns and protective armour after he was denied access to campus facilities.
Holmes' attorney Daniel King, who analysts have said appears to be laying the groundwork for a possible insanity defence, has said his client suffers from an unspecified mental illness and had tried to get help before the shooting.
Previous media reports have said Fenton reported her concerns about Holmes to a campus threat assessment team and a campus police officer.
(Writing by Mary Slosson; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Vicki Allen)
