James Helm
speaker
155 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
James Helm’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Warning, the following podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects.
This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned.
And I'm Colin Brown.
Thank you.
Mental health is a complicated topic, and we do want to state that someone's mental health condition is not an excuse for slaughtering a room full of people, but it does play a part in this story. However, before we get into that, we have to tell you the story of James' parents. Robert Holmes was described as an intelligent, very analytical man.
He had graduated from Stanford with a bachelor's in mathematics and earned his master's at UCLA. Then from there, he went on to the University of Berkeley to get his PhD in statistics. In the 70s, Robert was in his late 20s, and while at Berkeley, he crossed paths with a woman named Arlene. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman.
At the time, she was earning her English degree, she was very hardworking, driven, and she shared the same core values as Robert. It was clear from the very beginning that Robert and Arlene would be a very successful couple. And they were. In 1981, after Arlene graduated, she started working as a staff writer at the Berkeley Gazette.
That same year, Robert graduated with his PhD after writing his dissertation, Contributions to the Theory of Parametric Estimation in Randomly Censored Data. And for the first few years of their relationship, everything was going really well. Then, finally, on August 10th, 1985, the two got married in Los Angeles.
All children are innocent, and James was no exception. His parents were completely over the moon after his birth. After leaving the hospital, he was brought back to his parents' home in the affluent neighborhood of Rancho Penasquitos, just north of San Diego. It's a community that provides everything you could want to raise a family.
There's the magic of nearby beaches with their towering sunset-colored cliffs and warm surf. There are miles and miles of hiking trails, biking trails, and even horseback riding trails that wind through the Chaparro Hills. There's even Christmas Card Lane.
a path of over 200 houses that decorate for christmas each year with elaborate displays that illuminate the streets with holiday cheer so that coupled with security and attentive parents james holmes was set up with a really great life in addition it seemed as if his parents were really compatible which is essential when having a peaceful home
Now, at the time, Arlene was working as a registered nurse, but she was also still a writer for the Imperial Beach Star News. She would write in the newspaper's life section. In certain articles, she would write about her husband's silly quirks and gifts they would give each other over the years. In 1987, she wrote a piece titled, She Has Found Him the Perfect Gift at Last.
It read, I have learned that cute but feckless Valentine's gifts are not the way to go. When you are married to a practical man, be practical. This year I played it safe. Bob is out of town this week on business, but when he returns, he's going to just love his new pastel flowered skirt and blouse ensemble. Arlene's articles were humorous, and they gave a small glimpse into their lives.
James would later describe his parents' relationship by saying, You could see the love between them. They showed it. And as a child, he had no problem doing the same thing.
Now, some sources claim that these were early hallucinations that James was having, but having irrational fears like this when you're small is pretty normal. I remember when I was a kid, I watched an episode of Goosebumps, and I thought a ventriloquist dummy was going to come out of the book that I had in my closet and attack me in my sleep.
So, the fact that James was afraid of being kidnapped and these nail ghosts isn't really alarming, and according to everyone that knew him, he was a very normal kid. Neither his parents nor anyone else who was around him has recalled him having unusual behavior around this age. But soon enough, the Holmes family decided to move from the home James grew up in.
He was just seven years old when they packed up and moved to Salinas, California, about 450 miles north of San Diego. At the time, Bob's mother was ill, and the family wanted to be closer to her so that they could help. And that's the kind of family that James was raised in. From the get-go, being together, being there for each other, and making memories was the most important thing.
Now, according to them, the move from San Diego to Salinas was a pretty smooth transition for them, as the kids were still young. And again, they continued to have a really good life there. Their family would often visit their aunt and uncle in Chico, where they would explore the foothills of the mighty Sierra Nevada mountains. They would fish, ride horses, and have bonfires.
Growing up, James was not a withdrawn kid. He was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities like soccer, basketball, track, and martial arts. By no means was he a standout athlete, but according to his coaches and teammates, he was a team player who was a really good sport and always took losing with grace. Which is how a lot of the neighborhood kids described him as well.
The Holmes household was located at the end of a cul-de-sac, and James was always running around with friends having a good time. Their backyard had this long stretch of vacant land with a gully where they would all play capture the flag and flashlight tag. They would dig pits, fill them with water, and then jump in, pretending that they were in a water park.
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