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
two of james's female friends noted that he was a bit strange but never in a way that made anyone feel threatened a former roommate said that he would often lie in bed at night not sleeping just staring at the ceiling unmoving as he sat there in deep thought but nothing that they noticed was extremely alarming
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The science said victim services unit, children something.
uh-huh yeah yeah what about that there wasn't any children hurt now obviously we'll get more into that in part two but by 2010 james graduated in the top one percent of his college class his gpa was 3.949 the kind of grade that will get you into any graduate school of your choosing at least in theory following graduation james applied to eight graduate schools with doctoral neuroscience programs
He had several reference letters from past professors, including one that read, A very effective group leader brings a great amount of intellectual and emotional maturity into the classroom. However, out of the eight schools he applied to, James was rejected by all of them. And it was largely due to his essay that he wrote.
These essays are supposed to give a glimpse into the student, their personality, beliefs, and goals in life. But for James, it gave a glimpse into his psyche. In his essay, he spoke at length about using clairvoyance to solve challenging scientific equations. At one point, he stated that he "...invoked the infinite vastness of indefinite knowledge."
and the colleges he applied to were not impressed. Now, there was one staffer at Montana State who considered accepting James, but apparently James had left them an unsettling voicemail, and from there they went down a different direction. But this entire experience was really hard on James. He hadn't taken the rejection well, and from there he would go on a dark downward spiral.
At this point, James was around 23 years old. On average, men with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are diagnosed in their late teens to early 20s, and symptoms that may have been flickering throughout the teenage years often become hard to ignore by this age.
According to some psychiatrists, they believe that this is exactly what was happening to James at that time, and his family did have a history of schizophrenia. However, there are other professionals who don't believe that James was suffering from schizophrenia, but from severe OCD instead.
I have always been fascinated by the complexities of a long lost thought seemingly arising out of nowhere into a stream of awareness. I have an unquenchable curiosity, a strong desire to know and explore the unknown, and a need to persist against the odds.
When James made the move to Aurora, Colorado, I'm sure he was filled with hope. This was a new chapter, the start of what would hopefully lead him to a successful career in neuroscience. And like we mentioned, James did really well in school. His undergrad years had been a very pleasant experience for him. He had friends, he had made good memories, and school was easy for him.
However, he had no idea that graduate school would be the complete opposite experience. When classes began that year, a lot of the students were eager to start off strong. They got familiar with the other students in the class, introduced themselves to their professors, and did everything they were supposed to do. But not James.
He seemed like he didn't really care to be there, or that he was too smart to have to try. One classmate would later say, What struck me was that he was kind of nonchalant. According to his professors and classmates, James would often come to class early.
after a few weeks James started leaving his labs early he wove nonsensical jokes into his presentations skipped class and seemed completely unconcerned with the tasks given to him now you might just be able to get away with that in undergrad but not here James couldn't just study right before the exam and ace the class
In graduate school, there are endless presentations, group projects, and lab rotations. You have to put in the work to succeed, and James wasn't doing that. For his entire life, he had been really good at school, and what was once a fulfilling distraction for him was clearly no longer working. In his book, A Dark Night in Aurora, Dr. Reed suggests, Maybe James was impatient.
Maybe his studies weren't moving him fast enough towards his goal of figuring out what was wrong with him. But during this time, James also had another distraction, his very first girlfriend.
Now, when he and Gargi weren't in class, they hung out at James' apartment, a small one-bedroom on the third floor of an apartment building near campus. This apartment building would, in a matter of months, become a literal ticking time bomb. But from October 2011 to February 2012, it was James and Gargi's little escape.
They watched SNL reruns, had sex, played video games, and ate dinner together. On dates, they sometimes visited the Century 16 movie theater, the same theater that would become the center of James' demented plan. But despite having a love interest for the very first time in his life, James was still struggling with his mental health.
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