Prison Officials Won't Tell Aurora Victims' Families Where James Holmes Is

Five months after the Colorado Department of Corrections quietly transferred Aurora, Colorado, movie theater gunman James Holmes to an undisclosed location, victims' rights monitors were unable to determine if prison officials violated the law by keeping victims' families in the dark about the mass killer's whereabouts.

At a June 24 meeting, members of the Victim Rights Act Subcommittee said that because corrections officials characterized the transfer of Holmes in January as "temporary," his location could be exempt from disclosure policies, according to a family member of an Aurora victim. A vote among six subcommittee members resulted in a tie over whether the lack of transparency violated the state's Victim Rights Act. Therefore, no decision was reached, said a prosecutor who observed the meeting.

Holmes, who was sentenced in 2015 to 12 life sentences and 3,318 years in prison for killing 12 people and injuring scores more at Aurora's Century 16 movie theater in 2012, was transferred out of the Colorado State Penitentiary. Authorities told ABC News that the reason for the transfer was that another inmate had attacked him. His new location has been kept secret.

"The attack was part of the reason for moving him. There were many concerns; the attack was part of the concern," Colorado Prisons Director Steve Hager told ABC News.

The inmate who reportedly attacked Holmes, Mark Daniels, wrote to Denver's alternative newsweekly Westword in December, saying, "I would like to express my deepest condolences to all of the [Aurora] victims and to the families…. I'm sorry I couldn't wipe him out and sen[d] him packing to Satan's lake of fire." Daniels said he "did get him six or seven good ones" before a case manager intervened. "I'm sorry I couldn't finish him for you."

The Colorado Department of Corrections handbook for victims and survivors says victims can enroll in a notification program that "will provide you with the name of the facility where the offender is incarcerated." However, the handbook says it does not notify victims of "temporary or transport moves." A separate section of the handbook says, "You have the right to be notified during certain critical stages of supervision in the Colorado Department of Corrections," such as an inmate escape or an offender violating parole and not showing up for a hearing.

The state's Victim Rights Act contains similar language regarding notifying the victim in such cases but also states that this statute "does not require notification when an offender is moved from one correctional facility to another equally or more secure facility."

Furthermore, the notification system does not apply to "the temporary transfer" of an inmate to a similar or more secure facility, "so long as the person will return to the care and control of the transferring supervisory agency," the act says.

The June 24 meeting was called to review one or more complaints by Aurora victims' family members alleging that prison officials violated the Victim Rights Act.

In a response obtained by Newsweek to one such complaint, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections Rick Raemisch wrote that Holmes's current location is "interstate correction compact transfer," which means he is no longer in Colorado and is at a level 5 facility, which has the highest level of security.

"Offender Holmes was not released, discharged, paroled, or sent to a less secure facility. He was transferred to an equally secure facility and will ultimately return to Colorado in time," Raemisch wrote. "The Department of Corrections is committed to the safe operation of its facilities…. As you may be aware in light of the publicity, Offender Holmes has become a target for assault by offenders, and was in fact assaulted by another offender."

Raemisch added that keeping Holmes in a Colorado facility would be a safety threat. "While the Department is sympathetic to and understands the victims' desire to know about Offender Holmes' placement," he concluded, naming the location "thwarts the intended purpose of the transfer and is contrary to the public interest."

Rich Orman, a chief deputy district attorney who was a prosecutor in the Holmes trial, attended the June 24 meeting. Responding to the assertion that Holmes's transfer is "temporary," he likened the Department of Corrections's mindset to a quote by Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass: "When I use a word...it means just what I choose it to mean."

"To me, temporary means something like they have to go to a dentist, or they have to go to court or something like that. Temporary doesn't mean where they are incarcerated on an ongoing basis," Orman says. "It is directly in violation of the law. There is no argument to the contrary that makes any sense."

He adds, "If I can know where Charles Manson is, if I can know where the Boston bomber is…if I can know where all of these murderers are…why the hell is this guy any different?"

Orman says it's possible that his office will sue the Department of Corrections, alleging a violation of the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act, which he says requires that records involving the moving of an inmate be made available.

"There are no secret prisoners in the United States, or no secret prisons," says Anita Busch, whose cousin Micayla Medek died in the shooting. "Why is his location secret from the media? Why is it secret from the victims, and what makes him a special case? Why is he getting preferential treatment?"

Robert Hood, a security consultant and former warden of a Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, which is considered the country's "toughest federal prison," wrote on the website CorrectionsOne that Holmes did not turn up in a search of inmate databases for all 50 states. He called the gunman "the vanishing inmate."

An incident such as the attack on Holmes by a fellow inmate "is not a reason to transfer," Hood wrote. "Prison officials decided to pass the problem inmate on to another state prison system instead of managing the 'high-profile' offender."

Orman agrees, saying, "The reason that makes no sense is guys get attacked in prison every freaking day…. And they're not sending all these people out of state."

In an email to Newsweek, Laurie Kilpatrick, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman, said her office is "sensitive to the victims and their need to know" information about inmates. But she wrote that "the subcommittee's decision reflects an understanding of [the department's] legal obligations" to protect the public, staff and offenders. She also said the department would work with the victim rights subcommittee following the June 24 meeting.

Also on June 24, a federal judge dismissed lawsuits that victims and victims' family members had filed against Cinemark, the movie theater chain where the 2012 shooting occurred. The lawsuit alleged that the chain had inadequate security. A state court had issued a similar ruling in related claims against Cinemark earlier this year.