James Holmes seemed well on his way to a career as a scientist. 
 
 His résumé after he graduated with honors in neuroscience from the University of California-Riverside in 2010 cites experience in the lab dissecting birds, studying their musculature and analyzing data and graphs to measure molecules. 
 
 A video from a science camp he attended after high school shows him making a presentation about temporal illusions, misfirings in brain cells that lead to misreading the passage of time — the feeling that time stands still. In the video, Holmes refers to "an illusion that allows you to change the past." 
 
 He was one of six students admitted to the University of Colorado's graduate program in neuroscience last year. He received a $26,000 federal stipend. 
 
 But neuroscientist David Eagleman says Holmes' credentials were no better than those of an average student. The mass killing suspect is no elite neuroscientist, says Eagleman, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. 
 
 "He was just a second-year grad student," he says. "He didn't know anything." 
 
 Aurora, Colo., police say Holmes, 24, entered a midnight showing of the movie TheDark Knight Rises early Friday and opened fire with a rifle, shotgun and .40-caliber handgun, killing 12 people and injuring 58. They found his apartment booby-trapped with explosives and chemicals set to explode if someone entered. 
 
 Eagleman, a former researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., where Holmes attended the eight-week summer camp when he was 18, said the young man had a reputation as a "dolt." 
 
 Eagleman didn't know Holmes but says the teen parroted his advisers' words in his presentation on temporal illusions. A video of the speech was first reported by ABC News. 
 
 "He was just given the presentation to read," Eagleman says. "He wasn't any sort of superscientist when he was 18." 
 
 Stacie Spector, a Salk Institute spokeswoman, confirmed that Holmes attended a summer course at the institute but said that she could not comment further because of privacy concerns. She said the institute did not release the video. 
 
 John Jacobson, a former researcher at Salk whom Holmes listed as his mentor during the camp, told the Los Angeles Times that the teenager was a "mediocre" student who was stubborn and did not listen to direction. 
 
 "I saw a shy, pretty socially inept person," he told the newspaper. "I didn't see any behavior that would be indicative of violence then or in the future." 
 
 Jacobson told the newspaper Holmes "should not have gotten into the summer program. His grades were mediocre. I've heard him described as brilliant. This is extremely inaccurate." 
 
 He said Holmes' high school transcripts showed Bs and no advanced-placement classes. He was accepted to the camp because he had done computer programming, Jacobson said. He was never Holmes' mentor, he said, but Holmes worked in his lab to write a computer code for an experiment Jacobson was working on. He told the newspaper Holmes never finished it. 
 
 "What he gave me was a complete mess," Jacobson says. 
 
 Holmes' résumé suggests he was trained in dissection of birds and mice, performing chemistry tests and attaching small gene tags to cells to target them for treatment. 
 
 "Recipe-book stuff, literally, that every biology student should learn," Eagleman says. As for the grant, Eagleman says, "Holmes is being depicted as some sort of brilliant researcher who won a rare grant, but there are thousands of research students in this country with such grants. Everyone has one. There is nothing elite about it." 
 
 (Clarification: In our story published online Wednesday, Eagleman says he did not intend to suggest that all graduate students win research grants.) 
 
 Holmes had difficulty with a June 7 preliminary exam, given orally by three university faculty members. It is designed to evaluate students' knowledge at the end of the first year. Three days later, Holmes dropped out. ||||| In the wake of Friday's massacre at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation say the gunman must have had a substantial amount of target practice before the shootings. 
 
 They based their assessment on what they call the gunman's “unusually high” hit rate during the attack in the theater. Twelve people were killed, and 58 were injured. 
 
 The gunman used -- perhaps most notably -- an AR-15 assault-style rifle with a magazine that could hold as many as 100 rounds. But when that weapon jammed, authorities said, he switched to a less powerful weapon. He also carried a 12-gauge shotgun and a Glock .40-caliber pistol, authorities say. 
 
 Police said they recovered a second Glock from the suspect's car. 
 
 Among other things, the law enforcement officials said, authorities are searching the suspect's apartment for evidence of a gun range receipt, a brochure, related information he accessed on his computer or phone calls he may have placed to a range. 
 
 The officials are being briefed on the local investigation, but did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the developing case. 
 
 Such evidence would go to the gunman's state of mind, the officials said, and provide more evidence of premeditation and that he deliberately planned the attack. For the government, investigators said, such evidence would tend to knock down any defense strategy that the suspect is insane. 
 
 Or the gunman could have simply gone out to the prairie east of Aurora and practiced alone, much like Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner did before the attack in Arizona last year. 
 
 PHOTOS: 'Dark Knight Rises' shooting 
 
 One local shooting range owner said the suspect in the Aurora case, James E. Holmes, applied for membership at his club in June. But when the owner, Glenn Rotkovich, called Holmes, he was unnerved by the answering machine message. 
 
 "It was this very bass, guttural, rambling, incoherent message that was bizarre, at best," Rotkovich told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. "Freakish, maybe." 
 
 Rotkovich ultimately told his staff not to follow through with Holmes without checking with him, but Holmes never showed up. The next time Rotkovich heard his name, it was on television. 
 
 Officials monitoring the local investigation in Colorado said the gunman displayed a high degree of marksmanship for an amateur. 
 
 They said he first fired the shotgun, which would have sprayed a large area of the theater with buckshot or pellets. Then he fired the semiautomatic AR-15 with the 100-round magazine. When that weapon jammed, he started shooting from the Glock pistol, they said. 
 
 Further, the gunman was shooting in a dark theater after midnight and aiming at moving targets, all amid a canopy of thick gas from canisters he'd set off. That environment, when combined with the kick from the shotgun and the Glock, would make firing with much precision all the harder. 
 
 To kill 12 people and wound 58 in that kind of chaos would be “unusually high for someone new to this,” one official said. 
 
 Officials also theorize that the suspect believed police were being drawn to an explosion at his apartment and that time was on his side. 
 
 When he burst out of the back of the theater, he probably had one of several plans in mind, they said. One, retrieve the second Glock from his white Hyundai and return to the theater, or drive off with the Glock and use it should he come under police fire, officials said. Or, as one official said, “turn the gun on himself.” 
 
 Instead, police were at the theater within two minutes and arrested the suspect before he reached his car. 
 
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 richard.serrano@latimes.com ||||| James Holmes, the man who allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 58 at a packed screening of the latest Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," applied to join a Colorado gun range last month, but was rejected by the owner, who found him "creepy." 
 
 Glenn Rotkovich, who owns the Lead Valley Range in Byers, Colo., told ABC News that Holmes applied for membership about a month ago via email, but when Rotkovich called him to follow up, he said he got a "bizarre," Batman-inspired voicemail message. 
 
 He told his staff not to allow Holmes into the club if he showed up for an orientation. 
 
 The gun range owner's reaction adds to a growing portrait of the 24-year-old accused of carrying out the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, and who police say rigged his apartment with dozens of explosive devices set to go off when the door was opened. 
 
 The search of Holmes' apartment yielded a computer and a variety of Batman paraphernalia, including a poster and a mask, more evidence of his apparent obsession with the comic book hero. 
 
 Investigators also found 10 gallons of gasoline, which were removed from the apartment and detonated at a remote site. Images of the ensuing large fireball were captured by a media helicopter hovering above. 
 
 Exclusive Video of Holmes at 18 
 
 Overnight, ABC News obtained exclusive video and photos of Holmes. The video, which was recorded six years ago when Holmes was 18, gives some insight into his life. 
 
 In the video, he is standing among his peers at a science camp held at Miramar College in San Diego talking about "temporal illusions." 
 
 "Over the course of the summer I've been working with a temporal illusion. It's an illusion that allows you to change the past," Holmes said in the video. 
 
 He appears slightly nervous speaking to the group but also extremely intelligent. 
 
 This is how he was explaining his mentor's shared interest in fantasy versus reality in the video: "He also studies subjective experience, which is what takes places inside the mind as opposed to the external world. I've carried on his work in dealing with subjective experience." 
 
 By most accounts, Holmes lived the life of a normal teen -- with a particular interest in science. 
 
 The video shows him being introduced at the seminar as someone whose "goals are to become a researcher and to make scientific discoveries. In personal life, he enjoys playing soccer and strategy games and his dream is to own a slurpee machine." 
 
 Though Holmes was apparently a gifted scientist who had received a federal grant to work on his Ph.D. at one of the most competitive neuroscience programs in the country, he was a loner who -- oddly for a young student -- seemed to have no Internet presence. 
 
 Holmes Began Amassing Weapons Two Months Ago 
 
 On Saturday, officials said they have "evidence of calculation and deliberation" in the way Holmes allegedly planned and prepared for the shooting, beginning to buy weapons and ammunition two months ago. 
 
 Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates announced Friday that Holmes had purchased four guns at local shops and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition on the Internet in the past 60 days. 
 
 Holmes received deliveries to the school and his home over that period, police said. 
 
 Holmes was enrolled in a neuroscience graduate program at the University of Colorado. On Sunday, officials at the school's Anschutz Medical Campus said they are looking into whether Holmes had items delivered to the school. 
 
 "We are cooperating fully with the police investigation. It was mentioned yesterday that deliveries may have come to his work. That is being looked into," university spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery said. 
 
 The shooting began shortly after midnight Friday, at a soldout showing of "The Dark Knight Rises." Law enforcement officials tell ABC News that Holmes purchased a ticket, entered the theater and left through an emergency exit shortly after the movie started. He geared up with body armor and guns and returned to the theater. 
 
 Dressed in full riot gear, Holmes allegedly re-entered from an emergency exit in the front right corner of the theater before releasing something that witnesses identify as tear gas or a smoke bomb. 
 
 One theory from law enforcement officials is that Holmes began shooting with his Remington shotgun, which may have been loaded with a type of bird shot. 
 
 When he emptied that, he then likely switched to his Smith and Wesson .223 with a drum magazine holding as many as 100 rounds, law enforcement officials said. The rounds from this rifle are the ones which are believed to have penetrated the walls of the theater. 
 
 When this assault rifle jammed, officials believe Holmes transitioned to his next firearm, a Glock .40 calibre with an extended clip with a 40-round capacity. Several of these clips were recovered in the theater. 
 
 The first three firearms were recovered in the theater. The fourth gun was found in his car after he was confronted by police. 
 
 Click here to read about those who died in the shooting. 
 
 Holmes, 24, is currently in custody at Arapahoe County Jail. 
 
 Some recently released inmates from the jail said Holmes is not likely to get a warm welcome from the other prisoners. 
 
 "They're paying really close attention to keeping him separate," Steven Phillips, who was recently released from there, told ABC News. "He's in red, he's in chains, his arms are chained up in like a jacket. When he came in, they said he had a bullet proof vest on over his clothes so somebody wouldn't stab him." 
 
 Phillips heard that Holmes is being kept in 23-hour lockdown, one of the most protected types of confinement. He is given one hour outside his cell per day to shower and use the phone. 
 
 Jacob Wesson, also recently released from Arapahoe County Jail, said that because Holmes is a murder who killed children, if he was kept with other inmates, they would hurt him. "He wouldn't last," Wesson said. 
 
 Inside James Holmes' Apartment 
 
 New pictures emerged overnight of several explosions in a Colorado field where investigators took chemical materials recovered from Holmes' apartment. 
 
 Crews reportedly transported the materials by dump truck to the field so that they could be ignited -- and determined if they were in fact explosives. 
 
 Federal authorities and local police have now pulled all of the potential explosives from Holmes' apartment after gaining entry and eliminating potentially explosive traps Saturday. 
 
 The 800-square-foot apartment contained several trip wires rigged to trigger explosions, police said. 
 
 Scattered throughout the living room were 30 explosive devices -- including jars with chemicals and 30 shells with explosive powder -- similar to large fireworks, police said. 
 
 Bomb squads carefully neutralized the two main threats at the entrance of his apartment using a "water shot" and remote-controlled robot. 
 
 Oates said the suspect's intentions were clear. 
 
 "What we're seeing here is some evidence of calculation and deliberation," Oates said. 
 
 Click here to read "Who Is James Holmes?"
– The latest in the attempt to better define Aurora shooter James Holmes: He apparently had a lot of target practice, isn't so smart, and may have a thing for prostitutes. From the most to least concrete: Based on Holmes' "unusually high" hit rate, police believe he had extensive target practice in advance of the shootings, reports the Los Angeles Times. To be able to kill or wound 70 moving targets in a dark theater cloaked in gas is no easy feat, and the kick from the shotgun (used to shower the theater with buckshot, or something like it) and Glock (which he switched to after his semiautomatic AR-15 jammed) only added to the difficulty level. Such a hit rate under those circumstances would be "unusually high for someone new to this," said one law enforcement official. So he was a skilled shooter—but was he brilliant? His neuroscience career path, his federal grant, that science camp video may indicate so, but the man Holmes listed as his camp mentor calls him a "mediocre" student; another neuroscientist says he was considered a "dolt," reports USA Today. He "should not have gotten into the summer program. I've heard him described as brilliant. This is extremely inaccurate." As for that $26,000 grant, "Everyone has one.There is nothing elite about it." (Business Insider speculates that the grant money could have paid for his weapons cache.) And then there's the latest from TMZ, which claims Holmes frequented prostitutes in the months before the attack. Click to hear from three women Holmes supposedly "reviewed" online.