Aurora and the US deal with massacre's aftermath as stories of the dead emerge

Police make progress in defusing booby traps in apartment, while picture of suspected killer begins to come into focus

The Aurora police department escorts a truck filled with sand and improvised explosive devices removed from James Holmes' apartment.

Police in Aurora on Saturday used a robot to largely defuse a complex series of booby traps in the apartment of suspected theater spree shooter James Holmes.
As this small suburban stretch of Denver came to terms with the deaths of 12 people and a further 58 injured, police were probing Holmes' apartment, which appeared packed with homemade bombs and trip wires.
However, using an anti-bomb robot, police and the FBI managed to first disarm two trip wire-style traps and then carry out a small controlled explosion that rendered the apartment safe enough to enter.
Aurora police chief, Dan Oates, told reporters that he was in no doubt as to the intention behind the bomb.
"This apartment was designed to kill whoever entered it," he said.
That could have been a police officer investigating the aftermath of the shooting or a neighbour.
Holmes apparently left loud music on after he left to go to the theater and the noise caused at last one neighbour to investigate, but not open the door.
That neighbour, Kaitlyn Fonzi, was lucky not to end up as a 13th fatality in the Aurora tragedy.
Instead this community, which is part of a large city but feels like a small town, was dealing with the deaths of a dozen people at Holmes' hands: each with their own tragic story of a life cut short.
The youngest victim so far is thought to be Veronica Moser-Sullivan, a six-year-old who accompanied her mother to the late night showing of The Dark Knight Rises, her great-aunt Annie Dalton confirmed.
Dalton added that the girl's 25-year-old mother, Ashley Moser, remained in hospital in a critical condition with bullets in her throat and abdomen.
Local bartender Alex Sullivan was also killed in the attack.
He had planned to ring in his 27th birthday with friends at a special showing of The Dark Knight Rises and then celebrate his first wedding anniversary on Sunday.
Just before seeing the film he had tweeted: "Oh man one hour till the movie and its going to be the best BIRTHDAY ever."
Sullivan's uncle, Joe Loewenguth, paid tribute to him.
"He always had a smile, always made you laugh. He had a little bit of comic in him. Witty, smart. He was loving, had a big heart," he said.
Local student Micayla Medek, 23, was also among the dead, her father's cousin, Anita Busch confirmed to reporters.
Busch said the news, while heartbreaking, was a relief for the family after an agonising day of waiting for news. "I hope this evil act ... doesn't shake people's faith in God," she said.
Promising young sports blogger Jessica Ghawi, who recently wrote of surviving a Toronto shooting was also among killed.
The death of Ghawi, who was also known as Jessica Redfield, was a "complete and utter shock", wrote her brother, Jordan Ghawi, on his blog.
Matt McQuinn was another victim. A lawyer for the young man's family told CNN that he died attempting to save the life of girlfriend Samantha Yowler.
He attempted to cover the woman as the gunman opened fire. She survived, but was wounded and is recovering in hospital, family attorney Robert Scott said.
The family of US serviceman John Larimer said that his death was confirmed to them late on Friday night by a navy notification team.
In a statement released to reporters on Saturday, his parents said: "Last night about midnight a navy notification team arrived at our house to let us officially known that our 27-year-old son John was in fact one of the 12 killed at the theatre in Aurora."
Other named victims that emerged late on Saturday were local restaurant worker Rebecca Wingo, 32, Alexander Boik, 17, who had attended the movie with his girlfriend and Air Force reservist Jesse Childress.
Another person killed was veteran and hardware store worker Jonathan Blunk, 26, who had gone to the theater with a friend, Jansen Young. Young told the Today show that Blunk had saved her life by pushing her to the floor when the shooting began.
The final two names of victims to emerge were Gordon Cowden, 51, and Alexander Teves, 24.
But as Aurora – and America as a whole – came to terms with the full stories of the dead it was also hearing more and more about Holmes, whom is believed to have burst into a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises dressed all in black bullet-proof clothing, firing weapons and hurling smoke grenades.
While many of his victims' lives were open books easily discovered on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, Holmes' was a far more secretive person.
No trace whatsoever of Holmes has yet been be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter or anywhere on the Web.
In an age of social media and openness, Holmes was a closed book.
The only thing he had in common with the victims was his youth. A picture is starting to emerge though.
Holmes, 24, was a doctoral student whose family came from a middle class area of San Diego. He was a brilliant science student and the son of a nurse and a software manager. He had graduated with highest honours in spring 2010 with a neuroscience degree from the University of California, Riverside.
After struggling to find work, he enrolled last year in a neuroscience PhD programme at the University of Colorado-Denver, but was in the process of withdrawing this year. It is not known why he was leaving.
Police believe that Holmes was plotting his attack for some time, perhaps even as long as four months before he struck.
That is based on the delivery of ammunition that he ordered online and had sent to his college and home addresses.
"There is evidence of some calculation and deliberation," said Oates. However, all of Holmes' four weapons and the more than 6,000 rounds that he bought were legal.
Indeed Holmes, who is frequently described as quiet and shy but perfectly normal-seeming, had apparently always been careful with the law.
Joanne Southard, 55, dealt personally with Holmes when he applied to rent an apartment in her building.
Southard had no inkling the neat and tidy young man in front of her had the potential to walk into a theater and shoot 12 people dead. Holmes' references were good.
"They said he was quiet. He was happy," she said.
His arrest record was also a blank, save for a single speeding ticket.
All in all that made him a potential model tenant, but Southard turned him down because he did not answer the phone or return calls. "He seemed nice. Clean cut. But I guess there was something just a little off. He seemed unreliable.
"So I said no," she said. "Thank God I had a sixth sense, otherwise he might have tried to build that thing in one of my apartments," she said.
Instead Holmes ended up renting a different apartment in another building just a few hundred yards away. Inside that apartment dozens police have now defused a massive and complicated series of traps and homemade bombs.
Meanwhile, Southard's building lies safely just outside the police wire.