CENTENNIAL, Colo. (MCT) — From the moment that James E. Holmes walked into court, his hands shackled, his hair a flaming orange, all eyes were riveted on the man accused of carrying out one of the worst mass shootings in the nation’s history. And what they saw was perplexing.

Stripped of his body armor, the 24-year-old suspect turned out to be slender and pale, with a thousand-mile stare and that tousled, comic-book hair, which looked bizarrely out of place in the formal setting of a courtroom. His expressions were hard to read, seemingly pained one moment, barely awake the next.