DENVER (CN) - Mass murderer James Holmes' sister and father on Tuesday told the jury about the childhood of the man who could be sentenced to death for killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a Batman movie.
The nine-woman, three-man jury convicted Holmes on all 165 counts two weeks ago, including murder. After the sentencing phase, the jury must sentence him to death or life in prison.
Holmes' younger sister, Chris Holmes, began her testimony Monday and finished Tuesday morning, describing their lives as siblings five years apart. Both she and their father, Robert Holmes, referred to Holmes affectionately as Jimmy.
Chris told the jury in Arapahoe County Court that she had benefited from having her brother around as a child.
"It was nice to know that I had someone who was always there, in the same house as me, that I could talk to," she said.
"He had your back?" asked Tamara Brady, one of Holmes' five public defenders.
"Yes. Especially when we were younger. We used to be very, very close. And ... I love him a lot."
She said that her brother got along well with the rest of his family as he was growing up, especially his younger relatives. She said his younger cousins "loved him."
"He was really good with them," she said. "Sometimes I was jealous of how much they really seemed to like him."
Brady asked Chris Holmes about her Aunt Betty, who, like her brother, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
"We'd go there every Thanksgiving to their apartment. She was always very nice," Chris said. "I could also tell she was mentally ill in some form."
She said her parents had never talked about her aunt's diagnosis with her or with her brother.
Her early memories of her big brother were good ones.
"Living in Salinas, I would play sports with him, like basketball, when I was really, really little," Chris said. "That's one of the earliest [memories] I remember."
Asked if she remembered him reading to her, she replied, "That's what I've been told."
She told the jury that she followed her older brother around to the point where that it must have been "annoying."
"I am five years younger, so I wanted to do what he was doing," she said. "We got along pretty well."
She was asked to read a letter that her mother, Arlene Holmes, transcribed for James in 1994, when Chris was an infant. Holmes said that Chris had "soft cute skin - you are a happy baby" and that "I wish you could play marbles with me. You can when you are older."
"I think it's very cute," Chris said after she'd read the note to the court. "It makes me know that he really does love me, even when I was only one."
Chris said their relationship changed when Holmes got older and she entered adolescence.
"I think moving was really hard on him," she said of the family's move from Salinas, California to San Diego. "We stopped playing together as much, and like, playing sports or whatever it happened to be, we didn't spend as much time together."
The defense asked Chris if she felt she was similar to her brother.