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Veronica Moser-Sullivan and her dad, Ian Sullivan.

I don’t have a picture of the gold sandals to show you. Only those of us in the courtroom saw them because the x-rays and photos of the autopsy aren’t being shared with the public. I want to tell you about this because Veronica Moser-Sullivan’s last pair of shoes speak to us. They tell us what kind of kid she was and she deserves for us to know that.

6 year old Veronica Moser-Sullivan got those shiny sandals as a present from her 13 year old babysitter, Kaylan Bailey, the day before she died. They were a little girl’s glamorous dream shoes: gold with “little chains on them,” testified Kaylan, who was 13 the night of the shootings.

In surveillance video, we saw 3 seconds of Veronica confidently walking through that theater on her way into what is now known as Theater 9. The image struck me, how she swung her arms, chin up, as if she couldn’t wait to see that Batman movie. She must have felt so grown up. She was six years old out at midnight with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend and Kaylan. And she had on those spectacularly cool sandals.

The courtroom was somber this week as the jury handled and passed around the rifle bullet fragments which killed Veronica. The tiny metal pieces were in a zip lock bag attached to a manila envelope marked with red “EVIDENCE” tape.
But the deadly ammo was not enough: the prosecution wanted the jury to hold something else in their hands: those gold sandals. They were in an evidence bag of their own nearby, but the defense objected to having them on display for fear the jury would be unfairly prejudiced by the emotions this pair of shoes would render. The judge agreed.

But those sandals found a way to haunt us anyway. Thursday, on a different day in court, I wasn’t expecting it, but they were unmistakable in the grey of an autopsy x-ray. It was obvious Veronica was not clothed for the pictures, but she was wearing the sandals, her slim feet in the grainy image turned ‘just so.’ I wondered why the medical examiners did not take those gold sandals with the chains off for the pictures, and I can’t guess why.

As one angle followed the other on the courtroom monitor, it was as if we were in anatomy class. The coroner described the little girl’s injuries to the sobbing victims’ families, to James Holmes, to his attorneys and to the gunman’s quietly staring mom and dad. Veronica Moser-Sullivan died of multiple (4) gunshot wounds to her mid-section.

In the x-ray, we could see the thin line of the sandals on the outside of the bones of her feet. And around her ankles was the ghostly drape of the chain. A good percentage of the 19 female jurors were wiping their eyes with Kleenex. Veronica’s dad, who is slender and tall just like her, sat forward, his elbows on his knees, and a set jaw, listening. I can’t get that scene out of my head.

We’ve already seen home videos of Holmes as a little boy bodysurfing in the ocean and running around a playground. There was no objection for prejudice. We need to see those pictures.

Ian Sullivan deserves for you to know about his daughter too.

Editor’s Note: CU News Corps will remember the victims of the tragedy with every post via this graphic.