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CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Aurora theater shooter James Holmes didn’t know any of the 12 people he murdered on July 20, 2012. But in an interview with psychiatrist William Reid last year, he made an accurate prediction: “They’re going to make me know them.”

By “they,” Holmes meant the prosecution — and he was right. For the first month of trial, victims of the shooting testified daily. Amid testimony about online purchases and bullet trajectories, these witnesses shared their stories, repeatedly shifting the trial’s focus from killer to victims.

But lately, the trial has revolved entirely around the shooter himself. Monday marked the third day that the prosecution, seeking the death penalty, has screened Reid’s psychiatric evaluation with Holmes. For Sandy Phillips, the mother of victim Jessica Ghawi, that’s too much to take.

“Today was just too hard to listen to,” she said in an interview.

Phillips has stoically represented her daughter and the other victims every day in court. But after a particularly troubling video segment Monday afternoon, she left the courtroom in tears. And she wasn’t the only one affected: several jurors covered their mouths with their hands, and one reporter walked out.

The offending segment featured the gunman explaining his theory about human capital and self-worth. According to his model, every human life has an “arbitrary value” of 1; upon killing someone, the killer accrues the value of the victim. The shooter reasoned that, because he killed 12 innocent people in a movie theater, his personal value is now 13.

Reid, speaking with the defendant in late summer 2014, clarified that he didn’t just feel this increased value immediately after the shooting. Two years after, calm and medicated, the shooter assured him that he still believed his value was higher for having killed.

“In some ways it was worse than the autopsies,” Phillips said of the video. “To know your loved one was reduced to a number so he could feel enhanced is excruciating.”

Dr. Reid found other parts of the gunman’s responses troubling as well. When Holmes said homicide was a “coping mechanism” for stress, Reid didn’t buy it.

“That sounds like psychobabble to me, I’m sorry,” he said.

The psychiatrist had to repeatedly caution the defendant against using medical terms inappropriately. When Holmes spoke of “internal conflict,” Reid called it “more of that psychobabble crap.” When he called his reaction to 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan’s death “remorseful,” Reid told him to choose a smaller, simpler word. The defendant chose “sad.”

Many have speculated throughout the trial that the gunman, a neuroscience graduate student, knew how to prepare for an insanity defense. He has admitted to researching mental illnesses, and his answers in the evaluation video are peppered with psychiatry terms. He diagnosed himself with more than a dozen mental illnesses in his infamous notebook and mailed it to his psychiatrist. He has said he has a “broken brain.”

It will be up to 12 jurors to decide whether the defendant is criminally insane. The defense will present its case to the court beginning in late June. But if courtroom reactions are any indication, any sympathy the shooter may have won with the small talk and childhood stories of previous video segments has dissipated.

“He is incapable of real human emotion or empathy,” Phillips said. “He is a monster.”

Trial will resume Tuesday at 8:40 a.m. The prosecution expects the psychiatric evaluation video to continue until Thursday afternoon.

Editors note: CU News Corps will honor the victims of the shooting in every post with this graphic.