James Holmes basked in his bloodthirsty crime of shooting up a movie theater showing “The Dark Knight Rises” in 2012 — until he got a much-deserved prison beating that’s turned him into a quivering bowl of Jell-O!
The once-swaggering Holmes is now hiding like a rabbit in an isolation unit at the maximum-security Colorado State Penitentiary!
Prison officials say that Holmes was beaten down in a sneak attack by inmate Mark “Slim” Daniels.
The assault came as Holmes, who’s serving 12 life terms plus 3,318 years, was being moved between cells with a guard as an escort.
“When Holmes arrived at the penitentiary, he thought he was the new king. He had notoriety, a reputation — and a harem of swooning female pen pals,” said the source.
“But he learned the hard way that his celebrity made him a target for the REAL monsters who run things behind bars!”
The loser lifer got his first groupies while on trial for the 2012 Colorado shooting rampage that left a dozen dead and 70 wounded during a showing of the Batman flick.
The orange-haired fiend received 4,000 cards and letters — along with sexy photos of scantily dressed gals — while cooling his heels in the Arapahoe County Jail.
The attention went to his head, and Holmes plastered his cell wall with pictures of the babes — who wrote to him like he was a celebrity!
His groupies attended his court hearings, and one even proposed marriage!
Another woman included her picture and a photo of her kids when she penned the sickening note: “You are my darling. Sweet as a dove in the morning dew. Like a blast of sunlight in my soul.”
But fellow inmate Daniels just wanted to blast the smug creep, authorities say.
“Slim,” who is serving time for auto theft and assault, threw punches at Holmes in a vicious ambush that took guards by surprise.
“Now, Holmes is a quivering wreck and has to be coaxed out of the special prison pod where he’s kept alone for his own safety,” a law enforcement source told The ENQUIRER.
“All those female fans — and the pictures he posted of them — are no protection, and only make other inmates jealous.”
There’s also the fact that Holmes doesn’t seem to understand the severity of his own crimes.
With a staggering lack of self-awareness, Holmes whined in a letter to one “fan” that “there’s guys doing hard time and who don’t care about the consequences of being violent.”
Prison officials tried to keep the attack on the mass shooter under wraps—but Daniels wrote to the Denver Post newspaper to boast about the assault.
“He wanted to get this out,” said the 27-year-old con’s father, Tim Daniels. Prison officials don’t plan to take any extra measures to protect Holmes.
“I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t get knocked off in the next couple of years,” an insider said.
“I suspect he’ll end up dead—just like cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer!”
