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"He was very relaxed," said the police officer, Jason Oviatt. "It was like there weren't normal emotional responses to anything. He seemed very detached."

Officer Oviatt said that because the suspect, James E. Holmes, had been swathed in so many layers of body armor and equipped with a helmet and a gas mask, that he had first thought that Mr. Holmes was a fellow police officer.

Mr. Holmes eventually told arresting officers that he had booby-trapped his apartment.

Police officers were among the first people to testify at a weeklong court hearing that will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to move the case against Mr. Holmes to trial, a decision that will be made by William Sylvester, a district judge in Arapahoe County.

But for victims and their families, the hearing may offer the best, and perhaps only, opportunity to understand how the July 20 shooting unfolded, and to get a glimpse into Mr. Holmes's actions and mind-set in the weeks before the attack. A criminal trial — if one ever convenes — remains months away, probably at the end of a long series of legal arguments, including over Mr. Holmes's mental fitness to stand trial.

It has been more than five months since Mr. Holmes, a neuroscience graduate student, was accused of striding into a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" at a movie theater in an Aurora shopping mall and opening fire.

He faces more than 160 counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

Lawyers for Mr. Holmes, 25, have signaled that they might call witnesses this week to discuss his mental state in the hope of rebuting the prosecution's evidence that Mr. Holmes spent months methodically buying 6,000 rounds of ammunition, handguns, a shotgun and an assault rifle.

Minutes after the shooting, he was arrested outside the theater, still encased in black body armor, his shaggy hair dyed neon orange.

The fact that Mr. Holmes did not kill himself, unlike gunmen at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Columbine High School or Virginia Tech, has transformed the aftermath of the tragedy into a trying and costly legal case.

Although Mr. Holmes has not yet filed a plea, his lawyers have said several times that he is mentally ill. Mr. Holmes had seen a psychologist at the University of Colorado, Denver, where he had been a graduate student, and had so alarmed his doctor that she contacted the campus police about him.

Less than a month before the shooting, after he had dropped out of his neuroscience program, Mr. Holmes sent a text message to a classmate that suggested he believed that he suffered from dysphoric mania, a bipolar condition that combines manic behavior and dark, depressive tendencies. Mr. Holmes warned the classmate to stay away from him "because I am bad news," the classmate has said.