Crazed “Batman” massacre suspect looked scared and completely out of it at his first Colorado cour appearance yesterday. (Getty Images)
TRAGIC VIGIL: Amanda Lindgren cries for her boyfriend, Alex Teves, who was killed in the massacre allegedly by James Holmes. (Reuters)
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TRUE BEST FRIEND: President Obama gives a hug to Stephanie Davies, helped save the life of her wounded friend, Allie Young (left), after Young was shot in the neck. (Getty Images)
The Joker isn’t laughing anymore.
Demented “Batman” massacre suspect James Holmes looked scared, bug-eyed, and completely spaced out beneath his bizarre, Joker-inspired mop of red curls at his first court appearance yesterday.
“You’re not such a tough guy now!” seethed Tom Teves, who lost his 24-year-old son, Alex, in last week’s Colorado massacre, allegedly at the hands of Holmes.
The sickened Teves watched Holmes from a front-row seat in the courtroom — furious that he has shown no remorse.
David Sanchez, whose daughter Katie Medely, 21, was in a hospital about to give birth as her wounded husband, Caleb, 23, fought for his life after being shot in the head at the Aurora theater, spat, “He looks demonic. There’s something wrong with that man.”
Holmes, 24, didn’t speak during his 10-minute appearance in the Arapahoe County courthouse.
As prosecutors said they were still determining the charges to bring — in what could be a death-penalty case — he stared either straight ahead or into his lap with a look of apprehension.
But his eyes popped out and he appeared shocked when the judge told him he was facing murder charges.
A father of one of the dead victims told The Post that cops revealed to him that Holmes was adopted. Police said the San Diego-area couple who raised him are not cooperating in the probe.
“They’re not talking to us right now,” Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates told ABC News of Robert and Arlene Holmes, 61 and 58.
Holmes’ family lawyer, Lisa Damiani, yesterday said the couple’s “hearts go out to the victims and their families.”
She refused to answer questions about Holmes and his relationship with his family. But when asked whether his parents stand by him, Damiani told reporters in San Diego, “Yes, they do. He’s their son.”
Clad in a prison-issued maroon V-neck top over a bulletproof vest, red pants, white socks and sandals, Holmes was shielded from courtroom glares by one of his public defenders, who was assigned from the division that specifically handles capital-punishment cases.
Wounded victim McKayla Hicks, 17, was also in court. She had been sitting in the theater next door to the shootings when she was hit in the chin by a bullet that went through the wall.
“Once he walked into the [court]room, it just made everything a lot harder,” she told CNN. “He just looks like a pathetic freak. I just want him put away forever.”
Teves sneered, “Alex could have wiped the floor with him without breaking a sweat.” He added, as if addressing Holmes, “You shot a 6-year-old. Come on, give me a break. You’re dressed in full combat gear [and] immediately surrender. Come on. Pick on some guys who know how to use guns.”
It’s still unclear why Holmes snapped that night.
He had painted his body and hair red before donning military gear and shooting up the theater, killing 12 and wounding 58, paralyzing some for life.
Before he left his apartment, he booby-trapped it to kill cops when they got there to investigate the loud music he had set to a timer, hoping the diversion would let him escape after he shot up the theater.
The massacre occurred during a midnight premiere of Batman’s “The Dark Knight Rises” — and he told cops he was the “Joker.”
Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms yesterday were probing how he assembled his fearsome arsenal of guns — including an AR-15 military-style assault rifle.
TMZ.com said the loveless sicko had been spurned by three women on an online sex site since July 5. And he was about to get booted from his campus housing because he had dropped out of the University of Colorado.
A disgusted jail worker who served Holmes breakfast and lunch just hours after the massacre told The Post that the fiend didn’t lose any sleep — or his appetite — over what he’d just allegedly done.
The worker said Holmes wolfed down Frosted Flakes, a carton of milk and a blueberry muffin for breakfast, then slept like a baby.
“I’m thinking this just happened after midnight, and at 11 a.m., he’s taking a nap? I’m thinking, ‘Wake your ass up, dummy,’ ” he said.
Ian Sullivan, father of the youngest victim, 6-year-old Veronica Moser Sullivan, called Holmes a terrorist and said he should be prosecuted by the feds.
“We just enacted a bill that says if someone acts as a terrorist, he will be treated as such . . . Everything the president, the police, the FBI have said describe him as such,” the grieving dad said.
When Holmes opened fire, Allie Young, 19, was shot in the neck and started spurting blood in the theater, but best pal Stephanie Davies, 21, dragged her out of the carnage and applied pressure to the wound until help arrived.
“I saw Allie get hit and wasn’t going to have my best friend bleed to death in my arms,” Davies told The Post yesterday — a day after both met President Obama at Young’s hospital bedside.
Holmes, a brilliant but painfully shy loner, had been pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience at UC’s Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora before suddenly dropping out in June.
He had been given a $26,000 stipend from the National Institutes of Health, and investigators want to know if any of that cash went to purchase guns or explosives.
Meanwhile, a man in Maine was busted Sunday morning with a cache of weapons — including a AK-47, cops said yesterday.
Timothy Courtois, 49, claimed he had a loaded gun in his backpack when he saw “The Dark Knight Rises” Saturday night.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona in New York, Barry Bortnick, Caitlin Gibbons and Stephen Swofford in Colorado and Kristen Castillo in San Diego.