The names of victims were being made public yesterday, hours after the authorities confirmed the worst fears of families of the missing.
Matt McQuinn, 27, died as he sheltered his girlfriend Samantha Yowler from the barrage of gunfire. It was just one of many tales of heroism amid the horrors inside the cinema.
The couple had recently moved to Aurora from Ohio. Miss Yowler's brother, Nick, who was also at the screening, said that although his sister was hit by a bullet, Mr McQuinn's bravery had saved her life.
Two US servicemen were also named among the dead -- John Larimer, 27, a third petty officer in the navy, and Staff Sgt Jesse Childress, an air force reservist. Aurora is home to a large military base and two other US navy and air force personnel were among the injured, the Pentagon said.
Families did not receive confirmation of victims' identities until Friday evening. Bodies had not been removed from the cinema for several hours while police and coroner's officers conducted investigations.
But for many friends and relatives of the missing, that wait brought hours of uncertainty. Several toured hospitals treating the injured in the hope that their loved ones had survived.
"It took about 19 hours to hear from law enforcement, which was agonising and I thought just outright cruel to all the victims' families," said Anita Busch, whose cousin, Micayla Medek, 23, was another victim named yesterday. "We had been desperately trying to find her."
Friends of AJ Boik, a popular 18-year-old, took to Twitter to mourn his passing.
The first name to be made public had been that of Jessica Ghawi, 24, who moved the Denver area from Texas to pursue her dream of a career as a sports journalist.
In early June, she had left a Toronto shopping mall just before a gunman opened fire on the food court where she had been.
"I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday," she wrote at the time. I saw the terror on bystanders' faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change.
"I was reminded that we don't know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath."
Her brother Jordan flew to Colorado to bring her body home. But he also said that he wanted America to celebrate the lives of the dead rather than focusing on the atrocity committed by the killer.
"Let us remember the names of the victims rather than the name of the coward who committed this act," he said.
Mental health and grief counsellors worked with victims' relatives and survivors this weekend. A candlelit vigil was held in a park opposite the cinema on Friday night as a city that was listed as the 9th safest in the US last year mourned its dead.
But for others, there were remarkable stories of survival and celebration. Patricia Legarreta and her fiancé Jamie Rohrs went to the film with their four-month-old baby son and four-year-old daughter.
The couple were separated during the chaos and Miss Legaretta suffered leg wounds after she grabbed her children. They only learned that they had both survived when they were re-united in hospital.
And there they also made a decision about their lives. "He just looked at me and he said, 'I know this is not the time and place, but will you marry me?'," said Miss Legarreta. "And I said, 'Yes'. Going through 10 minutes of thinking he was dead and I would never see him again, you never want that feeling again."
