The Colorado Department of Corrections on Wednesday said former UC Riverside student James Holmes, sentenced to life in prison for murdering 12 people and wounding dozens of others, has been transferred to federal prison.

“The State sought to place the inmate in the Federal System several months ago, but placement required finding space at a facility that could provide appropriate security,” the department said in a news release. “That space recently became available and the move to the Federal prison was secured.”

Late Wednesday, the federal Bureau of Prisons had not announced where Holmes was transferred. Early Thursday morning, Holmes’ location was updated to USP Allenwood, a high-security federal prison in Pennsylvania, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate tracker.

Holmes, who is serving 12 consecutive life sentences plus more than 3,000 years extra, was transferred out of state in January 2016, a few months after he was attacked at a maximum-security prison in Colorado in an incident that also injured a guard.

Holmes was sentenced in August 2015 for the Aurora theater shooting.

Holmes was housed at the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he was assaulted on Oct. 8, 2015. After moving Holmes out of state, Colorado prison officials refused to disclose where he was being held, causing public controversy and deep concern for survivors and their families.

In June 2016, after two hours of debate, the Department of Public Safety’s Victims Rights Act Subcommittee split 3-3 over whether the Colorado corrections was breaking the law by refusing to tell theater shooting victims of Holmes’ location. The deadlock kept the secretive location at status quo.

At that point, state prison officials would say only that Holmes had been moved to an out-of-state prison to protect his and correctional officers’ safety.

Theresa Hoover, mother of Alexander “AJ” Boik, an 18-year-old murdered by Holmes, at the subcommittee meeting referred to the non-disclosure as “unconscionable.”

“I don’t think it’s right,” she said at the time. “I don’t think it’s fair for the victims not to know.”

Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, the lead prosecutor in the Aurora theater shooting case, said Wednesday night that he hopes Holmes will be back in Colorado.

“My great hope is he’ll be moved to Colorado in federal custody,” Brauchler said. “He can serve out the remainder of his life under Colorado skies, where he committed his crimes.”

Brauchler doesn’t want to see Holmes serve his sentence in California, where the inmate’s family lives.

“I’m pleased that after all these many, many months of obfuscation by the state government here that these family victims are finally going to get the peace of mind, knowing that the guy who murdered their loved ones, they’ll know where he is,” Brauchler said.

Brauchler said he’d like to now know where Holmes has been since he dropped off the radar screen.

“There is no longer any reason for the Department of Corrections to not disclose where he was,” Brauchler said. “I’d like to know what the conditions were.”