Crooks Was A Quiet, Nice Kid And A Bad Shot. What Happened?

Here's what we know so far about thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump's attempted assassin, via the BBC:

Thomas Crooks had not been carrying ID, so investigators used DNA and facial recognition technology to identify him, the FBI said.

. . . Crooks worked in a local nursing home kitchen just a short drive away from his home, the BBC understands.

Right away, this is a big difference from pretty much every successful or unsuccessful attempted assassin from John Wilkes Booth onward. They didn't want to hide their identities; they wanted their names out there. Most lived flamboyant and unstable lives without steady employment. Booth was a famous actor well known for his Confederate sympathies, and he made no attempt to conceal his identity or motives -- he leapt onto the stage at the Ford Theater after shooting Lincoln, after all.

Charles J Guiteau, who assassinated President James Garfield, had a disorganized career as a failed writer and political advocate, but his identity as a notorious fabulist and deadbeat was well known. He had a pattern throughout his life of feeling underappreciated for his contributions, and his assassination of Garfield was tied to this. On shooting Garfield, he immediately identified himself.

According to Wikipedia, President William McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz's identity as an anarchist agitator in the Cleveland, OH area was well known, to the point that other anarchists warned that he must be a provocateur. He was immediately restrained and identified after he shot McKinley with a revolver at close range, and he attempted to plead guilty at his subsequent trial.

Like both Guiteau and Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald had a disorganized career in which he failed at numerous jobs, first as a US Marine, then as an emigrant to Russia, and again on returning to the US. Oswald had come to the CIA's attention prior to the Kennedy assassination when he contacted the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, and he was known to the FBI when he wrote a threatening note to their Dallas office. He was also well known to the Russian emigre community in Dallas.

John Hinckley Jr is best known for wanting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in order to impress actress Jodie Foster, whom he'd previously stalked in an effort to establish a romantic relationship. He'd previously trailed President Jimmy Carter in an effort to assassinate him for the same reason. Clearly his intent was to gain fame, and he had no reason to conceal his identity. But even more than Guiteau, Czolgosz, and Oswald, he was unemployable, and at his trial, he was acquitted for insanity.

In contrast to all the others, Crooks had a steady employment history, kept a very low profile, and gave no prior indication that he was any sort of misfit. According to Newsweek:

Marcie Grimm, an administrator at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center where Crooks was a dietary aide, said in a statement obtained by Fox News politics reporter Aishah Hasnie on Sunday afternoon that the center became aware that Crooks was the gunman this morning.

"We are shocked and saddened to learn of his involvement as Thomas Matthew Crook performed his job without concern and his background check was clean," Grimm said.

Interviews with his schoolmates don't generally bear out any characterization as "bullied" or a "loner" -- but they do say he was a remarkably bad shot. According to the UK Telegraph:

Jameson Myers, who attended both elementary and high school with the suspect, said Crooks had attended trials for their school’s rifle team but had been asked not to return after “preseason”.

“He didn’t just not make the team, he was asked not to come back because how bad of a shot he was, it was considered like, dangerous,” Mr Myers told ABC News.

An anonymous member of the team, cited in the report by ABC, said Crooks “wasn’t really fit for the rifle team”.

They added: “He also shot terribly.”

Mr Myers said he was a “nice kid who never talked poorly of anyone”, adding: “I never have thought him capable of anything I’ve seen him do in the last few days.

This was the question I had in Sunday's post. While some experienced snipers have discounted the expertise needed to shoot somoeone in the head at 150 yards, it's plain from former sniper Rep Cory Mills's remarks to Jesse Watters that some level of serious training is required for that level of accuracy:

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS: Let's bring in Florida Congressman and former U.S. Army sniper, Cory Mills. What kind of shot was this, Cory, from 130 yards?

REP. CORY MILLS (R-FL): Look, at the end of the day, this is a shot that your basic training boot camp soldier is requested to make within their nine-week period.

This is one of the easiest shots, and they train all the way out till 300 or 500.

Easy shot or no, this is something that takes up to nine weeks of serious training by a fairly well-qualified candidate to accomplish. Yet just a few years earlier in high school, he was considered such a comically bad shot that he was actually dangerous. The BBC link above says,

He had a membership at a local shooting club, the Clairton Sportsmen's Club, for at least a year.

According to its website, the club is based south of Pittsburgh and is “one of the premier shooting facilities in the tri-state area” of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. It has more than 2,000 members.

It has multiple gun ranges, including a high-power rifle facility with targets up to 171 metres away.

I had a membership like that when I was a kid. Yes, regular classes familiarized me with a rifle and ammunition, taught me the basics, and made me a slightly better shooter than my untrained peers in the ROTC, but it certainly didn't put me at a level that would be expected from military basic training, which is what experienced sniper Cory Mills acknowledges is the level Crooks needed almost to kill Trump. So precisely what did Crooks do to move from a "comically bad" shot to at least journeyman proficiency -- and why did he choose to do this?

It's hard to imagine that he didn't talk about this with anyone at the club, or indeed, that he didn't seek out someone to mentor him in this effort. So far, it doesn't look like the media has contacted anyone at the Clairton Sportsmen's Club, which is a puzzle.

But here's another question: what about his family? According to USA Today,

An FBI official said Sunday that the bureau believes the rifle, using 5.56 ammunition, was purchased legally by Crooks' father, Matthew Crooks. The official, on a call with reporters, said he did not know whether Crooks had permission to use the weapon.

The Crooks family’s digital footprint is small, but some of their few online tracks tie them to internet marketplaces that buy or sell guns.

. . . Matthew Crooks could not be reached in repeated phone calls Saturday and Sunday.

As I noted yesterday,

When reached by CNN late Saturday night, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son.

Nevertheless,

The FBI said it believes Crooks, who had bomb-making materials in the car he drove to the rally, acted alone. Investigators have found no threatening comments on social media accounts or ideological positions that could help explain what led him to target Trump[.]

So Crooks's dad seems to buy high powered rifles on line, makes one available to his son, and he's trying to figure out what the hell is going on? And according to ABC News,

FBI investigators, led by the Pittsburgh Field Office, have searched Crook's [sic] home in Bethel Park, a suburb of Pittsburgh. They've also searched his vehicle, which was at the scene of the shooting in Butler, the FBI said.

"Suspicious devices found at both locations have been rendered safe by bomb technicians and are being evaluated at the FBI Laboratory," the FBI said.

I don't understand. There were bomb making materials around the family home -- so Crooks hid them in his sock drawer, or what? How on earth, if dad bought the gun and the bomb materials were around the house, could the family not be involved? And how, unlike any other assassin in US history, could Crooks have maintained such a low profile, especially in an era when a high social profile is both desirable and so easy to achieve?

Guys there’s nothing strange going on here. The 20 year old shooter had never used social media or posted a single thing on the internet, ever, and his phone cannot be accessed because it has a password which our government’s best hackers cannot bypass. That’s all. Normal stuff.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) July 15, 2024

Garland and the FBI have to be taken off the investigation, although I'm sure this will happen soon enough, after the election if not before it.