Any evidence or photo he had a range finder?
(A military expert here asked: qui prodest, qui bono?)
only allegations…
the explosives in “his car” and the range finder, remote control and the shell casings on the roof are all allegations…
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Aside from the testimony from Nicol who spotted him using it, I believe there is the following evidence:
- Any FBI statements regarding it. I haven’t searched all of the reports for mention of it specifically.
- Rooftop bodycam footage that I believe someone suggests it was in his pocket when they searched it.
- Screenshots of him walking onto the AGR property (Jon Maliss dashcam) shows a rectangular bulge in his right cargo pants pocket. (I have confirmed.)
4 Screenshots of him walking in vendor alley (ironcladusa cell phone) shows a rectangular bulge in his right cargo pants pocket. (I have confirmed.)
yes, but that is all circumstantial evidence, he…
I do not believe any single letter from any of the fast buriers of information…
and the rectangular bulge can as easily have been a packet of cigarettes or chewing gum, deck of cards, notebook, etc…
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Pretty big pack of cigarettes, gum, playing cards, etc. Did you see the photos I added? I classify those photos as likely corroborating evidence for Nicol’s testimony, not as standalone evidence.
I did just search through all of the FBI statements and they only reference SWAT’s testimony of him being sighted using it.
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For starters, rather than view some YouTube content creator’s cherry-picked image, who has very poor investigative sense, I prefer to go directly to the source for my information. Here is the Sky News video. See for yourself.
Trump shooting: Gunman identified as video shows body and rifle on roof | US News | Sky News
Now you see the blood trail…
Now you don’t.
It’s just a matter of the angle it’s being filmed from.
Added: As for the body remaining on the roof, @sorey addressed that along with the video in this post.
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Where exactly he did use that range finder? We don’t even know the place.
I’m glad you asked. In order to do a more thorough analysis of the evidence related to Crooks’ activities on the AGR property before he got on the roof, I had to deduce from the evidence where the most likely spot Crooks would have used the rangefinder from.
When the police arrived on the roof, they evidently moved the rifle away from the body and emptied his pockets. Photographed on the roof were a cell phone and a remote control transmitter (but no rangefinder!). The photo of the transmitter matches either of the following models (1 km or 5 km range):
The dimensions of both of these models are listed as 5.3 x 1.7 x 1.0 inches. On the other hand, the “bulge” in the pocket of the living Crooks looks to be considerably larger (perhaps the size of a small rangefinder?).
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Thanks for clarifying that for me. After using it on AGR grounds, he most likely put it back in his car when he went to get his backpack and rifle, unless it was in his backpack on the roof. He did have a second backpack in his trunk, per the evidence photo.
Hello Roger
Now you have shown me your diagram, I understand where you are coming from. Basically, you are using Google Earth. Now I realise you are referring to its source material as being high-level. But that is not the problem. The problem is using Google Earth itself as the ‘interface’ with the data, so to speak.
I initially tried using Google Earth myself, but realised that it is not accurate enough. It rounds up figures to the nearest foot. Also, the graphs it generates for various ground elevations are highly compressed and not that useful at all.
As a result of this, I discarded Google Earth and sought out a superior program. That is the one I mentioned in my previous message: randymajors. org. The source data for this program is the US Geological Survey. What makes this program superior to Google Earth, is that it produces ground elevation values to several places after the decimal point.
More than this though, the graphs that it generates are far more useful and detailed, and in addition, you can download a spreadsheet of all the ground elevation points for a given ground profile. This is what I showed in my previous image.
All that being said, let me show you what I get when I map the position of the bleachers onto Google Earth in like manner to my previous evaluation:
You can see that at the midpoint of the back of the bleachers, it gives 1335 feet elevation. If you move it towards corner point C, it then jumps to 1336 feet.
When using the randymajors. org site however, the values are far more specific, and not rounded crudely to the nearest foot. They are 1334.72 and 1335.68 feet.
I am more than satisfied that 1334.72 feet is the best value for the ground elevation of the bleachers, over either 1335 or 1336 feet.
I would advise you to test the program for yourself. Try running a ground profile of the perimeter of the bleachers and see what the elevation is at the midpoint of the back, and download the spreadsheet data.
Further to this, you also asked what values I have for Trump’s podium and also the ground height of building six that Crooks was on.
Using the randymajors. org site, I did a concentrated ground profile for the podium position of Trump, and averaged of all the elevation points (28) to get what I consider to be the best value:
1336.567679 feet.
This is seen from the following image:
For the building that Crooks was on, I did a ground profile for the entire perimeter of the building. This generated 203 elevation points. I took the average to determine the following value for the ground elevation of the building as a whole: 1334.564606 feet.
These 2 images show the analysis:
Data Values:
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But then I’ve yet to see a report of a range finder found with him, on the roof, in his backpack or in his car … only this remote control and these make ups of two explosive devices.
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If we discount every bit of radio communications, interview statements, and after-action report entries regarding Nicol spotting Crooks using a rangefinder, I’ve wasted an entire month or more analyzing this event, and the evidence associated with it. If you discount one piece of evidence, you would have to discount every piece.
Trust me, I don’t put it past Nicol to lie, but the most solid piece of evidence of Nicol stating that he saw Crooks with a rangefinder (I carefully worded that just for you) was this radio communication:
5:42 pm - “’Just an FYI, we had a younger white male, long hair, lurking around the AGR building,’ a local countersniper said at 5:42 p.m., according to a time-stamped transcript of encrypted radio communications obtained by The Washington Post. ‘He was viewed with a range finder sighting the stage. … We lost sight of him.’” (Source: WP)
What is most compelling to me about that (alleged) sighting of Crooks with a rangefinder, is that it wasn’t until after that when Nicol finally decided he better start sharing photos he took of Crooks. In short, he realized then that Crooks was more than a “suspicious person,” he was a “person of interest.”
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My experience, mfg data is overly ambitious, and only shows up in perfect conditions. You also have to be wary, as many mfg measure velocity through a barrel longer than 16". I had contended that Crooks rifle looked longer than 16", some others disagreed with me, stating it is 16". I did an earlier post where I took a couple different ammo mfg and ran it through my 16" barrel, and across my chronograph that at lower speeds aligns well with a radar chronograph.
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I hear you, but apart from running chrono on samples for 196 different cartridges, it sort of becomes ‘the art of the possible’. I’m a believer that, properly conducted, this little filtering exercise might reveal at least some reasonable candidates, or a reasonable interval.
I once got some 140-160 fps less from Magtech M193 on my 14.5" barrel as compared to their 20" mfg info. I’m still not sure how we could properly account for the barrel lenght differences on this find-the-bullet exercise from this spreadsheet. It took so long to gather the data that I still haven’t gone through the actual filtering criteria.
I remember. From your posts one can easily tell this is not your first barbecue around the topic. When you mentioned that too fast a spin can break the jacket, that we shouldn’t trust the info that it was exactly 5.56 and not .223,etc “not the first barbecue” all over it.
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Dear KHunter,
Thank you for your detailed explanation. I will study it and try to use your method and come back to you later.
But maybe I forgot to give you this link to my important link, showing that I am not using Google Earth’s data (of which I agree are not accurate), I am using data coming from Land ID of which I import into Google Earth via KML file. Please have a look here:
Once you have download the KML file, simply double click it and Google Earth should launch automatically activating the heigh accuracy topographical Data.
One more time I would like to stress the fact that Gary in his video with his heigh accuracy drone, was able to find the exact some sea levels as with my method by using the KML file provided by Land ID. Using two different methods and finding the same result is a double check that confirms the sea levels that I am using are correct. One thing has to be mentioned however, Gary did not indicate the position of the stage, nor the bleachers, he only indicated building 6 and the fence, which was 100% in agreement with my measuring method. See my post here for verification:
So, I suggest, I take time to try to do your method and you take time to do mine and we get back shortly to share our findings? Sounds like a deal?
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Good question. And… yep, that would be it… for the Crooks scenario, we need the velocity of the bullet at 150ish yards.
One thing: to be honest, I’m not sure how manufacturers come up with the 0-100-200-300 data… on the muzzle I know they have a chronograph in front of the test barrel or the weapon, but I’m not sure if they get the 100-200-300 from formula or a chrono down range. Some manufacturers do a better job than others. Hornady, for instance, uses real rifles, instead of test barrels. Some don’t even have the data, just slap a muzzle velocity there after chrono and call it a day apparently. But I’m getting the feeling that Crooks was inserted in a place where he would choose better ammo. The range he went to apparently is where top shooters of that area go to, the store where he bought that ammo appears to be owned by a very good gunsmith, kind of the go-to guy, you know…? His shooting environment has all the traces of making one go for that top shelf ammo, learning how to tell the difference between ammo, etc.
As for the velocities, online ballistic calculators could calculate the velocity at 150 yards for all of those, but it’s very time consuming (and not fun enough, just boring to do lol).
I imagine we have to start like this: for a given range of crack-thump sounds… say 213 to 222 milliseconds, a distance of x, sound speed of y, what would the average speed have to be for those durations? This would give us 2 average velocities as an interval. Then, part 2, we calculate the velocity of each cartridge at the 150ish ft, like you said.
I defaulted to AI on approaches to estimate the velocities from the available data, it came back with two:
Approach 1: Linear Interpolation Between Data Points
Since you have velocities at 0 yards (muzzle), 100 yards, 200 yards, and 300 yards, you can perform linear interpolation between the closest values (100 yards and 200 yards) to estimate the velocity at 154.11 yards.
Interpolated Velocity=V100+[(154.11-100) / (200-100)]×(V200−V100)
### Approach 2: Estimate Average Deceleration
If you want a broader approach that doesn’t rely on interpolation, you can estimate an average deceleration based on the muzzle and 100-yard velocity. Then, project what speed the bullet would have at 154.11 yards and filter bullets accordingly.
Is there another way we could estimate the distance at 150ish?
Then we get the average for each cartrige, from muzzle to the velocity at 150ish feet. Then whatever’s not inside our previous interval, we can filter out. Then we can make qualitative eliminations also, say, filter out training ammo or some hard to find brands, etc… follow a trust-the-reporting-scenario and leave only 5.56 in boxes of 50, or follow the trust-noone and leave .223 and 5.56 as candidates.
At this point, just from filtering higher velocities and using qualitative assumptions, my top 5 candidates were these (let’s see if they change after the math)
1- Hornady 5.56 75 gr BTHP T2 TAP PRECISION (id 16)
2- Magtech 5.56 HPBT 77GR CANNELURED (id 124)
3- Hornady 5.56 62 gr TAP® BARRIER™ (id 13)
4- BackHills .223 Heavy Match HP 68gr (id 151)
5- CorBon .223 Urban Response JHP (id 55)
BTW, what exact distances are we looking at, @vt1 ? From Crooks, HighRoof, Vent, 2ndFloorWindow (which window, actually?) Do you have these distances in metric centimeters or imperial with decimals? I remember seeing these somewhere…
The durations of crack-thumps (or snicks-reports) from @greg_n are on this post here.
1-0.221
2-0.217
3-0.212
4-0.212
5-0.212
6-?
7-?
8-0.218
shorter: 0.212
longer: 0.221
On determining the average speed from the snick-report, Greg and @sonjax6 were writing about accounting or not for the distance from bullet to microphone here on this post
And @vt1 also wrote about it here
And @cohler wrote about it here
Do we already have the calculated average velocities from these snick-report durations?
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This is what I got. All these are within the range of the average velocity, considering both the calculated values and also -4% on the calculated average of the cartridge at the distance of 154.11 yards, because of the, uh, ‘manufacturer optimism’ that @phecksel mentioned. On column ID I marked the remaining 11 candidates in green after I qualitatively eliminated the ones in red for various reasons (missing BC on website, barrel twist too low when there are better options, frangible, polymer, training ammo, rarer, too close to the edges of the calculated average velocities for snick-report, etc).
Then I marked my 4 best candidates with a green arrow on column ID. This is what I would choose. It’s within the math, if I got it right, and these have available data for Crooks to use on the ballistic calculator, three were tested with a rifle the same as his, and Hornady also makes a good ballistic calculator app. And this whole exercise just makes me believe he used the 100y zero… doesn’t strike me as someone who would be this picky about ammo and then use a lousy 25y zero.
1- Hornady 5.56 75 gr BTHP T2 TAP PRECISION (id 16)
2- Magtech 5.56 HPBT 77GR CANNELURED (id 124)
3 - Hornady 5.56 62 gr TAP® BARRIER (id 13)
4 - Hornady 5.56 70 gr CX™ TAP® BARRIER (14)
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VegasPatriot, please bear with me (and my French). I just wanted to point out a problem with the official story line. I hope that one day all these tatooed shooter types will be firmly questioned where they squirreled away that piece of evidence.
No worries. The evidence that is getting released is problematic, which is why I am doing my detailed analyses to make sense out of what really happened. Perhaps the worst example of problematic evidence is the Beaver County After-Action Report. Did you notice that the time stamped map for the 17:32 entry pertaining to the sighting of the rangefinder doesn’t show the location of Crooks when that sighting was made? They used the same map as the map used for the retaining wall sighting. What was added to the map was the location of the bike Nicol photographed.
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