Investigators and journalists appear to remain at a loss as to what motivated 20-year-old Thomas Crooks to allegedly try to kill Donald Trump as the first anniversary of the assassination attempt on then-former president and candidate Donald Trump approaches on July 13.
That mystery prevailed even in an extensive CBS’s report this week, which the network described as the “most comprehensive portrait” of Crooks to date — based on interviews “with more than two dozen friends, professors, law enforcement officials and others, as well as open records requests to half a dozen agencies and a review of thousands of documents.”
Despite all the legwork, CBS concluded:
He left no manifesto, no explanation for why he tried to kill the former and future president. In the year since the shooting, investigators and those who knew him have been trying to piece together what led him to climb that roof in Butler, with frustratingly few answers.
It is not the only news outlet left wondering.
Fox News and even the newspaper closest to the alleged shooter, the Butler Eagle, came to the same conclusion — that Crooks was leading a secretive double life that provided no clues as to motive up until the time of the assassination attempt.
The fact that Crooks kept to himself wouldn’t even have raised an alarm, the CBS report suggests, because he’d consistently done so his entire life.
What’s left is a mysterious portrait of a bright community college student who went from planning a career in engineering to dying on a rooftop after allegedly firing shots at Trump, wounding him in the ear, killing one rally-goer and critically wounding two others in the spray of gunfire.
The network spoke to Tristan Radcliffe, who had known Crooks since kindergarten and saw him almost daily but never received an invitation to the family’s home.
Radcliffe told the network that really didn’t bother him, saying, “He always seemed like he focused on his work more, you know, like he came off smart.”
Crooks enrolled in the Community College of Allegheny County in 2022 after his high SAT scores put him in the 99th percentile nationally, the network reported. He told an advisor he was saving up for a four-year engineering program. One former engineering professor there called him a “star student.”
The network profile described Crooks’ online life as “fairly routine” for a 20-year-old before the fall of 2023, with the young man listening to music and scrolling through social media.
According to professors who were interviewed, Crooks appeared to be focused on getting top grades and we was preparing to apply to engineering programs at the University of Pittsburgh and Robert Morris University. But then he began using an encrypted email service and a virtual private network while focusing more on news, explosives, and ammo.
That summer, Crooks had bought a rifle from his dad for $500 and signed up for a membership at a local shooting range, the network reported, apparently using it to shoot more than three dozen times.
A psychological portrait of Crooks remains elusive, though one Fox News report had an interview the day after the shooting with a fellow high school student who claimed Crooks was a “loner” who was “bullied” throughout his entire school career.
Crooks’ isolated lifestyle perhaps was best summed up by a stark anecdote CBS discovered. When the college student was asked to record a speech in front of an audience of five adults for one assignment, Crooks wrote an email to his professor asking to be excused.
The network reported Crooks wrote:
“I currently only live with my Mom and Dad. There are no other adults in my house and I have one sister who lives nearby that could potentially come over to be part of this audience. I do not have access to any other adults.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
