ABLECHILD: From Rooftop to Morgue – Tracking the Alleged Gunman’s Body Through the Butler Investigation
May 26, 2026
From Rooftop to Morgue: Tracking the Alleged Gunman’s Body Through the Butler Investigation
Republished with permission from AbleChild.
Of late an enormous amount of information has been made public about the 2024 Butler, PA attempted assassination of President Trump through a new book by investigative journalist Ken Silva and the released phone call by the father of alleged shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks by Judicial Watch.
There still are so many problems with the Butler investigation and AbleChild’s interest is solely related to finding out whether the alleged Butler shooter had been taking any prescription psychiatric drugs as often is the case in such murderous attacks. It matters because all the investigations of mass shooters that AbleChild has reviewed somehow fail to produce toxicology evidence that is necessary to determine if psychiatric drugs are involved.
It has been reported that the dead body that was lying on the roof of the AGR Building had no identification, such as a driver’s license or credit cards. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which immediately took the lead in the investigation, was relying on DNA analysis, biometric confirmations and photographs to conclusively establish the identity of the shooter.
The FBI has never released any information about how the body was ultimately identified. The July 14, 2024, FBI Press Release simply reports “the FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, …as the subject involved…” Okay, but how? The alleged shooter’s dead body lay on the roof of the AGR building all night until 6:30 a.m. the morning after the shooting.
The FBI had control of the crime scene, specifically the AGR building. In fact, the local Newspaper, the Butler Eagle, reported on July 17th that “Butler County Coroner William F. Young III…found himself at the Butler Farm Show grounds after midnight Sunday to examine the victim who was shot at the rally.”
Then, bizarrely, the reporter states “the coroner and another deputy later returned after 6a.m. to the American Glass Research (AGR) International Building, where he climbed onto its roof to confirm the death of Thomas Matthew Crooks.” Of course there were two victims, the alleged Thomas Crooks and Cory Comperatore so it is difficult to know which victim the Butler County coroner was identifying at midnight.
Why did the Butler County coroner return to the AGR Building to “confirm” the death of Crooks six hours after first arriving at the Farm Show grounds at midnight to confirm the death of one of the victims? First, if the Butler County coroner went to the Farm Show grounds to check out Comperatore, where was Comperatore’s body lying for six hours at the show grounds? It seems odd that Comperatore’s body would be laying at the fairgrounds waiting for the coroner. Then moving on to the body on the roof, did the coroner ask the FBI to have access to the body on the roof at midnight? Did the Coroner ask the FBI who took the blood from the body on the roof for DNA testing, and how was that process conducted on the roof?
Moreover, did the coroner ask the FBI what other actions were taken on the alleged shooter’s body before he was able to conduct his investigation? You know something along the lines of how many people handled the body during the 12 hours it laid on the AGR roof? Also, the coroner might ask whether the body had been guarded all night? Of course, there are chain of custody issues that must be addressed, especially because there is no documentation as to how the alleged shooter was identified.
Then, moving along to Sunday morning, the Butler County coroner sends the alleged shooter’s body to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner, Ariel Goldschmidt, for autopsy. No information is provided to the Medical Examiner about how the body was identified, but the Butler County coroner writes Thomas Matthew Crooks name on the receiving documents. How did the Butler County coroner know this was the body of Thomas Matthew Crooks?
On page twenty of the Medical Examiner’s autopsy, there is a document from the Butler County coroner, William Young, who writes “The subject’s hands were zip tied behind his back by emergency personnel and pronounced deceased at 18:25 on 07/13/24 by ESU Medic Michal Vasiladiolis-Nicol.” Oh, so, now it’s revealed that beyond the FBI handling the alleged shooter’s dead body, we have Butler ESU not only handling the dead body but pronouncing time of death and zip tying the alleged shooter’s hands.
By the following day, at a minimum, the FBI, Butler ESU, the Butler County Coroner and the Allegheny County Medical Examiner all handled the alleged shooter’s body and all refer to the deceased as Thomas Matthew Crooks without ever establishing how the identification was made.
Many have suggested that Crooks’ parents must have identified the body of their son, but one must wonder exactly when that would have taken place. After all, in all the official investigations that were conducted about the Butler shooting, no one notes that the family identified the body. Further, the timeline doesn’t seem conducive for familial identification.
Consider that after the body lay on the roof of the AGR building all night, it then was immediately transferred to the Allegheny County ME for autopsy and then transferred to a funeral home for cremation. Is it possible that Crooks parents could have identified their son after autopsy? Yes. But one can only imagine the disfiguration that occurred to the face because of the gunshot and because of the destruction to the body that comes with a Y incision autopsy.
It seems improbable that the parents would view the body after autopsy and, ultimately, none of the information being released by the FBI suggests that the family identified the body. And even if the identification was made by the family after autopsy, how did all the other officials know it was Crooks before autopsy? If everyone had already established that the shooter was Crooks, there’d be no point in having the family subjected to the gruesome identification of the body.
At the end of the day, the two law enforcement agencies who conducted in-depth investigations into the Butler shooting refuse to release the final investigations. Why? The FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police may have answers that explain how the identification of Crooks was made. The FBI needs to release its investigation, with all the evidentiary files, so the public can finally be confident knowing the right perpetrator was eliminated. It’s one thing to say the shooter is Thomas Matthew Crooks, but without the proof of identity, saying it doesn’t make it so. What everyone should be asking is what’s the reluctance in providing proof of identification?
AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety.
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