(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Last October, Headline USA exclusively obtained the autopsy and toxicology reports for alleged Trump shooter Thomas Crooks after a months-long legal battle.
At the time, the toxicology results didn’t seem to indicate much about Crooks’ state of mind—they showed that he had elevated levels of lead, but that he wasn’t on any “drugs of abuse.” As Headline USA noted back then, the exam didn’t include results for other drugs or therapeutics.
However, roughly nine months later, an online sleuth notified this publication about apparent anomalies in the report. The online sleuth, an anonymous Twitter/X account @tjphager, noticed that Crooks’s toxicology exam is missing the results for three specimens that were taken from his body: eight milliliters of heart blood, three milliliters of bile, and an envelope of hair. Those specimens were labeled items 3, 7 and 8, respectively.
Thomas Crooks
Toxicology Report acquired by@JD_Cashless @HeadlineUSAItems 4,5 “Screen” Target Compounds UNSPECIFIED
Note: Results for Specimens 3/Heart Blood + 7/Bile MISSING
Psychotropic Drugs are commonly tested for in BILE
See List/Next Post⬇️ pic.twitter.com/N0AEJJxqWO
— Tommy (@tjphager) July 17, 2025
Sure enough, items 3, 7 and 8 are not listed in the toxicology report’s findings. Instead, the findings only include results for three separate containers of heart blood, a vial of urine and one milliliter of eye fluid— list items 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6, respectively. Allegheny County Medical Examiner Ariel Goldschmidt, who conducted the autopsy exam on Crooks, also commissioned a private firm called NSM Labs, which tested Crooks for blood for lead, arsenic, mercury and other compounds. But that firm didn’t test for psychotropics, either.
It’s unclear whether Crooks’s bile and hair were ever tested, or if Goldschmidt simply omitted the results from his report. Goldschmidt didn’t respond to numerous messages seeking an explanation—nor did one of his scientists, Katrina Lindauer, who signed off on the exam. Butler County Coroner William Young, who was involved in the decision to send Crooks to Allegheny County, also didn’t respond to requests for comments.
Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger declined to comment.
Bile and Hair
According to an academic article published on the National Institutes for Health (NIH) website, bile can be used to test for a variety of drugs. Moreover, bile can reveal the presence of drugs for longer than other bodily fluids.
“Because it is an excretion product of the liver, it can be used for screening purposes and to determine what drugs an individual used or was exposed to prior to death,” scientists Jolene Bierly and Laura Labay wrote in a June 2018 article entitled, The Utility of Bile in Postmortem Forensic Toxicology.
“Some reasons for choosing bile as an alternative matrix include ease of collection, large sample volume, extended detection window relative to blood, and high concentrations of drugs and metabolites.”
Similarly, hair can be used to test for psychotropic drugs, too.
“Antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs are regularly encountered in different aspects of forensic toxicology, and some cases require the examination of hair samples,” wrote
Thomas Crooks
Toxicology Report acquired by@JD_Cashless @HeadlineUSAPsychotropic Drugs are commonly tested for in BILEhttps://t.co/8Pl1LfIdxF
— Tommy (@tjphager) July 17, 2025
SSRIs and Shootings
Psychotropic drugs such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, have long been thought to be linked to mass shootings and other terroristic activities. While no definitive causal link has been proven, studies show that mass shooters often struggle with mental health problems. A 2019 Secret Service study found that 19 out of 35 students who attacked their schools in an act of “targeted violence” had received some type of mental health treatment.
When it comes to would-be presidential assassins, at least one has been found to be on psychiatric medication: John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, had been taking “anti-depressants and tranquilizers” since the mid-1970s.
“Various psychiatric evaluations diagnosed Hinckley with schizophrenia, dysthymia (a type of prolonged depression, as well as narcissistic, schizoid, borderline and passive-aggressive personality disorders,” wrote historian Wendy Painting in her PhD thesis-turned-book, Aberration in the Heartland of the Real—a massive biographical work on Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Crooks’s father, Matthew Crooks, did tell law enforcement that his son was dealing with mental health issues. However, Thomas Crooks was purportedly never diagnosed with anything.
Crooks and Mental Illness
Butler County Coroner William Young said he was called around 6:15 a.m. on July 14 to examine Crooks’s body, which had been sitting on the AGR rooftop for over 12 hours.
“The decedent was removed from the rooftop at AGR International by Coroner Young and Deputy Bosiljevac. The decedent was taken to Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office for a pathological examination,” Young’s coroner report said.
“The remains were then released to Beinhauer-Connell FH.”
Infamously, Crooks’s body was cremated days later with bullet fragments still in his shoulder.
According to CBS, Crooks searched online in April about a “major depressive disorder” in the lead-up to the attack. Additionally, the FBI briefed the House Task Force investigating the Trump assassination attempts last month, telling members that Crooks exhibited strange behavior in the days leading up to the shooting, such as “walking around the house talking to himself” and “flapping his arms.”
And according to ABC News, “Investigators learned that throughout high school, Crooks would routinely sway back and forth while standing at the bus stop—but that Crooks never received any sort of formal diagnosis related to it.”
Headline USA reached out to three different independent toxicologists for their analysis of Crooks’s report. Only one was willing to talk—under the condition of anonymity—and he said that he didn’t know what to make of the missing results in Crooks’s report.
“I am probably not the right person to explain why it is missing a number. I interpret toxicology results, but don’t generate these reports. I would look for an expert witness who is a medical examiner or forensic pathologist,” the toxicologist said.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
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