Forensic audio analysis: more than 1 shooter?

A closer look at how I might have been wrong

I saw reports come in today about an analysis performed by Chris Martenson. My first reaction: “Wow, I got things really wrong!”

But as I watched his video, several problems became apparent. There still are more questions raised, that is for sure. Let’s go over the new evidence and claims, and evaluate what we have, and at the end we’ll take stock of our conclusions.

In his video, he begins with the shocking revelation that the official narrative of only a single shooter is bunk, and claims to have rock-solid evidence.

From the beginning, he already assumes that there were 2 weapons, the first shooting a string of 3 shots, and the 2^nd shooting a string of 5 shots, each from a different location.

As extra support, he references a report from CNN:

I can’t find independent confirmation of any such report, nor the techniques and exact findings made, except the original CNN claims (which are the source of all other references to her work).

Martenson then references the Deep State, the JFK shooting, RFK, and the constant lying, centered around a ‘lone shooter’. Which might all be true, but the claim that Butler follows the same playbook has to be proven, not assumed, before you can start using parallels with any confidence.

Martenson’s claims come from a look at the evidence from the audio from the shooting. Looking at the sound signatures and what they can tell us, he posits that there are 3, possibly 4 shooters. Using 2 different video clips of the shooting, he takes the sound output, and visualized the waves.

He explains that we have 2 sounds from the same shot: first the supersonic crack of the bullet whistling by, and then the actual sound of the shot when it finally arrives, in a ‘crack-pop’. The time between both gives an idea of the distance the shooter is.

Citing HealthRanger, a nice overview of the calculations of the distance is then given.

Using a program, Audacity, he visualized the sound from the first video. Immediately, this stands out: 3 shots, then 5 in rapid succession, an 8^th shot that sounded different, and then, 10 seconds later, the last shot. FOUR different events. Do they correspond to 4 different shooters, or not? That is what we will need to find out.

This is from the Fox 4 video, taken from straight in front of the podium.

Looking at the first 3 shots, we see 0.22 seconds between the bullet and the sound of the shot, which lines up with the expectation, and comes to a distance of about 400 feet.

Martenson then introduced a TikTok video that shows the impact of a bullet on the rail (red arrow points to it, added by me).

Martenson points out that the man in the colored shirt got wounded, right behind the man in the blue t-shirt, and shows a video of him walking down, next, to show that. (Notice also the man in the white shirt and dark pants: he got hit bad, and is seen carried away: he is in critical but stable condition.)

Why is this important? Because Martenson points out that this would seem to indicate that this round was likely more powerful than a 5.56 round. Stronger than his own reasoning, there was another person who got severely hit, plus the man in the colored shirt, and then have enough energy to hit the rail (and the hydraulics from the forklift? Of was that another round? We have no video at the moment to determine when that line got hit.) This is an important extra bit of information, that counters some of the official statements made about the gun and the ammo purchased.

Talking about the position, he assumes that the bleacher starts at podium level, 3 to 4.5 feet up. Looking at images from the rally, the side bleachers were lower than the middle bleacher, and started from the ground level.

A great new video shows exactly this corner, at the time of the shots. Look at the man in the colored shirt: he looks rather short, compared to the man in the black shirt and red hat in front of him. Notice also that if the shot hits the railing next, he cannot be hit much higher or lower than that. Railings are standard between 3 and 3.5 feet heigh. They are also standing on the last sitting surface.

Here you see sloppy guesswork by Martenson. He assumes, and does not give a moment to double-check. Talking about Trump’s podium, he guessed it is 3, maybe 4 feet high, with Trump’s 6’4 height, the bullet came in at that point at 10’ heigh (4+6’4, minus about 3 inches to his ear, roughly 10 feet).

Look at the below image from the rally.

(Source, with a great new angle from behind Trump)

The agents in the second one are those who rushed up the stage, and are roughly comparable to Trump, at least 6’ tall. That makes the podium at about 5 feet high.

A view from the other side places the podium at 4 feet, estimated (amazing what difference a new angle makes, no? Which is why you have to be VERY careful when trying to estimate based on pictures alone, with insufficient data). Also: 6 steps for the stairs, that places it confidently at about 4 feet high.

So this places the bullet that hit Trump at 10 feet, rather firmly.

I don’t have nifty software to measure dimensions of objects in pictures to get an exact height for the railing, but I can go even better:

This is a rentable 10-row towable bleacher, with known dimensions, taking the guesswork out of it.

This places the railing at 11’2, and now we have a firm number for the height of at least 1 point of impact.

One important element, as Martenson notes, is determining which of the shots that was. If it is the first, we have to line it up with Trump, who also got hit on the first shot.

I can’t seem to find the original video this was taken from, but let’s use the video by John Cullen (even though he is completely wrong in his conclusions, as I have shown repeatedly), seen here. Listening to the sound of the speech, the shot hitting the railing is exactly when Trump stops speaking, and got hit.

This is indeed very important, because now we have to line up both shots. A very interesting problem arises: Trump’s ear at roughly 10 feet, and the railing at 11.2 feet. A rise of 1.2 feet, over a distance of roughly 65-70 feet. That places the origin, inserting a shot distance of 400 feet, at about 3.1 feet high. Over a distance of 450 feet, that becomes 2.3 feet. There is no opening or window at the AGR International Inc. building that low.

I am not aware that the thin cartilage of the ear could cause such a deflection, pierce a man enough to critically wound him, wound another man, and then have enough energy left to create a nice spray of material when hitting the railing. This is a problem, to line up that shot properly.

Before you rush to any conclusions, I have yet another wrench to throw. Look at this picture:

(Source)

The shot that hit the rail seems to have also hit the hydraulics of the forklift truck, which places the trajectory of the bullet downwards again!

Back to Martenson. He then uses a second video, which ‘really clarifies everything’, he says. This is from a video by a rally goer, on the left side of the field, near the building where the shooter was. (Source)

Problem, right of the bat: he could not have picked a worse video. This video has a stutter, a moment it freezes, right in the middle of the rapid shot succession, which is rather pivotal in his study here. It’s a cell phone recording, and there was some kind of hiccup, in buffering during filming or whatever the cause (I am not an expert on cell phone videos). Another issue is that the cell phone was moving fast, as the person was running: can this moving cause distortions in the audio? We’re talking about milliseconds here, definitely possible, and there is an artifact that made me think this, as I will show later.

As he has his audience listen to this new video, he wants us to notice the difference in sound between the first 3 shots and the second series of 5 shots. This, to him, is proof that we’re talking about 2 different guns, and thus 2 different shooters.

I don’t hear a different gun. When listening to such sounds, there is a different between the sound of slow shots, and rapid shots, at least in our perception of it. Open this video, about a man shooting an M1 Garand: his first shot, a short pause, and then the last 7 in very rapid succession. What do you notice? Can you hear, as I do, that the first shot sounds different, slightly lower pitched, and the next 7 higher pitched. Hearing the sound waves by themselves, or in rapid succession, ‘bumping into each other’, changes our impression of the sounds created (creating a higher pitch)

So are we really listening to 2 different weapons?

Martenson then claims there is only an echo for the first of those 5 shots.

Next, he lined up the 5 shot succession from both videos.

They should line up, but don’t really: there are slight variations.

First issue: the echo we see in video 1 (top), is repeated for shot 1 from video 2 (bottom), as he said, but, since the positions are different, the echo is differently timed, as well. What Martenson fails to notice, is that the time between shot and echo quickly becomes just as fast as between shots themselves, fully overwriting the echo signature.

Second issue: he notices that shot 3 is 0.03 seconds earlier, and then says that shot 6 is off by the same amount, while that is off by 0.05 seconds.

Martenson claims that this difference in line-up is due to the sound reaching both microphones at a slightly different time, as they traveled a different distance. Hence, 2 shooters.

This leads to a third problem: there must be 3 shooters. One for shot 3, and another for shot 6.

Forth issue: Martenson started out by claiming that the first shooter fired the first three shots, and the second shooter the second series of 5 shots (those above). ALL of those 5 shots.

Now we have to divide this second burst of 5 shots into 2 (or 3, if we use his reasoning consistently) different shooters? So we’re up to 3 to 4 different shooters?

Here we can insert another interesting video, that claims that there are not 9, but 10 different shots, by 3 different rifles. This video claims the group of 3 and 5 are by the same gun (I agree), but then distinguishes a 9^th and 10^th shot, each very different from each other and the previous shots. Are both indeed shots? At least 1 of those is a shot, as audible in other videos. Did the sniper teams fire twice? Once right after the second volley, and then again, 10 seconds later? Did that first shot hit Crooks, or get really close, causing him to roll away, coming into view, and then get hit again?

Questions, questions...

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Conclusions:

1) There is a discrepancy in height between Trump’s ear and the bleacher railing, hit at exactly the same time. This is quite a problem, as it suggests an upward trajectory, coming from the direction of the building. This might mean I got it wrong, and there are 2 shooters?

I find that hard to believe (not that I could get something wrong, but that 2 shots can be fired so simultaneously that there is no overlap. Also, with some wiggle room in the numbers, this might indicate the shots came from within the building, but then why the similarly loud shots? Shooting from within a building, through a small window (look at the pics of the building, they are small and narrow), will always drastically decrease the loudness of the sound of your shot. Yet we can always hear it very clearly?

Yet, there is also the possibility that the shot that hit the rail was from a downward trajectory, as I have shown, as well. A complete conundrum I have no answer for at this time.

This is getting quickly beyond what I can do, without proper software and experience in such analysis, or without inside sources who can feed me information. I can point out problems in logic, unproven assumptions, etc., but I can’t argue on much finer points. This is my limit.

2) There IS a 6^th shot after the rapid 5, well before the last shot, 10 seconds later. This is not yet accounted for, by no one. Official messages only talk about 1 shot, the kill shot, by the sniper team. Nothing about a missed (?) shot.

3) The first 3 and next 5 shots were taken by the same shooter. The first three, aimed, with each shot some time for (quick) readjustment, the next 5 almost in a panic, rapidly, without caring much where the bullets would land. I think that this is when Corey, the firefighter, got killed.

4) the 6^th shot (and the 7^th, if that above video is correct) does not make much sense, if you want to conjecture a ‘grassy knoll’ second assassin. Why would he shoot at a point WHEN THERE WAS NO TARGET? Trump was fully covered by Secret Service agents at that time, down, on the ground. There was no kill shot possible. So who shot, and at what? Not at Trump.

5) There is compelling evidence to assume the caliber of the rifle used was larger than a 5.56, given that, not including Trump, for with that first shot a person was critically injured (I don’t have seen conclusive evidence this was the case, though, I am still hunting down the original video footage that shows the rail getting hit), another injured, and a rail giving a considerable fan of debris when hit. Hard to believe a 5.56 would have enough energy to do all that in a single shot, but perhaps gun experts can shed light on this, I might be completely wrong on this, too.

6) It is tempting to revert to what we know from earlier (JFK, Vegas, etc.), but any repeat has to be proven, not assumed. And it is tempting to make fantastic claims about a ‘proven 2^nd shooter’, and make headlines. Being the debunker is far less glamorous, but even more necessary. Don’t make such claims beyond what the facts allow. Dr. Martenson, in his video, remains careful, and in the end talks about “hypothesis”. I applaud him for that. A John Cullen does not, and seems to attack anyone who disagrees with him, even when several of his claims are flat-out disproven (his post about the before/after of the ‘man on the water tower’, for example, which was complete wishful thinking and showed a critical lack of careful corroborating).

7) Distrust everyone who does not give sources so you can verify their claims yourself. If your main evidence is a video, post the link to the full, unaltered source.

So, did I answer questions, or raise more questions?

I think I am pointing at possibly being wrong (lack of evidence and exact information is not helping). There are some serious questions about some of the data points, that I cannot reconcile. I went in, thinking that the first shot hit both Trump and the railing, as my original overview line showed to be perfectly lining up from where Crooks was and connecting both Trump and the rail. Yet, when I started to do the math and looking at the heights of each hit, to check and review Martenson’s claims, I found that I was wrong, as the height difference is such that Trump and the rail don’t line up for a single downward shot from the roof. Unless the bullet somehow DID deflect from Trump’s ear, upward. But the picture of the bullet after hitting Trump’s ear (yup, that famous picture) seems to indicate a downward trajectory.

Am I wrong in my measurements and estimates? That is still possible, but at this point, until I have solid evidence to say otherwise, I have to admit that there is a serious problem with my initial claims, as Trump and the rail don’t line up height-wise to be hit in the same shot.

Most or all other problems cannot be answered at this moment via open-source investigation. For example: why was Trump not whisked away 10 minutes or even an hour before his speech, when a credible threat was identified? Was that an error in judgement on the ground, caused by putting insufficiently experienced people on the ground, or because a more sinister reason? We will need new information to say anything reasonable about that.

There are more than enough serious problems to have a healthy suspicion that this was a set-up, where the agents in the field were set up to fail, and give the shooter (shooters?) a clear shot. The Secret Service does not make so many mistakes, all at once. (Remember, to explain away why there weren’t enough actually trained Secret Service agents on the ground in Butler, one has to explain the Pittsburgh event with Jill Biden, how that got approved so quickly, how it got a higher threat assessment that required/justified pulling more agents from Trump, to replace them with inadequately trained DHS agents, how the roof did not get any guard (I don’t care what local LE did or did not do, it ultimately is the responsibility of the Secret Service to verify it is covered, and, if not, to fix it or withdraw their protectee), etc. This covers too many people, up to the very top of not just the Secret Service, that one cannot but be suspicious.

Hanlon’s razor might as well apply, I am not ruling out there are too many stupid people in positions of power:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

But what stupidity? Are we really (finally?!) going to do away with woke and DEI? Are we going to admit that some people might not have cared enough about the real mission of the Secret Service, because of who Trump was to them, fully politicizing their job, making the wrong decisions/cutting corners?

Hanlon is hardly a way out, it forces us to a whole series of other problems and questions (that I believe still exist even if there was malice included).

Did I miss anything important in the above analysis? Let me know in the comments.