The Highland Park shooter shared a haunting picture of his teenage sex doll hanging herself in his closet online, a newly emerged image shows.
Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo III posted the eerie shot of ‘Sophie’ from his ‘Awake 47’ account on the Documenting Reality website in June 2020.
The sick 21-year-old, who gunned down seven people in Illinois on July 4, captioned one of the images: ‘I don’t understand why. Sophie July 1, 2020 – July 22, 2020.’
He also sent dozens of racist rants against Jewish people, black people and Asian people on his page and denied the Holocaust ever happened.
Documenting Reality founder and site moderator Chris Wilson said he was cooperating with cops over the vile messages.
Crimo was charged with killing seven people at the Independence Day parade in Highland Park on Monday.
Yesterday he confessed to police he unleashed a hail of bullets from a rooftop in suburban Chicago and fled to the Madison, Wisconsin, area.
The killer then admitted that he contemplated shooting up a second event there, authorities said Wednesday.
In July 2020, Highland Park shooter Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo posted a picture he entitled ‘Sophie Killed Herself,’ showing a sex doll hanging from his closet in a mock suicide.
Online, Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo often shared photos of his teenage sex doll, including this one from June 2020 showing the doll he named ‘Sophie’ sitting in the passenger seat of his car
His Acura 30CL featured a ‘P**** Magnet’ sticker on the rear windshield, with at least four teddy bears in the back seat and a Donald Trump bobblehead affixed to the rear dash
Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo, 21, is expressionless in a mugshot that was released Wednesday
Crimo was a frequent poster on the online forum Documenting Reality, where he used the moniker Awake 47 to share disturbing pictures and make racist and anti-Semitic remarks, the New York Post reported.
He would often share photos of himself along with footage of shootings and other instances of real-life violence, according to NPR.
He also used it to document his relationship with a teenage sex doll he named Sophie.
One picture from June 2020 shows the doll sitting in the front passenger’s seat of his Acura 30CL with a seatbelt fastened.
The car also had a ‘P**** Magnet’ sticker on the rear windshield, at least four teddy bears in the back seat and a Donald Trump bobblehead attached to the rear dash.
The next month he shared a picture he entitled ‘Sophie Killed Herself,’ showing the doll hanging from his closet in a mock suicide.
‘I don’t understand why,’ he wrote in the post, adding: ‘Sophie July 1, 2020 – July 22, 2020.’
Additionally, Crimo posted several racist messages on the site in the days leading up to the mass shooting at Highland Park, Illinois.
In one, he seemed to question the legitimacy of the Holocaust, writing: ‘The math is all scewed (sic). The logistics of 6m Jews doesn’t make sense, but I’m just retarded.’
In the days leading up to the shooting, Crimo wrote a series of vile and anti-Semitic posts, like this one from June 25 questioning the Holocaust
Just two days before he committed the massacre at Highland Park, Illinois, Crimo also seemed to suggest that Jews were ‘fire retardant’
Other posts took aim at Asians, who he said ‘should be gassed,’ and black people
On July 2, he also seemed to suggest Jews were ‘fire retardant.’ And in another post from June 28, Crimo posted: ‘I say we just get rid of the blacks all together.’
Four days later, he said Asian people should ‘be gassed and washed,’ suggesting they could be put in gas chambers.
In fact, NPR reports, Crimo would post so frequently on the online forum that other users were able to positively identify him after police released his picture during the manhunt for the shooter on Monday.
Documenting Reality founder and site moderator Chris Wilson told the Post he is now cooperating with authorities.
‘This is not something we’ve ever had to deal with,’ Wilson said in a statement, adding that Crimo ‘was a member of the site, as well as other sites.
‘I think what happened is horrendous, and I am cooperating fully with law enforcement officials.’
The revelations of his posts are just the latest unsettling development as federal law enforcement officials dig into Crimo’s background as he faces multiple counts of murder for the deadly Fourth of July rampage.
Crimo also used the site, Documenting Reality, to share photos of himself – so after police released his picture during the manhunt for the shooter on Monday, people on the site were able to positively identify him
In September 2019, Illinois State Police received a ‘clear and present danger’ report related to Crimo’s family after he threatened to kill himself and his family. They removed knives from the property, but later returned them, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Crimo, who was 19 at the time, was not arrested. He was two years under the legal age minimum to apply for the firearm owner’s identification (FOID) card needed to legally obtain a weapon.
Crimo used a legally purchased Smith & Wesson M&P 15 to carry out the attack. He bought the weapon – which costs around $800 – in 2020
But despite the murder-suicide threats, Crimo’s father sponsored him for a FOID card in December 2019, and it was approved a month later, in January 2020, which allowed him to obtain four guns.
Officials have since said they approved the permit because there was ‘insufficient basis’ to deem Crimo dangerous, with the only record on his file a 2016 ordinance violation for possession of tobacco.
That meant Crimo was legally able to buy the weapon used in Monday’s massacre.
‘He bought everything on his own, and they’re registered to him,’ his father told The Post of his son’s weapons.
‘You know, he drove there, he ordered them, he picked them up, they did his background check on each one,’ he added, as he insisted he had ‘zero’ involvement in the massacre.
‘They make me like I groomed him to do all this,’ he said. ‘I’ve been here my whole life, and I’m gonna stay here, hold my head up high, because I didn’t do anything wrong.’
Robert Crimo Jr. told the New York Post that his son, the accused Fourth of July gunman, talked about the mass shooting in Copenhagen the night before launching his own massacre
Crimo’s father Bob Sr. was cornered by police as he arrived at home on Tuesday
The gunman opened fire at 10.14am on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6.30pm in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded
He also insisted in the interview with the New York Post that his son’s actions were not motivated by hate, and said that while he will continue to support his son, he is ‘furious’ about what happened.
‘I want a long sentence,’ Robert Crimo Jr said. ‘That’s life. You know you have consequences for actions. He made a choice. He didn’t have to do that. I think there’s mental illness there, obviously. … I didn’t see a lot of it.’
But it has also been revealed that Crimo drove to Madison, Wis., in his mother’s car after the shooting, where he happened upon another July 4 celebration.
Police don’t yet know exactly what his motive for the killing spree was but on Wednesday they confirmed his fixation on the numbers 47 – the inverse of 7/4, the date of July 4.
‘His motivation isn’t necessarily clear, I don’t want to go into specifically what he told investigators, however he had some type of affinity towards the number 4 and 7, and inverse 7 and 4,’ Lake County Major Crime Task Force Deputy Chief Chris Covelli said after Crimo’s court appearance.
‘We don’t have information to suggest he planned on driving to Madison initially to commit another attack. We do believe that he was driving around following the first attack and saw the celebration (in Madison).’
Covelli said Crimo didn’t go through with it because there are ‘indications’ that he didn’t plan it out as thoroughly as he had with Highland Park.
On Wednesday, Crimo made a full confession and told cops he ‘looked down, aimed and fired’ into the crowd, but dressed up ‘like a girl’ and used make-up to cover his face and neck tattoos.
He will now remain in custody until his next court date on July 25, when he will be represented by a public defender.
Bob Crimo Jr. and his wife, Denise, said in a statement: ‘We are all mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and this is a terrible tragedy for many families, the victims, the paradegoers, the community, and our own. Our hearts, thoughts, and prayers go out to everybody’
In the meantime, his parents, who have not been charged in connection with the shooting, have hired a lawyer in Steve Greenberg, a local man who railed against the shooting on Twitter on Monday before realizing that his friends’ son was responsible for it.
They released an official statement on Wednesday reading: ‘We are all mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and this is a terrible tragedy for many families, the victims, the paradegoers, the community, and our own. Our hearts, thoughts, and prayers go out to everybody.’
And on Tuesday night, Greenberg appeared on NewsNation to insist his clients have done nothing wrong, and to deny claims by police that they were called to the family house twice in 2019.
‘I don’t think anyone’s ever aware of any red flags that make them think that their son is gonna go out in their own community and start shooting people.
‘Had they seen any signs of it, I think they would have acted. They’re responsible parents,’ Greenberg said.
Death toll in Highland Park July Fourth shooting rises to seven
The number of people who have died in the Highland Park Fourth of July massacre has risen to seven, as of Wednesday.
The victims include Stephen Straus, 88; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacki Sundheim, 63; Nicholas Toledo Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, and husband and wife, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37.
On Wednesday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office revealed that the seventh victim, Uvaldo, died at Evanston Hospital around 8 a.m. The number of injured victims now stands at 46, ranging in age from 8 to 85 years old.
Robert Crimo, 21, appeared in Lake County court on Wednesday, after being charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. He is expected to face a slew of other charges and is being held without bail.
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart told the court that Crimo carried out a ‘calculated and premeditated attack’. He said Crimo confessed to standing on a roof above the parade route and took aim at people standing across the street, reloading his Smith & Wesson AR-15 rifle three times.
Police recovered 83 spent casings from the roof.
Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were both killed in the massacre. Their two-year-old son, Aiden, was pulled from underneath his father’s body
Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, his granddaughter because he was in a wheelchair
Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were the parents of a two-year-old boy, Aiden, who is now orphaned. He was pulled from underneath his father’s body and taken care of by paradegoers.
Nicolas Toledo, 76 was the first victim to be identified. He was a grandfather visiting his family from Mexico. His family said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them.
Toledo had not wanted to attend the parade, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family’s insistence of going, he obliged.
Another victim, Jacki Sundheim was a longtime teacher at the North Shore Congregation Israel synagogue. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported.
‘There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki’s death,’ the synagogue said in a statement.
Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, who was in hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm and back of the head, died on Wednesday. His wife, Maria, was hit in the head by fragments, and his grandson received a gunshot wound to the arm but is stable.
On Wednesday, Katherine Goldstein’s daughter, Cassie, described how her mother was shot in the chest and fell down dead in front of her.
‘He shot her in the chest, and she fell down. And I knew she was dead,’ Cassie told ‘NBC Nightly News.’ ‘So I just told her that I loved her, but I couldn’t stop because he was still shooting everyone next to me.’
Katherine Goldstein, pictured left, was among the people killed in the Highland Park parade mass shooting on July 4
Steve Straus, 88, (left) was among the seven people who were killed during the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre. Eduardo Uvaldo, 65, (right) died on Wednesday. Family said he had been shot in the arm and back of the head
A local doctor who rushed into the carnage described the shooting victims as being ‘blown up’ by the attacker’s high-powered weapon.
Dr. David Baum, a long-time obstetrician in Highland Park, was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. When the shots rang out and others fled, he ran into the fray to try to help the victims.
In an interview with CNN, Baum described seeing victims with ‘wartime’ and ‘unspeakable’ injuries.
‘The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire,’ Baum said. ‘The horrific scene of some of those bodies is unspeakable for the average person.’
‘Having been a physician, I’ve seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally — some of the bodies — there was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets.’
‘There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable,’ he told CNN.
‘And the injuries that I saw — I never served — but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade,’ Baum said.
Baum said there were at least three doctors, a nurse and a nurse practitioner, who joined him in treating victims. He recalled paramedics covering up victims who they knew were dead at the scene.
