Hawaii Assassin Routh, Life In Jail: The Rifle and the SUV Where Did They Come From?

stock here: FINALLY! An assassination that didn’t directly involve set up by the FBI and CIA! Routh was from Kaaawa (yes three A’s in a row), a tiny town in a remote part of Oahu, I have done full solar systems in that town. He wrote a 291 page book about Ukraine, and it is still available on Amazon for $2.99 Kindle. I put a few excerpts at the far bottom. I posit that reading his whole book could provide an understanding of how misguided mind sets “work” or are at least created.

He failed to put any of his 6 cell phones in Faraday bags, thus providing evidence important to the prosecution for multiple validation of his every location in the month before the attempt on Trumps Life….both were very stupid, I detail the Faraday Day Cage (bag) issue at the far bottom.

With all of his efforts, he failed to see the salient point: Ukraine and the Collective West, goaded and antagonized Russia into this Invasion, by stating that they would put nuclear weapons right on the border with Russia…just 5 minutes away from Moscow. His hatred of Russia was like his hatred of Donald Trump. Once set, like a pit bull latching on, there was no revisiting of the thought decision, even though would eventually give him life in prison.

A-Eye dove on this……
The details surrounding how Ryan Routh equipped himself are a mix of old professional ties and family resources. You’re right on the money about the “admin lady” and the SUV—investigators used these very links to trace his steps from North Carolina to Florida.

1. The Rifle: The “Roofing Connection”

Routh didn’t buy the gun from a shop; he leaned on people from his past in the Greensboro roofing industry.

• The “Admin Lady”: Tina Cooper was an administrative assistant who had worked for Routh at his own roofing company decades ago. Despite Routh firing her in the early 2000s, they remained in contact.
• The Transaction: Routh approached Cooper, claiming he needed a gun for his son’s protection. Cooper acted as the middleman, connecting Routh with Ronnie Oxendine, the owner of Oxendine & Sons Roofing.
• The Deal: In August 2024, they met at the Oxendine roofing headquarters. Routh paid $350 cash for the SKS-style rifle and gave Cooper a $100 “finder’s fee.” * The Cover-up: After Routh was arrested, Cooper reportedly texted Oxendine: “I do not know [sht] and u do not either… No proof.”* Both eventually took plea deals for their roles in the illegal sale.

2. The SUV: A Family Loan

The black Nissan Xterra that Routh was driving when he was pulled over on I-95 wasn’t registered to him.

• The Daughter: The vehicle was officially registered to his daughter, Sara Ellen Routh.
• The Setup: Routh had been using the car as a “mobile command center” for weeks. When the FBI searched it, they found a mattress inside, indicating he had been living in it to avoid hotel records. They also found a note addressed to his daughter and son (“Sarah” and “Oran”) with instructions on what to do if the car needed to be moved.

3. The Fake Plates: Why Take the Risk?

You’re absolutely right that fake plates are a magnet for Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), but Routh’s logic was focused on a different threat: The initial “BOLO” (Be On The Look Out).

• The Logic: Routh knew that if he were spotted at the golf course, police would immediately run his real plates and link the car to his family or his North Carolina address. By using a plate stolen from a 2012 Ford truck, he hoped to create a “mismatch” that would confuse officers during a quick visual check.
• The Reality Check: While he thought the fake plate would help him “blend in” during his month of reconnaissance, it actually backfired. Once a witness (Tommy Craig McGee) took a photo of his vehicle and plate at the scene, the fake plate was immediately flagged as “stolen” in the system.
• The Arrest: It was actually the real-time plate readers on I-95 that helped the Martin County Sheriff’s Office track the Xterra as it headed north, leading to the high-risk stop where he was finally apprehended.

Inside the SUV, the FBI also found plates from North Carolina and Ohio tucked under the driver’s seat—essentially a “portfolio” of tags he could swap out to stay off the radar.

Minnesota abstract

While there were no Faraday cages or Faraday bags found in Ryan Routh’s vehicle, the reason people often ask about them is because of how “high-tech” some of his other behavior seemed compared to his “low-tech” reality.

The evidence presented during his trial (which led to today’s life sentence) actually proved the opposite of him using signal-blocking technology: his phones were wide open and tracking his every move.

The Phone Evidence: Why No Faraday Bags?

If Routh had used Faraday bags (which block all cellular, GPS, and Wi-Fi signals), the FBI would never have been able to build the case they did.

• The 12-Hour Ping: Because his phones were active and connected to the network, the FBI was able to prove he had been lying in wait in the bushes for 12 hours (from 1:59 a.m. to 1:31 p.m.) before he was spotted.
• The “Breadcrumb” Trail: Data from two of the six cell phones found in his SUV showed that he had been “casing” the golf course and Mar-a-Lago repeatedly between August 18 and September 15, 2024.
• The Google Searches: One of the phones contained a search history for how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico—hardly the move of someone trying to mask their digital footprint.

Why the confusion about “Cages”?

The “Faraday cage” rumor likely stems from two things found in his 2012 Nissan Xterra that looked suspicious to the untrained eye:

1. Homemade Explosive Components: In the back of the SUV and in a box he left with a friend, investigators found “gray boxes” containing rat traps modified to trigger explosives, pipes, and .50 caliber cartridges. These weren’t signal blockers; they were crude booby traps.
2. Ceramic Tiles: He had backpacks filled with ceramic tiles hanging on the fence at the golf course. He intended these to act as makeshift “body armor” to protect him from return fire, but from a distance, they looked like strange technical equipment.

The Vehicle: 2012 Nissan Xterra

To answer your earlier question more specifically, the SUV was a 2012 black Nissan Xterra.

• It was registered to his daughter in North Carolina.
• It was essentially a mobile sniper’s nest. It was packed with clothes, food (Vienna sausages), a mattress, and his handwritten “kill list” of dates and locations where Trump would be.

The irony of the case is that Routh tried to act like a sophisticated “freedom fighter,” but he was caught because he drove a beat-up SUV with a stolen plate and kept six cell phones turned on that told the FBI exactly where he was for a month.