"Despite investigators' nonstop pursuit of this case, there still remains no prior connection or contact between" Crouse, a 39-year-old Christiansburg resident, and shooter Ross Truett Ashley, said a news release the Virginia State Police issued Tuesday.
Crouse's slaying echoed the shooting deaths of 33 people in 2007 at Tech, considered the country's deadliest campus rampage, and drew international attention that continued as thousands attended the officer's funeral Monday.
The .40-caliber, semiautomatic handgun used to shoot Crouse was bought in January 2011, state police said. Police did not identify the seller. Ballistics tests have linked it both to Crouse's slaying on Dec. 8 and to the death of Ashley on the same day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Ashley, 22, was from the Spotsylvania County community of Partlow and had attended the University of Virginia's Wise campus before transferring to Radford University to major in business management. He was attending classes part time this semester, police have said.
Another new detail Tuesday was that a surveillance camera in a Blacksburg store captured an image of Ashley on the afternoon of Dec. 7, the day before the shootings.
Police say that about midday on Dec. 7, a pistol-brandishing Ashley stole a Mercedes SUV from his landlord. He was seen in the Blacksburg store that afternoon, and the Mercedes was found the next morning abandoned near the Smart Road, a research facility overseen by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
Despite investigators' non-stop pursuit of this case, there still remains no prior connection or contact between" the men, the statement said.
The shooting sent tremors through the Virginia Tech campus, which was the scene of the deadliest U.S. mass shooting in April 2007. A gunman killed 32 and then himself.
State police investigators said they have interviewed family, friends and acquaintances to reconstruct Ashley's movements before his deadly encounter with Crouse.
Ashley stole at gunpoint a 2011 luxury SUV from a Radford real estate office the day before the officer's slaying and his first known appearance in Blacksburg was recorded hours later by surveillance video inside a retail shop in the college town.
A state police timeline does not include any other sightings of Ashley until the lunch-hour shooting of Crouse the following day.
Crouse was an Army veteran and married father of five children and stepchildren who joined the campus police force about six months after the 2007 massacre. He previously worked at a jail and for the Montgomery County sheriff's department. His funeral Monday at a campus coliseum was attended by family, friends and dignitaries, including Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Ashley grew up the isolated northern Virginia community of Partlow and played football at Spotsylvania High School. Friends and former classmates said he had broken up with his girlfriend over the summer and vaguely mentioned some family issues, but they generally spoke of him in positive terms.
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