Killer intent on mass carnage
CRIME scene photos from inside Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s Mandalay Bay lair reveal his meticulous planning for the massacre.
In addition to stockpiling 23 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Paddock set up cameras inside his 32nd floor room, in the door’s peephole and on a caterer’s cart in the hallway, so he could see police approaching.
Before they could arrest him, Paddock shot himself through the mouth, dying instantly and robbing his victims of justice.
Paddock, 64, an otherwise unremarkable former accountant, mailman and compulsive gambler, rained hundreds of bullets on to a crowd of 22,000 concertgoers for nine minutes at an outdoor country music festival, killing 59 and injuring almost 500 in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
Paddock checked into his suite overlooking the Strip last Thursday and over the next four days moved more than a dozen suitcases packed with his armoury.
In his room were 12 semiautomatic rifles he had converted into fully automatic weapons using a device called a bump stick.
He balanced one assault rifle with a scope on a bipod, used to help with aim.
“I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said of his cameras.
In addition to the victims Paddock took down at the concert over the road from his hotel, he shot a hotel security guard who approached the room in his leg.
“The fact that he had the type of weaponry and amount of weaponry in that room, it was pre-planned extensively,” Sheriff Lombardo said.
“I’m pretty sure he evaluated everything that he did and his actions, which is troublesome.”
There is still no motive for the attack, but police yesterday vowed they would find one, possibly within “the next 48 hours”.
A terror link has not been ruled out. Islamic State claimed immediate responsibility, but this is almost rote for mass shootings in the US.
FBI agents were questioning Paddock’s long-term Australian girlfriend, grandmother Marilou Danley, who had been in the Philippines since September 25 but returned to the US yesterday.
Sheriff Lombardo said the investigation was proceeding cautiously in case criminal charges are warranted against someone else.
“This investigation is not ended with the demise of Mr Paddock,” he said.
“Did this person get radicalised unbeknown to us? And we want to identify that source.”
Meanwhile, a series of high value bets over recent weeks led to speculation Paddock — a “high roller” at many Nevada casinos — may have been driv- en by significant financial loss.
Law enforcement officials revealed he had bet about $160,000 ($A203,000) in the past few weeks at Las Vegas.
This was traced through 16 Currency Transaction Reports which are filed at request of the Treasury Department and the IRS for “each transaction in currency involving cash-in and cash-out of more than $10,000 in a gaming day”.
There has been no insight from acquaintances into what drove the retiree’s actions.
His neighbours in Mesquite, 130km north east of Vegas, were still in shock yesterday that the world’s media had descended on their quiet desert village.
Paddock and Danley were known as extremely private, keeping to themselves.
Their modest, light brown, brushed concrete bungalow is still surrounded by crime scene tape and their garage door is a crumpled pile in their driveway after police removed it in a raid on Tuesday.
“All those weapons. I can’t believe that they were just over there,” said retired construction worker Rodney Swaningson, who lives four houses away.
“I think they were quite reclusive.
“I never spoke to him and I never met his girlfriend.”