Las Vegas gunman spent $1.5M, became distant before rampage

In the months before unleashing a hail of bullets into a Las Vegas concert crowd, Stephen Paddock burned through more than $1.5 million, became obsessed with guns and increasingly unstable, and distanced himself from his girlfriend and family, according to an investigative report released Friday.

With those revelations, police announced they were closing their 10-month investigation without a definitive answer for why Paddock, a high-stakes gambler, amassed an arsenal of weapons and carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“By all accounts, Stephen Paddock was an unremarkable man whose movements leading up to Oct. 1 didn’t raise any suspicion,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said. “An interview with his doctor indicated signs of a troubled mind, but no troubling behaviour that would trigger a call to law enforcement.”

Paddock left no manifesto or “even a note to answer questions” about his motive for a rampage that killed 58 people and injured more than 800 others, Lombardo said.

One of his brothers told investigators that he believed the gunman had a “mental illness and was paranoid and delusional.” A doctor believed he may have had bipolar disorder, the report said.

Paddock’s girlfriend said he had suddenly stopped being affectionate and constantly complained of being ill. Marilou Danley told investigators that he said doctors could not cure him but told him he had a “chemical imbalance.”

In its final report released Friday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department found Paddock acted alone and no one else will be charged, said Lombardo, the elected head of the agency.

Earlier this year, U.S. prosecutors charged an Arizona man accused of selling illegal armour-piercing bullets found in Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Douglas Haig has pleaded not guilty and maintains he sold tracer ammunition, which illuminate a bullet’s path.