SHOOTER MAY HAVE WANTED TO LIVE UP TO FATHER’S NOTORIETY, EXPERT SAYS.
‘Direct insight’ into Las Vegas gunman evasive
It’s difficult to perform a psychological autopsy on Stephen Paddock so soon after his horrific rampage, however, a desire for attention or fame appears “again and again” in the psychological makeup of mass murderers, especially the deadliest.
And the Las Vegas shooter may have wanted to live up to his father’s notoriety, says University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford.
Paddock’s father, Benjamin “Big Daddy” Paddock, was a psychopathic, suicidal serial bank robber, once named to the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List.
“It’s not like a manifesto has been discovered that would give us direct insight” i nto what motived Paddock to open fire high above the Las Vegas strip Sunday night, Lankford said. But “when I was a kid, my dad was a teacher. I didn’t have any thoughts about crime and fame. Paddock had it modelled for him.”
Lankford also finds meaning in the sheer height from which Paddock sprayed bullets into a crowd of 22,000, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 520 as he fired from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino Hotel.
Rampage shooters often feel a deep sense of victimization, said Lankford, who studies mass killers. “One of the most common justifications or rationalizations for violence in human history is, ‘ Someone else hurt me, and now I’m going to hurt them.’”
Shooting from high above, when everyone else is ducking and running, allows the killer to seize power in a moment of violence, he said. As well, “the further away you are, the easier it becomes to kill. It becomes more like a video game and less like real life.”
Details emerged Tuesday that show Paddock, a 64- year- old former accountant and high-stakes gambler described as everything from “aggressively unfriendly” by some former neighbours to seemingly normal by his family, booked a corner suite at the Mandalay, knocked out windows on either side of the corner and set up rifles on tripods so he could command a wider scope.
Paddock took 23 guns, several with scopes, and thousands of rounds of ammunition into his suite on Thursday. He also set up cameras in the hallway, perhaps so that he could kill himself before police could arrest him, Clark County Sherriff Joseph Lombardo said on Tuesday.
There is still no known motive. “We have no idea what his belief system was,” Lombardo told reporters. “I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath.”
Contrary to what many believe, mass murderers generally aren’ t “crazed lunatics” who suddenly become unhinged and kill indiscriminately, James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Boston’s Northeastern University wrote in 2013 in the Journal of Homicide Studies along with co-author Monica J. DeLateur.
Most plan their rampage for days, weeks or months. They are “deliberate, deter- mined to kill.” Witnesses often report that the gunman appeared remarkably relaxed and calm, even smiling.
“You often time find that these men” — and mass killers are almost exclusively male — “have experienced a history of frustration and failure, which is why often times they’re not young, but middle-aged,” Fox said in an interview.
They tend to be socially isolated. They tend to externalize blame, “which is why when they decide if life isn’t worth living, others have to share in their pain as well,” Fox said.
However, most mass killers don’t have criminal records, he said. Most haven’t been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. “They are bitter, disappointed, angry, but not mentally ill,” Fox said.
It’s rare, but not unheard of to shoot from above. In 1 966, Charles Whitman opened fire from atop the 307-foot tower at the University of Texas in Austin.
Lankford noted Paddock’s father was a bank robber in the Bonnie-andClyde era, when Hollywood popularized and glamorized robbers and gangsters. “I wonder, and this is more speculative, did his father have that desire for attention,” he said.
“There was celebrity bank robbers. Now we have celebrity mass killers,” Lankford said. “And so maybe it’s a case where the son is kind of taking the contemporary version of that kind of quest for fame.”
Paddock barricaded himself in a hotel room and died by a self- inflicted gunshot wound, he added. “The suicidal element is pretty crystal clear in this case,” Lankford said. Paddock’s father also had suicidal tendencies. Suicide is complex. “It’s not like there is a suicide gene, per se,” Lankford said. However, “it is true that there are certain mental disorders that increase the risk of suicide that can have a genetic component.”
“To me, the nature of the attack suggests that this is somebody who wanted to lash out, he wanted to, in a big way, but he did not want to risk getting caught. Suicide was his exit strategy.”
Lankford also pointed to the psychological research on the variable of distance, and how it affects people’s willingness to use violence against others.
“The research shows what you might think, which is the closer you are to someone the more resistant or the more difficult it is to harm him or her,” he said.
“You recognize their humanity. It’s a more visceral experience, and your conscience is more likely to become a barrier.”