Las Vegas gunman may have scoped out other music festivals

LAS VEGAS (AP/AFP) — Investigators are looking into whether gunman Stephen Paddock scoped out bigger music festivals in Las Vegas and Chicago — and perhaps Boston’s Fenway Park — before setting up his perch in a casino hotel and raining deadly fire on country music fans.

Paddock had booked a hotel room in Chicago during the hugely-popular Lollapalooza music festival, it emerged Thursday, raising the prospect he had been planning a large-scale attack for months.

The Blackstone hotel, with rooms facing a downtown city park where the festival was held, said a man of the same name had a reservation there in August — just as hundreds of thousands were attending the four-day outdoor concert series, including Malia Obama, daughter of the former president.

"There was a reservation under the name Stephen Paddock," Blackstone spokeswoman Emmy Carragher told AFP. "We have not confirmed whether that is the same Stephen Paddock, and we're working with the authorities."

Paddock did not check in for his reservation, she said.

US media, citing multiple anonymous law enforcement sources, reported that searches of the Las Vegas gunman's communications and electronic equipment found that he had scouted locations in both Chicago and Boston.

NBC News reported that he had specifically researched the Lollapalooza festival.

He had also conducted internet searches for the Fenway Park baseball stadium and the Boston Center for the Arts, a small performance venue, the Boston Globe newspaper reported.

The revelations raised the chilling prospect that Paddock had been planning an attack for at least two months before he launched Sunday's assault on a country music festival in Las Vegas, raining bullets on the crowd from a nearby hotel tower.

The Chicago hotel's proximity to the outdoor concert stadium suggested a similar scenario to the Las Vegas mass shooting, which killed 58 and injured almost 500.

The details came to light as investigators struggled to figure out why the high-stakes gambler opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 Sunday night from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel casino in Las Vegas. He killed 58 people and injured nearly 500 before taking his own life.

A federal official said authorities are looking into the possibility Paddock planned additional attacks, including a car bombing.

Authorities previously disclosed Paddock had 1,600 rounds of ammunition in his car, along with fertilizer that can be used to make explosives and 50 pounds of Tannerite, a substance used in explosive rifle targets.

Paddock had an arsenal of 23 weapons in his hotel room. A dozen of them included “bump stocks,” attachments that can effectively convert semiautomatic rifles into fully automated weapons.

In a rare concession on gun control, the National Rifle Association announced its support Thursday for regulating the devices.

Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, told FBI agents Wednesday she had not noticed any changes in his mental state or indications he could become violent, the federal official said.

Paddock sent Danley on a trip to her native Philippines before the attack, and she was unaware of his plans and devastated when she learned of the carnage while overseas, she said in a statement.

Investigators combing through his background for clues remain stumped as to his motive.

The profile developed so far is of a “disturbed and dangerous” man who acquired an arsenal over decades, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said. But investigators have been frustrated to find that he lived a “secret life,” Lombardo said, “much of which will never be fully understood.”

A former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort and Spa in Reno said Paddock had a “god complex” and expected quick service without regard to how busy the staff was at the time.

“He liked everybody to think that he was the guy,” John Weinreich said. “He didn’t boast about anything he had or anything. It was just his demeanor. It was like, ‘I’m here. Don’t cross me. Don’t look at me too long.’ ”

The weekend before the massacre, he rented a room through Airbnb at the 21-story Ogden condominiums in downtown Las Vegas and stayed there during a music festival below that included Chance the Rapper, Muse, Lorde and Blink-182.

“Reasons that ran through Paddock’s mind are unknown, but it was directly at the same time as Life Is Beautiful,” the sheriff said.

Police were reviewing video shot at the high-rise to check Paddock’s movements. His renting the condo was curious because, as a high-roller, he could have easily gotten a free room at one of the casino hotels on the Vegas Strip.

In early August, Paddock booked a room at Chicago’s 21-story Blackstone Hotel that overlooked the park where the Lollapalooza alternative music festival was being held, though there’s no evidence he actually stayed there, a law enforcement official said Thursday.

The hotel confirmed a Stephen Paddock made a reservation but said he never checked in.

Lollapalooza draws hundreds of thousands of music fans every year to Grant Park.

Although Paddock killed himself as a SWAT team closed in, the sheriff said it appeared he had planned to survive and had an escape plan. Lombardo would not elaborate on the plan.

The coroner’s office in Las Vegas would not release details of its autopsy on Paddock. Some behavioral experts have wondered whether he suffered from some kind of brain abnormality or had a terminal illness that prompted him to lash out.