Probe documents don’t hint at motive

The Las Vegas gunman who opened fire on concertgoers in October carefully prepared both for the attack and the investigation that would follow, according to hundreds of pages of court documents made public late Friday.

In the court documents, which detail some of the early days of the investigation, 64-year-old gunman Stephen Paddock is described as spending significant time amassing his weapons and stockpiling ammunition while also seeking “to thwart the eventual law-enforcement investigation” into the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

Paddock, firing from his high-rise hotel suite at the Mandalay Bay resort, killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others at a country-music festival on the Las Vegas Strip far below before killing himself, police said.

The newly released documents do not answer the main question that has lingered since the Oct. 1 attack: What motivated Paddock to carry it out?

Many details in the more than 300 pages of documents — which were unsealed in response to requests from media organizations — were previously known.

Paddock bought the items used in his attack during the year leading up to it, the FBI said, and a large share of the ammunition and accessories he amassed appear to have been bought online. Federal authorities said Paddock used “anonymously attributed communications devices,” destroyed or concealed digital storage, and had at least three cellphones in the hotel suite where he opened fire.

Two of the cellphones were not locked, and authorities were able to examine them, producing no significant information about Paddock’s plans or preparations, the FBI wrote. But the third phone, which has a Google operating system, was locked, and authorities said they could access the device only with help. The FBI special agent who signed the affidavit argued that because only that phone was locked, any information related to a criminal conspiracy would be found on it.

Authorities also said that investigators searching Paddock’s hotel rooms, his vehicle and homes found more than 20 guns, hundreds of rounds of unused ammunition, suitcases partially filled with “pre-loaded highcapacity magazines,” body armor, a homemade gas mask and explosive materials.