Las Vegas gunman lost money, became unstable before shooting

[David Fritz]

LAS VEGAS (AP) — 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 behavior 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 told reporters.

The FBI is expected to release its final investigative report, including a
psychological profile of the gunman, later this year, Lombardo said,
noting that authorities want to leave "no stone unturned."

"The FBI's assessment may shed a better light on Paddock's personality and
what motivated him, but I don't know if they can provide a motive," said
police Sgt. Jerry MacDonald, a key investigator in the case.

One of Paddock's 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 police department.

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

The report included a summary of 14 of Paddock's bank accounts, which
contained a total of $2.1 million in September 2015. Two years later, the
amount had dropped to $530,000. He "wasn't as successful in the gambling
as he was in the previous years," Lombardo said.

Investigators said Paddock paid more than $600,000 to casinos and over
$170,000 to credit card companies. The analysis said he also made nearly
$95,000 in firearms-related purchases.

The report gave no other information about the casino purchases. High-
rollers like Paddock are often given credit lines at casinos.

Paddock bought more than three dozen guns between 2016 and 2017. Danley
told investigators that she noticed he was buying large amounts of
ammunition, but he dismissed her concerns by saying it was cheaper to buy
in bulk, according to the report.

She told police that she accompanied Paddock to gun stores and gun shows
and helped him set up a gun range in Nevada. Danley told authorities he
tended to be obsessive when he dove into a new hobby, and she considered
the behavior part of that same pattern, said Detective Trever Alsup, the
lead investigator in the case.

Paddock's mother, Irene Hudson, told investigators she did not understand
why her son would carry out an attack and believed he "must have developed
some type of 'brain tumor,'" the report said.

An autopsy did not find anything unusual with Paddock's physical
condition, even after a microscopic brain examination by experts at
Stanford University.

A brother, Eric Paddock, described his sibling as a "narcissist" who only
cared about people he could benefit from.

Survivor Megan O'Donnell Clements, who attended the music festival with
three friends, said she had come to accept that a motive would likely
never be found but "to see it written out and finalized" in the police
report was gut-wrenching.

"It's worse. It's not closure," the resident of Wilmington, Delaware, told
The Associated Press. "To know for real that we'll never really know, it's
kind of horrifying. I just don't understand what would have driven someone
to that, and to have absolutely no answers, even if I had in my brain
accepted that, it's just really hard to swallow."

The final details of the investigation came after police released 13
batches of investigative documents, 911 calls, police reports, witness
statements and video over the last three months. They have illustrated
chaos, heartbreak and heroism from first responders, concertgoers and
family members.

Police body camera recordings earlier made public showed officers using
explosives to blast through the door of a 32nd-floor hotel suite to find
Paddock dead on the floor from a self-inflicted gunshot. There were 23
assault-style weapons, including 14 fitted with rapid-fire "bump stock"
devices, strewn about the room and a revolver near Paddock's body.

Authorities concluded that Paddock fired for 11 minutes, using multiple
weapons outfitted with target scopes and bump stocks. Eight incendiary
rounds were directed at an aviation fuel tank at the nearby airport. Two
hit the tank, but it did not explode.

Officers found several laptops, including at least one that was missing a
hard drive, the report said.

Eric Paddock told investigators that he believed his brother had cheated
on the family's tax preparation. Eric was worried he might be implicated
for tax evasion if evidence was collected from his brother's hard drives,
the report said.

When police told Eric Paddock about the missing hard drive, he repeated
several times: "Maybe he did care for us."

Friday's report further detailed Paddock's meticulously planning,
including researching SWAT tactics, renting other hotel rooms overlooking
outdoor concerts and investigating potential targets in at least four
cities.

The police department is conducting internal reviews into individual
officers' actions, including one veteran officer who froze in a hallway a
floor below where Paddock was firing onto the crowd of 22,000 country
music fans.

Another officer accidentally fired a rifle during a blast to breach a
locked door in Paddock's room. Police said no one was injured and the shot
did not hit Paddock.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/las-vegas-police-release-final-report-oct-1-
153238961.html