Las Vegas Shooter Update
Posted on Mon Oct 09, 2017 at 01:43:26 PM EST
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There's been all sorts of news updates on Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock over the weekend, none of which seem to offer a clue into his behavior.
One worthwhile interview I saw was that of Steve Wynn, the billionaire owner of many Las Vegas hotels. (Corrected: He built the Mirage but no longer owns it.) He said his staff was very familiar with both Paddock and Marilou Danley and they were as "vanilla" as could be -- no flags at all.
He says Paddock didn’t run up debts or have a gambling problem. Wynn said butlers, waiters and massage employees knew Paddock and his girlfriend.
The main thrust of his interview was the difference in security tactics at the Mirage and other hotels. [More...]
A few questions I have: He did not check into the suite on Thursday. It wasn't available until Saturday. So he stayed in another room until then.
A person who has seen Mandalay Bay hotel records that have been turned over to investigators said Wednesday they show Stephen Paddock asked for the two-room suite on the 32nd floor when he checked in last Thursday. The room wasn’t available until Saturday and he moved into it then and opened fire from it the next night, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. A person who has seen Mandalay Bay hotel records that have been turned over to investigators said Wednesday they show Stephen Paddock asked for the two-room suite on the 32nd floor when he checked in last Thursday. The room wasn’t available until Saturday and he moved into it then and opened fire from it the next night, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.
If he moved rooms on Saturday, the issue of housekeeping not entering his room seems to be a dead one. The hotel clearly knew a safety check was not needed as he was alive and able to move rooms. If he was only in the shooting suite from Saturday until Sunday, I doubt a do not disturb sign would raise a red flag.
This raises a question to me: Did he wait until Saturday to bring in his weapons and tools, or did he bring them to his first room and then move them to the shooting suite on Saturday. Surely the hotel's video cameras would show that.
Also investigators would have searched his first room as well. While the room would have been cleaned for the next guest, did the housekeepers or next guest find anything unusual to report?\
Wynn phrases the question of motive a little differently, and I think the distinction is significant. Instead of asking what his motive was, he asks what message he was trying to send by his acts:
“This is a man who behaved rationally, privately, a little introverted, liked to play video poker. But he was a rational man. And every historical review of his behavior indicates that he was a rational man; so was his girlfriend. And yet he prepared over an extended period of time, a totally irrational act.
“Now, this sounds like someone either totally demented -- a behavior which he never evidenced -- or someone who's sending a message. This is a plan. We don't know what that message is or if there is one, but this behavior, according to my employees, is as stunning, as unexpected as anybody, any of them have ever met.
One comment of Wynn's seemed to be out of the blue, which suggests to me he has a lot of inside information from law enforcement that we don't have. He mentioned that in his hotel, guests are not allowed to use the service elevators unaccompanied by some member of the staff. Why would he just throw that in unless he had information that either Paddock (or a visitor to his room) had used the service elevator? Is that how he moved his suitcases from the first suite to the next? Or is that how the female who may have visited him arrived or left?
In the Marilou Danley department, Philippine news reported over the weekend that her faith-healer brother, Reynaldo Bustos, who gave an interview to ABC (warning: autoplay video) has not been seen since Thursday. His wife says someone came and picked him up and he never returned. Is he in hiding or was he kidnapped? (He practices hilot, the ancient Filipino art of healing, and herbal medicine.)
I personally think Marilou had nothing to do with the shooting plot but I wonder why Paddock gave her a ticket to the Philippines rather than Australia. She left the Philippines in the 1970's with her daughter and moved to Australia. She married a man name Darcy (a boxer 30 years older than her who died in 2003). They divorced in the 1980's and she moved to the U.S. in 1989 or 1990 and has lived here ever since. Her brother said she had not been back to the Philippines since 2012. He said the money he wired her was for a business, not a home. She told authorities it was for a home, although she didn't say it was for a home in the Philippines.
He and she don't speak the same language, so that might account for that difference, but still, whose account was the money wired to? Did she even have a bank account in the Philippines? Did she have a bank account in Hong Kong, and go there to deposit the funds or retrieve them?
What was the point of the Las Vegas Police in its interview on 60 minutes? The departmenet would not have sent four cops unless it wanted to get a message out. I don't believe for a minute the cop who claimed he could read the note on the "nightstand" and that he saw it contained numbers he recognized as height distances and shooting calculations. Either he learned that afterwards, or it's a lie, the numbers were something else (like phone numbers) and the police wanted this version of the note out there so as not to tip off anyone whose phone numbers were on the paper.
The FBI has a cryptanalysis unit called the CRRU (Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit) that specializes analyzing handwritten notes. While I personally don't trust their results (especially when they use it for drug rather than gambling records), that is the unit that will decide what his writing meant, not a local Las Vegas police officer who saw it for a few seconds or minutes. (Also, it was not on a "nightstand" but an octagonal table near his shooting set-up. It also had something on top of it, so how much of it could he see unless he picked it up to read it. Was he wearing gloves?)
ISIS continues to insist it has a connection to Paddock. I am not discounting it. Paddock had so many cameras, it seems to me he could have recorded himself shooting, and during his pause in shooting, or in the time between he stopped shooting and when police entered the room, sent the video somewhere and then erased it. I doubt he shared ISIS' reasons for attacks, I think he was sending his own message, but I wouldn't be surprised if he turned to them for guidance.
One other question I have that I haven't seen raised. The concert had been going on for hours. Jason Aldean was the last performer. I've seen reports that the shooting began during his final song. Why did he wait until the very end of the show to start shooting? How much had the crowd thinned by then? I think the "22,000" number is the number of people who attended the three day festival, not the number watching Jason Aldean at the show's end. Surely the crowd has thinned out.
As for a plan of escape, who escapes in slippers, which is what he was wearing in the photo showing his dead body? I think the Sheriff believes he was going to try and shoot his way out. He might have been able to hold police at bay for hours that way, but escape? I don't think so.
What was he doing after he shot the guard and before the police entered his room? The shooting had stopped. Was he erasing his camera footage and phone and computer contents? Destroying evidence that might identify anyone who gave him guidance?
CNN got a copy of Paddock's 2013 deposition from his slip and fall lawsuit against a casino. It doesn't tell us anything about motive.
As for what Paddock's message might have been, I have no idea. He could have been mad at the world, mad at Las Vegas, mad at the Government or any number of things.
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