FBI: The Las Vegas shooter at the Mandalay Bay who killed 58 people was upset with how casinos treated him
The gunman who murdered 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas in 2017 was “extremely agitated,” according to a cache of records recently made public by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The evidence in the records is the clearest yet that there was a reason behind the bloodiest mass massacre in modern American history.
In order to avoid being caught 64-year-old video poker enthusiast Stephen Paddock committed suicide at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino.
The documents offer the most in-depth look into Paddock's potential motivation and gambling habits to date, going into the months and years leading up to the shootings from his 32nd-floor windows into the 22,000 attendees of the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
“Paddock was very disgruntled at the way casinos were treating him and other high rollers,” a fellow gambler told the FBI, noting that casinos had begun barring high rollers from specific events, hotels, and even casinos around three years prior. The gambler described Paddock as a high roller who likes to play video poker and had a bankroll of between $2 million and $3 million. According to the story, the acquaintance thought that Paddock's “snap” could have been brought on by stress over how high rollers were being treated.
An acquaintance of Paddock's claimed to the FBI that the Mandalay Bay hotel “was not treating Paddock well” and that “a player of his status should have been on a higher floor in a penthouse room.” In response to a public records request made by The Wall Street Journal, the collection of FBI documents was made available last week.
Stephen Paddock: Who was he?
According to records given to the FBI by the Nevada Gaming Authority, which were among the recently made public documents, Paddock bet hundreds of thousands of dollars during a roughly ten-year period in Las Vegas, Reno, and other Nevada properties. For instance, Paddock wagered more than $945,000 in 2006 and pocketed about $4,300 in winnings. Before the incident on October 1, 2017, Paddock made four bookings at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in the month of September. According to the records, Paddock considered himself a professional gambler and stated to one person questioned by the FBI that gambling had become his primary source of income about three years prior to the incident.
The person, whose name was kept secret, told the FBI that Paddock bought the weapon out of concern that he had been earning a lot of money and wanted it as a method of defense. The person informed the FBI. Because he “earned too much money from them,” Paddock claimed he had been expelled from a number of casinos. Paddock would visit the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas about once every three months, typically during the week to play casino games, according to another lady who was questioned by the FBI there. She recalled that on one visit from September 12 to 14, just a few weeks before to the shooting, Paddock lost $38,000. “Paddock only wanted to discuss gaming,” she remarked.
There is no proof of a conspiracy.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of Las Vegas stated in 2018 that the department's 10-month investigation turned up “no proof of conspiracy or a second gunman” and no clear explanation for the shooter's actions. Authorities found that Paddock spent $1.5 million over a two-year period, including money due to casinos; yet, a review of 14 of his bank accounts revealed that he had $2.1 million in September 2015 but just $530,000 at the end of the second year.
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