Vegas Massacre Victims Must Wait A Year For More Clues About Shooter"s Motive

The FBI and Las Vegas Police Department seemingly left no stone unturned in their quest to ascertain exactly why 64-year-old Stephen Paddock – a multimillionaire real-estate investor and video-poker aficionado – decided to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

Investigators raided Paddock’s homes, interrogated his siblings and longtime girlfriend – whom he had reportedly “sent away” on a trip abroad before committing his horrible crime – scrutinized his finances and interviewed employees at the casinos where he regularly was comped rooms and other luxuries, perks of his high-roller status.

Still, many details remain unclear. The official timeline of events was changed several times, and there’s still some doubt as to whether Paddock shot security guard Jesus Campos – the first person to alert authorities to Paddock’s whereabouts – before or after he opened fire on an unsuspecting crowd of country music fans. Authorities insist they have found no evidence to suggest that Paddock had help in carrying out his assault.

Joe Lombardo

And while investigators have made little progress in their search for a motive, sheriff Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas police revealed last month that Paddock had racked up millions of dollars in gambling losses in the years before the shooting.

But now that the initial phase of the investigation is over, the victims and their families will need to wait until late next year before the FBI releases its definitive report on the Oct. 1 shooting, which left 59 dead and more than 500 injured. According to Fox News, the report is expected to be finished shortly before the one-year anniversary of the shooting.

While the LVPD is preparing its own report, the FBI will focus on why Paddock did what he did – a question that has been left almost totally unresolved, according to Fox News, which cited an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal.

“Now that’s a long time for some people, but speaking for the FBI, that’s light speed, all right?” Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday.

 

Rouse said reports from other agencies investigating the mass shooting will be released at different times, but the FBI’s one is “focusing a large part on the why” which is “what everybody wants to know."

 

That burning question has not been answered, but Rouse said evidence still suggests Paddock was the only person involved in the attack and that he has not been linked with any affiliations or ideologies. The FBI previously denied claims by the Islamic State that Paddock was responding to a call to intensify attacks against Western countries bombing its territories in Syria and Iraq.

 

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Joe Lombardo has said in the past that Paddock’s mounting gambling losses may have played a role.

 

“As I sit here today, I believe that we are learning as much as we possibly can about why the subject did what they did,” Rouse said.

One it’s finally released, the report will include a digest of all the information gleaned from over 400 interviews FBI agents conducted in the US and abroad. The bureau has also reviewed 22,000 hours of footage captured by surveillance cameras and cell phones.

Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the FBI has interviewed around 400 people worldwide in connection to Paddock and has brought in the same number of specialists to help document evidence. He said the Route 91 Harvest music festival site took investigators 14 days to comb over, while Paddock’s room and hotel hallway at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino took 13. Important items found at both sites have been sent to the FBI"s central lab in Virginia.

 

"We’re going to have, I think, the best digital schematic of what happened and where it happened and how it happened that you can come up with," Rouse said.

 

He added that FBI investigators have 22,000 hours of surveillance and cellphone footage and 250,000 photos to look over, amounting to about 40 terabytes of data.

 

"We didn’t leave anything uncovered,” Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And again, the casinos, with their support, let us track down a lot of information of who may have had contact with that person. And it was very helpful to us."

In the two-and-a-half months since the shooting, hundreds of victims and their families have filed lawsuits against MGM Resorts, the owner of the Mandalay Bay resort and casino where Paddock carried out his deadly massacre. Many of the lawsuits allege negligence on behalf of the hotel and its staff. As the victims’ attorneys begin discovery, it’s possible that some of the details withheld by the FBI and police might surface.

* * *

Meanwhile, Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg on Friday released the official coroner"s report on the massacre. It included some grim details: Of the 59 people (including Paddock) who were killed, all of them died of gunshot wounds, according to the New York Post. None had been trampled, as some media outlets had initially reported.

Most of those killed died from a single gunshot wound, though four victims sustained multiple gunshot wounds, the coroner said. Twenty-one people were shot in the head, 36 died with chest and back wounds and one - Rocio Guillen of Corona, California - died of a gunshot to the leg, according to a chart the coroner released. Another 500 people were injured during the shooting.

 

Vegas Shooter Was Depressed, Lost "A Significant Amount Of Wealth" Before Massacre

It’s been more than a month since Stephen Paddock smashed two windows in his hotel suite and opened fire on a crowd of 20,000 unsuspecting country music fans, and investigators are still desperately grasping for something that sounds like a motive in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Extrapolating from the evidence that’s been presented to the public, it seems whatever Paddock"s motive might"ve been, he took it to his grave. Indeed, it seems logical to assume that any hints of Paddock’s state of mind in the moments leading up to the attack were encoded on the hard drive he reportedly smashed (or maybe even clues that might’ve led investigators to a possible accomplice).

Still, the pressure is building to find something to close the narrative, so to speak, as victims of the attack have begun filing lawsuits against MGM resorts. The company has been suspiciously tight-lipped about the attack, with reports suggesting the company forced Jesus Campos, the security guard whom Paddock shot in the leg - allegedly the first person to discover the shooter - into hiding, presumably to keep him from sharing details with the press that had not been vetted. He later made his first public appearance on the Ellen Show, reportedly because MGM execs felt Ellen wouldn’t ask too many penetrating questions about the still-murky timeline of events.

Among other details, it’s still unclear when, exactly, Campos happened on Paddock. And this is important because it would help to determine how long it took for the SWAT team took to get to Paddock’s room after hotel security was first alerted.

Meanshilw, as lawsuits against the company mount, strange details like a report earlier in the week that one member of the SWAT team responding to the incident "accidentally discharged" his gun in Paddock’s room. Paddock reportedly killed himself minutes before the police arrived. He shot Campos in the leg - and reportedly fired 200 rounds into the hallway - after being alerted to his presence thanks to a series of cameras he had rigged in and around his room.

So in a surprising update on Friday, the Associated Press reported what appears to be a trial balloon (and a weak one at that) hinting that, after weeks of intensive scrutiny, investigators are finally slouching toward a motive.

Gunman Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and real estate investor, had lost a "significant amount of wealth" since September 2015, which led to "bouts of depression," Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said in an interview this week with Las Vegas news station KLAS-TV.

Depression would fit with other hints that Paddock suffered from untreated mental illness. But more importantly, it would satisfy the public"s craving for closure that would also remedy the uncertainty that there may have been something more sinister afoot.  While Police aren"t calling it a motive, they"re saying the loss of wealth could"ve been a "determining factor" in the shooting, which is notably vague.

"This individual was status-driven, based on how he liked to be recognized in the casino environment and how he liked to be recognized by his friends and family," Lombardo said. "So, obviously, that was starting to decline in the short period of time, and that may have had a determining effect on why he did what he did."

 

Investigators still have not determined exactly what led Paddock to unleash a barrage of gunfire at concertgoers from his high-rise suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino on Oct. 1.

Of course, judging by the caveat, authorities still don’t feel comfortable citing this as the definitive motive, at least not yet. Still, it’s a useful hedge if, three months from now, they haven’t found anything else more compelling.

They still might: Tellingly, the AP also reported that investigators are once again putting the screws to the shooter’s longtime girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who has repeatedly insisted she saw no indication that he might be planning this horrible attack. Sheriff Joe Lombardo also casted aspersions on Paddock’s brothers, with whom he reportedly had little contact. One brother, Bruce Paddocks, was recently arrested in connection with a child pornography sting.

Marilou Danley is still considered a "person of interest" in the investigation and was being questioned again this week, Lombardo said. The FBI previously questioned her about Paddock"s gun purchases and what she may have noticed about his behavior, Danley has repeatedly denied knowing anything about the attack and said Paddock never said or did anything that would have led her to believe he was going to carry out a massacre.

 

But the sheriff said he had doubts about her story, calling it "hard to believe."

 

"You would think Ms. Danley would have some information associated with that," Lombardo said. "Currently, we haven"t been able to pull it out of her, if she has it in her."

 

The sheriff also described Paddock"s younger brother, Eric, as "manic" in interviews with news reporters outside his Florida home following the shooting but didn"t elaborate. Eric Paddock has called his brother a multimillionaire

 

"You can see there"s something associated with the family," Lombardo said without elaborating.

 

A second brother, Bruce Paddock, was arrested in Los Angeles on Oct. 25 on suspicion of possessing child pornography.

Whatever happened that night, the public might soon learn more of the details that investigators at the FBI and LVPD have so far refused to share. The AP is suing for radio dispatches, security camera footage and other records relating to the police response to the shooting. And as lawsuits move forward, some more evidence may well be made public during discovery.

Which only adds more pressure for investigators to have some defense - something they can turn to to explain the shooting and, in doing so, obviate any suspicions of incompetence that might color the public’s perception of both the investigation, and the actions of first responders.

"Shots Fired" - MGM Releases Audio Of Security Guard Reporting Las Vegas Shooting

Nearly a month after the worst mass shooting in US history, many questions remain unanswered.

After an exhaustive investigation, the FBI and Las Vegas Police Department have confirmed that Paddock meticulously planned the assault, and even booked hotel rooms overlooking music festivals in other cities – suggesting that he had planned previous attacks, but backed out for whatever reason. However, his motive is seemingly lost to the wind.

But perhaps even more troubling than the absence of a motive (from a legal perspective, at least) is the fact that, four weeks later, the timeline of events remains murky. Specifically, two things are still unclear: The first is whether security guard Jesus Campos, who first alerted the hotel to the attack, was shot before, during or after the assault began. The second is how long it took the hotel’s dispatcher to inform the police.

This information is, of course, crucial because victims of the attack have already begun filing lawsuits against MGM Resorts, the owner of Mandalay Bay, for negligence related to the attack.

So far, the company appears to be doing everything it can to suppress any new information from leaking to the press. The mystery surrounding Campos’s activities following the attack has only further alarmed victims. Following Stephen Paddock"s Oct. 1st massacre, Campos flaked on a press conference that he reportedly scheduled then went missing for days before suddenly resurfacing on the "Ellen" show - a decision that was made for him by MGM management, who apparently believed Ellen wouldn"t ask too many probing questions.

On Saturday, audio of Campos’s dispatch call reporting “shots fired” has been released. But curiously, the audio was not released with a time stamp, making it impossible for the public to discern when, exactly, the call was placed.

During the 24-second audio released Friday, Campos can be heard reporting “shots fired” at Mandalay Bay from the 32nd floor.

“Hey, there are shots fired in 32-135,” Campos says, according to the audio, which was released by MGM.

According to the most recent official version of events (which has of course been revised several times) Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo has said Campos first reported that he had come across a blocked off doorway on the 32nd floor at 9:59 pm. The official timeline shows him being shot six minutes later, just before Paddock began firing on the crowd of 20,000 country music fans across the street. The shooting ended around 10:15, and the first police to arrive on the floor encountered Campos minutes later before forcing their way into Paddock’s room.

Last week, the New York Times postulated an alternative timeline that places the shooting of Campos about a minute after the shooting began. While it’s been reported that Paddock fired 200 rounds into the hallway, the gunshots in the record sound distant enough to suggest that he may have been firing on the crowd during the Campos call.  

Of course, the audio clip was not released with a timestamp, and no explanation from MGM was given as to why the clip is just being released now.

But as lawsuits move forward, perhaps more details about what exactly happened that night will emerge.

Mysterious "Missing" Vegas Security Guard Left The Country Days After Vegas Massacre

The mystery surrounding Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos grows increasingly bizarre by the day.  Following Stephen Paddock"s October 1st massacre in Las Vegas, Campos, who may or may not have been shot by Paddock, flaked on a press conference that he reportedly scheduled then went missing for days before suddenly resurfacing on the "Ellen" show.

Now, Fox News has uncovered Customs and Border Patrol documents showing that Campos apparently crossed the border into Mexico days after the Vegas massacre.  Campos reportedly crossed the border at the same place in January but, for whatever reason, was driving a rental car this time around instead of his own vehicle.  Per the New York Post:

Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos mysteriously left the country just days after the Las Vegas massacre, a report says.

 

Customs and Border Patrol documents obtained by Fox News show that the 25-year-old entered the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro border crossing in California — one week after the mass shooting.

 

It’s unclear how long Campos was out of the country. The documents only show that he entered back into the US.

 

The young man reportedly crossed the border at the same location in January.

 

While Campos was driving his own vehicle with Nevada plates during that trip, sources told Fox that he took a rental car this time around — which was registered in California.

Of course, this raises a number of new questions including, but certainly not limited to, the following: (1) why would the FBI allow a material witness to flee the country during an ongoing investigation, (2) if Campos was shot, why/how did he spend hours in a car on a road trip to Mexico rather recuperating in a hospital bed and (3) if this was a "pre-planned" visit, as his union suggests, then why did investigators seem so baffled by his disappearance.

The new information raises even more questions about Stephen Paddock’s Oct. 1 massacre — such as why authorities would allow Campos to leave the country in the middle of their investigation or how the security guard managed to make it down to Mexico with a gunshot wound to his leg.

 

Campos reportedly took a bullet from gunman Stephen Paddock at the start of his killing spree.

 

The union that represents him told Fox that they were aware of his trip to Mexico and claimed it was pre-planned visit. What’s unclear, though, why the group didn’t report his whereabouts in the days following the massacre.

So what say you?  Was this just an innocent, pre-planned trip to Mexico or is there a lot more to the Jesus Campos saga?

This Is The Most Equity-Bullish Chart We've Seen Yet

How expensive are US equities versus their peers around the world? Compared to bonds? Commodities? Are there fundamental risks we can identify?

In the following presentation, Cantillon Consulting"s Sean Corrigan answers all of the above and details what opportunities for better asset allocation might lie ahead...

Howver, deep in the presentation is an intriguing little chart.

As Sean Corrigan explains, if we superimpose the pattern of US Stock-to-Corporate Bond relative value from World War I to the end of World War II on the post-Berlin Wall data, we get a near-perfect overlap with the Crash of "29 corresponding to the Tech bust and the "37 slump to the Great Financial Crisis.

Were the somewhat spooky parallels to continue, 2020 would usher in a two-decade, 13% CAR stock outperformance over corporate bonds as enjoyed during the 50s and 60s.

Which, as Corrigan concludes, would be something to behold... and is probably the most bullish equity market analog we have seen yet.