It took six years, but it appears federal authorities may have possibly begun to genuinely crack the case of the Las Vegas mass shooter, Stephen Paddock.

As previously reported, Paddock was a high-stakes gambler who opened fire on a crowd attending a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 1st, 2017, killing 60 people.

Following the mass shooting, the authorities struggled to discern a motive for the crime, while the media meanwhile linked it to white supremacy without any evidence.

Literally nothing linked the 2017 Las Vegas shooter to white supremacy. His victims were virtually all white and it turns out he was just angry at casinos. Yet dozens of media figures baselessly reported on his supposed racial motivations at the time. https://t.co/B8MoLJfyGu

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 31, 2023

Now fast-forward to late last month, when the FBI released “a trove of documents” related to the case. While the documents didn’t explicitly lay out a motive, they did offer clues and hints as to what it might possibly be.

Case in point: “A fellow gambler told the FBI that Paddock had said he was ‘very upset at the way casinos were treating him and other high rollers,’ noting that casinos had reduced the number of perks they gave to VIP customers in the years leading up to the shooting,” The Wall Street Journal reported following the documents’ release.

The gambler friend said that the stress over the reduction in perks could “easily be what caused Paddock to snap.”

Keep in mind this is just speculation. Still, it’s more than investigators had prior to their interview with the gambler friend. That said, it does contradict with what a panel convened by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit found after a yearlong investigation.

“In its 2019 report, the panel said there was no indication that he was motivated by a grievance against ‘any specific casino, hotel, or institution in Las Vegas.’ The aging Paddock wanted to kill himself and sought infamy by killing as many people as he could, the report said,” according to the Journal.

Plus, members of the public remain very skeptical about the fellow gambler’s claim, given as the mass shooting hadn’t involved shooting up, you know, a casino:

And it took them 6 years to release this little information, why? Transparency on this, the largest mass shooting in US history, is severely lacking

— X_TonyJ_x (@tonyj_x) March 31, 2023

It only makes sense to kill a shitload of innocent people who also are getting roughed up by the same casinos then.. Besides the fact that this motive could have been found days after, not 6 years.

— MsInFour (@TryonZack) March 31, 2023

K if he lost a lot of money gambling, and was mad at the casino, somehow able to afford guns and ammo when losing money at the same time, so why did he shoot at a concert with hundreds of people?

— Mysterious Orb in a Dungeon (@trappedndungeon) March 30, 2023

Calling BS here. This ‘report’ comes on the heals of the manifesto in Nashville with many bringing up the lack of info on Vegas. Also, a lone shooter with a perceived grievance focuses on it. He would have shot up the casino not the festival.

— The Centerist (@JonnySunshine7) March 31, 2023

Remind me again, how many casino workers he shot? Was it the dealer, the management, maybe the pit boss??? Oh wait, it was nobody that had anything to do with the reason he was “disgruntled”… yeah, ok fbi, that’s the best y’all could come up with? After all this time???

— Mike Thomas (@ButcherMike87) April 2, 2023

The documents released last month also included statements from a guy who reportedly worked with Paddock at some point in the past and stayed in touch with him afterward. The man said that Paddock had been “mad at the system” and fascinated with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And so there’s another possible motive. That said, the man hadn’t expected him to “go out like that.”

Another possible motive is money loss.

“Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, the former head of the Las Vegas police, said … in 2018 that Paddock’s gambling losses may have been a factor; his bank accounts dwindled from $2.1 million to $530,000 in the two years before the attack. But the sheriff said investigators weren’t able to ‘definitively answer the why,'” according to the Journal.

Notice how there are so many possible motives? That’s the problem. Thus far is that the feds have been unable to pinpoint one precise motive. Instead they’ve found leads pointing to multiple motives, none of which have been corroborated yet.

Indeed, according to the Journal, “A 10-month probe by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department previously turned up no evidence of Paddock’s motives after interviews with his relatives, girlfriend, ex-wife, doctor and casino hosts, as well as searches of his computers, phones and internet history. He left no statement or suicide note, wasn’t affiliated with a terrorist group and had no mental-health diagnosis that might explain his actions.”

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Vivek Saxena

Senior Staff Writer -- [email protected]
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.

V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.

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