Tag: las vegas

Letters addressing the gunman who in October 2017 unleashed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history in Las Vegas, apparently written by an ex-convict who lived in Texas, foretold the carnage to come, according to documents obtained Friday.

“My friend it sound like you are going to kill or murder someone or some people,” said a handwritten letter to Stephen Paddock dated June 1, 2017, and signed Jim Nixon. Addressed “Dear Steve,” it said, “Please don’t go on any shooting rampage like some fool.”

“I am concern about the way you are talking and believe you are going to do something very bad,” said another letter, dated May 27, 2017, that was among 10 unredacted documents released by Las Vegas police. Letters dating to 2013 and 2014 described the men doing business together.

“Please don’t go out shooting or hurting people who did nothing to you,” the May 27 letter pleaded. “Steve please please don’t do what I think you are going to do.”

Police did not receive the letters until nearly two months after Paddock rained gunfire from windows of a high-rise casino hotel into an outdoor concert crowd, killing 58 people and injuring more than 850. Paddock killed himself before police reached him. Two more people died later of their wounds.

The letters were found by new owners of a vacant office building in Mesquite, Texas, who mailed the letters to Las Vegas police. Police said the letters were forwarded to the FBI and that agents investigated.

A reference to the letters was among hundreds of pages of documents made public by the FBI last week in response to a records request from the Wall Street Journal. There was no description of their credibility, but an FBI record said Paddock sold property he owned in Mesquite in approximately 2012.

“Paddock used the money from that sale to buy dozens of weapons that were ultimately used in the shooting,” said a typewritten FBI report with sections blocked out that characterized other records as “negative for contact” between the writer and Paddock.

“We moved into an office and found … a folder full of what appears to be copies of letters,” said a brief Nov. 30, 2017, cover letter with sender and recipient information redacted. “We wish you well with your investigation.”

In a statement Friday, the bureau in Las Vegas declined to comment and pointed to findings by Las Vegas police and the FBI that did not specify a motive for Paddock’s attack.

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In 2017, Stephen Paddock committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

The shooting has been shrouded in mystery for years. Details have been scarce and a motive has never been revealed, until now.  The FBI, too busy with other things, failed to announce a motive.

A new motive theory is being advanced by several media outlets, but it’s raising eyebrows because it doesn’t sound plausible at all.

Does anyone believe this?

From NBC News:

Las Vegas shooter was upset over how casinos treated him, new FBI documents say

The high-stakes gambler who carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern America, killing 60 and injuring hundreds more in Las Vegas, was apparently angry over how the casinos were treating him despite his high-roller status, according to a fellow gambler.

An FBI interview with the gunman’s fellow gambler is detailed in hundreds of pages of documents made public this week. The gambler, whose name is redacted in the documents, said he believed the stress could have easily caused gunman Stephen Paddock “to snap.” Paddock, 64, was a video poker player who relied on gambling as his main source of income.

The revelation comes years after the FBI in Las Vegas and the local police department concluded their investigations without a definitive motive, although both agencies said Paddock burned through more than $1.5 million, became obsessed with guns, and distanced himself from his girlfriend and family in the months leading up to the massacre.

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WES PERRY WAS in his Las Vegas hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino when a gunman, a few rooms away, smashed his own room’s window and opened fire. Fans were gathered across the Las Vegas Strip at a country-music festival. It was Oct. 1, 2017, the final night of the Route 91 Harvest festival, and headliner Jason Aldean had just started singing his hit “When She Says Baby.” The rampage went on for 10 minutes, killing 58 people and injuring more than 850. It is considered the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. 

“I was near the end of the hallway and he was at the very end of the hallway,” Perry tells Rolling Stone. “I looked out the window and I could see very clearly down at the festival site — which is actually why I loved that room — and it was all dark. I had the same view as the shooter.”

When the gunfire erupted at 10:05 p.m. Pacific time, Perry was startled out of the humming silence of his hotel room, where he’d gone to rest and charge his phone after spending Sunday at the festival. To this day, the Nashville resident still needs a white-noise machine to fall asleep. 

“You have to stop and realize how much it’s changed you,” says Perry, who is the director of country sponsorships at Live Nation, the promoters behind Route 91. “You may not realize day to day, in the moment, what it’s done to you, but then you look back and say, ‘Wow, my life changed because of that.’ ”

Yet five years since the massacre at Route 91, little else has, when it comes to mass shootings in the U.S. The suspect, a 64-year-old white man who took his own life by the time authorities entered his room, was identified, yet no motive was ever determined. A ban on bump stocks, the device the shooter used to transform his weapons from semi-automatic to automatic, was enacted via executive order by President Trump in 2018, but seemingly did little to curb future mass shootings using assault rifles. And the survivors, traumatized and struggling to heal — an estimated 22,000 people attended the festival’s third day — find it hard to agree upon anything. Even the official death toll is a point of fierce debate.

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