Las Vegas sheriff: Mass killer led a 'secret life' before attack
The Las Vegas gunman behind the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history spent decades stockpiling guns and living a “secret life” that investigators may never be able to fully understand, police say.
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Clark County, Nev., Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Wednesday that it was only logical to “make the assumption” that Stephen Paddock had “some help at some point” in pulling off Sunday's massacre.
As evidence, Lombardo pointed to gunman Paddock’s huge arsenal, explosive materials found in his car and his meticulous planning.
“What we know is Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo and living a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood,” the sheriff said.
Authorities also revealed that they believe Paddock had an escape plan, even though he turned the gun on himself as police closed in on his luxury suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Paddock killed 58 people and injured hundreds in the attack as he fired from his room on the 32nd floor.
Authorities were still searching for a motive.
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"Anything that would indicate this individual’s trigger point, that would cause him to do such harm, we haven’t understood it yet," Lombardo told reporters Wednesday. "Don't you think the concealment of his history of his life was well thought out?"
Lombardo said Paddock had 1,600 rounds of ammunition and several containers of an explosive commonly used in target shooting that totaled 50 pounds in his car. But it wasn't clear what, if anything, Paddock planned with the explosives, he said.
Authorities also revealed that the weekend before the shooting, Paddock, 64, had rented a high-rise condo in a building that overlooked the Life is Beautiful alternative music festival featuring Chance the Rapper, Muse, Lorde and Blink-182. Lombardo offered no other details on what led Paddock there.
Eric Paddock called his 64-year-old multimillionaire brother a "private guy." As for what triggered the massacre, Eric Paddock said, "Something happened that drove him into the pit of hell."
Marilou Danley, Paddock's girlfriend, returned to the U.S. from the Philippines on Tuesday and was interviewed Wednesday by FBI agents in Los Angeles.
The 62-year-old said in a statement read by her lawyer that Paddock had sent her to see family in her native Philippines weeks earlier, and she was still overseas at the time of the attack. She said he wired her money so she could buy a house for her family, and she was initially pleased but later feared it was a way to break up with her.
FULL COVERAGE: THE MASSACRE IN LAS VEGAS
Paddock led such a low-key, private life that no one seemed to know him well, and those who did had no sense he was capable of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
Where other mass killers have left behind a trail of plain-sight clues that help investigators quickly understand what drove them to violence, Paddock had nearly no close friends, social media presence or other clear connections to the broader world.
Even the No. 2 official in the FBI said Wednesday he was surprised investigators have not uncovered more about why a man with no obvious criminal record would cause so much bloodshed.
"There's all kinds of things that surprise us in each one of these events. That's the one in this one, and we are not there yet," FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said. "We have a lot of work to do."
They wonder if he had some sort of mental break at the time that drove him to start making plans for mass murder.
Authorities were looking for hints in those details of the kind of life he lived, and the kind of victims and venue he targeted, said David Gomez, a former FBI national security and criminal profiler.
"We may never know to 100 percent certainty," he said. "But they will find out."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
