Is Vegas shooter's girlfriend the key to elusive answers?
Amid bizarre new details, sheriff suggests Stephen Paddock’s girlfriend may be hiding something from investigators still searching for a motive in the Las Vegas massacre. #Tucker
Stephen Paddock’s girlfriend may be hiding something from investigators who are trying to piece together the motive behind the Las Vegas massacre, the city’s sheriff suggested in a wide-ranging interview with a local television station.
Marilou Danley, who is still a person of interest in the case, has told authorities that she never knew the attack was coming. Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, in his first TV appearance in nearly three weeks, told KLAS that investigators he’s spoken to believe this assessment is accurate. But he added that something appears to be off about the manner in which Paddock amassed his arsenal of weapons.
“There is a lot of people that have hundreds and hundreds of guns, but for this individual to do it at a certain point in time and to do it all with such robust action, you would think that Ms. Danley would have some information associated with that,” he said. “But currently we haven’t been able to pull that out of her, if it’s in her.”
Lombardo added that Danley will be interviewed again this week and he suggested she could have prevented the massacre, which left 58 dead and hundreds injured.
“It could have been prevented on many levels,” Lombardo told KLAS’ George Knapp. “Marilou Danley, his brother, anybody that may have had some modicum of information that would have presented this individual’s state of mind, but apparently right now we don’t know that.”
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Danley was in the Philippines at the time of the attack and Paddock wired $100,000 to an account in the country days earlier, according to past reports.
No motive for the Oct. 1 shooting has been revealed yet, but Lombardo said that since September 2015, Paddock – a high-rolling gambler – had lost a significant amount of wealth.
“I think that might have a determining factor on what he determined to do,” Lombardo said.
The sheriff said Paddock was narcissistic, had some bouts of depression and was very status-driven, based on how he liked to be recognized in the casinos and by his family and friends, which was starting to decline.
Oct. 9, 2017: Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo discusses the Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department headquarters in Las Vegas. (AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Paddock fired off more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and had access to over 4,000 more, Lombardo told KLAS.
The shooting spree stopped after, according to Lombardo’s belief, Paddock realized the authorities were closing in.
“I believe the suspect believed the wolf was at the door and took his own life,” Lombardo said.
A hard drive that was missing from one of Paddock’s laptops found in the room after police entered has still not been recovered.
“The hard drive was not located in the room,” Lombardo said. “We may never know where that hard drive is. It could have been removed years ago.”
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Security footage obtained by police from Mandalay Bay is still being investigated and Paddock was not seen in the presence of any other individuals while moving around the property, Lombardo added.
The sheriff also said “conspiracy theories and thinking that we are trying to hide stuff or are conspiring together to hide stuff is ridiculous.” He also blasted Internet trolls accusing the victims and their families of faking the injuries and deaths.
“I’m amazed at people’s mental state to post the stuff that they post,” Lombardo told KLAS. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I wish I could locate some of these individuals or have them present themselves to me personally and I’ll show them what happened out there.”
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