Las Vegas Mass Murder

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Stephen Paddock was sixty four years old, far out of the age bracket of

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your average mass shooter. He lived
a normal life for a guy's age,

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working in real estate, and although
he'd been married and divorced a couple of

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times, he didn't have any children. And twenty seventeen, Stephen was living

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in a retirement community located more than
an hour's drive away from Las Vegas,

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where he was a regular at the
casinos. Stephen's main vice was gambling,

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and he did it a lot,
all with high stakes. Even though his

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gambling game had recently gone downhill,
putting him into some serious debt, he'd

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paid it all off by the time
October twenty seventeen came around. This all

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tells the story of a pretty ordinary
guy with ordinary problems, albeit most of

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us don't have deep gambling debts.
The most remarkable thing about Stephen was actually

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his parents, in particular his father, Benjamin Paddock. Benjamin had earned a

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spot on the FBI's most wanted list
for almost ten years after carrying out a

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string of bank robberies. However,
Stephen had never shown the same criminal tendencies

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as his father. In six decades, speeding tickets were the only run ins

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he'd had with the cops. On
October first, twenty seventeen, Stephen stationed

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himself in one of the two suites
that he'd booked in the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

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It was on the thirty second floor, giving him a perfect vantage point

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of the crowds of the Las Vegas
Strip below. He'd arrived at the hotel

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on the twenty fifth of September and
decided to rent a second suite a few

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days later. Hotel employees remembered interacting
with Stephen, but they hadn't noticed anything

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out of the ordinary. He spent
most of his time gambling into the early

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hours of the morning, and even
though he'd transported more than twenty suit cases

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up to his suite, he'd done
it gradually enough that nobody had paid any

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attention or had noticed. On the
thirtieth of September, Stephen hung a do

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not disturb sign on the door to
both of his suites. The first of

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October rolled around, and Stephen sat
in his hotel room looking down at the

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festival below. It was the last
night of the Root ninety one Harvest Country

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music Festival, and at around ten
pm, the closing act began to play.

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In the months leading up to this
day, Stephen had been researching events

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in different cities that would be attended
by a large number of people. He

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previously went so far as renting a
hotel room with a view of Chicago's Lallapalooza

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festival, but he never followed through
and didn't show up for his room rental.

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Did he lose his nerve or change
his plan. Between September and October

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two thousand seventeen, Stephen's Google searches
had painted a picture of his plans.

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He typed out queries like swat weapons
and do police use explosives? Now he

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was able to put his plan into
action. At ten or five pm,

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Stephen broke two of the windows with
a hammer and then started to shoot through

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the broken glass. Once he opened
fire, he was relentless. He began

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with a few single shots from his
rifle and quickly escalated to shooting bursts up

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to one hundred rounds at a time. Thirty one people died there at the

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scene, but the number of wounded
was much higher. Many of Stephen's bullets

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hit their intended targets, injuring more
than four hundred festival goers. Directly.

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The strip was already busy with an
estimated twenty two thousand people, who initially

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thought that the loud noises were just
fireworks going off nearby. When the first

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bodies fell, a mass panic began. People tried to flee, trampling,

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climbing over, and shoving each other
to try to save their own lives.

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There was a tall security fence around
the lot, making it difficult for the

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festivalgoers to go anywhere. Quickly,
it corralled them into one area, feeding

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the panic and making them frantic in
their attempt to get away. Another four

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hundred were injured by those who were
trying to escape the gunfire. Twenty seven

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of the shooting victims who were injured
at the scene later died from their injuries

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at the hospital. Here is cell
phone recorded audio from that day as it

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started and people were trying to take
cover or run away. Yet with the

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people on the strip that day,
it must have felt like an eternity,

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but in reality, the shooting only
lasted four round ten minutes, by which

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time Stephen had fired more than a
thousand rounds, only taking short pauses to

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reload or change from one gun to
another. At one point during the shooting,

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Stephen had taken a at a tank
of jet fuel at the International Airport,

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hoping that it would explode. Although
one of his bullets did pierce the

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tank, the jet fuel failed to
ignite. Since the first gun shots,

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police had been scrambling to locate the
shooter, but it was hard to pinpoint

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whether the shots were coming from the
festival grounds themselves or the two nearby hotels.

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They located Stephen after seeing gunfire flashes
from a suite at the Mandalay Bay

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Hotel, but by the time they
had narrowed down what floor the shooter was

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on, they were too late.
The shooting was over. Police arrived at

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the Mandalay Bay Hotel's thirty second floor
at ten seventeen PM and encounter the hotel's

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security guard, Jesus Campos, who
was bleeding from a bullet wound in his

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right thigh. Jesus had responded to
a security alert about an open door on

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the thirty second floor, but it
found that the access door to the floor

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had been barricaded shut. Then he'd
been shot by Stephen through the closed door

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of the suite and quickly taken cover. Despite his Injuryjesus handed the officers a

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master key to all the rooms on
that floor. Only then did he leave

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to seek medical attention. It turned
out that the door Jesus had not been

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able to open had been deliberately screwed
shut by Stephen, and several of the

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responding officers had to break it down
to get inside. They swept down the

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hallway, scouring each room and evacuating
terrified hotel guests as they went. Then

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they used explosive devices to gain access
to the room that Stephen had been shooting

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from. Stephen was surrounded by a
variety of twenty four guns and high capacity

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magazines scattered around his body, where
bolt action rifles, revolvers, semi automatics,

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and sniper rifles. Forensics later discovered
that Stephen had managed to use fifteen

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of the twenty four available guns at
some point during the shooting, but the

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most recent round he'd fired had been
from his Smith and Wesson revolver, and

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the target had been himself. Just
minutes before police arrived, Stephen Paddock died

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from a bullet wound to the head. Investigators, grieving loved ones of the

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victims, and the curious public were
left to piece together why Stephen had carried

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out such a heinous act before turning
the gun on himself. Why would a

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sixty four year old man opened fire
on innocent people at a music festival in

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Nevada. To this day, the
question remains unanswered. The Clark County Sheriff

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revealed that they had found evidence that
Stephen might have had an accomplice and intended

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to escape that day instead of dying
by his own hand. However, the

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evidence has never been made public,
and if that really was Stephen's plan,

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for some reason he decided not to
follow it. If he did have an

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accomplice, that person has never been
identified. There was no note or manifesto

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left behind, nothing to suggest a
motive behind the killing. In fact,

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the only note found in Stephen's hotel
suite contained a series of calculations of the

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wind speeds and distance from his room
to the Las Vegas Strip below. It

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was practical and showed how well planned
the attack was, but he gave no

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insight into what he'd been thinking when
he opened fire. Unlike almost all mass

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shootings, there seemed to be no
message Stephen wanted to convey, and no

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lesson he wanted to teach. He
didn't have links to any extremist groups.

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He wasn't a member of Occult,
and he didn't seem to be having a

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psychotic break. The reason that sixty
people had to die that day is still

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a mystery to everyone but the perpetrator
himself. That is ten minute murder for

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today, brief and bingeible true crime. I'm Joe the host, and thank

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you for taking the time to listen. A question for today comes from Missy

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in Rome and I'm assuming that's Rome
Georgia, not like Rome over and is

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it Italy? I feel stupid right
now. Roma is in Italy. I

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don't know why I ask that.
I'm confident Roma is in Italy, right.

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Yeah, when something is so simple
and obvious, it makes you question

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whether it's right. Sometimes Rome Georgia. I'm sticking with Rome Georgia. That's

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where it is. Dear Joe,
are there some things you avoid saying because

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you have a hard time pronouncing them? Love the podcast, Please do Serial

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Killer Sunday more often, Missy,
Thank you for the question and thank you

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for listening. Also a roll tide. Yeah, there are things that I

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do not say on this podcast very
often. A few of those words I'll

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give you three of them. Rule
rural rule like out in like out in

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the country, rule, rule,
man rule, that's right. I think

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I got it right. Caramel caramel. Obviously I can say both of those,

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but I don't know which one's right. And if you say one,

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the other group of people will say
you're saying it wrong, and you say

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the other one, you're saying it
wrong. It depends on where you're from

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how you say it, and I'm
kind of from all over the place,

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so I don't know how to say
it. I'll use them interchangeably in my

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own personal life. Camel carmel because
I don't care. And the last one

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I think is documented on this podcast
in a previous episode. Regularly. I've

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gotten much better at saying it regularly. Regularly. I have to think about

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it really hard before I say it, though, Regularly say it fast and

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tell me I'm wrong about how hard
that word is. Regularly. See I'm

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doing it now, I'm doing it. Okay. Those are the three that

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I'm giving you. They're probably more
that I can't say that I'm not thinking

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of right now. But anyway,
if you have a question for me or

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a story idea for an episode,
you can email me Joe at ten minute

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00:11:48.360 --> 00:11:52.759
Murder dot com and I don't get
a chance to directly respond to all of

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those, but I promise you I
do read each and every single one of

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them. And hey, if this
is your first time listening to ten Minute

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Murder, please subscribe so that you
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and never miss any of the new
ones. Connect with me on social media

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see the visuals of what we're talking
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you like this episode, please leave
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place that's possible. Your positive feedback
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for all the information about ten minute
Murder you can go to ten minute murder

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dot com. Have a good night
rule, rule, rule, rural,

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rural, rule, rural. I
don't know