There was no “clear” motive for Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 people in Las Vegas in 2017, but he wanted to commit suicide and seek notoriety, according to an FBI investigation report released Tuesday.
The federal police did not establish a “unique” motive for the worst shootings in recent US history, which also injured more than 800 people at a country concert. 1 st October 2017.
But, in retracing Stephen Paddock’s past, a panel of legal and psychiatric experts put forward a complex set of “potential motivational factors,” as most mass shooters do.
One certainty is in their final report: the shooter, who acted alone, had no ideological, political or religious motivation. Nor did he have a particular “grievance” against his targets, chosen for practical reasons.
But the 64-year-old former accountant, who had lost a lot of money in casinos, had “aged badly” in recent years. Suffering from “an objective (and subjective) decline in his physical and moral form […] and his financial status,” he wanted to “take control of the end of his life by committing suicide,” they note.
In parallel, he had the “desire to reach a certain degree of sad notoriety”, “influenced by the memory of his father” Benjamin Paddock, a bank robber who was among the fugitives most wanted by the FBI, according to the report .
Manipulator
For them, his crime is “consistent with his personality,” characterized by a lack of empathy, a secretive character and an obsession with details once he sets a project.
During his life, he often “exploited others through manipulation and lies,” say the experts.
Before committing his crime, he dedicated “time, attention and energy” to his preparations, they stress. He seems to have chosen his target on the internet and spent a year buying weapons and ammunition.
It does not seem to be open to anyone at any time.
In August, the Las Vegas police had also concluded that he had acted alone.
“The question we were not able to answer is” why “Stephen Paddock did that,” added city sheriff Joe Lombardo.
Stephen Paddock, who committed suicide in the minutes that followed the carnage, had carried an arsenal in his hotel room at the 32 th floor of Mandalay Bay, where he shot into a crowd of 22 000 people attending at an outdoor concert.
The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) had quickly claimed the shooting, claiming that Stephen Paddock was one of his “soldiers”. A thesis that was quickly refuted by the local police.
