3848 The Las Vegas Shooter Story Changes Once Again
On October 1st, 2017 at approximately 10pm, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock used a hammer-like implement to smash two windows in his 32nd floor suite at of the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.Outside the smashed windows, a crowd of approximately 22,000 had gathered for the Route 91 Harvest country music festival – inside were several gun tripods, 23 different firearms - some with scopes, others with bump-stock devices - and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Bump stocks are legal accessories that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at rates approaching that of fully automatic weapons.At 10:08pm, Las Vegas Police reported receiving the first call of shots fired at the country music festival and 72 minutes later Paddock was found dead in his room by the responding SWAT team. During those 72 minutes, 58 people were murdered, 489 were injured and the lives of thousands were irreparably damaged forever as a result of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hope you're doing well. It is time for an update on the Las Vegas Shooter.
Now just before I start...
It is a grave and great temptation to use a horrible, evil situation like this to support one's own political or philosophical views.
You know, for people to use it as anti-white or anti-Christian rhetoric, to use it to go against availability of guns and you name it.
I actually recorded an entire show yesterday and then had to scrap it as new information came to light.
So it is...
A grave temptation to attempt to leap ahead of the information in search of a narrative which conforms to one's political ideology.
I just want to caution people against that.
The information is still very sketchy, but here's what we have so far.
So law enforcement have updated the number of dead and injured.
Stephen Paddock murdered 58 people and injured 489.
His own death brought the death count to 59 people in total.
According to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, Stephen Paddock is a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo and lived a secret life, much of which will never be fully understood.
This investigation is not ended with the demise of Mr.
Paddock. Did this person get radicalized unbeknownst to us?
And we want to identify that source.
So, a couple of points there.
ISIS, of course, claimed that he converted to Islam a couple of months ago and was a soldier of their organization.
Again, it seems somewhat unlikely that a guy in his 60s is going to jump over to Islam, and it doesn't appear that there's any relationship between the girlfriend and Islam, and so it seems pretty hard to understand that.
Of course, if he had the secret life and was amassing ammo over decades, that goes against ISIS's claims that he was radicalized a few months ago.
How the police know that he had a secret life for decades...
You know, it's funny, when somebody doesn't leave...
A footprint on the internet?
It's impossible to understand, you know, just because so many people do, it's impossible to understand just how hard it is to find out information about people's lives.
If they haven't left a social media footprint, you've got a lot of footprints on the ground.
You've got a lot of knocking on doors.
You've got people with inconstant memories.
And people have changed over time.
And it's really, really hard to get information if somebody hasn't been online a lot.
And so where they're coming up with these conclusions, I'm sure we'll Now, the question of radicalized.
Did this person get radicalized unbeknownst to us?
Now, radicalized doesn't mean ISIS necessarily.
I mean, the act of murdering all of these people and injuring hundreds of people, that is a radical act to begin with.
If he did it for some motive, which, as we talk about here, has become less clear over time rather than more clear, Of course it was a radical act.
If he was radicalized by some external source, that will be figured out.
This is more of a question mark than a comment about radicalization.
So while it was previously reported that ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound associated with homemade bombs, was found in Paddock's parked car, authorities have also found 50 pounds of tannerite, another explosive chemical.
And that was in his car.
The purpose of that, of course, remains unknown.
Of course we want answers.
Something this horrible, this horrifying happens in the seat of the empire.
People want answers.
You want to know what are the steps, what are the dominoes that lead up to something like this.
So far there are no easy answers.
I have provided one, which I'm going to stick by and reinforce at the end of this presentation.
But it is just about the hardest answer there is.
The number of firearms connected to Paddock has expanded to 47 after the search of his Reno home.
All the weapons were purchased legally in Nevada, Utah, California and Texas.
Of those weapons, apparently 12 had bump stocks installed.
Paddock purchased 33 weapons between October last year and the Las Vegas shooting.
So, October last year, some people say, well, that had to do with Trump, but of course, all the mainstream media were saying that Trump had a snowball's chance in hell of achieving the presidency.
Now, Stephen Paddock was alarmingly intelligent.
You can see this with the interview with his brother, that the entire family seems to be very smart.
He was very good at figuring out odds.
The claim is that he made a living...
As a gambler, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do, so maybe he had some way of figuring out the odds or whatever, but the idea that he was some sort of anti-Trump fanatic is hard to sustain for a variety of reasons we'll get into, not least, of course, in that he started purchasing arms before Trump became president, and when, according to most people, myself excluded and some others, there was no chance that Trump really was going to become president, so that becomes...
A challenging motive to sustain in the face of the evidence.
On Wednesday, California Democrat, of course, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation which would ban the sale and possession of bump stocks and similar devices which are used to increase the rate of fire on a legal weapon.
Because, you see, you can never judge Muslims by an Islamic shooter, but you must judge all gun owners by the actions of one Possibly completely insane individual.
It was originally reported that two bump stocks were found in Steven Paddock's hotel room and shortly after the shooting, the controversial accessory became very difficult to purchase online.
Some retailers appear to have already discontinued sale of bump stocks while others sold out quickly due to high demands.
Now... That may be, of course, because retailers were upset at the possibility, cautious of the possibility, of a copycat shooting using similar technology or similar equipment, and therefore they didn't want that.
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said, Look at the weapon obtaining.
The amounts of Tannerite available.
Do you think that this was accomplished all on his own?
Face value? You've got to make the assumption.
He had to have help at some point.
And we want to ensure that's the answer.
Maybe he's a super guy.
Superhero. Not a hero.
Super. I won't use the word.
Maybe he's a super that was working this out on his own.
But it will be hard for me to believe that.
Put two and two together. Another residence in Reno with several firearms.
Okay, electronics and everything else associated with it.
Large amounts of ammo, a place of mesquite.
We know that he had a girlfriend.
Do you think this is all self-facing?
Individuals are just, without talking to somebody, sequestered amongst themselves?
Come on, folks! It's a little bit of chatting on the fly, and Sheriff Lombardo also noted there's no evidence which suggests terrorism, but since it is an, quote, ongoing investigation, we're not going to close down any doors.
Now, the question of help is, of course, still open-ended.
The shooter's brother, in his interview, off-the-cuff interview, it's well worth watching for more than a half an hour out front of his house, but the reporters said, oh, did he have help?
It's simple, you go to... The hotel, and you get a bellhop, you give him a hundred bucks, he takes your bags up to your room.
And you could do this over a couple of days, you could get a different bellhop each time, you could wear different outfits, a lot of stuff going on.
So the idea that, how did he get all these weapons?
You get a golf bag, and you know, it's not that tough to get all these weapons up to the room.
And so it is, of course, kind of chilling.
That this occurred in such an efficient and horrifying way.
I mean, this is the way to kill maximum numbers of people and the idea that an intelligent, wealthy, accomplished, successful man would take it into his head to do this kind of stuff.
We like to think that maybe he's corrupted.
We like to think that maybe or maybe he was working with someone so that it gives us more of a chance to stop it in the future because somebody could speak.
The idea that he did this all on his own You know, I don't know much about how all of this would be accomplished, but nothing about it seems wildly difficult to me.
It just doesn't.
And so the idea that somebody's working with him, obviously we'll see as we go forward, but I don't see anything, obviously admittedly an amateur outside view, I don't see anything in particular that would require that he be working with someone to achieve his hellish goals.
So we'll see. Marilu Danley.
So this is the woman who was living with him and Sheriff Joseph Lombardo on Marilu Danley.
He said,"...the investigation with her is ongoing and we anticipate some further information from her shortly.
Currently she is a person of interest." And just by the by, if, as some people have suggested, she may have been the conduit through which ISIS was able to radicalize the shooter...
I don't imagine if that were the case, she'd be heading back to answer questions.
That's my particular perspective, though.
So the 62-year-old mother and grandmother, Marilu Danley, is from the Philippines but has an Australian citizenship.
She returned to the United States late on September 3, 2017, to face questioning from law enforcement.
It is reported that Paddock met Danley when she was working as a casino hostess at the Atlantis in Reno, Nevada.
According to Atlantis Casino Resort Executive Casino host John Weinreich, quote,"...not a lot of smiles and friendliness.
There was not a lot of body movement except for his hands." He's talking about the shooter.
"...that would annoy people, and he did not seem to care at all.
He acted like, these machines are for me." Now, I'm going to be quoting people's comments about the shooter.
Just be aware.
People have their own perspectives, their own motives.
Some people like the spotlight and will say stuff to get cameras and microphones in their faces and so on.
So just, you know, grain of salt time.
This is all, to some degree, just what people say.
And until there's hard evidence, please reserve judgment.
The Atlantis Casino Resort Executive went on to say about the shooter, he loved to stare at other people playing.
It was not a good thing because it would make other VIPs in the high limit area uncomfortable.
One of my guests once said to me, he really gives me the creeps.
Well, the shooter in his past worked as a mail carrier and an IRS agent.
Just pointing that out.
In an interview with Australia's Channel 7, Dan Lee's two Australian-based sisters commented she, right, the shooter's purported girlfriend, she was sent away.
She was away so that she will not be there to interfere with what he's planning.
No one can put the puzzles together.
She didn't even know that she was going to the Philippines until Steve said, Marilu, I found you a cheap ticket to the Philippines.
In that sense, I thank him for sparing my sister's life.
But that won't be to compensate the 59 people's lives.
No one can put the puzzles together, the sisters said.
No one, except Marilu, because Steve is not here to talk anymore.
Only Marilu can maybe help.
She probably was even more shocked than us because she was more close to him than us.
To be able to find out that the person you live with, that you love and live with, can do such a thing, and you thought you know the person yourself.
Philippines National Bureau of Investigation Nick Suarez said, Dan Lee arrived in the Philippines last month and then there was a wire transfer to her account for $100,000 from Stephen.
The FBI has coordinated with the Philippine office of the Interpol to look for her.
Now this is a pattern.
This is a pattern that you will see in this family.
The males take care of the women.
They give them resources.
I talked before about how the shooter's mom...
Had four children with a psychopathic bank robber and con man.
And as is revealed by the brother's interview, Eric, well, the bank robber left the mom.
The mom didn't leave the bank robber.
And so she had no particular issue, it would seem, with taking the proceeds of crime.
And the brother himself says he worked for decades at a job he hated to provide for his family, who he barely saw.
This is just providing resources to women.
The shooter himself provided resources to women, and his $100,000 and other things as well.
The shooter's father, the criminal, his girlfriend said, oh, he was soft touch, gave money, and so on.
So this is just a particular pattern, which we'll touch on later.
According to the brother, Eric Paddock, he said, That's the Steve I know.
That's something that makes sense.
Steve would have wanted to take care of Marilu.
Las Vegas Starbucks employees reportedly recognized Paddock and Danley and commented about a noteworthy interaction to the mainstream media.
Starbucks supervisor Esperanzo Mendoza said he would glare down at her and say with a mean attitude, You don't need my casino card for this.
I'm paying for your drink just like I'm paying for you.
Then she would softly say, Okay, and step back behind him.
He was so rude to her in front of us.
And just, you know, one of the things, you know, he's a rich guy, he's in Vegas.
It seems odd that he would choose this particular woman, but I guess there's no accounting for tastes.
On October 4th, Mary Lou Danley released a statement through her lawyer, Matthew Lombard, and said, I am devastated by the deaths and injuries that have occurred, and my prayers go out to the victims and their families, and all those who have been hurt by these awful events.
I have faith in God, and I will continue to pray for everyone who has been harmed or hurt.
I am a mother and a grandmother, and my heart breaks for all who have lost loved ones.
I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man.
I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together with him.
He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.
And what does this mean, the fact that this comes through her lawyer?
She continued through her lawyer to say, A little more than two weeks ago Stephen told me he found a cheap ticket for me to the Philippines and that he wanted me to take a trip home to see my family.
Like all Filipinos abroad, I was excited to go home and see family and friends.
While there he wired me money, which he said was for me to buy a house for me and my family.
I was grateful, but honestly, I was worried that first the unexpected trip home and then the money was a way of breaking up with me.
It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone.
Wow. I don't know.
I mean, a breakup?
I mean, I've had some breakups in my day, but here's $100,000 to go away.
$100,000! Boom!
Dropped in her account. Eh, go buy a house for you and your family.
I'm astounding. She went on through her lawyer to say, According to her brother,
Rinaldo Bastos, I called her up immediately after the shooting and she said, Relax, we shouldn't worry about it.
I'll fix it. Do not panic.
I have a clean conscience.
And, sorry, just a little note for those who are annoyed by the fact that I use slightly different voices for these quotes.
The majority of listeners are podcast listeners and it's helpful for them.
Hugh Jordan Knight said, According to Buzzfeed, Danley lived on the Gold Coast in Queensland for a Danley lived on the Gold Coast in Queensland for a decade until the late 1980s.
She moved to the U.S. to marry Arkansas man Geary Danley, a FedEx auditor, in 1990, bringing along her daughter, who was then 15.
The couple settled in Memphis before later retiring to Nevada.
Paddock girlfriend Mary Lou Danley was married to Geary Danley for over two decades before their separation in April 2013 and divorce in February 2014.
After the shooting, two of Danley's daughters, Diane Waltrip and Deirdre Piercy, started receiving threats due to their loose association, but had no knowledge of Mary Lou's relationship.
According to Dion Waltrip, The people are hurting and they want to lash out and they are lashing out at the wrong family, wrong people.
That's because your name is Danley or anything that you happen to know anything about this or be affiliated with it and that you would want anything like this to happen to anyone is a terrible thing.
I reiterate, he has no knowledge of Mr.
Paddock or any knowledge as to why Mr.
Paddock would do such a horrible, horrible thing.
So why is terrorism, to me, at least, less likely as a motive?
Well, of course, if someone was shooting into a rap concert, we may suspect, I think we'd have reason to suspect, racial motives.
And the fact that he shot into country and western fans, Trump supporters and Christians and so on, might have had a political motive.
However, there is indication that this was not, perhaps, his first choice of a kill zone.
Life is Beautiful.
Life is Beautiful.
Again, according to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, it's important for you to understand the rooms were not rented by the Ogden.
It was done through Airbnb by a private owner unknown to the Ogden.
So we have very great cooperation from the owners of Life is Beautiful and the Ogden and their cooperation.
Okay, while we have already spoken, many people had contact with Stephen Paddock at hotels and places he frequented in.
We still have more contact.
Interviews to conduct.
The Life is Beautiful lineup included performances by Lorde, Chance the Rapper, Blink-182, Pusha T, Haim, Schoolboy Q, Two Chains, Gorillas, Vince Staples, Bill Nye, and many more.
And this, of course, if I had to guess, would be somewhat less populated by Trump supporters than the country music festival that he ended up shooting into.
So... If this was not coincidence, I don't know.
I mean, maybe he had this pattern.
Maybe he moved around, like people chasing buffalo in the past, right?
Maybe he just moved around. Maybe it was coincidence.
Maybe it wasn't. It's hard to say at this point.
Hopefully it will become more clear.
Now, last year's festival, the Life is Beautiful Festival, was attended by approximately 137,000 people.
And this year's festival attracted 45,000 people per day.
Making me feel...
While the northeast-facing broken window in Stephen Paddock's Mandalay Bay Suite faced the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival, the east-facing window allowed him to target nearby fuel tanks at a McCarran International Airport-owned property.
The Swiss port-operated tanks are primarily used to provide fuel to private aircraft.
Now remember, he was a licensed pilot, had been since his teens.
I think his license had lapsed because he hadn't kept up the medical requirements, so he would know something about this.
Paddock fired on the tanks.
Two bullets left holes in the exterior tanks, and one of these penetrated the tank but did not cause an explosion or fire.
Now, it seems unlikely this would have killed anyone, but it may have created enough of a distraction, drawn away enough first responders to perhaps give him an opportunity to escape, which we'll talk about shortly.
McCarran spokesman Chris Jones said, airport fueling has not been compromised, it's functional.
Colorado-based aviation consultant Mike Boyd said, a machine gun is not going to blow up a tank of fuel.
Jet fuel itself sitting there in a big wet pile is very hard to ignite.
You have to be a very amateur terrorist to think anything like that.
It's true. It sort of reminded me when I was a teenager, I worked up North Gold Panning prospecting.
It got so cold where we had our canvas tents, our prospectors, it got so cold we actually had to get jet fuel flown in to keep ourselves warm at night and we never particularly worried about it blowing up.
Despite earlier reports that hotel employees had been in and out of Paddock's room previously, a hotel worker claims that after Paddock checked in on Thursday, he kept the Do Not Disturb sign on his door for the next three days.
Yeah, no kidding. Do Not Disturb.
Already disturbed. Police officials commented that three video cameras were found in the hallway of Paddock's suite, including two placed on a service cart and another over the suite door peephole.
Reportedly, Paddock also had a baby monitor camera in the family area of the hotel suite as well, although none of the cameras were recording.
Investigators also noted they have reason to believe that Paddock originally planned to escape after the shooting, suggesting that he did not have a death wish.
Again, according to Sheriff Lombardo, I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody.
I'm pretty sure he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troubling.
Additional information has also been made available regarding Paddock's confrontation with an unarmed security guard prior to being found dead by the SWAT team.
Reportedly, only 17 of the hotel's 200 on-duty security guards were armed.
The rest... Including Guard Jesus, Campos simply had nightsticks.
And nightsticks, of course, worse than useless against automatic weapons.
The stairwell doors leading to the hallway outside of Paddock's room were barricaded, as was the door to his room.
Campos arrived on the 32nd floor by elevator, but was seen coming via Paddock's surveillance cameras.
Of course, people were phoning down saying, gunshots, they're up here, it's close.
Paddock fired through the hotel room door, striking Campos in the leg.
After being hit, Campos radioed the casino headquarters to report Paddock's location.
Joseph Lombardo again.
We received information via their dispatch center that helped us locate where this individual was sequestered.
Police arrived on the floor and Paddock responded by firing an estimated 200 rounds in their general direction, causing them to fall back until SWAT arrived.
Kampus reported staying on the floor and even assisted police in clearing the hotel rooms prior to SWAT breaching the suspect's door.
ABC reported that an investigator claimed that evidence suggests that Paddock's mental state had been deteriorating with significant weight loss, an increasingly unkempt physical appearance and an obsession with his girlfriend's ex-husband.
Paddock purportedly had severe allergies and often wore brown cloth gardening gloves to prevent rashes or any contact with cleaning chemical residues.
According to Las Vegas Review-Journal, records from the Nevada Prescription Monitoring Program obtained Tuesday show Paddock was prescribed 50 10-milligram diazepam tablets by Henderson physician Dr.
Stephen Winkler on June 21st.
Paddock purchased the drug, its brand name is Valium, without insurance at a Walgreens store in Reno on the same day it was prescribed.
He was supposed to take one pill a day.
According to Drugs.com, diazepam is a benzodiazepine.
It affects chemicals in the brain that may be unbalanced in people with anxiety.
Diazepam is used to treat anxiety disorders, alcohol withdrawal symptoms, or muscle spasms.
Diazepam is sometimes used with other medications to treat seizures.
Common diazepam side effects include drowsiness, feeling tired, muscle weakness, and or loss of coordination.
Less common side effects include confusion, hallucinations, unusual thoughts or behavior, unusual risk-taking behavior.
Decreased inhibitions, no fear of danger, depressed mood, thoughts of suicide or hurting yourself, hyperactivity, agitation, aggression, hostility, and chronic abuse of the drug can also trigger psychotic experiences.
According to Las Vegas Recovery Center Chief Medical Officer Dr.
Mel Pohl, If somebody has an underlying aggression problem and you sedate them with that drug, they can become aggressive.
It can disinhibit an underlying emotional state.
It is much like what happens when you give alcohol to some people.
They become aggressive instead of going to sleep.
According to the Daily Mail, According to Eric Paddock,
his brother... The reason Mary Lou looks so plain in that picture they keep posting of her is because for him she would not wear perfumes or hairsprays or anything with scents in it because it affected him.
Now, room service.
This is quite intriguing. A receipt dated September 27, 2017 was published online purportedly showing that the shooter, Paddock, ordered room service for two people directly to his 32nd floor Mandalay Bay suite a full day before authorities claim he checked into the hotel.
According to Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars, Paddock ordered a burger, a bagel with cream cheese, a potato soup, one bottle of water and two Pepsis, suggesting that there was another person eating with him in the room.
The receipt shows the number two next to the word guests.
So given that police claim that Paddock checked in on September 28th and girlfriend Marilu Danley was out of the country, this has raised significant questions.
If the receipt is legitimate, why would the police inaccurately report his check-in date?
And was Paddock, in fact, dining with another individual?
Now, lots of potential answers to this.
Maybe it was a mistake.
He checked in using his girlfriend's ID, so maybe they just thought two guests.
Maybe that is enough for a guy, although not one who's recently lost weight.
Maybe it was his last meal. I don't know.
But we'll keep an eye on it.
So his gambling career. Some have speculated as to the viability of gambling as a profession, but reportedly the Mandalay Bay's top machines pay out 99.17%.
Or for every $100 wager, they pay out $99.17.
It's a pretty thin margin at the top.
The house wins a sliver.
So given the skill-based nature of video poker, a close margin along with significant amounts of casino perks and rewards could make the activity quite fruitful.
Was it his only source of income?
Well, of course, he had real estate.
He made money from real estate.
In the two weeks before the attack, Paddock reportedly gambled with at least $160,000.
According to his brother, Eric Paddock, we're wealthy people.
$100,000 isn't that much money.
He gambled that much through a machine in hours.
He's got the highest level of membership card at a lot of these casino hotels.
If a lot of these hotels say they don't know Steve, they're lying.
The casino was a means to an end.
The casino, to him, was like a job in Toyota in Japan, where you live in the Toyota apartments across the street, and then you go to the Toyota factory to work.
That's what the casino was.
It's a place where you lived, and they were nice to you, and you could get it paid for by playing slots.
He was a math guy.
He could tell you off the top of his head what the odds were down to a tenth of a percent on whatever machine he was playing.
He studied it like it was a PhD thing.
It was not silly gambling.
It was work. If you get close to 100%, that's where he gambled.
It's not just the machine.
It's the comps. It's the room.
It's the 50-year-old port that costs $500 a glass.
You add all that stuff together, and his net is better than 100%.
The Guardian has published an interview with the unnamed boyfriend of one of Marilou Danley's sisters, who reportedly interacted with Paddock on a half-dozen occasions between 2013 and 2015.
According to this anonymous man, yes, I was familiar with him.
He was extremely intelligent, methodical, conservative, guarded and strategic.
A planning, thinking type of guy.
Allegedly, Purportedly, Paddock commented about his gun hobby and was knowledgeable about the Second Amendment.
His comments were that it's a substantial hobby that needs to be protected, a gun room.
I've asked that question of many people I know from the US, and sadly enough the answer is very similar in many ways, that people have this belief that the constitutional amendment is their right, with very little understanding of the content of that actual bill.
I think it'd be fair to say Paddock indicated to me that he certainly knew more than most.
The night prior to the attack, Paddock called the Mandalay Bay front desk on two different occasions to complain.
That the guest below him was making too much noise.
I guess that situation was relatively quickly to be reversed.
Now, more information has also emerged about Paddock's 2012 lawsuit against the owner of the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
Paddock sued the casino for negligence, saying that he slipped and fell on an obstruction on the floor in 2011, resulting in $30,600 in medical expenses.
As previously noted, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2014.
Photographs of the paddock's hotel room, weaponry, and even his dead body were leaked online in the days following the attack.
One of the most noteworthy aspects of the photos is the appearance of a possible suicide note placed by what looks like a green ashtray or roll of tape.
While law enforcement denied the existence of any note, the unexplained paper has raised significant suspicion.
Investigations are being conducted to determine who leaked the photographs.
My guess, if I have to guess, I don't have to, I choose to.
I don't think there's an explanatory note.
I don't think there's a suicide note that explains.
This was such a vicious and cruel incident and he was intelligent enough to know that people would be desperate for answers after this attack.
And his cruelty, his sadism, his evil, would have him probably take pleasure in not providing people with any explanation, knowing that that would be more torturous to them.
Now, according to his brother, Eric Paddock...
He helped make me and my family wealthy.
I mean, he's the reason I was able to retire three years ago when I got really burned out doing the job I did.
He didn't have a lot of friends.
He was a private person.
There's a story about that he's, oh, he kept his shades closed and he didn't talk to me for the first three times he saw me walking in the neighborhood.
Wow! That makes him really weird, doesn't it?
He was a private guy.
That's why you can't find out anything about him.
That's why there's no pictures.
Is he such a weirdo because he didn't have a Facebook page and posted 50,000 damn pictures of himself every day?
Who's weird? This is 100% Steve.
Did this by himself.
People can't seem to cope with that either.
But Steve was a highly intelligent, highly successful person.
He could have done anything he wanted to do.
And he did. He made himself wealthy.
He made us wealthy. He was a very successful person.
He gambled for 20-plus years successfully.
It's like a job to him.
He did it mathematically.
It was fun to hang out with Steve because he was a rich guy who hung out in the hotels, okay?
Him getting on a plane and flying somewhere is like you going to Publix.
It's something he does every week.
I hope to hell they find, when they do the autopsy, that there's a tumor in his head or something, because if they don't, we're all in trouble.
I'm praying for at least some data points, because otherwise, the bug in Men in Black put on a Steve suit and went and did this.
There's no other rationalization.
One of the Las Vegas shooters' brothers has a long criminal rap sheet.
He once declared bankruptcy to escape debts.
This is Bruce Paddock, 57, has several felony arrests for crimes such as arson, theft, burglary and selling marijuana.
Paddock's other brother, Eric, who lives in Florida, told reporters, I'm just a guy.
Here's Eric Paddock.
I was the youngest son.
I grew up with a single mom. I had a tough time.
I did dumb stuff when I was a teenager, okay?
I have no criminal record and that stuff because I'm smarter than the average bear and I knew to hang out with people dumber than I was and who would get caught faster.
That's how it works. Her husband, referring to his mother, tough life, her husband was an asshole, a total asshole.
He ran off, left her with four kids.
We were bad kids, he said.
Steve made my mom wealthy, he said.
Stephen Paddock recently did.
He sent a walking aide by post to his 90-year-old mother.
His mother who had four children by a sociopathic or psychopathic armed bank robber.
One fellow gambler at a casino near Paddock's home recalled a striking interaction from a few months back while playing at a blackjack table with the shooter.
Stephen said, I wish I could just go kill my mom.
I don't know why the hell she brought me into this world, recalled the witness.
Everybody at the table couldn't believe what he said.
When he was sober, he was nice as anybody.
His drinking got to the point where he didn't even know what the hell he was doing on the table.
So he seems to care for his mother.
His brother has a lot of sympathy for his mother.
He sent her a walking aid. The last text he sent was to find out if she was all right in September.
Loves his mother, cares about his mother.
And yet, wants to kill his mother.
That kind of splitting, that kind of dissociation, that kind of lack of integration and personality is trampling to me.
So here are a few parting thoughts to take with you.
Of course, everyone's hungry for causality.
To find out what happens so this kind of horrifying, murderous predation can be prevented.
Now, first of all, I just want to toss this in there, the horror that Americans feel with this kind of death from above.
I want you to think of people in Syria.
I want you to think of people in Libya.
I want you to think of people in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places where the empire regularly destroys the innocent and the somewhat guilty and the totally guilty in drone strikes and the fact that Obama dropped 100,000 bombs over the course of his presidency.
Not all those bombs fell on combatants.
This death from above situation, this is a horrifying incident to have occurred in the heart of the empire.
But it is not unknown outside of the empire.
Have a thought for what the government has inflicted and is inflicting on innocent people around the world.
This kind of horror that you feel is also the horror that they feel.
We want to make sense of all of this.
We want to prevent this.
And pulling the insanity card?
Yeah, okay, let's say he was insane.
Why would insanity take the form of mass murder?
Why? Why would he be this kind of shooter?
Why couldn't he be insane, so to speak, to the point where he takes all of his money and he uses it to buy toys for children?
Why wouldn't he set up a homeless shelter?
Why wouldn't he have pathological altruism?
Why would it have to take this form of this kind of aggression, this kind of murderousness?
The disinhibition of the medication, maybe even of the alcohol, maybe in combination, I don't know.
He didn't order a beer, he ordered two Cokes, two Pepsis, I think.
So the fact that the lid came off, the lid may have come off his personality, maybe he spent his whole life repressing his father's genes, his mother's parenting, maybe his father's parenting as well.
Maybe he spent his whole life repressing it, gut anxiety, Getting older, got anxiety, took the medication, it took the lid off, and the father re-emerged, in a sense.
It's possible. We may never know.
We may never know. So, in this kind of chaos, in this kind of confusion, in this need for answers that we all have, We want a political motive so that we can get angry, we can put it, wrap it in a big box of cause and effect.
But for this, if it doesn't turn out to be political, if ISIS is not involved, which I don't really believe they are...
If it turns out that this was just ghosts of the past, if this turns out that this was a woman who bore four children to a psychopath and then they struggled because of genetics and because of environment and because of a lack of sympathy in society, a lack of understanding in society for the cause and effect of these things, then there is a fix.
But it's not a quick fix. Like all the low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing violence has been picked already.
There is higher and deeper hanging fruit, so to speak, that we can get a hold of, but it's not quick and it's not easy.
The cycle of violence is long and complex.
We understand men's roles in the cycle of violence, and I've got a whole presentation series here It's called The Bomb in the Brain.
We'll put a link to it below.
It's called The Bomb in the Brain, about the effects that early childhood abuse and neglect has on people's dysfunctions.
I have that, and it's really, really important.
I strongly urge you, I beg you, I request of you, I get on my knees supplicating you to have a look through that.
This is really, really important.
And interrupting, slowing down, stopping, perhaps even reversing this cycle of violence, is a long and complex process.
It takes knowledge, wisdom, compassion, empathy, curiosity.
It takes listening skills and it takes judging parents, which is difficult for people to do for a variety of reasons I've talked about in the show many times before.
It is hard to look at our parents and see their naked failings right there in front of us.
And I think it could safely be said that a woman who had four children by a criminal who ended up On the FBI's most wanted list could have chosen better is part of the cycle of violence.
I talk about women because they generally ghost out when the cycle of violence comes around.
All we think of is, you know, guys hitting kids with belts and being drunk and running off and deadbeats dads and so on.
The moms are absent from the family portrait of cyclical violence and I need to bring them back in here because that's what's missing.
That's what needs to be talked about.
That's one way we can solve things.
So it's going to take, and this is the promise and the horror of this particular approach, to understand the causes and effect of child abuse, to understand the relationship between child abuse and violence.
I have a whole book by Lloyd DeMoss on the origins of war in child abuse, which you can find at freedomandradio.com.
I read the whole audiobook. It's well worth it.
Listening to, it's very instructive.
And it is, you know, understanding the role of child abuse in the cycle of violence is like putting the sun correctly at the center of the solar system.
Everything falls in place.
Everything makes sense.
And we know what to do. That's the good news.
The bad news is... It takes generations to fix.
That's why I say there are fixes.
Very clear, obvious, well-established, proven fixes.
