Las Vegas police found 23 guns in Stephen Paddock’s hotel room, along with explosives and more weapons at his home, but detectives have yet to discover the gunman’s motives.
Was Paddock, as Donald Trump put it, “pure evil”?
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“The psychological autopsy” is under way, according to James Alan Fox, a US law professor and co-author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, writing in USA Today.
Mass murderers have characteristics in common, including social isolation, repeated failures, and the tendency to blame others for their own misfortune, says Fox.
Police interviewed the Vegas shooter’s brother almost immediately in a bid to get an insight into the killer’s character.
“There is nothing,” Eric Paddock told investigators and reporters on Monday, comparing the shock of learning his brother was a mass murderer to seeing a meteor land on his street. “Where the hell did he get automatic weapons?”
“Some investigators have suggested psychological issues, but there is no confirmation of this,” the BBC says.
The gunman was a high-stakes gambler who mainly kept to himself, The Washington Post says. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, “casino records suggest that Stephen Paddock might have won tens of thousands of dollars in the weeks before” the attack, and police are seeking to establish whether he had also lost money - but so far officers are “stumped”.
He had a girlfriend who liked karaoke, lived in a retirement community, and had held steady jobs as a postman, accountant, auditor and apartment manager. His father was a bank robber on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, The Independent says, but Paddock himself had no criminal record.
Police found no link to international terrorism, despite a claim of responsibility from Islamic State.
Paddock also bought firearms, but shop owner David Famiglietti told the BBC that the killer passed the FBI background checks when purchasing weapons from his store this spring. Celebrity news website TMZ says Paddock had a hunting licence, but didn't fit the usual mass murderer profile.
“We are completely dumbfounded,” said his brother Eric yesterday, before breaking down in tears in front of his home in Orlando, Florida. “We can’t understand what happened.”
-
A whole new world: redrawing the Mercator mapUnder the Radar African Union joins calls to ditch 'colonial distortion' and portray countries at more accurate size
-
'Enforcement of rulings remains spotty at best'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Book reviews: 'King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution' and 'Gwyneth: The Biography'Feature How the Iranian Revolution began and Gwyneth Paltrow's life in the spotlight
-
What we know about the Copenhagen mall shootingSpeed Read Lone gunman had mental health issues and not thought to have terror motive, police say
-
Texas school shooting: parents turn anger on policeSpeed Read Officers had to be urged to enter building where gunman killed 21 people
-
DJ Tim Westwood denies multiple sexual misconduct allegationsSpeed Read At least seven women accuse the radio and TV presenter of predatory behaviour dating back three decades
-
What happened to Katie Kenyon?Speed Read Man charged as police search for missing 33-year-old last seen getting into van
-
Brooklyn subway shooting: exploring New York’s ‘steep decline in law and order’Speed Read Last week, a gunman set off smoke bombs and opened fire on a rush-hour train in the city
-
How the Capitol attack investigation is splitting the RepublicansSpeed Read Vote to censure two Republican representatives has revealed deep divisions within party
-
Is sentencing a Nazi sympathiser to read Shakespeare an appropriate punishment?Speed Read Judge seemed to think introducing student ‘to high culture’ would ‘magically make him a better person’ said The Daily Telegraph
-
Sarah Everard’s murder: a national reckoning?Speed Read Wayne Couzen’s guilty plea doesn’t ‘tidy away the reality of sexual violence’
