Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock would "lie in bed just moaning and screaming 'oh my God,'" his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, told investigators, who remain without a satisfying motive for the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history nearly a week after the attack. The former FBI officials who relayed Danley's account to NBC News added that while Danley described "mental health symptoms," authorities do not believe Paddock's health had reached such a state as to satisfyingly explain his horrific actions.
In addition to not understanding what drove Paddock to his attack — which was meticulously planned and perhaps involved scouting possible locations in other states — investigators are trying to learn what the gunman did in the hour between shooting a security guard outside his hotel room and being discovered dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound by a SWAT team. It was unclear how long Paddock had been dead in the room before he was found.
"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," said the shooter's brother, Eric Paddock. NBC News writes that authorities believe at the very least Paddock "may have been in physical or mental anguish."
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.
-
Political cartoons for November 2Cartoons Sunday's political cartoons include the 22nd amendment, homeless camps, and more
-
The dazzling coral gardens of Raja AmpatThe Week Recommends Region of Indonesia is home to perhaps the planet’s most photogenic archipelago.
-
‘Never more precarious’: the UN turns 80The Explainer It’s an unhappy birthday for the United Nations, which enters its ninth decade in crisis
-
France makes first arrests in Louvre jewels heistSpeed Read Two suspects were arrested in connection with the daytime theft of royal jewels from the museum
-
Trump pardons crypto titan who enriched familySpeed Read Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering while CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange
-
Thieves nab French crown jewels from LouvreSpeed Read A gang of thieves stole 19th century royal jewels from the Paris museum’s Galerie d’Apollon
-
Arsonist who attacked Shapiro gets 25-50 yearsSpeed Read Cody Balmer broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion and tried to burn it down
-
Man charged over LA’s deadly Palisades Firespeed read 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht has been arrested in connection with the fire that killed 12 people
-
4 dead in shooting, arson attack in Michigan churchSpeed Read A gunman drove a pickup truck into a Mormon church where he shot at congregants and then set the building on fire
-
2 kids killed in shooting at Catholic school massSpeed Read 17 others were wounded during a morning mass at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis
-
Australian woman found guilty of mushroom murdersspeed read Erin Patterson murdered three of her ex-husband's relatives by serving them toxic death cap mushrooms
