Contrary to repeated claims by government that questioning the official narrative of mass casualty incidents "hurts the families of the victims", it is implausible half stories pandered as truth that really hurt the victims. The real truth - a narrative that makes sense and maps to reality - on the other hand, is the one thing that can bring lasting peace to victims of such attacks.
The apparent cluelessness of the police and FBI about when Paddock checked in to the hotel room is just one of many far more serious problems with the entire narrative of what happened on the night of October 1st in Las Vegas. Furthermore, all of these problems are easily discernible by anyone with a functioning BS meter. The following describes the most clear-cut examples.
Paddock Was No 'Lone Wolf'
Many eyewitnesses have testified to hearing shots on the ground in the vicinity of the Route 91 concert area. There are many videos that appear to back up these claims, with the low, dull and relatively slow thud of a military-issue belt-fed automatic machine gun (like an M240) firing from a distance identifiable, while the higher pitched, faster and closer 'crack' of a smaller caliber weapon (like an AR-15) can also be heard, often at the same time as the more distant fire. Most eyewitnesses state that this closer gunfire came from East of the concert area, i.e. from the opposite direction of the gunfire from the Mandalay Bay.
Recordings of police scanners make it clear that LVMPD officers were also convinced that there were at least two shooters in the Mandalay Bay, and were responding to multiple reports of shots fired at several other hotels. Corroborating the police scanner recordings are the many eyewitness accounts (including video footage) of shots fired and mass panic at several other hotels further up the Las Vegas strip, some over 1.5 miles away.
These reports have been systematically ignored or dismissed by Las Vegas police, the FBI and media, apparently because they contradict the official narrative of a lone gunman in the Mandalay Bay.
For evidence of the full extent of these shootings at other locations in Las Vegas, read Niall Bradley's excellent article Las Vegas Terror Attack: Clear Evidence of Multiple Shooters at Multiple Hotels
On September 27th someone ordered room service to Paddock's suite. The order was for a significant amount of food, and the receipt (released by Mandalay Bay server Tony Hernandez Armenta) is stamped "guests: 2".
Independent investigator 'Nick Falco' stayed in the Mandalay Bay on the 14th October and ordered a similar amount of food. His receipt is stamped "guests: 1", suggesting that hotel room service is aware of how many people they are serving.
Instead, it seems clear that Paddock, or someone, checked in to that hotel room with another person. The LVMPD and the FBI appear to be ignoring this evidence.
Another report that appears to have been suppressed comes from "multiple senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation" who told NBC News that "garage records show that during a period when Paddock's car left the hotel garage, one of his key cards was used to get into his room."
Despite the testimony of these senior law enforcement officials, when asked about this claim, the LVMPD Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said, "I'm not aware of that." Apparently multiple senior law enforcement officials are aware of it, but it has been scrubbed from the official narrative.
The scene in room 135 on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay is itself testimony to the presence of two shooters in that room. Two windows were smashed and used as firing positions. Why would a lone gunman take the time and effort to break two windows (about 20 yards apart) and move between them to shoot, when both windows provided the same view of the concert area? How plausible is it that a lone gunman in that room would be able to fire alternatively from those two windows while also keeping a constant eye on the feed from two cameras on the service cart outside the door and another in the peephole?
A Completely Confused Timeline
The initial timeline given by Las Vegas and Clark County Sheriff Lombardo had Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos arrive on the 32nd floor at about 10.15pm because he was checking out a 'door alarm' in the corridor of the 32nd floor, not far from Paddock's room. As Campos neared the door of Paddock's room, "well over 200 bullets were fired through the door" according to Sheriff Lombardo, one of them slightly wounding Campos in the leg. After this, there was no more shooting from Paddock's room. Campos was hailed as a hero for 'disturbing' the shooter and ending his attack on the concertgoers, possibly saving many lives. Soon thereafter, 8 police officers arrived on the 32nd floor, but it wasn't until 11.20pm - over 1 hour later - that a SWAT team actually entered Paddock's room, a delay that was referred to as "undue" in media reports.
In a subsequent press conference, Sheriff Lombardo addressed this 'undue delay' by stating that there was no delay, that police officers on the 32nd floor were relatively relaxed because after they arrived at 10.17pm (2 officers) and 10.26pm (8 additional officers), they heard no further shooting, and proceeded to evacuate rooms along the corridor. In the same press conference, Sheriff Lombardo stated that as the first team of officers was evacuating rooms, a second 'strike team' made up of two K-9 officers, a detective and a SWAT team member "carrying heavy bags of technical equipment" approached Paddock's room from the stairwell at 10.55pm. When this team saw the cameras outside Paddock's room, they "pulled back and waited for the approach of a full SWAT team", according to Lombardo. In the same press conference, Lombardo also stated "we did have SWAT officers discharge their weapons at the room location", yet when these four officers were interviewed on '60 minutes' they make no reference to firing their weapons and the host of the show stated clearly that at no time when the officers were in the vicinity of Paddock's room did they hear any gunfire.
In the final telling of this story however, no full SWAT team ever arrived, and it was these men that blew open the door and entered the room at 11.20pm. Remember, we're told that there was no other shooting in Las Vegas that night. The only shots fired came from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay bay, and those shots had stopped at 10.15pm. A full one hour and five minutes after the shooting from Paddock's room had stopped, a full SWAT team was still not available. Why not? Is it because every SWAT team in Las Vegas was busy responding to the many active shooters scenarios that were occurring at several other hotels, as I have already detailed?
A few days later, this initial timeline was changed. Campos's arrival on the 32nd floor was moved back 16 minutes to 9.59pm, again to check a door alarm, and the arrival of police officers on the 32nd floor stayed the same, at 10.17pm. According to Lombardo (who seems to have been reading from an FBI script) it was at 9.59pm that the shooter in Paddock's room opened fire as the security guard moved up the hallway to check the door alarm. The change in timeline meant that the unfortunate Campos was no longer a hero, but more importantly, questions were being asked about the six minutes between Campos being shot and the shooter(s) in room 135 (which had obviously been identified by Campos) starting to fire on the crowd below at 10.05pm. Had Campos immediately informed security dispatch in the hotel? Had they immediately informed the police? If they hadn't, might they be liable for legal action by the victims? One victim thought so. Within a day of this modified timeline being released, MGM (which owns the Mandalay Bay and the concert area) released a statement saying they disagreed with it. Furthermore, they said that:
"the 9:59 p.m. PDT time was derived from a Mandalay Bay report manually created after the fact without the benefit of information we now have. We are now confident that the time stated in this report is not accurate. We know that shots were being fired at the festival lot at the same time as, or within 40 seconds after, the time Jesus Campos first reported that shots were fired over the radio"MGM also stated that police were with armed Mandalay Bay security officers in the building when Campos first reported shots were fired over the radio, and that the officers and the armed security personnel immediately responded to the 32nd floor.
This claim raises a serious question: since Lombardo's timeline has the first two officers arriving on the 32nd floor at 10.17pm, why did it take them 18 minutes to do so? More to the point, why is there any question about any timeline of events when hotel security cameras undoubtedly recorded - with time stamps - the movements of Campos and police officers as they moved through the hotel?
Two days later, Lombardo gave another press conference and changed the narrative again. Now Campos was not shot at 9.59pm; instead this was the time when Campos arrived in the stairwell of the 32nd floor at the first of two doors that lead out onto the corridor directly in front of Paddock's room. Finding the first door locked for some unknown (at the time) reason, Campos went back down the stairs to the 31st floor, along the corridor of that floor to the central elevators and up to the 32nd floor with the intention of checking the stairwell door from the corridor side.
Sounds of Drilling, Like a Jackhammer
Campos walked down the corridor towards the stairwell doors, directly adjacent to the double doors of Paddock's suite. He opened the first stairwell door and inspected the second door that he was unable to open from the other side just a few minutes earlier. He saw the problem, it had been screwed shut with a metal bracket. Standing in the space between the two stairwell doors, Campos called hotel maintenance and informed them of the situation and an engineer, Stephen Schuck, was dispatched. Recounting events on the Ellen Show, Campos stated that while standing in that area between the two stairwell doors, he heard what he "assumed was drilling sounds".
Campos then exited the stairwell door back into the corridor, letting the heavy outer door slam behind him. As he walked back down the corridor towards the elevators, a hail of bullets came through the door of Paddock's room. One bullet struck Campos in the thigh (perhaps a miracle, given it's possible that up to 100 bullets were fired at him through the door in a relatively confined corridor - shots continued to be fired after Campos took cover, as well as during and after Schuck's arrival). He took cover in a door alcove of one of the other rooms and immediately informed hotel security dispatch. The time was 10.05pm according to the new timeline.
As noted, according to MGM, at the same time as Campos made this call, or within 40 seconds of it, the shooter(s) in Paddock's room began firing on the crowd at the Route 91 concert. Remember, MGM stated that police were with armed Mandalay Bay security officers in the building when Campos first reported shots were fired over the radio, and that the officers and the armed security personnel immediately responded to the 32nd floor. Yet according to Sheriff Lombardo, the first two officers arrived on the 32nd floor at 10.17pm. Which version is correct? If the officers responded immediately as MGM said, it is unlikely that it would have taken them 12 minutes to make the short trip up the elevator to the 32nd floor. If they did not respond immediately, why not? According to the timeline at Intellihub, one officer was reportedly on the 31st floor at 10.11pm when he reported that he heard automatic gunfire on the floor above him. Shouldn't he have already been aware that this was the case, if hotel security and police were already working together, and Campos and Schuck had already made clear at 10.05pm that shooting was happening on the 32nd floor?
But what about the engineer Stephen Schuck? According to his testimony on the Ellen Show, he responded to the call about the blocked stairwell door by using the service elevator some distance away. In his own words:
"I came down from a higher floor and a different hallway, using a service elevator and I walked out and rounded the corner for the 100 hallway. It was quiet at this time and the doors are set back about a foot and Jesus was towards the end of the hallway but I didn't know at that time and I thought I saw someone pop out of the cubby and I kept walking and once I got more than halfway is when I saw Jesus and I started to hear shooting. At the time I didn't know it was shooting, I thought it was a jackhammer, and as an engineer I thought we're not working up here this late, we wouldn't be doing that. And it was, I believe, outside, it wasn't in the hallway yet, and that's when Jesus leaned out and he said 'take cover! take cover!' and within milliseconds if he didn't say that I would have got hit."Note his reference to the sound of a "jackhammer", which matches with what Campos heard a few minutes earlier when he was in between the stairwell doors. But those few minutes are all important. Campos was shot at 10.05pm, within 40 seconds of the shooter(s) in the room firing on the crowd below. What is a reasonable amount of time to have passed between Campos getting shot and Schuck arriving from a higher floor, walking down the corridor towards Paddock's room, and then being shot at himself? Two minutes? Three? Four? At least one minute surely? Even if it was just one minute, that still suggests that someone in Paddock's room was shooting at the crowd while also shooting through the door at Schuck.
The change of the time when Campos was shot from 9.59 to 10.05 suits both the MGM management and the LVMPD, because it avoids the allegation that police (who were in the hotel at the time when Campos was shot) could have been at Paddock's room before the shooting began at 10.05pm. Still, there is the question of why the police officers and security guard who were in the hotel at the time did not arrive on the 32nd floor until 10.17pm.
In their interview with 60 Minutes, one of the four officers who breached Paddock's room at 11.20pm stated that he saw "a lot of drills, drill bits, all kinds of tools in the room". This corroborates the testimony of both Campos and Schuck that they heard drilling sounds or the sound of a jackhammer just before they were shot at. During one of his press conferences, Sheriff Lombardo was asked by a journalist if he saw any evidence in the room that the shooter had planned to survive, if he had planned to escape. The Sheriff answered "yes" but refused to say what that evidence was. Later the Sheriff corroborated the statements of Campos and Schuck and the officers who first entered the room when he confirmed the presence of drills in Paddock's room, and volunteered the information that the drilling was to the wall adjacent to the main door of the room. While Lombardo stated that the drilling "had not been completed" we have no idea what that actually means. With a camera already in the peephole, two cameras on a service cart in the corridor and the stairwell door screwed shut, all angles were covered for the shooter(s), so it seems unlikely that the drilling was to install yet another camera as suggested by Lombardo. More likely is that the drilling in the wall adjacent to the door was for the shooter(s) to escape from the room into the stairwell without exiting through the suite door.
Who Shot Stephen Paddock?
After the shooting from Paddock's room stopped at 10.15pm, Campos was still in the alcove of one of the rooms near Paddock's suite. Officially, police officers arrived at 10.17pm and stayed in the corridor until the door was breached at 11.20pm. At no point during that time did any of those present in the hallway report hearing any more shooting, not even a single gun shot. This poses a problem for the claim that Stephen Paddock shot himself. The best the LVMPD could come up with by way of an explanation, as stated by Sheriff Lombardo, was that Paddock must have chosen the exact moment when the ad-hoc SWAT team blew the door open 11.20pm to shoot himself dead, with the sound of gunshot masked by the explosion. This would be a remarkable coincidence, where Paddock, supposedly sitting in the room for more than an hour after stopping shooting, unwittingly chose the exact moment of the explosion to shoot himself. But we're forced to believe it because otherwise, Stephen Paddock was shot by someone else, that is to say, there was more than one gunman in that room...
Comment: See also:
Las Vegas Terror Attack: Clear Evidence of Multiple Shooters at Multiple Hotels
The Las Vegas Massacre and Occam's Razor