Comment: The questions continue to pile up and all the police can do is blame 'poor hotel security'. There's obviously something more going on than that.
For previous updates, see:
More than 50 dead, 500 wounded in Las Vegas concert shooting - UPDATES.
Oct. 10 Updates
In the original story, Campos was drawn to Paddock's room because he noticed the door was ajar. Now, in this one, he was on the floor investigating a
different open door, which set off a hotel alarm. Were they
both open?
Is Campos a reliable source? Right-wing source GotNews.com asserts that an ATF source told them Campos may have been
an accomplice - a large amount of gunpowder residue was found on his hands: "They believe he killed Paddock, shot holes through the door and his own arm to produce physical evidence for his cover story, then went and lay next to the elevator." That ATF denies that, however. That said, here's the rumors:
"Paddock also had an electronic signal jamming device active and that is why the cameras were all out on the floor," the ATF official explained.
Moreover, it appears the 64-year-old multimillionaire also plotted his attack well in advance: "Paddock at a minimum scouted out two separate music concerts, one being the EDC [Electric Daisy Carnival] and the other held at the Life is Beautiful venue plaza by Fremont, but didn't pull the trigger," the ATF senior official told GotNews. "Paddock had big plans, and didn't plan on dying in the hotel room." ABC News recently reported that Paddock had previously booked a hotel room overlooking Lollapalooza, and visited other musical festivals, presumably to scout for potential targets.
"Paddock also bought 60 guns total from at least 20 different gun stores, and he only visited them each once," the official said. The ATF is looking into the real estate investor's mysterious background, and so far has yet to reach a conclusion. A source familiar with the investigation told GotNews he "believes [Paddock] was an illegal gun broker or possibly working for a three letter agency to catch real criminals who are trying to buy illegal guns."
Speculation that Paddock may have been an arms dealer has increased in recent days, in part due to a bizarre television interview his younger brother Eric gave, in which he discussed his brother's background:
"People are saying 'oh, he must've had help.' Steve had no help. Steve didn't take help. It did not take a village for Steve. Steve was an arm-," Eric Paddock says in the strange clip, before awkwardly pausing, apparently catching himself. "I'm sorry. Please, don't..."
What has Paddock's escape plan? As we reported in a
previous update, officer Newton, who was part of the team that breached the room, could only speculate based on what he saw that Paddock planned to shoot it out with them, and could have held out for hours based on the number of guns and ammo. But Sheriff Lombardo says the shots fired at the jet fuel tanks may have been intended
to cause a distraction.
"We know that he attempted to shoot at the fuel tanks. We know that he had some personal protection equipment in the room. We know that the car that was down in the parking garage still contained binary explosives," Lombardo said. "Depending on the 'splash' he made during the shooting, would it enable the first responders to be directing their attention to other locations, which would enable Mr. Paddock to just leave the hotel."
Lombardo said that the explosives were not set up to detonate with a trigger, but added that police do not know "whether he had planned to cause additional harm outside of what occurred at Mandalay Bay."
When asked about the "note" found in Paddock's room, Lombardo responded: "There was not a note in the suspect's room. We recovered a document that had numbers associated to it," adding that he was not able to make a guess as to why it was found in his room. This somewhat contradicts the accounts of the officers who breached the room, who say the note contained specific angles and elevations to maximize his shooting accuracy.
Police and FBI have reportedly sorted through "a thousand leads" and
haven't found anything: no motive, no connections, no accomplices, nothing. Former FBI profiler David Gomez told AP: "It's his actual normalcy that makes him a fascinating study".
Experts say it is extremely unusual to have so few clues more than a week after a mass shooting. In past mass killings or terrorist attacks, killers left notes, social media postings and information on a computer, or even phoned police.
In this case, there was no suicide note, no manifesto, no evidence the gunman was motivated by any ideology and Paddock has no clear presence on social media, police said.
The FBI is working around-the-clock and a "comprehensive picture is being drawn as to the suspect's mental state," the sheriff said. Though at this point, they haven't found any one particular event in Paddock's life that triggered the shooting, he said.
October 11 Updates
Laura Loomer has
another scoop from Mandalay Bay. She has acquired a screenshot from the hotel's employee database, Workday, that shows security guard
Jesus Campos is not currently listed as an employee. This may suggest he has either resigned, was fired, or perhaps was never even officially employed or entered into the system by the hotel.
The media have already pointed out the strangeness of Paddock not having any social media profile. But despite his reclusive nature, they still managed to obtain photographs of him. Isn't it strange that we know practically nothing about Jesus Campos?
As for the revised timeline, even MGM is
saying that the police version "may not be accurate":
"As evidenced by law enforcement briefings over the past week, many facts are still unverified and continue to change as events are under review. We cannot be certain about the most recent timeline that has been communicated publicly, and we believe what is currently being expressed may not be accurate."
DeShong added, "We understand the public's desire for information and the importance of getting our community and the public at large the information they deserve, and we are doing everything we can to support law enforcement's efforts to do so. Therefor, it is not appropriate for us to comment further at this time on what remains an open matter for law enforcement."
YouTube user M34T has synced several videos of the shooting below:
Notice the shots heard in the cabbie's video at 4:39, which aren't audible in the crowd footage. Since the cabbie was directly next to the hotel, it's plausible her camera was picking up shots fired
within the hotel room, which were not audible farther away. These come around 5 minutes after the shooting started, i.e. right in the middle of the 10 minutes of gunfire. What were these shots? Was this when shots were fired through the door of the hotel room? Police have not suggested shots were fired within the room at any other time than at the very end (according to the first timeline) or 6 minutes
before the shooting began (according to the second timeline). Remember, Paddock was supposed to have fired off up to 200 rounds at either time. So what are these shots?
Police are saying that Campos actually called in the shots fired at him soon
after he was shot, and before the shooting began, "possibly using a hallway phone to contact hotel security. He manually called down and he used his radio to call." Some details that may possibly become relevant as more information comes forward:
Some police officers had already been inside the Mandalay Bay building responding to another, unrelated call when the attack happened, Roberts said.
There are no hotel surveillance cameras in the hotel hallway, only on the floor's elevator banks, and the timestamps on the hotel's communications systems have in some cases been inaccurate, hampering investigators' ability to build an accurate timeline while they try to find a motive behind the attack, Roberts said.
As to how Paddock and/or an accomplice managed to get all that weaponry into the hotel room, it has emerged that he was allowed
access to the hotel's service elevator - an alleged perk for high rollers. This news was preempted when the CEO of Wynn resorts on Sunday apparently
slipped by saying this:
"You'd never stop a man like this (Paddock) from coming in the building," Wynn told FOX News on Sunday. "However," he continued, "nobody in this company's history, no public person, has ever walked in the service elevator unless they were accompanied by security. Uh, that wouldn't happen."
This tidbit of information was offered up randomly as they were not talking about elevator use at all. When Chris Wallace heard Wynn say this, however, he immediately asked for clarification.
"Did he (Paddock) go in the service elevator, Steve?" asked Wallace.
Wynn then proceeds to fumble his response, seemingly knowing he'd just revealed information the public was not given.
"Uh, Uh, Uh, I'm just saying, anything like that...I'm not sure if he did. But nobody ever goes in the back of the house unaccompanied by security," replies Wynn.
So was Paddock accompanied by security? If so, who specifically? And again, wouldn't any of this have been captured on camera?
In related news, an
autopsy has found no abnormalities in Paddock's brain. Marilou Danley had "no concerns" over Paddock's mental health. And Sheriff Lombardo says we may
never know Paddock's motive. Lombardo also contradicted two previous pieces of reporting:
Lombardo said his team had reviewed hours of CCTV footage, and were not aware of any evidence to suggest he went into the desert to practice shooting in the days before the massacre, or that he hired a prostitute...
A bellboy did help Paddock move several bags up to his room, Lombardo revealed, adding that the killer traveled back and forth to his hometown of Mesquite several times before the massacre.
FBI returned to Paddock's place in Reno after someone told local police that the house had been
broken into. A neighbor saw lights on in the home. Police discovered someone had broken in through the front door, but they are "not sure exactly how they gained entry. Police are not aware of any damages or anything that was stolen." There are no suspects at this time or any descriptions of a suspect.
October 12 Updates
The maintenance guy who was warned off by Jesus Campos spoke to NBC. Stephen Schuck was called to the 32nd floor to check on the stairwell door near Paddock's room which had been jammed shut (according to the police who breached the room, a piece of metal had been screwed into the door and frame). Walking down the hallway, he heard shots. Campos, who was taking cover in one of the hotel-room door alcoves by this time, warned Schuck to take cover. More shots were fired as Schuck too ducked into an alcove. After waiting for the gunfire to stop Schuck immediately told hotel dispatchers to call police.
The audio of Schuck radioing in the shooting was broadcast:
Laura Loomer went to Jesus Campos's house. An armed security guard working for On Scene, Troy Goff, was standing in front of the home. (On Scene's business license apparently
expired in January, and they have a virtual address.)
Some are claiming that those extra 6 minutes should have been
enough time for police to have intervened earlier:
Pressure mounted Wednesday for Las Vegas police to explain how quickly they reacted to what would become the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history after two hotel employees reported a gunman spraying a hallway with bullets six minutes before he opened fire on a crowd at a musical performance.
. ..
The six minutes wouldn't have been enough time for officers to stop the attack, said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director who has worked on SWAT teams.
Rather than rush in without a game plan, police would have been formulating the best response to the barricaded gunman, he said.
"Maybe that's enough time to get the first patrolman onto the floor but the first patrolman is not going to go knock on that customer's door and say 'What's going on with 200 holes in the door?'" Hosko said.
It took 10-15 minutes for the first police officers to make it to the 32nd floor. Whether or not that response is considered fast enough would depend on whether there were any policeman in the area close enough to make it there in less time.
A Clark County DA insider allegedly told
True Pundit that Sheriff Lombardo is lying to the public.
"Lombardo is a politician and that is all he is," the DA insider said. "He's doing and saying what the FBI is telling him and the majority of it makes no sense to anyone who has conducted criminal investigations for any length of time.
"You have to understand the FBI in Las Vegas only takes, they never give anything and this includes information. It is the same with the way they treat the DA's office and Metro (Las Vegas Police)."
Las Vegas is the county seat of Clark County. Its court system and law enforcement investigations are normally separate from federal court and the FBI.
The DA insider said Aaron Rouse who heads the FBI in Las Vegas reports directly to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who is running point on the Las Vegas shooting probe. Rouse, who for years worked under McCabe in the Bureau's Counterintelligence Division in D.C., was appointed to the Las Vegas post by ex-FBI director James Comey in 2016.
According to the Las Vegas source, Rouse's FBI has discounted most of the intelligence and evidence found by investigators outside the bureau, including LVMPD as well as solid evidence pinpointed by investigators working with the county DA's office.
Some of this evidence deals with forensic proof that a second shooter may have opened fire on the concert goers, the law enforcement source said.
When pressed for details on what specifically Lombardo and the FBI are covering up, the DA insider said local investigators, as well as retired law enforcement officers who have volunteered their expertise since the shootings, uncovered fairly impressive forensic evidence that an additional shooter was likely firing from a location closer to the concert crowd than shooter Stephen Paddock's deadly perch at the Mandalay Bay.
Paddock, the DA insider said, was firing rounds from approximately 400 yards away from the concert from the 32nd floor on Mandalay Bay. The law enforcement source said investigators turned over proof to the FBI that a second shooter was firing from inside a perimeter of approximately 215 yards.
October 13 Updates
More oddities surrounding Jesus Campos have come to light in the last day. First, he was scheduled for 5 network interviews (apparently set up by his union president), but
didn't show up for any of them. This included an interview with Sean Hannity. When he was nowhere to be found, Hannity tweeted "He cancelled." Journalist Stephanie Wash tweeted "We were in a room & we came out & he was gone". After all this, Laura Loomer paid a second visit to his home. She says a "female family member of Campos answered the door and ... clearly said
'I can't talk about this, I was told not to talk about this.' " As Loomer writes, who is preventing the family from talking?
In addition to Campos not showing up on the Mandalay Bay employee software, he's apparently
not even registered as a security guard in the state of Nevada. All security guards are supposed to register as armed or unarmed guards with the Private Investigator's Licensing Board, but there's not Jesus Campos listed with the PILB.
And here's another eyewitness who insists there was more than one shooter:
October 14 Updates
Cops have
revised the shooting timeline
again. Now, Campos is shot by Paddock at 10:05, not six minutes earlier:
The latest account came a day after MGM Resorts, which owns Mandalay Bay, disputed the police department's timeline, saying in a statement that the time of 9:59 had come from a hotel report "manually created after the fact" and was not accurate.
The sheriff did not say on Friday whether Mr. Paddock had already begun shooting at the crowd from the window of his 32nd-floor suite when he wounded Mr. Campos, or turned to the concert immediately after. MGM said in its statement that the gunman was firing at the concert grounds "at the same time as, or within 40 seconds after" the time Mr. Campos first reported shots over his radio.
Don't worry, though. Sheriff Lombardo assured everyone, "there is no conspiracy." "Nobody is attempting to hide anything in reference to this investigation. The dynamics and the size of this investigation requires us to go through voluminous amounts of information in order to draw an accurate picture," he
added. Lombardo cited Campos's cell phone call about his encounter as verification for the new timing.
For their part, MGM Resorts has
hired a crisis management firm, Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, "to assist in responding to inquiries from media and investors".
LVMPD and the FBI
denied journalists Laura Loomer and Mike Tokes access to yesterday's press conference. Guess they've been asking real questions... Media also
attacked Michael Snyder (now a Republican candidate for Congress) for asking
tough questions.
The boyfriend of Marilou Danley's sister has revealed more
detail about the man. Apparently Paddock told him he had a huge "gun room" in his Mesquite, Nevada, home, and owned at least one made-to-order weapon worth thousands of dollars. He called Paddock "highly intelligent and strategic."
He and his girlfriend, who was the sister of Marilou Danley, had also spent some time at their home Mesquite, Nevada where Paddock mentioned his 'gun room'.
'His comments were that it's a substantial hobby that needs to be protected: 'a gun room',' the man said.
Paddock had reportedly experienced significant weight loss in the lead up to the shooting. He also developed an obsession with his girlfriend's ex-husband, Geary Danley, with whom she had been married to for more than 20 years before they finalized their divorce in 2015.
The gunman's brother, Eric Paddock, told Reuters in a series of text messages that Danley was sympathetic in dealing with Paddock's allergy-driven quirks.
Paddock often wore brown cloth gardening gloves to prevent rashes from contact with cleaning chemical residues, the brother wrote.
He was also allergic to many pills and was unable to renew his pilot's license - he had flown planes since he was a teenager - because he could not take the pills needed to reduce his blood pressure. At casinos where he was a regular, he was such a valued customer that staff obliged his requests to wash his room's carpet with plain water.
'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 hair sprays or anything with scents in it because it affected him,' Eric wrote, referring to the passport-style photo of Danley that has been widely circulated by news outlets.
...
Paddock certainly seemed less open with his Reno neighbors; Page describes him as 'a reclusive weirdo' and says she 'never once got as much as a smile out of him.'
'I never heard music, conversation and never once saw them have friends over.
'He would keep his face down, avoid all conversation and was just very unfriendly and strange.'
October 15 Updates
See:
Laura Loomer also reports that Campos only started working for Mandalay Bay on
June 30 of this year. He'd only been working there for 3 months.
An interesting factoid: The Saudi Royal Family
owns 45% of the Four Seasons, which owns the top six floors of Mandalay Bay (above the 32nd floor).
October 16 Updates
Laura Loomer
interviewed survivors and eyewitnesses Stephanie and Anthony, who insist there were multiple shooters:
Stephanie and Anthony, the survivors, told Loomer they recall two different sounds that night: automatic gunfire coming from one source - presumably Paddock - and single-shot gunfire coming from somewhere else.
...
Loomer noted that these two individuals feel the mainstream media has ignored them. "It's shameful that eyewitnesses and victims of the Las Vegas shooting feel as though mainstream and local Las Vegas media don't want to listen to their accounts of what happened the night of the shooting," Loomer told GotNews. "Like many of the people I met in Las Vegas, the eyewitnesses I spoke with expressed their frustrations with the direction of the investigation, the lack of answers, and the inconsistencies with the ever-changing timeline."
...
"Given the fact that the LVMPD and FBI are still unsure of the facts of the shooting and the timeline of the attack, it seems reckless for them to dismiss the idea of multiple shooters, especially given the fact that multiple eyewitnesses claimed that they were chased on the ground and heard multiple shooters," Loomer explained.
Stephen Paddock's body has been
transferred to Stanford University where neuropathologists will further examine his brain. Chances are they won't find anything more than the autopsy: i.e., nothing.
Comment: Actress Vanessa Marquez claimed on Twitter that "Clooney helped blacklist me when I spoke up [about] harassment on ER. Women who don't play the game lose career... I did." Clooney denied having anything to do with it, saying he "had no idea Vanessa was blacklisted".
Director Oliver Stone has refused to speak out against Weinstein, saying that he believes you should "wait until this thing gets to trial" before commenting. But he too has been accused by former Playboy Playmate Carrie Stevens, who says that 26 years ago, when she was 22, Stone grabbed her breast at a party: Former Pussycat Dolls member Kaya Jones revealed what the pop super-star life is really like: James Van Der Beek said he too was abused as a young man: "I've had my ass grabbed by older, powerful men, I've had them corner me in inappropriate sexual conversations when I was much younger..."
Update (Oct. 15): Writer Lila Feinberg has called off her wedding with Amazon exec Roy Price, which was planned for November 12.