And why should we care? After all, there’s a very good argument to make for not giving shooters such as Paddock the attention they probably craved in life.
But there’s also a desire to make sense out of something so vile, something that still lacks any motive that we can see. Some mass killers who’ve previously led obscure lives leave manifestos because they want us to know them at the end. Paddock doesn’t seem to have done that, although I assume his computer might reveal more than we know now (which is next to nothing). So far there is no “sense” to be made. But more understanding of his life trajectory and motives could point to something that might help prevent or alert us to the next one.
Because there is very likely to be a “next one.” Unfortunately, the impulse to kill and the ability to kill is part of humankind, and that won’t change. The weaponry might, and among the many present-day choices are vehicles and/or explosives and/or firearms and/or knives and probably others I haven’t thought of. And some that haven’t been invented yet.
We don’t know much about Paddock at this point (most of the information I rely on in this post is at that link), so anything I’m about to write here is extremely speculative. But these are my hunches, guesses, theories, for what they’re worth.
Paddock was a guy who kept a very low profile. But there are two unusual things about his life, and they tie in with each other (or might tie in with each other). The first is that his father was a notorious criminal, a bank robber and prison escapee who lived away from the family under a different name for many years. The second is that Stephen Paddock was a gambler. If he had a home—and he apparently had several in various Sunshine states but didn’t stay too long in any of them—it was the gambling centers of Las Vegas and to a lesser extent Reno. So in a sense he was home when he committed his crime, although he was in a Vegas hotel.
Does psychopathy run in families? Maybe, say the researchers. Paddock’s shocked and talkative younger brother Eric says that his father was on the run by the time Eric was born and therefore not much of an influence on their lives, but since Stephen was eight years older than Eric we can conclude that their father probably was a much greater environmental influence during Stephen’s formative years until the age of eight. And of course their father would have been a genetic influence for all his children.
So there’s a criminal and possibly psychopathic father, and Stephen himself seemed drawn to the risky business of gambling. On the move, married once (briefly?), no children, holding various legit jobs until making a financial killing (to coin a phrase) in real estate, at least according to his brother. I wonder, though, whether Stephen might have actually made his money in a shadier enterprise and gave the real estate explanation as a cover story. Something about his constant moving and the very low profile indicates at least the possibility.
So he might have been a shady character right along, who kept a low profile and let no moss grow under his feet, and found his natural home in casinos, where he felt most comfortable.
What made him decide to become a killer? After all, he’s older than most mass murderers, and isn’t described as having been particularly rageful, or rageful at all. My guess is that politics was not the issue, but that’s just a guess (like most of what I’m writing here). I think he wanted to die for some reason, and decided to let his destructive impulses out prior to killing himself. And I think he did that because he was a psychopath who wanted to kill, to go out in what he considered a blaze of glory.
If I’m correct about that—and I have no idea whether I am—he would have most resembled Columbine shooters Harris and Kliebold, of the mass killers that come to mind. That may seem like an odd thing to say, since they were high school students and he was well into his sixties. But here’s what I’m basing the statement on [emphasis mine]:
”¦Harris and Klebold planned for a year and dreamed much bigger. The school served as means to a grander end, to terrorize the entire nation by attacking a symbol of American life. Their slaughter was aimed at students and teachers, but it was not motivated by resentment of them in particular…
The killers, in fact, laughed at petty school shooters. They bragged about dwarfing the carnage of the Oklahoma City bombing and originally scheduled their bloody performance for its anniversary. Klebold boasted on video about inflicting “the most deaths in U.S. history.” Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn’t been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. It wasn’t just “fame” they were after – Agent Fuselier bristles at that trivializing term – they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.
Well, I don’t know if Paddock was that ambitious, but I think his impulse was most likely similar.
The other comparison that comes to mind is to Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper of 1966. The similarities there involve the high-up sniper perch, and the seeming lack of obvious or conventional motivation (even Whitman—who kept voluminous journals—didn’t understand why he had these aggressive impulses and was trying to puzzle it out). On autopsy, Whitman was found to have had a brain tumor that may or may not have been the cause or at least a contributing factor in his aggression, and doctors have been arguing about that ever since. I wonder whether an autopsy of Paddock will reveal any brain changes that might possibly explain (or at least partially explain) his sudden turning.
I have little doubt we’ll learn more about the shooter as time goes on. But I doubt we’ll learn enough to understand all that much. Perhaps Trump’s characterization is the best explanation we’ll ever have: “an act of true evil.”