This was published 6 years ago
Inside Las Vegas shooter's room: guns, ammunition and couch against the door
By Rachel Olding
Las Vegas: High-powered guns lie on the carpet among piles of bullets. Another firearm sits in the hallway on a bipod, used for stability when firing at targets.
Photos and footage emerged on Wednesday offering a glimpse inside the hotel room that unleashed the deadliest shooting in modern US history.
Retired accountant and multi-millionaire gambler Stephen Paddock, 64, checked into Room 32135 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Thursday. It was a hotel that both he and his girlfriend, Australian-Filipino grandmother Marilou Danley, had stayed in before on their regular trips to the famous Strip.
Footage obtained by the New York Post show double doors to the suite blown off their hinges and a bullet-riddled couch pressed up against the door. Yellow crime scene tape remains criss-crossed across the door.
Verified photos from the Las Vegas shooter's hotel room.Credit: Twitter/@MikeTokes
Inside, an assault rifle on a bipod is seen sitting on the carpeted floor with an evidence marker numbered 19.
It is one of 22 rifles and one handgun brought into the double-room suite by Paddock over four days. Police believe he brought them through the hotel concealed in more than 10 suitcases. Some had been modified into fully automatic rifles using bump-stock devices.
Further photos, since verified by police, show military-grade assault rifles lying on the carpet amid bullets, optics, a neat stack of 15 magazines and bipods used for stability when firing at targets.
One photo shows the bottom half of a man's body lying on the floor, dressed in black pants, slip-on shoes and black gloves. The curtains are drawn in the dark room and on a nearby table, there is a slip of paper although police do not believe anything resembling a suicide note was left behind.
Drapes billow out of broken windows of room 35132 of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.Credit: AP
A small hammer can be seen, possibly the one used to smash open two windows in the suite and aim on the festival crowd below. He fired incessantly for nine to 11 minutes on the crowd gathered for the Route 91 Harvest country music festival.
Federal authorities have confirmed that he had a staggering 12 'bump stock' devices to allow rifles to discharge ammunition quicker. All the weapons and devices were bought legally.
An unverified photograph claiming to be of the Las Vegas shooter's hotel room. Credit: Twitter/@MikeTokes
On Wednesday, the death toll stood at 59 and the injured at 527.
A few more details on the gunman trickled out on Wednesday morning yet a possible motive remains a mystery.
MSNBC has reported that Paddock wired $100,000 to the Philippines in recent days, the country that his 62-year-old girlfriend was born in and still visited.
The network reported that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sherriff Joe Lombardo was incorrect when he said that Danley was located by police in Tokyo immediately after the shooting.
Lombardo later told a press conference Daley was in the Philippines, authorities were in contact with her and hoped to have more information soon.
Jonathan Neighbors, 15, adds light to one of the 59 luminaries set on the front steps of Greene Memorial United Methodist Church for victims of the shooting Credit: Heather Rousseau
The network said she left the US on September 25 for the Philippines, travelling via Hong Kong. She is due back later this week.
The network also said that Paddock had reported 16 gambling wins of $10,000 in the two weeks before the shooting. Federal law in the US requires individuals to report casino winnings of more than $10,000 in a day.
A picture has emerged of a gambling-obsessed retiree who was oddly stand-offish to friends and family but had made large amounts of wealth which he pumped back into poker hands, a small collection of investment properties, boat cruises, concerts, two airplanes and regular trips to Las Vegas.
Danley was a keen gambler too, posting photos from Vegas gambling tournaments, including a stay at Mandalay Bay in 2014.
After divorcing her husband of 22 years, she met Paddock in around 2014 and was known in their over-55s community in Mesquite, Nevada, as a friendly woman who liked Zumba classes.
Paddock was described as a regular gambler, bordering on addict, in a 2012 civil case that he launched against the Cosmopolitan Casino, according to NBC News. He tried to sue the casino after he slipped on the floor and injured himself. However, CCTV showed that he either purposely slipped or fell out of his sandal and the case was dismissed.
His large financial transactions made in recent weeks - possibly $10,000 a day - suggest he was placing huge bets in the lead up to the massacre. It raises questions about whether he was also making huge losses.