In the late evening of October 1, 2017, a person or persons stationed in a suite and/or adjacent hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas started shooting on a crowd of concert goers to the Route 91 Harvest, a country music festival. The firing lasted about 10 minutes, and the person or persons doing the firing killed close to 60 innocent people and wounded more than 500 victims.
Two weeks later, the law enforcement officials in charge of investigating this horrible crime are starting to stand accused of an ugly crime nowhere near as brutal, but potentially fatal for their credibility – providing information in such a way as to stand accused of potential official coverup.
And the security guard who may well have seen who went in and/or out of a room the shooter used as a sniper post went missing five days ago, just before he was to tell his story to a national TV audience. Top that, Area 51 buffs.
I have held back from writing about this tragedy for so many decent people and their loved ones because I’m not there investigating the crimes against them personally.
However, what we’re hearing is not making many people feel good about the honesty of those telling us what happened.
Murder is a crime that falls under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. However, the FBI will take part in a criminal investigation if the perpetrators violated federal laws or if the criminals appear to have crossed state lines or if the local people need extra help. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms will take part perpetrators broke federal laws involving these items. And other federal forces (ICE, Secret Service, and the like) will take part if the lawbreaking involves their areas of concentration.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who leads the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department responsible for policing Las Vegas and the rest of Clark County, is the local lawman in charge of the Route 91 Harvest mass murder investigation. The FBI is also involved. The FBI’s Special Agent in charge of the Las Vegas Division is Aaron Rouse. Disgraced fired FBI chief James Comey appointed Rouse to the position in July 2016, per a 7/28/2016 FBI press release.
The narrative being pushed by law enforcement is that one demented guy did it.
He snapped and went off, supposedly, due to a downturn in his life or gambling losses. Opponents of citizens’ right to bear arms right away called for massive gun control.
Days later, police announced they found notes that were calculations on trajectory, distance, and other technical matters that would have helped a shooter kill more people. Were the notes in Paddock’s handwriting? If so, it implies Paddock was a careful planner.
FBI people said the shooter acted alone.
Then Sheriff Lombardo blurted out the obvious at a press conference a few days later, according to a report in the 10/5/2017 Daily Mail.
“Do you think this was all accomplished on his own?” Lombardo asked, noting the arsenal of weapons the shooter amassed, and the discovery of explosives in his car. He added: “You’ve got to make the assumption he had to have some help at some point.”
Officials also said Paddock checked in to the Mandalay Bay Hotel September 28.
But an independent reporter named Laura Loomer reported valet records indicate Paddock was at the hotel as early as September 25. She accused FBI officials of lying.
It is conceivable one man could have taken all the guns and ammo up to the room in question using an elevator and a luggage cart. Paddock supposedly kept the housekeepers out, so they couldn’t report his arms cache.
But why would the guy need all that weaponry? No shooter used much of what he had.
He was alone in his room, lawmen said. His shack-up honey, one Marilou Danley, an Australian citizen of Filipino ancestry who met Paddock while she was a hostess for high rollers in casinos, went out of the country not long before his killing spree. She left her husband of 25 years, a man named Geary Danley, to be with Paddock. Paddock reportedly wired her as much as $100,000 while she was in the Philippines in late September.
But room service receipts that surfaced implied he was ordering for two. Who was the second person?
Agents reported Paddock started shooting on the country music fans about 10:05 p.m. Vegas time, and then shot scores of rounds through the door of the hotel room and wounded security guard Jesus Campos when Campos checked on the 32nd floor about 10:15 p.m. They claimed Campos’ presence diverted the shooter from completing his evil mission. In fact, the shooter(s) stopped killing people in the crowd below at about 10:15 p.m. They said Campos’ call alerted hotel security people, who in turn got police help.
A hotel maintenance man (Stephen Schuck), who also came to the came up reported Campos was wounded, and they released that audio. His call to hotel security had sounds of gunfire; it came in about 10 p.m., before the shooter(s) started firing on the crowd.
But no one has released any audio of the security guard Campos calling after he was shot.
Later, Las Vegas police said the shooter shot through the door (of one of the rooms Paddock rented) many times and wounded Campos before 10 p.m., several minutes before someone in that room started shooting at the crowd of country music fans.
Laura Loomer tried to talk with Campos at his home, to hear what he had to say about what happened. She said his house was under guard by a guard company of curious background.
Campos is missing right now. He was supposed to go on TV on Thursday, October 12, but he vanished. Did Mandalay Bay’s bosses (MGM Resorts), fearing lawsuits, talk him into silence? Or did his union’s lawyers and other honchos get to him? Is he here legally? What is his criminal record, if any? Or is something uglier involved? What did he see and intend to say that would make someone want him out of circulation?
A CNN report 10/13/2017 noted Sheriff Lombardo said it was true Campos reached the 32nd floor about 9:59 p.m. He blamed the original 10:15 p.m. time on an incorrect handwritten time line entry made by a Mandalay Bay employee.
Per CNN’s reporting on 10/13/2017 and the Daily Mail’s and New York Daily News’ reporting 10/14/2017, the revised timeline of the massacre is as follows:
The shooter fired through the door of one of the hotel rooms Paddock rented at Campos at 9:59 p.m.
The shooter fired at the crowd below from 10:05 p.m. to about 10:15 p.m.
SWAT officers were in the vicinity of the rooms Paddock rented by 10:17 p.m.
SWAT officers did not breach the door until 11:20 p.m., about an hour later. They said they found Paddock dead, probably a suicide.
Why the wait? Supposedly they spent most of the time until they made a move on the room the bullets came from evacuating people from nearby rooms.
David Hickey, the president of the Security Police and Fire Professionals Union, reportedly told Fox News “It’s (Campos’ disappearance before a scheduled appearance on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show) highly unusual. I’m hoping everything is okay with him and I’m sure MGM or the union will let (media) know when we hear something,”
Hickey said he’d been helping security guard Jesus Campos prepare for a string of interviews, scheduled for Thursday evening (October 12).
“For the past four days he’s been preparing,” Hickey said, noting the interviews were Campos’ idea to begin with. He said he hoped telling his story would help him move on.
“Thursday we had a meeting with MGM officials, and after that meeting was over we talked about the interviews, we went to a private area, and when we came out, Mr. Campos was gone.”
Hickey told Fox he received a text Thursday night, saying Campos had been taken to a “quick clinic.”
“Right now I’m just concerned where my member is, and what his condition is,” he said.
Campos has not resurfaced as of this writing (October 17, 2017).
Why would Mandalay Bay management care about the timeline?
If Campos and/or Schuck reported shooting before 10:05, when the shooter started firing on people – shooting that lasted another 10 minutes or so, then armed hotel security officers might have prevented most of the deaths by shooting though the hotel room door at the shooter and helping police get to the two rooms Paddock rented earlier than they did get there. Lawyers for the dead and wounded could sue and win a judgment holding the owners of Mandalay Bay civilly liable for the deaths and wounds the shooter caused.
Remember, the shooting stopped at about 10:15 p.m. The original info Sheriff Lombardo said Mandalay Bay people gave his officers put Campos outside Paddock’s door at that time, and he allegedly turned from shooting at concert goers to shooting at Campos. The self-serving report made it look at first that Mandalay Bay people were on their toes and saved the day. It was later proven wrong.
Why would someone else want Campos out of the way?
Maybe Campos saw who came and/or went from the suite and the room Paddock rented. If there are other people involved, they or their people would not want Campos sharing this with a national TV audience. Was Campos himself in on the plot, ask some.
Now for some other questions.
Have lawmen reviewed the Mandalay Bay Hotel’s security camera footage? If so, what have they found? Likewise for Paddock’s vehicle in the hotel’s parking. Who got into that vehicle and retrieved items or placed items in the vehicle?
How could Mandalay Bay’s management (MGM Resorts) prevent their place from suffering an Ocean’s 11 attack if they weren’t watching the premises for weapons and explosives?
Have lawmen reviewed all footage taken outside the hotel and at the venue of the outdoor concert? Did the bullets come from only one place at a time? Or did they come from multiple places at the same time?
Why were there two knocked-out windows some distance apart in the hotel room and the adjoining hotel suite Padddock rented? Was one sniper post not enough for the shooter? Were spent cartridge cases from more than one weapon found at each of the broken-out windows? Could someone go between the room and the suite using an internal door without having to go out in the hallway?
Were the weapons checked for fingerprints? Whose were on them? What about ammo containers?
Have the hotel room and the suite been checked for fingerprints, blood, and other sources of DNA?
As gross as it sounds, have autopsies been done on the dead, and did the coroner have bullets and fragments retrieved from the victims? Likewise, for the living who were shot, did lawmen have bullets retrieved when doctors removed them? This sad and gruesome work is part of determining what kind of bullets the shooters used, and what kind of weapons they used.
And following up – did the projectile(s) that killed Paddock come from one of his own weapons, or from the SWAT team or other police officers, or from a weapon neither Paddock nor the lawmen had? Like a weapon in the hands of an accomplice or a hit man whose job it was to make Paddock a patsy and shut him up for good?
What was the estimated time of death of Paddock? Did he commit suicide or did he have help in meeting his Maker – possible before the shooting started? Or did the SWAT team do their jobs and kill him?
Will the autopsy report on Paddock reveal any drugs or any thing else unusual? Drugs would tend to imply Paddock had help or was even a patsy. A criminal, especially one who police say had firing calculations, and may have had an escape plan, would want to be focused, not addled.
There are other matters of interest.
Sky News on 10/3/2017 reported a woman got toward the front of the crowd watching the country music show and started yelling, “You’re all going to die!” A witness said security people took her and a guy who was with her out of the outdoor concert area. Less than an hour later, the woman’s bizarre statement came true for about 60 people.
Where are the gal and her guy now? What do they know?
CNN reported 10/2/2017 country star Jason Aldean and the others on the stage fled when they realized they were being shot at. The report noted after the outdoor stage was empty, “floodlights illuminated the crowd.” That’s when the shooter(s) really started hitting people that night.
Why were floodlights turned on to show the concert goers? Who did it? What ties, if any, do they have to the shooter(s)? Were they aiding, or futilely trying to obscure the view of the shooter(s)?
Did the smoke alarms in the suite and/or the other room Paddock rented trigger? At what times? Were the rooms and smoke alarms separate enough that a shooter who could trigger one of the smoke alarms not trigger the other?
In the concert audience area, and in and around the aviation fuel tanks a shooter also hit with bullets in an apparent attempt to cause an explosion, did investigators find any bullets that were not shot by any of the weapons in the hotel room and suite Paddock rented?
Sheriff Lombardo early on implied there are multiple shooters and/or accomplices to Paddock. Recently Lombardo started to play ball with the feds and soften his stance about Paddock having help. Did the feds lean on him to adjust his public comments?
There is some critique of the Las Vegas police for taking so long to get to the 32nd floor to begin with, and to break into the room. I’m not going to criticize them for alleged slowness. I don’t know when they got the call for help from the hotel’s people, and how many people they had to go through to get to the area of the room and suite Paddock rented. And, given that there was no one shooting when they arrived, it might have been prudent for the police to evacuate nearby guests when they could.
The FBI, for their part, did do one thing quickly. It only took them a few hours to publicly deny Paddock was a Moslem terrorist connected to ISIS.
Meanwhile Comey’s homeys still haven’t been able to find proof Trump and the Russians stole the 2016 election using vote altering technology, or any other nefarious means, like Pokemon Go or Great Lakes scented itching powder in Hillary’s pant suits that caused her to avoid campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Even though Comey is gone, the No. 2 in the FBI is Andrew McCabe, whose wife Jill got $500,000 or so from a PAC with ties to Clinton pal Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe in her failed run for a US senate seat of Virginia. In his circles and/or those of his wife’s big donors, the average gun owner and country music fan is a hick who is fit only for working to pay taxes to support the cushy federal employee lifestyle of people like McCabe. McCabe said the FBI hadn’t found any motive or ties Paddock could have had that would lead him to commit mass murder.
Even the FBI “no Isis here” conclusion is questionable. ISIS claims Paddock is a convert to Islam. They have said so repeatedly. It also turns up Paddock visited the Middle East on cruises. ISIS people generally don’t lie when they claim responsibility for an attack. Since ISIS is at war with the United States, they would view an attack on thousands of Americans at a country music concert as a legitimate act of war.
A number of other Islamist terror groups have also been attacking Americans. Is the FBI telling the full truth in saying there is no ISIS tie, implying no Islamist terror group connection, but not saying it is possible another group with Islamist extremist views is involved?
Miss Loomer also posted on line a flyer, purportedly printed by MGM Resorts managers (MGM Resorts owns most of the Mandalay Bay Hotel), encouraging Mandalay Bay employees to donate to groups like CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), a front group for Islamist extremists in the United States, and to the leftist extremist group Southern Poverty Law Center.
Then there’s the issue of the Four Seasons Hotel. This is a hotel within the Mandalay Bay Hotel, basically the 35th to the 39th floors of the massive building. Who owns the Four Seasons Hotel? According to an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal published two months before the murderous attack on the concert goers, a Saudi Arabian prince owns almost 50% interest in this hotel, which starts three floors above the floor where the shooter(s) shot at the victims.
How did Paddock get the money for the weapons, the cruises, and his high stakes gambling lifestyle? Was he laundering money by gambling in casinos? Was he selling arms?
Multiple sources report Paddock had a business degree and years of employment as a federal employee. He started as a mailman when he was in college, then he was an agent for the IRS and an auditor for the Defense Department. He also had a pilot’s license.
Supposedly Paddock and one of his brothers started a real estate business that made them a pile of money. Paddock gambled a lot, winning and losing big, according to several people.
Was Paddock’s federal accounting background, pilot’s license, and gambling lifestyle a cover for a government project, some are asking.
From the FBI, crickets. Except for “He doesn’t have ties to ISIS.”
Sheriff Lombardo said it was hard to believe Paddock didn’t have help. But he has become more and more defensive in recent days.
Do the feds have anything on Lombardo? Vegas is a dirty town. I sure hope the sheriff is clean.
Why would the feds want to mislead people? What is their motive, assuming they are doing this?
(Remember, there is no formal proof the FBI or other federal agencies are covering anything up at this point. But there are a lot of people making that assumption, and it is the 800-pound gorilla in the briefing room when the FBI and Clark County officials speak.)
Was it a sting like Fast and Furious that went bad? Remember, Paddock was a long time fed, highly intelligent, and able to make profitable deals and gambles.
Are Moslems involved? It’s not likely MGM Resorts management or Four Seasons management are going to view Middle Eastern people with xenophobic suspicion.
Who was with Paddock in the room, helping him eat overpriced room service food?
A prostitute has come forward saying she allowed Paddock to indulge in violent rape fantasies on her person several times in exchange for several thousand dollars per session. But that was months ago, she said, and he was fired up because he had been winning big at the casinos. Interesting thing …. the prostie said Paddock was a 9-11 “truther” who blamed the feds for the Arabs’ attacks that killed thousands of Americans. Not a john’s typical pillow talk. Even if the gal was bound and gagged, so she couldn’t talk back.
Another prostitute has reportedly claimed she was with Paddock in one of the rooms at the Mandalay Bay hotel. But she did not report the presence of a lot of weapons or ammo or other operatives. How could she miss 20 firearms, if they weren’t brought in at the last minute by Paddock or his helpers?
Do lots of highly trained Moslems come to Vegas? In August 2017, reporters figured out the Saudi Air Force rented an entire wing of a hotel (W tower) of the SLS Las Vegas complex so their flyboys could train at nearby Nellis Air Force Base. No one for the Saudis or the US Air Force would comment, but hotel staffers filled them in. Supposedly the Arab air force brought their own attendants, so female staffers were not working the joint while the Saudis were there. (There were no details printed about private entertainment arrangements being made for our Arab “allies.”)
Why did the shooter or shooters stop shooting after 10 minutes? Was anyone shooting from a room that was not in the room and next-door suite Paddock rented? Was any shooter able to get out of the suite without being seen by Campos, Schuck, or the hotel cameras?
Why did the SWAT team wait an hour to take out the shooter when he could have started shooting again? Did anyone know he was already dead? If so, who? And how?
And why did Campos disappear? Where is he now? Is he okay?
There are still a lot of loose ends to this case. And there are some things the feds and local lawmen know that they aren’t saying. Hopefully the purpose of their silence is to lull those involved in this horrible crime that are still at large into a false sense of security.
Hopefully their silence or statements are not meant to fool the public.
We already know the feds perpetrated a massive coverup surrounding the murder of JFK.
We already know Bush 41 and Bill Clinton and their people turned Iran-Contra from an aid mission to anti-Communists into a drugrunning, money laundering, and murder operation.
We already know the feds were incompetent in failing to prevent the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, and they were complicit in the cover-ups afterward.
We already know top FBI officials lied about the takedown of TWA Flight 800 by Long Island in 1996.
We know the feds were incompetent in failing to stop the 9-11 terrorists, and we know Sandy “Brown Shorts” Berger, an official from the Clinton administration, stole documents incriminating Team Clinton for incompetence or worse, hid them in his shorts, and destroyed them.
What is the ” how to be your own detective ” part of this article?
The reporters checked Paddock’s real estate and pilot records that were available publicly. They found kin and associates of Paddock and his female by using person locator websites and other databases. Some even checked on Jesus Campos’ security guard credentials that are public record in Nevada. And Laura Loomer found out where he lived, went out to his home, wrote down info on the guard covering the place and ran it thru state record databases to conclude these dudes were shaky. You could have done likewise if you were getting paid or were that curious.
Now for the rest of the exercise.
Every case has facts and evidence.
Humble records, like the valet tickets and the room service charges, indicated time and number of people.
Bullets and ballistic evidence will indicate what bullets came from what weapons. Any projectile shot from a firearm other than those purportedly recovered in the suite and the room Paddock rented will indicate another shooter. So will fingerprints, DNA, and other trace evidence.
Footage from the outside of the hotel and over the concert site may well indicate one or more shooters. So will the positions of the fallen and wounded and the routes of the bullets into their bodies.
So may Campos, if he’s allowed to talk, and if he tells the truth.
Simple questioning of witnesses turns up answers to questions. Laura Loomer simply showed up and talked to hotel employees.
The actions of those who have something to lose by the truth being found points to a coverup on their parts. Why was Jesus Campos whisked away from a TV show without explanation? What did he see? What does he know? Why has he not resurfaced?
And simple common sense is an investigative tool. How does a guy smuggle in firearms and ammunition over several days without being spotted by security people who do not want weapons in a hotel where they can be used to rob the hotel and casino and the high rollers?
To override evidence, the authorities have to lie about it, lose it, or destroy it. This sort of thing happens a lot more than people would expect.
Lawyers for the wounded and the loved ones of the dead will be able to force the release of virtually all of the police information (at least that which is not “lost” or hidden or destroyed). Even though a lawsuit won’t usually send someone to prison, the lawyers should be able to get this info for their clients in demanding the release of these records.
And eventually many of these records will be public records in the federal and state court systems in Nevada.
As my Grandpa Charlie used to say, “When you tell the truth, all you have to do is remember what happened. When you lie, you have to remember everything you said.”
Watch the statements of law enforcement officials. And put pressure on your members of Congress to ensure the truth and nothing but the truth comes out. Pressure put on federal and Nevada officials will either make them do right, or screw up in lying so totally that they out themselves by their falsehoods. In this regard, hold the feds accountable like you would hold your children accountable when you catch them trying to lie their way out of trouble. (Except don’t spank them or take away their allowances. Let competent authority ground them in jail cells and/or take away their paychecks.)
May God rest the souls of the dead, and bring the wounded to full recovery. May He aid in winning the victims or their survivors justice.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
End Notes
Sources include these articles:
The Guardian, 10/5/2017
Daily Mail, 10/5/2017
New York Daily News, 10/14/2017
CNN 10/2, 10/9, 10/13/2017
Sky News 10/3/2017
Las Vegas Review Journal, 8/4/2017
Zero Hedge 10/11/2017
New York Times, 10/4/2017
Washington Post, 10/4, 10/6/2017
Los Angeles Times, 10/3/2017
The Sun (British paper), 10/2/2017
The Independent (British paper), 10/4/2017
GotNews.com 10/11/2017
Laura Loomer on Twitter 10/3, 10/6/2017
Fox News, 10/13/2017
Business Insider, 10/13/2017
