On the night of Sunday, October 1, 2017, a crowd of about 22,000 people had gathered at an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas. By the end of the night, 58 of them were dead and hundreds more were hurt. Two more people would later die of their injuries, and in October 2020 the official count was raised to 60. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI both concluded that the deaths were the work of one man, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retired accountant, real estate investor and high-stakes gambler from Mesquite, Nevada. He died by suicide that same night.
Paddock was never charged with any crime, because he did not live to be charged. No court ever heard the evidence, and no jury ever reached a verdict. In place of a trial stand two official inquiries. The police department's final criminal investigative report, 187 pages long, was released on August 3, 2018. It concluded that Paddock had acted alone and that no one else would be charged, and it said that investigators could answer who, what, when and where, but not why. The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit delivered its own assessment in January 2019 and closed the federal case. It found no "single or clear motivating factor." Between them, the two reports describe a man whose health, finances and closest relationship had been declining, who had no ties to any group or cause, and who left no note or message of any kind.
From 1975 to 1985 he worked for the federal government, first as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service, then as an agent of the Internal Revenue Service, and last as an auditor with the Defense Contract Audit Agency. From 1985 to 1988 he worked for a company that later became part of Lockheed Martin.
After that he worked for himself, as an accountant and a real estate investor. He owned rental properties, and in his last years he had houses in Reno and in Mesquite, a retirement community more than an hour's drive from Las Vegas. He held a private pilot's license and bought an airplane after earning it, and he learned to scuba dive. Those who knew him told investigators that he took up one hobby at a time and invested himself heavily in each.
He was best known in the casinos. For years he gambled tens of thousands of dollars at a time on high-stakes video poker, and the casinos treated him as a high-value player. People who knew him described him to investigators as detail-oriented, unkempt in appearance and averse to attention. They knew of no violence in his past and no abuse of alcohol or drugs.
His record with the police was almost empty. He had minor traffic tickets and no arrests. He belonged to no religious congregation and to no political group. When the police department later went through his life in detail, it found that he had committed no crime in the period leading up to October 1.
By the time investigators examined his finances, the money was running out. In September 2015 Paddock held about $2.1 million across 14 bank accounts. By September 2017 the total had fallen to about $530,000, a loss of nearly 75 percent in two years. Investigators traced more than $600,000 of the outflow to casinos and more than $170,000 to credit card companies. In the two years before October 1 he spent about $1.5 million in all. He had become less successful at gambling than he had been in earlier years.
His health troubled him, even if his doctors found little wrong. People close to him told investigators that he often complained of feeling sick, of pain and of fatigue. The physician who identified himself as Paddock's primary care doctor told FBI agents that Paddock struck him as odd and showed little emotion. The doctor thought he might have bipolar disorder, but Paddock would not discuss it. He refused the treatment the doctor offered for his mood and accepted a prescription only for anxiety, and he seemed fearful of medication. The doctor had last examined him about a year before October 2017.
Paddock lived in Mesquite with a partner. She told investigators that his manner had changed over the last year of his life. He had grown distant. He complained to her that he was sick and told her that doctors had diagnosed a "chemical imbalance" they could not cure. He described himself to her as an atheist. She told investigators that he did not talk much about politics.
About two weeks before October 1, Paddock sent her on a trip to the Philippines. While she was there, he wired her $150,000. She was abroad when the deaths occurred.
On the night of October 1, Paddock carried out the attack on the festival crowd. It lasted minutes. He died by suicide that night, and he never spoke to investigators.
The scale of the injuries took months to settle. In January 2018 the police department counted 851 people injured. By the final report in August 2018 that figure had risen to 869 people with documented physical injuries, as more cases were confirmed. Of those, 413 were injured by the attack itself; the other 456 injuries were of other kinds.
At the end of January 2018, under a court order, the Clark County coroner's office released the autopsy records of the 58 people killed that night to two news organizations, with case numbers, names, ages, hometowns and racial descriptions removed.
The investigation began that night as a joint effort of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI. Investigators had no motive, no message and no living suspect to question.
The partner flew back from the Philippines and landed at Los Angeles International Airport on the night of October 3, 2017, where FBI agents met her. On October 4 her lawyer confirmed that she was with him at the FBI's Los Angeles field office. At a news conference that week the authorities described her as a person of interest, a step up from the status of witness she had held at first. She was not in custody and was free to go where she pleased. No charges were ever brought against her.
In January 2018 the police department released an 81-page preliminary investigative report. Releasing such a document while a case remained open broke with the department's normal protocol, and the department described it as a public service. The report drew no conclusions about motive. It recorded that investigators had interviewed 43 people with direct ties to Paddock. It found no evidence that he had colluded with anyone and no evidence that he supported any terrorist group, and it repeated the department's belief that he had acted alone. It set out the accounts of his partner, his doctor and those around him about his declining health and changed behavior. The department said a fuller final report would follow.
While the investigation went on, several news organizations, among them the Associated Press, went to court to obtain the department's records under Nevada's public records law. The department argued that it could not release material while its investigation remained open. On February 7, 2018, a Nevada state district judge rejected that position and ordered the department to begin releasing records from the hours after the attack onward: emergency calls, officers' body camera footage, dash-camera and closed-circuit video, evidence logs, dispatch records, interview reports, and purchase orders and no-bid contracts. Names, Social Security numbers and video segments in which people could easily be recognized were to be removed. The judge criticized the "wholesale withholding of documents with a general claim of confidentiality," gave the parties a week to argue what the department could charge, and cautioned against fees high enough to block public access.
Other courts acted on related requests in the same weeks. Federal and state judges ordered the release of search warrant records and autopsy reports. A week after the victims' autopsy records were released, the report on Paddock himself was released to the Associated Press and the Las Vegas Review-Journal in response to their lawsuit. It found no disease and nothing else in his physical condition that could account for aggressive behavior, and it offered no insight into motive. Over the following months, the police department released its records in 13 batches, including emergency calls, reports, witness statements and video.
On August 3, 2018, about ten months after the attack, the head of the police department released the final criminal investigative report and declared the department's investigation complete. The report concluded that Paddock had acted alone. There was no second attacker and no evidence of a conspiracy, and no one else would be charged. It found no evidence of radicalization or ideology and no tie to any hate group or terrorist organization. It found no suicide note and no manifesto.
On the central question the report was plain about its limits. Investigators had established who, what, when and where; they had not been able to establish why. The report gathered the financial evidence of his falling fortunes, the medical evidence of a man who felt unwell and resisted help, and the statements of those who had watched him withdraw. It concluded that he had planned the attack meticulously. It recorded that he had no political or religious affiliation and had shown no racial bias. The FBI's own analysis, including a psychological assessment, was still to come.
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit convened a group it called the Las Vegas Review Panel. Its members were experts in threat assessment, psychology, psychiatry, research, analysis of online behavior and law, and they spent nearly a year working through the evidence. The FBI shared its findings with the police department in November 2018 and announced on January 29, 2019, nearly 16 months after the attack, that it had closed its investigation.
The panel found no single or clear motivating factor. It said that the motives of attackers of this kind are, in general, "a complex merging of developmental issues, interpersonal relationships, clinical issues, and contextual stressors." It noted that the attackers it had studied averaged 3.6 stressors and 4.7 concerning behaviors before they acted, and that 48 percent had considered suicide. In Paddock's case it concluded that his health, his functioning and his finances had declined in his last years, and that in reaction to that decline he "concluded that he would seek to control the ending of his life via a suicidal act." The panel found that he wanted to die in a way that would bring him notoriety, and it found no evidence that he had meant to escape. He had taken, in the panel's words, "multiple, calculated steps" to make sure of his own death, and the panel suggested that the planning itself had given him a sense of direction and control.
The panel described a man with minimal empathy who viewed other people "through a transactional lens of cost and benefits" and who used manipulative tactics. It found that no group had directed or inspired him, that he had pursued no agenda, and that he held no grievance against the city, the casinos, the festival or the people in the crowd. He left no manifesto and no suicide note. The panel agreed with the police finding that he had acted alone. The head of the police department said afterward that the investigation's leads were exhausted, but that the case could be reopened if new information ever came to light.
For three years the official count stayed at 58. In that time, two women who had been injured on October 1, 2017, died of complications of their injuries. One, from Las Vegas, died in May; the Clark County coroner classified her death as a homicide arising from the attack. The other, from California, died in November, and in August a coroner in California ruled that her death had been caused by the injuries she suffered at the festival in 2017.
For months the police department acknowledged that the two deaths were connected to the attack but declined to change the official count, and it gave no public explanation. As late as September 30, 2020, a department statement said the initial count remained at 58 while acknowledging that others had since died. On October 1, 2020, the department announced that the official count was now 60.
No court ever tested the evidence. The finding that Paddock alone caused the deaths rests on the conclusions of the police department and the FBI, which agreed with each other, and on no verdict. Both inquiries closed without a determined motive. The FBI panel pointed to his decline and his wish to end his life in a way that would be remembered, but it did not claim to have found a single reason.
The count of the dead changed. For three years the official figure was 58; since October 1, 2020, it has been 60. The count of the injured also moved between the preliminary and final police reports, from 851 to 869.
His partner was briefly treated as a person of interest. She was never charged.
1975 to 1985: Works for the federal government as a postal letter carrier, an Internal Revenue Service agent and a Defense Contract Audit Agency auditor.
1985 to 1988: Works for a company later absorbed into Lockheed Martin.
September 2015: Holds about $2.1 million across 14 bank accounts.
September 2017: The accounts hold about $530,000; about two weeks before October 1, he sends his partner to the Philippines.
October 1, 2017: 58 people are killed and hundreds injured at a music festival in Las Vegas; Paddock dies by suicide the same night.
October 3 to 4, 2017: His partner returns to the United States and is at the FBI's Los Angeles field office with her lawyer; she is briefly called a person of interest.
January 2018: The police department releases its 81-page preliminary investigative report.
Late January 2018: The coroner's autopsy records of the 58 victims are released under court order, redacted.
February 7, 2018: A Nevada district judge orders the police department to begin releasing its records under the state's public records law.
February 2018: Paddock's autopsy report is released under court order.
August 3, 2018: The police department releases its 187-page final report, finds he acted alone, finds no motive and closes its investigation.
November 2018: The FBI shares its review panel's findings with the police department.
January 29, 2019: The FBI announces that its Behavioral Analysis Unit found no single or clear motivating factor and closes its investigation.
October 1, 2020: The police department raises the official count of the dead from 58 to 60.