The mysteries continue to pile up when it comes to Stephen Paddock, the man who slaughtered over 50 people in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Authorities still have no motive and it seems that everything new that pops up brings more questions. ABC News has reported that Paddock’s laptop does not have its hard drive, meaning the authorities don’t have access to a possible direction to a motive.
Also, authorities in Los Angeles arrested his brother Bruce on child porn charges.
Hard Drive
From ABC News:
Paddock is believed to have removed the hard drive before fatally shooting himself, and the missing device has not yet been recovered, sources told ABC News.
Investigators digging into Paddock’s background also learned he purchased software designed to erase files from a hard drive, but without the hard drive to examine it is impossible to know if he ever used the software, one source said.
The absence of substantial digital clues has left investigators struggling to piece together what triggered Paddock to kill 58 innocent concertgoers and injure more than 500 others on Oct. 1.
Authorities are examining every aspect of Paddock’s life — from his family, friends and associates to his travel patterns, health and finances. So far, a motive has been elusive to investigators.
So if he removed the hard drive before he killed himself, shouldn’t it be in the room? I guess he could have thrown it out the window? Or maybe he removed it before he went to the hotel? But then again why bring the laptop, which is rendered useless without the hard drive.
Without the hard drive, authorities have lost a valuable piece of possible evidence that could have contained a manifesto or give clues to why Paddock committed this horrible crime.
UPROXX noted that Paddock is not the only mass murderer who went out of his way to clear his digital trail:
Paddock isn’t the only mass shooter in the past few years to pull such a tactic. Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui, Northern Illinois shooter Steven Kazmierczak, and Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza were all careful to destroy digital evidence, including SIM cards, computer hard drives, cell phones, and laptops. Of the three, only Lanza’s laptop had any recoverable evidence.
The Daily Mail reported that the FBI retrieved a few documents on the computer, “including articles ‘advocating for pedophiles’ rights,’ according to documents released this week.”
Brother Arrested on Child Porn Charges
That last tidbit is especially interesting now since authorities arrested his brother Bruce Paddock at an assisted living facility in North Hollywood for possession of child pornography.
This investigation began months before Stephen killed the 58 people in Las Vegas. From FOX 11:
According to the LAPD, the investigation began “after evidence was discovered inside a business located in the 9000 block of San Fernando Road in Sun Valley.”
“Paddock had been squatting inside the business and after his eviction, the evidence was discovered,” an LAPD statement says. “At the time of the initial investigation, Paddock was a transient and could not be located.”
He was found this morning at the Laurel Canyon Boulevard address and arrested by a task force that also included the FBI.
According to USA Today, prosecutors in Los Angeles County filed a complaint that “lists 19 counts of child exploitation of a child and one count of possession of child pornography.” The complaint dates the charges from January to August of 2014 and alleges that “Paddock had more than 600 photos depicting youths under age 18 engaging in or simulating sexual activity” and “[A]t least 10 of the images depicted youths under age 12.”
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Comments
But then again why bring the laptop, which is rendered useless without the hard drive
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because he may have used a ‘nix based livecd/usb which (while harder and slower) can boot w/o drive in place and browse web if needed.
may have been using it to monitor news reports but there would have been flash drive inserted or cd in tray.
w/o either of those 2 it really does get mysterious and I have not seen anything saying one way or other on that.
True. Many run off usb instead of dual booting but I also assumed the HDD was needed at least to store some operating files locally. Moving everything back and forth to a stick has to be really excruciating.
If he was only looking for internet access for current news or info even a decade old phone would be easier and could be destroyed at last minute like a usb memory stick.
with liveusb files as you go written to that and most stored in volatile ram during live session.
but no idea if he had that, was just pointing out a hdd is not needed really.
First, you gotta hand it to the Paddock family. Winners on all account.
Now as for the FBI working on this case……need I say more?
Imagine? – If they find the hard drive, they’ll find hillary clinton’s emails, and interesting photos Weiner shared with him?
And Obama’s college records.
— Including his writing as head of the Harvard Law Review.
Synonyms for putrid, adj. rotten, stinking:
obama
clinton
huma
weiner
wasserman-schultz
mccain
boehner
cnn
msnbc
nbc
ny times
usa today
(add to the list?)
All the more reason to believe he had an inside accomplice……..
Or somebody on the recovery team looked on that hard drive and found some stuff that cannot be allowed – and suddenly “oops! Did we forget to mention there was no hard drive? Just gone, poof! It’s magic!”
I don’t trust the FBI as far as I could kick them anymore. Remember how everyone “forgot” to secure Paddock’s house, and a couple days later “someone” burglarized it, went through it, and took “something” but no one will even know what got took or who did it, and now that entire story is being memory holed.
I’m starting to think that no matter insane theory Alex Jones is spinning, it must have about a 50% chance of being right.
Paddock’s home wasn’t the first one that the FBI ‘forgot’ to secure. They pulled the same stunt after one of the terrorist attacks – the one in Florida I believe – didn’t secure the home until after the media went through it. Come to think of it, same pattern as Benghazi.
It confirms that he intentionally erased his digital trail, and would imply that there was more digital evidence that got scrubbed.
correction – it confirms that SOMEONE erased his digital trail.
You’re right, Tom, we don’t actually know who did the erasing. With all the strange details, nothing is certain.
Hey, Alex Jones was the first guy to be ringing the alarm about the globalists. He’s been right much more than he’s been wrong. In ANY event, Jones has been a hundred times more correct than the ny slimes and their ilk.
Jones’ news is not ‘fake news,’ as is the democrat media’s.
Accidentally hit thumbs down while trying to hit reply.
I used to think that Alex Jones and Infowars was total bollocks, but recent events have made me begin to wonder.
Love the wording “Paddock is believed to have removed the hard drive before fatally shooting himself”. Obviously he couldn’t remove it after fatally shooting himself. Also “before” covers a very large time span. This is chaff meant to obscure the true picture. Now over to Infowars for the real story.
He was at the hotel for several days. It seems very plausible that he used his laptop for most of his visit then discarded the hard-drive in his late stage of preparation. A hard drive would be easier to lose than a whole laptop.
I don’t see an immediate need to launch a fleet of conspiracy ships over this detail.
Who needs to hide a hard drive with data about a crime?
A dead man? Nope.
A man on the run who hasn’t been caught (and doesn’t intend to be caught)? Nope.
A man on the run who fears he may be caught? Not really. Anyone caught by authorities without prior access to the drive would arrest the suspect on other evidence. Although the contents of the drive may be incriminating, it wouldn’t necessarily make or break a prosecution. Once caught, the jig would be up, HDD or no HDD.
Who would benefit from a missing HDD?
There is no scenario (but one) that this makes sense. That one scenario is that another party didn’t want anyone to access the HDD after the crime. That party removed the drive as part of an effort to cover its tracks and avoid identification and capture. OR that party wants us to believe the contents of the alleged shooter’s HDD would incriminate him, when in fact, the “shooter” was a patsy, and there’s nothing on the drive at all that would tie the alleged shooter to the crime. A non-incriminating hard drive might raise questions that the perpetrating party wouldn’t want raised. A missing HDD is just a missing HDD. Speculation about what might be on it is just that – speculation.
Don’t you think it odd that so many dead mass shooters’ drives went missing or destroyed? Has a mass shooter who had tossed or destroyed his data ever been captured alive?
You’ve never had a beer?
Unless he was playing “A Beautiful Mind” the home game and he thought he was hiding it from a 3rd party. Never ever rule out Nucking Futz.
I see little reason to trust the FBI. They seem very biased towards protecting Democrats and their causes. The Las Vegas Sheriff can’t decide how he wants to present the timeline. These are valid reasons to be suspicious.
Look I am not saying it was the Aliens….but it was the Aliens.
It could have been aliens. Or it could have been the Islamic State. I don’t know. I’m leaving nothing out. Except Caribou.
If caribou were involved I’m going to be shocked.
Well, if Paddock wasn’t the shooter after all, then there’s no need to be mystified by the lack of a manifesto.
Officialdom still doesn’t know a whole lot about this case. And my suspicion is still that they know even less than they think they know.
My suspicion is just about opposite. They know- but don’t want US to know.
I still like the theory I read a while ago that he was in some intelligence branch for years. Heck considering there isn’t anything else to go on even aliens is as good as any.
The FBI seems to be where evidence goes to die.
Unless Hillary’s “people” get to them first then they just die.
Is this the same brother who came out after the shooting claiming to be shocked with no apparent motive and describing this whole thing as if it were going to be a big shock to an otherwise normal family? I guess he didn’t want to be outdone by this brother with the shock value!
Also most people’s biggest digital footprints aren’t on hard drives any more. This seems more like excuse to obscure than an informative report.
Valid point.
I wonder if this guy didn’t pull a Se7en and leave a bunch of dead-end clues just to mess with us. Maybe he was trying to make a crime that people would talk about for 50 years.
Ah, the missing HDD.
This would be very strange, except in two scenarios.
The first is where the HDD was removed by someone other than the person owning or using the laptop. This could be another person no the scene or someone having access to the laptop later.
The second is where an external drive is used to house the OS and the computer boots from that drive. This is a method used by sophisticated operators, such as intelligence agents and sophisticated criminals. It allows the laptop to be used but stores all files on an external device that is easily transported or, in the case of a thumb or jump drive, easily destroyed.
Neither of these scenarios are likely in the case of a lone lunatic gunman. Usually people who simply want to make the HDD unreadable smash it with a hammer.
The first is likely if authorities wished to conceal information or evidence which may be on the HDD. If it is missing, it can’t be examined.
The second is most likely if the person using the laptop was either engaged in a high-end criminal enterprise or was an intelligence operative.
Or in the case of him being just bat shit crazy, he may have believed he was an Operative or Criminal Mastermind.
Well, that IS the question, isn’t it? Was he crazy? Who knows? Also, until we actually have some evidence as to his “reason” for this act, we will have no idea as to his mental state or even if he was actually the person who committed the act. After all, all we have is a circumstantial case against Paddock. We have no eye witness who can identify Paddock as being the shooter. People are assuming that Paddock was the shooter because the weapons were purchased in his name, he checked into the hotel using his GF’s name and his body was found in the room, with the weapons, after the shooting ended. We have NO evidence which categorically proves that Paddock was the shooter or, if he was, whether he acted alone.
So, was Paddock actually the shooter? Who knows? Was Paddock insane? Who knows? Was Paddock involved in other criminal enterprises? Who Knows? Was Paddock a government agent? Who knows? Did paddock act alone, if he committed the act? Who knows? In other words, at this point, almost any theory is as good as another. Take your pick and enjoy the show.
If it was present, as described, and he removed it after the shooting but before he died, it should have been in the room. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that someone investigating stole it. Most likely did not want to have to share with the public what was on it. FBI in charge but blames sheriff for all errors. This smells quite bad.