As the clouds of war gather again over our great country, we’re finally gaining some clarity regarding Mandalay Bay shooter Stephen Paddock. He was that seeming oxymoron: a video 
poker “whale,” one who didn’t blanch at wagering $100 a spin. Not only was he good at beating the house, his sniper’s nest at Mandalay Bay was a comped suite. This will no doubt cause some anguish among the casino hosts who unwittingly enabled Paddock’s killing spree. “Mr. Paddock once owned and managed an apartment complex near Dallas, and he has been described by some as a wealthy retiree. People who knew him were under the impression that he was a profitable gambler,” reports the New York Times.
Paddock, who had credit lines in the hundreds of millions of dollars, wasn’t a glad-hander but casinos were doubtless happy to see him coming, as he had the reputation of making good on his gambling debts. Numerous transaction reports of $10,000 or more were associated with Paddock’s activity. He was also known for poaching other people’s slot machines when they got up to either stretch their legs, not to mention an annoying habit of trying to psych out people at nearby machines. (The portrait of a sociopath begins to emerge.) Paddock’s presence “was not a good thing because it would make other VIPs in the high-limit area uncomfortable,” says John Weinreich who, as executive casino host at Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, often dealt with Paddock and got no warm fuzzies from the experience. In addition to being a high-echelon player at MGM Resorts International casinos, Paddock was a Sevens Stars member of Caesars International‘s loyalty program.
Paddock carried his gambling habit to an obsessive degrees. His brother told the NYT, “He could tell you off the top of his head what the odds were down to a tenth of a percent on whatever machine he was playing. He studied it like it was a Ph.D. thing. It was not silly gambling. It was work.” Eric Paddock added that what really hooked his brother were the perks that came with playing large, “It’s the 50-year-old port that costs $500 a glass. You add all that stuff together and his net is better than 100 percent [win].”
However, the more we learn of Paddock, the more of an enigma he himself becomes. A slip-and-fall lawsuit against The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas was dismissed three years ago. His girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was a hostess at the Atlantis, contrary to theories that she was some kind of agent provocateur for ISIS. And, although he lived in Mesquite, Paddock generally shunned its casinos — although if he was a whale in Las Vegas, he’d have been a whole pod of them in that podunk town. David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV, threw some shade on Mesquite, telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “On one hand, you’re a big fish in a smaller pond, but on the other hand, they have fewer amenities. That’s not a knock on Mesquite, but you can’t exactly get the same spa experience or fine dining there as you can get at Bellagio.”
The Mandalay Bay Massacre put enough of a shock into LVA Publisher Anthony Curtis for him to echo one of the favorite lines of gambling opponents, calling video poker “the crack cocaine of gambling.” Why? According to College of Southern Nevada Department of Hospitality Management Chairman Mark DiStefano, video poker players can rack up comps faster than the bread-and-butter gambler — which may be one reason casinos are less wont to comp their drinks these days.
Curtis says Paddock had the reputation for being a loner and a heavy drinker, but we’re no closer to the explanation of what made him one of the worst murderers in U.S. history. Did he suffer some kind of loss (or string of losses) at Mandalay Bay that made him snap? He engaged in $160,000 worth of transactions leading up to the bloody Sunday. Or was he a mental time bomb, primed to detonate? We may never know. The people who knew Paddock best, Las Vegas prostitutes, described him as “a cheap man who didn’t display emotion.” What happened last weekend was anything but impulsive. Paddock had already staked out Fenway Park, Vegas’ Life is Beautiful festival and the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, evidently in search of potential killing grounds.
Maybe it was something in Paddock’s DNA. His father, Benjamin “Chromedome” Paddock was a notorious bank robber, “diagnosed as psychopathic,” according to the FBI and “should be considered armed and very dangerous.” By comparison, Stephen Paddock was a Boy Scout. “My brother is not like you and me. He sends me a text that says he won $250,000 at the casino,” said Eric Paddock. “Wizard of Odds” Michael Shackleford diagnoses Paddock as a “premium mass” gambler who used mathematical strategies to get an edge on the house: “I think the shooter was one of these people who was basically milking the system, getting free vacations … If this guy was a millionaire, it’s quite possible he was not bothered by the ups and down. He probably had steel nerves and was a difficult person to move emotionally.”
Paddock’s suite remains a crime scene, its blown-out windows an eerie reminder of what went down Sunday night. College of Hospitality Management at Johnson & Wales University academic Sunil Atreya theorizes that it could become a board room or storage space (our choice) — or refurbished and put back into circulation, which would show poor taste on the part of MGM. Atreya added, “What is extremely important for them to do right now is repair those windows. As long as those windows are gaping open, it’s a reminder of the event.” Yes, and we know how much Las Vegas likes for people to dwell on unpleasant events. </sarcasm>
In the meantime, we applaud the coalescence of congressional support for banning “bump stocks,” the retrofit that enabled Paddock to kill so prodigiously. (The official tally of weapons found in Paddock’s suite now stands at 23. Staggering. An ancillary arsenal has been discovered at his “cookie-cutter” house in Mesquite. Also, the guns were not purchased under Paddock’s name, raising the possibility of a conspiracy.) Even the National Rifle Association is on board with the move, so there’s no good reason why Congress should push it through before it adjourns. (What was the Obama administration thinking when it approved these killing machines? Even without bump stocks any crank with a rubber band and YouTube access can go fully automatic.) The carnage might have been worse had Paddock been able to buy tracer ammunition, which also might have ignited the fuel tank he perforated at McCarran International Airport. (Kudos to Boyd Gaming, by the way, for quietly scrapping a gun show scheduled for Eastside Cannery this weekend.)
Meanwhile, the search for Paddock’s motive continues, with the Nevada Gaming Control Board being brought into the investigation, combing Paddock’s paper trail while the police study his cyber files. The contents of a note found in Paddock’s room remain undisclosed. They may explain why he did what he did, but I believe the Mandalay Bay killing spree will go down as one of the great imponderables of history.
