“We didn’t know that our neighbor is crazy”
Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 people at the festival of country music in Las Vegas, putting themselves in some of the most monstrous killers of America. No one can yet understand what caused “good and loving person” (so say about all of your friends) to turn into a “mentally ill and dangerous maniac” (as he called the police). The life of a murderer can help to find the key to the motive for the crime. However, while it remains, if not a mystery, full of missing elements of the mosaic.
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Stephen Paddock, more like a character in the works of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. The only thing we can say with absolute certainty is that Paddock had two lives. One open to all. Simple man, caring and faithful. Other — closed even from the relatives. The life of a maniac, who for the past few months has collected an Arsenal of weapons, methodically chose the scene of a mass murder and had carefully prepared everything so that no accident did not derail his plan. And lastly, has fulfilled it. Without any apparent purpose.
Invisible maniac
Residents of the small town of Mesquite, where Stephen Paddock lived the last two years, now deny that somehow knew him. “Perhaps we met when I got the mail, but I wouldn’t recognize him,” says Rod Sveningson, the owner of the house, which is just a few meters from the house Paddock. “Maybe he was playing Golf, but I failed to find a single person who knew him,” reports the local newspaper columnists Terry Nerenz for which the story of the Paddock is a kind of repetition of teenage nightmare. She lived near one of the most famous killers of America, Jeffrey Dameron, “the Cannibal of Milwaukee”, and her first boyfriend was a classmate of Dahmer At a local club say they do not know the Paddock. “I never saw him, even on photos I don’t,” AFP news Agency quoted one of the employees of the club.
If it happened in new York or Los Angeles, those explanations would be understandable. But the population of Mesquite is only 20 thousand people here, according to locals, rarely closes the door, leaving the store, and that someone, even a very modest and unobtrusive, could live in the town, not attracting attention, seems strange.
One expert explains the behavior of the inhabitants of a shock, from which they had not yet departed, citing as example the phrase of one of the locals: “We didn’t know that our neighbor is crazy.” Didn’t and still don’t want to believe it.
However, there is a man who refuses to believe that Paddock was the killer. It was one of his neighbors. He called on local radio to say that the Paddock may not be the killer. “I now live in Pittsburgh, but I’m eight months lived in a neighboring house with a Paddock and I’ll tell you one thing — it is all 100% not the killer. I know him.”
Atypical maniac
Experts on mass killings say that the Paddock will likely not fit under the category of a typical serial killer. That is, certain preconditions had been. His father was the famous criminal, and at one time was on the FBI list of ten most dangerous criminals. His younger brother Bruce has an impressive track record of criminal offences, from arson and threats, looting and destruction of private property. However, all this in the past. However, first, the public life of Stephen Paddock pulls rather an example to follow or envy. He was born in Iowa, then his family moved to Arizona. There is now said to be his relatives, he had last seen his father. In 1961, when Stephen was seven years, Pat Paddock was arrested and sent to prison. The family moved to California, where Steven graduated from high school, then University, and then became an accountant and part-time investor. He moved to Florida, changed girlfriends (one even married, marriage really did not last long) and since moving to Mesquite with his wife, another civilian, was a successful investor is a multimillionaire, who left the business and retired.
All this, according to one expert, psychologist Erik Madfish specializing in criminal offences at the University of Washington in Tacoma, makes Paddock very unusual serial killer.
According to him, the profiles of mass murderers, of course, vary, but they always have one common part — they all experienced failures in life. “A mass murderer — rather unlucky in life, be it love relationship, work or something else.” Paddock, rich, beloved, revered relatives (his brother Eric said that the topic of conversation the last time they talked, it was the health and well-being of their 90-year-old mother, who lived in Florida. Stephen was really worried about her because of hurricanes), does not fit this characteristic.
In addition, says Professor Madfis, even in the case losers needed a push, which makes ordinary misanthrope a person who wants to kill. The police said that he had examined thousands of variants that could induce Paddock to commit the crime, but found nothing.
Nervous maniac