Wednesday, October 4, 2017

RETHINKING: Las Vegas Killer : Perverse Psyche



Dear Friends:

Here we have a horrible event that shook America, spreading blood and death in Las Vergas.

The news said that last Sunday – October 1st, 2017 - approximately at 10 pm from the 32 floor of the Mandalay Hotel of Las Vegas a gunman started to shoot against people who was in a music concerto, killing 59 and injuring around more than 500.

The police informed the suspect was Stephen Craig Paddock, a 64-year old man, resident of the area of Las Vegas. He was retiree and strong gambler of the casinos. He didn’t have previous criminal background. He was not a veteran of war.  Nobody knows about his political or religious ideas.

Paddock killed himself when the SWAP units approached to his hotel room where the police found 23 firearms, some of them automatic rifles, cameras and quantities of ammunitions. (According to several sources he had more guns and ammunitions in his home outside Las Vegas.)

The arsenal of Mr. Paddock is the first evidence the suspect was planning a heavy attack. He prepared as professional all the details before the slaughter. The killing was not a casual shooting after a disappointing moment in the casino.

The rest of the information related to Paddock is partial. Nobody warned to the authorities about his movement of guns or other suspicious activities inside the hotel.
(Possible complicity is open question…)

He didn't leave notes or declarations explaining the motives of the massacre. In the moment of the shooting he was alone. (A lot of killers “talk” through a paper or e-mail…)

Key question: Why he made this mass shooting?  After more a day of the massacre, the police investigators are looking for elements that can determine the reasons the suspect had for killing a lot of people in a concert.

Some observers say the attacker was a gun dealer and he had a lot of money. But these arguments don’t help to find the reasons of the slaughter.

The only way to learn about the motive of the massacre is reading the "psyche" of Paddock, but now he is dead.

At this point, we come to the main subject of the analysis: the psyche of the mass killer.

When somebody is angry for discussions with people, he/she says: “I will kill you” and maybe in the shooting kill more than one or two individuals. Nobody remember that Paddock was discussing in the hotel or concert with others.

And it is important to remark that he rented a room of the hotel with direct vision of the open concerto place, carried to the room an arsenal of guns, and started the shooting when the concert was holding for some reasons. The sequence of actions puts in evidence that he had a plan, a very articulated plan.

According to all these actions, we see, the Paddock’s psyche was prepared for the mass shooting. He wanted to kill people, people who were participating of a concert.

The previous observation moves us to imagine that Mr. Paddock had something in his psyche against the organizers, the singers and/or the attendants of the concerto.

Nobody knows if he was a frustrated artist or singer. However, why the attack was against the participants of this concert in the Mandalay Hotel? (It doesn't look that was casual...)

He could be a frustrated artist or producer, but this does not imply he wanted to make a massacre. (A frustrated singer will not prepare an arsenal of sophisticated weapons to heal his wounded sensitivity.)

In Internet, somebody posted a story saying that his father was a famous robber of banks. This data gives a possible link between the mass-killer and the attitude of his father. (The son of a criminal…!)  Despite of all, it is very different the action of robbing banks compared with a human butcher job.

The lack of elements moves us to think that the suspect had a “mental sickness” and he was a man with “evil” in his veins, a perverse guy.

The people with mental sickness and evil don’t care about the life of other human beings. They can kill humans like somebody kills ants or mosquitoes. They don’t have in their minds a “mechanism” to differentiate ethical and non-ethical attitudes in the society.

Nonetheless, it looks rare that a mental sick individual plans a massive killing, renting a room in the exactly direction of a concerto and transporting to this room 23 heavy guns.

During the last few years, we have read in the news cases of massacres where a crazy guy went to a school or shop with 2 or 3 guns and started to shoot against people.

We can affirm that is possible that Mr. Paddock was sick, but till now we don’t find the exact cause of the slaughter considering the preparation of the massacre and the arsenal used.

Now, he is dead. Probably, if his girlfriend accepts to cooperate with the police, and she can give other information to determine the exactly reason of the mass shooting. (Maybe, she was co-planner of the massacre. (An Asiatic lover with passion for the blood of others…?)

Meanwhile, the dimension of the crime puts this case in the top of the rankings of human massacres across of the United States without apparently terrorist goals…

Authorities have to take actions to avoid similar massacres in the future and hotels have to improve their security systems to block any intention to carry an arsenal of guns inside a room. (By the way, hotels are not weapon shops…)

We have to hope that nobody wants to emulate Mr. Paddock. In the human pathology, there are bad persons who applaud devils as “heroes” and try to emulate them in similar actions.

Provisory conclusion: This is a pathological case of a perverse psyche…


Domingo A. Trassens
WORLD RETHINK
Rethinking the world with you
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SOURCES:

1) Previous personal studies of basic psychology during my career of teacher and the reading of some books about cyber-psychology in recent years. (My first degree before computer sciences and business administration was as school teacher.)

2) External Sources: Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Washington Post stories.and a series of newspapers from Germany, U.K., France, Canada and Japan.

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