Stephen Paddock was 64 years old, far out of the age bracket of your average mass shooter. He lived a normal life for a guy's

age, working in real estate, and although he'd been married and divorced a couple of times,

he didn't have any children. In 2017, Stephen was living in a retirement community,

located more than an hour's drive away from Las Vegas, where he was a regular at the casinos.

Stephen's main vice was gambling, and he did it a lot, all with high stakes.

Even though his gambling game had recently gone downhill, putting him into some serious debt,

he'd paid it all off by the time October 2017 came around. This all tells the

story of a pretty ordinary guy with ordinary problems, albeit most of us don't have deep gambling

debts. The most remarkable thing about Stephen was actually his parents, in particular his father,

Benjamin Paddock.

Benjamin had earned a spot on the FBI's most wanted list for almost 10 years after carrying out a string of bank robberies. However, Stephen had never shown the same criminal tendencies as

his father. In six decades, speeding tickets were the only run-ins he'd had with the cops.

On October 1st, 2017, Stephen stationed himself in one of the two suites that he'd booked

in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. It was on the 32nd floor, giving him a perfect vantage point of the

crowds of the Las Vegas strip below.

He'd arrived at the hotel on the 25th of September and decided to rent a second suite a few days later.

Hotel employees remembered interacting with Stephen, but they hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

He spent most of his time gambling into the early hours of the morning,

and even though he'd transported more than 20 suitcases up to his suite, he'd done it gradually,

enough that nobody had paid any attention or had noticed. On the 30th of September,

Stephen hung a do-not-disturb sign on the door to both of his

suites. The 1st of October rolled around, and Stephen sat in his hotel room looking down at the

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