Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock did not want to be disturbed the night before he committed the worst mass shooting in American history.
The 64-year-old, a high-stakes gambler recognized in casinos all over Nevada, was staying at the Mandalay Bay hotel in a room which gave him the perfect vantage point over the Route 91 Harvest festival on Sunday.
Police say the attack, which left 58 dead and more than 500 injured, was carefully premeditated and they recovered dozens of weapons from his hotel room. And he wasn’t about to let another hotel guest disturb his careful preparation.
On Saturday night – the evening before the shooting – he called in two noise complaints about loud country music being played in the room below him.
Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock called in two noise complaints about loud country music coming from the hotel room below – the night before his rampage
Garzon said he didn’t realize the complaining guest had been Paddock until he saw the drapes flapping out of his smashed out windows
Albert Garzon, a restaurant owner visiting from San Diego, and his wife and friends, was staying in 31-135, directly beneath Paddock, when he says he got a knock on the door at 1.30am.
It was security asking him to turn down the music after another guest had complained about the noise, the New York Times reports.
When he asked who it was, he replied: ‘It’s the guest above you.’
Garzon says they turned down the music, but half an hour later, they got another visit from a different security guard saying the hotel had received another complaint from the same individual.
The restaurateur agreed and turned the music off.
He gave it very little thought amid the ensuing chaos on Sunday, until early on Monday, when he looked up and saw a curtain flapping out of Paddock’s smashed out windows, and realized that the noise complaint had been made by the gunman.
Hundreds of rounds of automatic gunfire were reported by witnesses on the scene; after Paddock opened fire
The behavior is consistent with descriptions of the shooter as an anti-social and intolerant, loner.
John Weinreich, who was an executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nevadad where Paddock was a regular.
Weinreich said Paddock was a ‘starer’ who could make other players uncomfortable.
‘He loved to stare at other people playing,’ he said. ‘It was not a good thing because it would make other VIPs in the high-limit area uncomfortable.’
‘One of my guests once said to me, ‘He really gives me the creeps.’
Paddock was an avid gambler and played up to 1,000 hands of video poker in a single hour – at a cost of $100,000.
He bet the colossal sums by playing $125 a time hands at ‘ferocious’ speeds for eight hour stints in casinos on The Strip and in Reno.
Top video poker players told DailyMail.com that players like Paddock look like ‘stenographers’ on the machines because their fingers move so fast.
Fast and furious: These are the video poker machines which allowed Paddock to gamble stakes of up to $100,000 in an hour by playing multiple hands at once
Crack cocaine: A review in the late 1990s compared the machines to the most addictive drugs but they also offer some of the best odds of coming out even, experts say
They had seen Paddock at exclusive VIP tournaments in Las Vegas where he won and lost six-figure sums.
The players described him was a ‘low level high roller’ but he still would have got perks like free limousine rides and $10,000 of free money to play with.
Paddock’s girlfriend Marilou Danley was taken on all-expenses paid shopping trips and they would have stayed in expensive hotel suites for free.
DailyMail.com can also disclose that other high rollers were concerned about Paddock drinking a ‘constant stream of booze’ whilst he was playing.
They described him as a ‘heavy, heavy drinker’ and wondered if his high alcohol intake contributed to his mental deterioration.
Paddock shot dead 58 people and injured more than 500 on Sunday when he opened fire on a music festival from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay casino before shooting himself dead.
The FBI are no closer to understanding the motive of a man who his brother Eric described as ‘just a guy’.
Despite having an estimated $2million in his retirement, Paddock lived an oddly isolated and frugal life.
DailyMailTV has learned that the multi-millionaire former accountant was so concerned about saving money that he often ate lunch at a retirees’ center.
He joined the frail, elderly, homeless and disabled at the Mesquite Community and Senior Center in Nevada paying just $3.50 for a subsidized lunch.
Around three times a week Paddock enjoyed Mexican food, meatloaf and hamburgers while listening to cheery songs on the piano at the center.
And bizarrely on the day Paddock drove 80 miles to Las Vegas where he checked in to the Mandalay Bay hotel to begin the preparations for his death mission, he popped into the government-run center to ask the cook for an enchiladas recipe.
Local resident Marshall Meland, 78, who was enjoying lunch at the center, told DailyMailTV: ‘We recognized Stephen when his face flashed up on TV.
‘He last came in to the center around 11am last Thursday and checked in at the desk, but didn’t stop for lunch like he usually does.
‘Instead he went straight up to the counter to speak with the cook and asked her about an enchiladas dish she cooks, he wanted to know how she made it.
‘After that he left. No one took any notice of him, it wasn’t until later after what he did that we realized he drove to Vegas that afternoon. Everyone at the center is shocked.’
Other diners at the senior center recall Paddock as an ‘unsociable’ and ‘quiet’ man who liked to sit alone to eat his lunch and who was ‘in a world of his own’.