After five days of scouring the life of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock and chasing 1000 leads, investigators confessed today they still don't know what drove him to mass murder, and they announced plans to put up billboards appealing for the public's help.
In their effort to find any hint of his motive, investigators were looking into whether he was with a prostitute days before the shooting, scrutinising cruises he took and trying to make sense of a cryptic note with numbers jotted on it found in his hotel room, a federal official said.
Investigators believe Paddock hired a prostitute in the days leading up to the shooting and were interviewing other call girls for information, a US official briefed by federal law enforcement officials said.
So far, examinations of Paddock's politics, finances, any possible radicalisation and his social behaviour - typical investigative avenues that have helped uncover the motive in past shootings - have turned up little.
"We still do not have a clear motive or reason why," Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said. "We have looked at literally everything."
The FBI announced that billboards would go up around the city asking anyone with information to phone 800-CALL-FBI.
"If you know something, say something," said Aaron Rouse, agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI office. "We will not stop until we have the truth."
Paddock, a reclusive 64-year-old high-stakes gambler, rained bullets on the crowd at a country music festival Sunday night from his 32nd-floor hotel suite, killing 58 and wounding hundreds before taking his own life.
Mr McMahill said investigators had reviewed voluminous video from the casino and don't think Paddock had an accomplice in the shooting, but they want to know if anyone knew about his plot beforehand.
The official also disclosed that Paddock took at least a dozen cruises abroad in the last few years, most of them with his girlfriend, Marilou Danley. At least one sailed to the Middle East.
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