It’s been several weeks since the horrific Las Vegas massacre and it we’ve still not been given a motive for Stephen Paddock’s crime. Usually in cases of mass shootings, it doesn’t take long for investigators to give at least a rough snapshot of the killer’s psyche, but for some reason, new details about the shooting have been few and far between.
While Stephen Paddock’s motivations and life are still under investigation, another member of his family has been detained by police.
As reported at the New York Post, Bruce Paddock, brother to the Vegas killer, has been arrested on child pornography charges.
When looking back at the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when the media was all over Bruce’s doorstep, it’s obvious that the guy had some serious issues of his own. The way he talked to the media and the things he said were very strange from the get-go.
So it’s not that surprising he’s caught up in some illegal stuff, but even so, child pornography is about as depraved as it gets.
Bruce, 58, was detained at a Los Angeles assisted-living facility, where he was awaiting surgery for spinal stenosis. Apparently, he had over 600 explicit images of minors in 2014 and had also swapped pornography.
He faces 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of possession of child pornography, according to the charges.
When authorities and the media talked to Bruce after the Vegas shooting, he told them he hadn’t been in contact with his brother for 10 years. Not only that, he revealed that his family wasn’t on the best of terms and that there was a lot of resentment amongst them.
He also revealed that their father was a bank robber, who once made the FBI’s most-wanted list and was determined to be “psychopathic” with “suicidal tendencies.” Apparently, Bruce was pretty upset that his brother’s crime had open up the closet containing his own past troubles with the law.
Court records show Bruce Paddock has a criminal record stretching back to the 1980s, with convictions for vandalism, criminal threats, theft and driving with a suspended vehicle and other arrests for which he was not convicted.
But these latest charges are by far the worst. Thankfully, he will soon be sent to prison where he belongs and we’ll have one less child pornographer on the streets.
Source: New York Post