Newly released letters show Las Vegas shooter was begged by friend not to carry out killings

Mass murderer Stephan Paddock, who took his own life after opening fire on October 1, 2017 on attendees at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on the Strip, had received pleas from Jim Nixon, who the newspaper described as an ex-convict.

“I can get someone for you who can help you,” Nixon wrote in a letter dated May 27, 2017. “Please don’t go out shooting or hurting people who did nothing to you. I am concerned about the way you are talking and believe you are going to do something very bad. Steve please please don’t do what I think you are going to do.”

The letters hadn’t surfaced publicly until this week, when they were provided by police in response to a records request from the Review-Journal. That didn’t sit well with former Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, who was a Clark County commissioner at the time of the shooting.

“Sisolak, who helped lead efforts to raise funds for the victims, said in an interview with the Review-Journal that this was the first time he had heard that the letters existed,” the report said. “He said he did not know what the reason would have been for keeping the letters secret.

“Not releasing the letters sooner could feed into people’s conspiracy theories ‘when they find out there was evidence that was not made public,’ Sisolak said.

“I would have liked to have known,” he said. ‘I couldn’t have changed anything.’”

The Review-Journal detailed Nixon’s friendship with Paddock.

“Nixon, a disabled Vietnam War veteran who is now 75, said he met Paddock more than a decade before the shooting, when he was visiting Virginia, where Paddock was living. Paddock would stay at Nixon’s homes in California, and when Nixon moved to Las Vegas, Paddock would visit from Mesquite, Texas, and go fishing at Lake Mead.

“He did what he did and I feel bad I couldn’t have stopped him,” Nixon said. “I didn’t know he was going to do what he did.”

The letters mentioned that Nixon had been to prison. He told the Review-Journal he served time for tax fraud decades ago.

Several of the letters indicated that Nixon was worried about Paddock’s mental health and seemed to foreshadow the killings he would commit.

“Remember you have to answer to God Almighty for your earthly crimes,” Nixon wrote in the May 2017 letter.

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