You can’t make this stuff up

I currently have fourteen books in print, one in editing, and one at 65,000 words that is heading to completion. All feature graphic violence and persons of evil intent, even the use of torture.

But nothing I can write can touch the malignancy of a person who methodically prepares over a period of time to sit in a hotel room and fire into a mass of complete strangers five hundred yards away.

I can’t imagine a motivation for that. As a retiree I can’t grasp how a man could get up one day and decide ‘I’m going to devote my last days to seeing how many complete strangers I can kill‘.

I’ve worked on murder cases and violent deaths. Mostly they were high passion/immediate rage, substance-fueled excess, or illegal transactions gone wrong, with the occasional utter (known) lunatic tossed in. They all had a motivation, however illogical.

But this tragedy in Las Vegas escapes my understanding. Why a man who, as of this posting, had no criminal or mental heath history, who appears to have negotiated the trials and travails of modern life successfully, to have pursued a non-violent career to a comfortable retirement, would undertake such a mission of malignancy is beyond my ability to explain, either factually or in fiction.

I have considered the possibility of a brain tumor, but you do not normally see such an affliction resolve itself in such a specific manner; aberrations in behavior and personality resulting from such brain events normally manifest themselves in a broader spectrum of noticeable behavior.

The world is a unsettling place.

My prayers go out for the victims and their families.