What was Stephen Paddock's motive? Conspiracy theories swirl online as authorities hunt for reasons behind Las Vegas massacre

Police admit to having no clue why the shooting happened. But internet theorists believe they know the answer

It's not clear why Stephen Paddock took a whole arsenal of weapons to a Las Vegas hotel and used them to kill at least 59 people and injure hundreds more. But internet conspiracists believe they may know the answer.

Police have admitted they have no clue as to why Paddock carried out the attack, or if it was in service of any higher goal.

“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters. “I can't get into the mind of a psychopath.”

But into that gap have rushed online conspiracy theorists, eager to prove that they know the justification behind the massacre. Some admit that they don't know the truth but that they believe there is more to the story than is public – while others go as far as to suggest that they have found the real reason the attack happened.

US radio host and former senator Joe Walsh, for instance, simply suggested that something was being hidden about the story or that what official explanations there have been were wrong.

Another report in the conservative National Review was posted under the headline "Based on the Early Reports, the Las Vegas Shooting Is Very, Very Strange". It went on to ask questions about how Paddock had got hold of his huge cache of weapons, the fact that his father was also involved in a violent incident in Las Vegas, and a potential connection to Isis.

Other reports questions whether there was more than one shooter during the attack. Though there were initial reports that there could be more than one gunman, those appear to have been the result of the confusion during the attack, and videos circulating online that claim to "prove" there was more than one shooter appear to be identifying an illusion caused by echoes.

But people including Infowars boss and TV host Alex Jones suggested that Paddock had committed the atrocity because he was both a leftist and a jihadist. He said that he was "just like so many others that had converted to Islam, that was so angry about Trump and everything that was happening that he went out and carried out this attack" in a long ranting video.

He also suggested that the attack was connected to the release of OJ Simpson from a Nevada prison, just days before. The timing was helpful because it meant that the news media would be in the state and ready to ensure that the massacre got the most possible attention, he suggested.

He also suggested that the attack was linked to a broader theory about 2017 being the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and his claims that leftist groups would commemorate it with terror attacks. "Now, again, clearly it looks like he had help, but we saw the October 1st event of the 100 years of the Bolshevik Revolution coming up, and I had been predicting starting October 1st that we'd see terror attacks," he said on the TV show Real News with David Knight.

Isis has claimed responsibility for the shooting, but experts have cast doubt on the suggestion. There has been no indication of the killer's political views, or any real indication that the anniversary of the Russian Revolution could be marked with violence.

The only link to leftist politics appears to be an entirely fake report that was based on a misidentification of the man behind the shooting.