VEN (LAS VEGAS) — In a shocking new development, Clark County Nevada Sheriff Joseph Lombardo revealed late Monday night that in another sweep of crazed Mandalay Bay shooter Mad Dog Paddock’s house in Mesquite, Nevada, authorities found “disturbing” books and photographs and other “incriminating” documents, which may shed new light on the motive behind the worst mass shooting in American history.

This new evidence was missed during earlier searches, Sheriff Lombardo explained,  “because like Poe’s purloined letter, the stuff was basically hidden in plain sight.”

Anonymous sources tell VEN that among the many items seized was a heavily annotated paperback edition of Catcher in the Rye, a series of “very disturbing” how-to books which Paddock may have used in planning his deadly assault, what appears to be a Canadian passport under the false name of Ramon George Sneyd, a first-class ticket to London, and indications that Paddock may have traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin at some point before the shooting and duck-taped his diary to the underside of the Wisconsin Avenue bridge.

Authorities also found a picture of Paddock holding the .399 Carcano rifle he used in the assault, as well as what anonymous sources described a series of “bizarre handwritten notes” that they are analyzing to determine if the handwriting is indeed Paddock’s.

“It looked like some sort of code or automatic writing.  Crazy stuff like phonies must die and my determination to eliminate phonies is becoming more the more of an unshakable obsession. 

“He wrote this stuff over and over again, filling up two spiral notebooks!  The guy was nuts!”

Sheriff Lombardo refused to confirm or deny rumors that several SSRI prescriptions were also discovered — including Fluoxetine, Paroxetine, and Sertraline, as well as over 500 Cialis tablets — all made out to an Alek Hidell, an alias Paddock was apparently using.

Meanwhile, the FBI is focusing once again on Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, whose uncle apparently was a colonel in the Hong Kong Ministry of Internal Affairs, the counter-espionage branch of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, which is the Chinese equivalent of the CIA.

Developing . . . .