Did gambling losses turn law abiding ex-accountant into mass killer?
ON paper, the man who blasted himself into the annals of evil from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel room wouldn’t have hurt a fly. A former accountant and qualified pilot, Stephen Paddock was a 64-year-old resident of a retirement community living in a quiet, crimefree Nevada desert town.
He appeared to have nothing more controversial in his life than a passion for gambling.
A two-times divorcee with no children, he had never come to the attention of police and his dumbfounded family yesterday could suggest only that he must have ‘snapped’ – although over what they had no idea.
His motivation is, of course, a crucial part of the investigation now under way. But the slaughter of so many innocent people focuses the spotlight firmly once more on America’s insanely lax gun laws – and Nevada’s are some of the loosest – that allow ordinary men to commit extraordinary crimes by amassing a terrifying arsenal with no questions asked by the authorities.
Perhaps those questions might have been asked if they had known Paddock’s father, Benjamin, was an armed bank robber who had once been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Criminals List after he escaped from prison.
Paddock Sr, who tried to run over an FBI agent chasing him, was described as ‘psychopathic’ in his arrest warrant.
When police burst into Stephen Paddock’s 32ndfloor room at the Mandalay Bay, they discovered his body surrounded by at least ten rifles, some of them automatic assault weapons.
The whole operation was clearly carefully planned. He had checked into the room last Thursday and managed to keep the contents of his luggage secret, despite regular routine visits to his room by hotel staff. Experts believe he gradually moved his guns and ammunition into his room over the preceding days.
Paddock had ensured he had a perfect view of the country and western concert he targeted. While he was waiting to carry out the attack, he even found time for a spot of gambling, including at the fruit machines in the Mandalay Bay’s ground-floor casino.
Indeed, amid evidence that Paddock had been gambling very heavily in recent weeks, there was speculation last night that his outrage may have been linked to his gaming.
Despite Islamic State claims that Paddock had recently converted to Islam and had carried out the atrocity in its name, the FBI insisted there was no evidence of his having any connection to an international terror group.
‘We have no idea what his belief system was,’ said County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo.
With no obvious clue to a motive, investigators were last night eagerly waiting to talk to the one person who may be able to shed light on the crucial puzzle as to what drove Paddock to mass murder. His live-in Australian girlfriend Marilou Danley was visiting family in the Philippines at the time of the massacre. It has emerged Paddock had used her ID in the casinos over the past few days.
Police called Paddock a ‘lone wolf’ and his lifestyle seems to reflect that. Since 1974, he had been registered as living at 27 different addresses – many of them respectable middle-class communities – in California, Florida, Texas and Nevada. He had once owned two small planes, although his licence had expired for medical reasons. He also had a hunting licence from Alaska.
Paddock – who grew up in Sun Valley near Los Angeles – had worked his way through a succession of jobs, including as an internal auditor for the defence giant Lockheed Martin.
However, the chief source of his income had in recent years come from an apartment building he and his 90-year-old mother owned in a suburb of Dallas.
In 2015, he paid $369,000 for his last home at 3272 Babbling Brook Court in Mesquite, Nevada. It is in a retirement community for the over 55s called Sun City Mesquite.
The sedate and remote town – set up by Mormon pioneers in the Mojave Desert – is only 80 miles from Las Vegas. It has virtually no crime and is the sort of town where the locals potter down the main street in golf carts.
Like many who gravitate to Nevada, Paddock lived for gambling. According to Don and Sharon Judy, his next-door neighbours at his previous home in Viera, near Melbourne, Florida, Paddock was rarely at home and kept the house barely furnished.
They had seen his girlfriend Miss Danley just a handful of times in the two years Paddock lived there. They rarely socialised with anyone else in the community.
‘He seemed normal, other than that he lived by gambling. He was very open about that,’ said Sharon Judy. She said her neighbour had described himself as a world traveller and ‘professional gambler by trade’.
The Judys never saw any sign of weapons in the house, which Paddock sold for $235,000 before moving to Nevada and his beloved casinos. His former neighbours’ utter bafflement at yesterday’s events were echoed by Paddock’s family.
‘We have no idea how this happened. It’s like an asteroid just fell on top of our family,’ said Eric Paddock, his 55- year- brother, in Orlando, Florida. ‘Something happened, he snapped or something.’
He said they had last been in contact a few weeks ago when Stephen Paddock texted him after Hurricane Irma to check on the welfare of their 90-year- old mother who lived down the street from Eric.
He said his college- educated brother had no political or religious affiliations, and had never served in the military. He had no known mental health or money problems.
Stephen Paddock had been quietly living out his retirement enjoying the hotels, shows and gambling in Las Vegas, where he liked to play video poker and fruit machines. ‘He was a wealthy guy who liked to play video poker, he went on cruises. He sent his mum huge boxes of cookies,’ Eric Paddock said. ‘He doesn’t even have parking tickets.’
His brother had owned a couple of handguns and a rifle, he said, although nothing like the arsenal that was discovered in Las Vegas.
‘He’s not an avid gun guy at all. He never hit anyone, he’s never drawn a gun,’ he said. ‘He had no machine guns when I [helped him move] from Melbourne to Mesquite.’ Growing up, they had nothing to do with their notorious father, he added.
Another brother, Bruce, said he hadn’t talked to Stephen for ten years, adding: ‘I don’t know how he could stoop to this low point, hurting someone else.’ He described the gunman as a laid-back, ‘neverin-a-hurry’ type and a law-abiding
‘It’s like an asteroid fell on our family’
citizen. Stephen Paddock was married twice, first to Sharon Brunoehler, divorcing in the early 1980s. He married his second wife, Peggy, in 1984 but they divorced after six years.
Miss Brunoehler’s brother, Scott, remembered the killer as a smart and fun-loving man who used to take his in-laws out water-skiing on his motor boat. Last night there was speculation that Paddock probably inherited his passion for gambling – not to mention his affinity for guns – from his father. The late Benjamin Paddock – a father of four – robbed three Arizona banks of $25,000 in 1960.
Ironically, Paddock Snr – whose nicknames included Big Daddy, Chromedome and Old Baldy – was seized in Las Vegas after a desperate bid to escape capture in which he jumped into his car and tried to run over an FBI agent.
The FBI, which had described him as ‘armed and dangerous’, found a loaded handgun and a cudgel in his car.
He subsequently escaped from prison and robbed another bank, this time in San Francisco. His son Stephen by contrast appeared to have lived an almost completely crimefree life – until yesterday.
This picture of law-abiding normality was reinforced when police searched Paddock’s home in Mesquite.
Fearing boobytraps, they used a robot to break in but found what they said was a completely ordinary home, albeit with some ammunition that had been left behind.
Police are understandably keen to talk to Paddock’s girlfriend and gambling partner Miss Danley, a 62- year- old divorcee. A former ‘high limit hostess’ in a casino, she describes herself on Facebook as a ‘proud mom and grandma who lives life to the fullest’. Miss Danley may be able to offer some insight into speculation Paddock’s shooting spree was linked to his gambling.
He tried to sue a Las Vegas hotel, Cosmopolitan Hotels & Resorts, in September 2012, claiming it was guilty of negligence after he slipped on the floor. The claim was settled through arbitration.
More relevant may be the string of large gambling transactions Paddock had made in recent weeks. It wasn’t clear whether the bets were wins or losses but records show he repeatedly gambled more than $10,000 – and sometimes more than $30,000 – a day.
Carolyn Goodman, Las Vegas’ mayor, yesterday described Paddock as ‘a crazed lunatic full of hate’.
History records that mass killers in the US are often ordinary people, albeit driven by twisted motives. It appeared last night that Stephen Paddock was no different.