Girlfriend: Gunman was ‘kind, caring’
Woman denies knowledge of his plans for Vegas massacre
LAS VEGAS — The girlfriend of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock said Wednesday that she had no idea of the massacre he was plotting when he sent her on a trip abroad to see her family.
Marilou Danley issued the statement after returning from her native Philippines late Tuesday and being questioned for much of the day by FBI agents. She was out of the country for more than two weeks.
“I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man,” Danley said in a statement read by her attorney, Matthew Lombard, outside FBI headquarters in Los Angeles. “He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.
“I am devastated by the deaths and injuries that have occurred, and my prayers go out to the victims and their families and all those who have been hurt by these awful events,” Danley said.
She said she left the country because Paddock, 64, bought her a ticket to visit her family in the Philippines, and that she was initially pleased a few days ago when he wired her $100,000 to buy a house for her family there, but she later feared it was a way to break up with her.
Danley spoke with the FBI for several hours as investigators struggled to get inside the mind of Paddock, who carried out his massacre, killing 59 people and wounding more than 500 others, without leaving the plain-sight clues often found after major acts of bloodshed.
Danley, 62, who has been called a person of interest by investigators, though they have not suggested that she is considered an accomplice or involved in any way, has pledged to cooperate with authorities.
Investigators are reconstructing Paddock’s life, behavior and the people he encountered in the weeks leading up to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said. That includes examining his computer and cellphone. He said investigators have not had any problems accessing the gunman’s electronic devices.
Casino regulators are looking at Paddock’s gambling habits and checking their records to see whether he had any disputes with casinos or fellow patrons. In addition, investigators are examining financial reports filed in recent weeks when he bought more than $10,000 in casino chips.
Investigators were unable to explain what led Paddock to rain heavy fire down on a country music festival Sunday night from the windows of his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino before killing himself as police closed in.
“This individual and this attack didn’t leave the sort of immediately accessible thumbprints that you find on some mass casualty attacks,” McCabe said.
The retired accountant stockpiled an arsenal of high-powered weapons while pursuing a passion for high-stakes gambling at Nevada casinos, where his game of choice was video poker, a relatively solitary pursuit with no dealer and no humans to play against.
It was in a casino where Paddock met his girlfriend, who was a high-limit hostess for Club Paradise at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, his brother Eric Paddock said.
Paddock was such a regular at the Atlantis that his entire family once took over the top floor at the casino’s expense, his brother said.
“They were adorable — big man, tiny woman. He loved her. He doted on her,” Eric Paddock said.
Employees at a Starbucks in Mesquite, Nev., however, described the couple’s relationship differently. A supervisor at the coffee shop told the Los Angeles Times that Paddock often berated Danley in public.
Amid a backdrop of anguish and questions, President Donald Trump headed to Las Vegas to visit with survivors and law enforcement personnel. He echoed authorities in saying that they have not identified a motive.
“Not yet,” Trump said during remarks to reporters. “We’re looking. I can tell you, it’s a very sick man. He was a very demented person.”
Trump and first lady Melania Trump met privately with victims at a Las Vegas hospital and then with police officers and dispatchers, praising them and the doctors who treated the wounded. He didn’t address those grieving until the end of his visit, when he called it a “very sad day for me personally.”
“Our souls are stricken with grief for every American who lost a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a son or a daughter,” he said. “We know that your sorrow feels endless. We stand together to help you carry your pain.”
Many of Paddock’s guns were purchased in recent years. Between October 2016 and Sept. 28, the day Paddock checked into the hotel, Paddock bought 33 guns, the “majority of them rifles,” Jill Snyder, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in San Francisco, said Wednesday in an interview with “CBS This Morning.”
Paddock also had substantial ammunition in the room, with clips containing between 60 and 100 rounds, Snyder said.