Killer’s girlfriend says he gave no hint of plan
She says $100,000 he wired to Philippines was for her and her family to buy a house
The girlfriend of the man behind the Las Vegas bloodbath that killed nearly 60 innocent people said Wednesday that the man she knew was a kind person that gave no hint of his oncoming murderous rampage.
“I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, quiet caring man,” Marilou Danley in a statement through her attorney after an FBI interview. “I loved him and I hoped for a quiet future together with him. He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of, that I understood in anyway to be warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.”
Danley, who described herself as a mother and a grandmother, returned to the U.S. on Wednesday after visiting family members in the Philippines, their native country. She was in the Philippines when Paddock fired the fatal gunshots out of a 32nd-story window of a Las Vegas high rise on Sunday.
Danley, 62, said in the statement that a couple of weeks ago, Paddock told her he had found an inexpensive plane ticket for her to go visit her family. Once she was there, she said, he had wired her money to buy a home for her and her family. The FBI says he wired $100,000.
She said that the plane ticket and money for the home made her concerned that Paddock was pushing her away.
“I was grateful, but honestly, I was worried that first the unexpected trip and then the money was a way of breaking up with me,” Danley said. “It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone.”
“I have not made a statement until now because I have been cooperating with authorities. I voluntarily flew back to America, because I know the FBI and the Las Vegas Police Department wanted to talk to me, and I want to talk to them. I will cooperate fully with their investigation. Anything I can do to help ease suffering and help in any way I will do.”
Danley was interviewed Wednesday by authorities at the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, a law enforcement official said. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said Danley was accompanied by a lawyer and cooperated with the investigation.
Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo has named Danley a “person of interest” in the investigation. The official said Danley was not considered an accomplice, though investigators were likely to subject her to extensive questioning about the gunman’s activities before the assault, his extensive cache of weapons and the state of his finances.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said investigators worked to reconstruct Paddock’s life and patterns. McCabe said investigators wanted to speak to “anyone and everyone who may have crossed his path in the days and the weeks leading up to this horrific event.”
Paddock wounded more than
500 people in a 10-minute barrage from his perch in a 32nd-floor hotel suite on the city’s Strip. The retired accountant killed himself before a SWAT team blasted into the room.
The shooting rampage was meticulously planned and included specially modified weapons. Investigators found a computer and
23 guns in Paddock’s hotel room. Nineteen more guns were found at the home he shared with Danley in Mesquite, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, and seven at his house in Reno.
Paddock made his attack even more deadly by adding legal “bump stocks” to 12 semiautomatic rifles that allowed them to mimic fully automatic gunfire.
The Australian Associated Press reported Danley was born in the Philippines and moved to Queensland in eastern Australia in the early 1980s. She left Australia for the USA in 1989, where she worked in casinos.
Her two sisters, who live in Australia, told the country’s Channel 7 TV network there was no way Danley knew what Paddock planned. Their identities were concealed.
“She was sent away. She was away so that she will be not there to interfere with what he’s planning,” said one sister who lives in Queensland.
Paddock’s victims were among more than 20,000 people celebrating country music at the Route 91 Harvest festival. The gunfire erupted in the concert’s closing minutes while headliner Jason Aldean performed.
“I loved him and I hoped for a quiet future together with him. He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of, that I understood in any way to be warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.” Marilou Danley