Vegas shooter was millionaire son of bank robber
LAS VEGAS (AFP) — Stephen Craig Paddock, the retired accountant who smuggled an armory’s worth of weapons into a swanky Las Vegas hotel and mowed down concertgoers from a 32nd story window, was a wealthy high-stakes gambler.
The 64-year-old was a multi-millionaire who owned two planes and a home in a tranquil golf course retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, 130 kilometers east of the gambling hub. According to a brother, he showed no sign he was poised to commit mass murder.
But he had a link to notoriety — his father was a notorious bank robber, once on the FBI’s “10 most wanted” list and described as a psychopath.
His brother Eric Paddock said his family was in shock and could not understand what motivated his elder brother.
“He’s never drawn his gun, it makes no sense,” Paddock said from his doorstep in Orlando, Florida.
“Where the hell did he get automatic weapons? He has no military background or anything like that,” he said. “He’s a guy who lived in a house in Mesquite, drove down and gambled in Las Vegas.”
“It’s like an asteroid just fell on top of our family,” he told the Las Vegas ReviewJournal. “We have no idea how this happened.”
He said that Stephen was a multimillionaire who made much of his money investing in real estate.
Eric said his brother was a peaceful man, who was a regular player of highstakes video poker.
The two were last in touch last month, texting about power outages after Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida.
But Eric also revealed that their father Patrick Benjamin Paddock was a violent bank robber jailed in the early 1960s for a series of heists.
He escaped prison in 1968, landing on the FBI’s most wanted list, which described him as “extremely dangerous” and “psychopathic.”
But he later escaped. An Oregon Supreme Court opinion from 1981 says FBI agents rearrested him on Sept. 6, 1978, at his Bingo Center in the small city of Springfield.
Despite the escape, Benjamin was paroled the following year and returned to Oregon. He continued the bingo operation until authorities finally closed it in 1987 and charged him with racketeering.
Stephen’s former brother-in-law Scott Brunoehler remembers him as smart and fun loving.
Brunoehler, 62, said he hadn’t spoken to Stephen since he divorced his sister. “He seemed like a normal, good guy,” he said. “I’m still in shock.”