Police said Stephen Paddock, 64, is the man who opened fire Sunday night on a packed crowd at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 59 people and leaving more than 500 injured.
Paddock killed himself before officers arrived at his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, the deadly perch from which he fired down on a crowd of thousands below.
He lived in Mesquite, Nevada, and is registered at the same address there as Marilou Danley, a 62-year-old woman who is currently in the Philippines. Police spoke with Danley and dismissed her as a person of interest in the investigation.
Paddock was born on April 9, 1953. But beyond that, details about his background — and possible motive — remain scarce.
“As far as his history and background, we haven’t completed that part of the investigation yet,” Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Monday.
The New York Times reported Monday night that Paddock was twice divorced and that he last worked at a company that later became defense contractor Lockheed Martin from 1985 to 1988. After that, he made his money by gambling, according to the Times.
ISIS, through an official media channel, claimed responsibility for the attack. But the FBI said there was no connection to international terrorism.
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Monday that authorities found 23 guns in Paddock’s hotel room, including AR-15 and AR-47-style assault rifles. They also recovered 19 weapons, a number of explosives, and “several thousand rounds of ammo” at his house in Mesquite.
On Monday afternoon, a S.W.A.T team was preparing to raid a house in northern Nevada, bringing the total number of crime scenes to four.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman called Paddock “a crazed lunatic full of hate.”
“This was a classic WMD. This was a weapon and a man of mass destruction,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said.
Paddock made several large gambling transactions in Las Vegas in the weeks leading up to the attack, law enforcement officials told NBC News. The transactions were “in the tens of thousands,” but it is not yet clear whether they were losses or wins. One of Paddock’s former neighbors described him as a “professional gambler.”
Lombardo said Paddock checked into Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sept. 28, but that nothing seemed amiss.
“We have determined there has been employees going to and from his room and nothing nefarious was noticed at this point,” Lombardo said.
Paddock appears to have rented two rooms at the Mandalay Bay hotel, one that faced east and the other, north, Clark County Commission Chair Steve Sisolak told the Nevada Independent. He was using Danley’s slot machine card, which is why police wanted to talk to her.
Relatives of the shooter told multiple media outlets that Paddock was wealthy, having made his money from real estate, as well as gambling. And they expressed shock that he was responsible for the mass shooting.
“We know absolutely nothing, this is just… we are dumbfounded,” the shooter’s brother, Eric Paddock, told reporters from the family home in Florida.
He added that he didn’t believe his brother had any political affiliations and that there was “absolutely no indication he could do something like this.”
“He was just a guy. Something happened, he snapped or something. He was just a guy,” he told CBS, adding that his brother had “no religious affiliation” or history of mental illness.
“His life is an open book, it’s all in the public record. There’s nothing — he went to college, he had a job,” Eric Paddock added.
The last time he heard from his brother was after Hurricane Irma struck Florida.
“He had a couple of guns but they were all handgun, legal — he might have had one long gun, but he had them in a safe,” Eric Paddock said.
Per public records, Stephen Paddock had a hunting license from Alaska. He was also a licensed pilot and owned two planes.
Eric Paddock also mentioned that their father, Benjamin “Big Daddy” Hoskins Paddock, was at one point on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list for a string of bank robberies. In Phoenix alone, Benjamin Paddock stole nearly $ 35,000 by robbing five banks, which would be nearly $ 300,000 today, according to the Tucson Daily Citizen. He was arrested in Las Vegas, according to the Citizen, after holding up a bank in 1960.
Lombardo said authorities believe Stephen Paddock was a “lone wolf” attacker.
“We have no idea what his belief system was,” he said. “Right now, we believe he was the sole aggressor.”
Police in Mesquite and Las Vegas said Paddock had had no recorded interactions with their departments.
“We have no investigative information or background associated with this individual that is derogatory,” Lombardo told the Washington Post. “The only thing we can tell is he received a citation several years ago, that citation was handled as a matter of normal practice in the court system.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Defense also said Monday that there were no records of Paddock having served in the military.
Stephen Paddock did work for a predecessor of Lockheed Martin from 1985 until 1988, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to BuzzFeed News via email.
“We’re cooperating with authorities to answer questions they may have about Mr. Paddock and his time with the company,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, the shooter’s ex-wife, Peggy Paddock, refused to talk to reporters when approached at her home in Cerritos, California, on Monday, according to the Los Angeles Times. A Los Angeles County sheriff’s officer stationed outside her house said Peggy and Stephen were married for six years and divorced more than 27 years ago. They did not have children.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Please follow @BuzzFeedNews.
Rose Troup Buchanan is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.
Contact Rose Troup Buchanan at Rose.Buchanan@BuzzFeed.com.
Ellie Hall is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC. Her secure PGP fingerprint is 6055 A264 DADD AADC 347E 5986 547C C11C DD7D 176A.
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