Las Vegas gunman 'a guy who had money', says brother

Stephen Paddock lived in a tidy Nevada retirement community where the amenities include golf, tennis and bocce. He was a multimillionaire real-estate investor, recently shipped his 90-year-old mother a walker and liked to travel to Las Vegas to play high-stakes video poker.

Nothing in his background suggests why he would have been on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino with at least 17 guns on Sunday night, raining an unparalleled slaughter upon an outdoor country music festival below.

"I can't even make something up," his bewildered brother, Eric Paddock, told reporters Monday. "There's just nothing."

At least 59 people were killed and nearly 530 injured in Paddock's attack on the Route 91 Harvest Festival. The 64-year-old gunman killed himself in the hotel room before authorities arrived.

Asked about a potential motive, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said he could not "get into the mind of a psychopath at this point."

Public records offered no hint of financial distress or criminal history, said Eric Paddock, who spoke with reporters outside his home near Orlando, Florida.

"No affiliation, no religion, no politics. He never cared about any of that stuff," Eric Paddock said as he alternately wept and shouted. "He was a guy who had money. He went on cruises and gambled."

Stephen Paddock, who had worked previously as an accountant, never served in the military and was "not an avid gun guy at all," though he had a couple of handguns and a long gun, he said.

Eric Paddock also said he had not talked to his brother in six months and last heard from him when Stephen checked in briefly by text message after Hurricane Irma.

Their mother spoke with him about two weeks ago, and when he found out recently that she needed a walker, he sent her one, Eric Paddock said. "She's completely in shock," he added.

Eric Paddock recalled receiving a recent text from his brother showing "a picture that he won $40,000 on a slot machine. But that's the way he played."

He described his brother as a multimillionaire and said they had business dealings and owned property together.

While Stephen Paddock appeared to have no criminal history, his father was a notorious bank robber, Eric Paddock confirmed to The Orlando Sentinel. Benjamin Hoskins Paddock tried to run down an FBI agent with his car in Las Vegas in 1960 and wound up on the agency's most wanted list after escaping from a federal prison in Texas in 1968, when Stephen Paddock was a teen.

An FBI poster issued after the escape said Benjamin Hoskins Paddock had been "diagnosed as psychopathic" and should be considered "armed and very dangerous."

The elder Paddock remained on the lam for nearly a decade, living under an assumed name in Oregon. Investigators found him in 1978 after he attracted publicity for opening the state's first licensed bingo parlor. He died in 1998.

Associated Press

(China Daily USA 10/03/2017 page2)