October 2, 2017


News and Views


THE BIG STORY OF THE DAY, IS THE LAS VEGAS SHOOTER. SEE THIS COLLECTION OF STORIES ABOUT HIM AND THE CRIME. WE NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THIS GUNMAN. AS IS SO OFTEN THE CASE, THOSE WHO KNOW PADDOCK ARE TOTALLY SURPRISED; HOWEVER, ISIS HAS CLAIMED CREDIT FOR THE SHOOTING. THAT DOES NOT APPEAR TO ME TO BE LIKELY, THOUGH. THOSE WHO ARE ATTRACTED TO ISIS OR TO NEW AND STRANGE RELIGIONS ARE USUALLY YOUNG. WITHIN THE NEXT FEW DAYS AS THE FBI INVESTIGATE THERE WILL PROBABLY BE MORE INFORMATION.

SO MANY TIMES PEOPLE “LOOK NORMAL,” WHEN THEIR INNER MIND IS DEEPLY DISTURBED. THERE IS ANOTHER SURPRISING THING – PADDOCK WAS A MULTIMILLIONAIRE. SEE ALL ARTICLES BELOW, AS THEY ARE FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES, AND CONTAIN DIFFERENT INFORMATION. THE FIRST IS THE MOST UP TO THE MINUTE, AND INVOLVES HIS FAMILY BACKGROUND. HIS FATHER WAS AN INCORRIGIBLE CRIMINAL, BUT WAS HE INSANE? IF SO, HE COULD HAVE EITHER MISTREATED THE SON BADLY ENOUGH TO DAMAGE HIS MIND; OR IN FAIRLY RARE CASES, A MENTAL ILLNESS CAN BE INHERITED GENETICALLY. I USUALLY THINK IT IS DUE TO ENVIRONMENT AND PARENTAL TREATMENT, HOWEVER. I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR MORE ABOUT IT, THOUGH.


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breakingnews/las-vegas-shooters-father-bingo-bruce-lived-colorful-life-of-crime-and-deception/ar-AAsNIFW?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Las Vegas shooter's father, 'Bingo Bruce,' lived colorful life of crime and deception
FOX News FOX News
Greg Norman
October 2, 2017

Photograph of wanted poster -- © Provided by Fox News An FBI-issued poster seeking the capture of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock

The father of the gunman behind the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history robbed a string of banks in Arizona, escaped prison in Texas and tried to start a new life as the manager of a bingo parlor in Oregon, according to historical newspaper articles.

Eric, the brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, who killed at least 50 people from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino late Sunday, told the Orlando Sentinel that their father was Benjamin Hoskins Paddock.

The elder Paddock, born in Wisconsin in 1926, had a host of other fake names and nicknames, including “Big Daddy” and “Old Baldy," and was on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list from 1969 to 1977.

Paddock was indicted in 1960 on three counts of robbing Phoenix branches of Valley National Bank, the Arizona Republic reported on Oct. 6 that year. He was accused of stealing close to $25,000 and was caught in the summer of 1960 by FBI agents after returning to Arizona from Las Vegas.

The 6-foot-4, 245-pound Paddock was convicted and slapped with a 20-year prison sentence, but the lengthy jail term was cut short when he busted out of a federal prison in Texas in 1969, the Eugene Register-Guard reported.

RELATED: STEPHEN PADDOCK: WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT LAS VEGAS SHOOTING SUSPECT

An escaped federal prisoner poster issued by the FBI at the time said Paddock was “diagnosed as psychopathic” and “reportedly has suicidal tendencies and should be considered armed and dangerous.”

About six months after the escape, Paddock was involved in an armed robbery at a bank in San Francisco and in September 1978, he was awaiting trial related to charges from that incident, according to the Oregon newspaper.

Paddock, described by the FBI as being an “avid bridge player,” had managed to live a secret life centered on another game --bingo -- as a parlor manager in Springfield, Ore.

The FBI said Paddock lived for years in the Eugene-Springfield area under the alias of Bruce Werner Ericksen and managed to stay one step ahead of law enforcement by constantly changing his appearance and avoiding contact with police, which may have resulted in fingerprinting, the Eugene Register-Guard reported.

The man dubbed by the newspaper as “Bingo Bruce” appeared to have run out of luck in 1978 when he was arrested, but the feds paroled him and he was back in the number-calling game just a year later.

“He was a nice guy, and helped a lot of people financially and did one hell of a lot for the kids,” former Junction City Mayor Chuck Ivey, who was on the parole board, told the newspaper.

“All that stuff is old news,” Ivey said when he asked about Paddock’s past.

RELATED: LAS VEGAS SHOOTING: TRUMP CALLS MASSACRE 'PURE ACT OF EVIL'

In 1987, the gig finally ended when the Oregon Attorney General’s Office filed seven racketeering charges against Paddock related to his bingo operation. On top of that, he was charged with rolling back car odometers.

Paddock settled the racketeering charges for $623,000 and pleaded no contest to the odometer case, while simultaneously claiming he had cancer.

Among his other life claims: being an auto crew racing chief, Chicago Bears football player and survivor of a World War II mine sweeper sinking, according to the Eugene Register-Guard.

When the final verdict in Paddock’s legal saga came in, and Circuit Judge George Woodrich decided to let him off with a $100,000 fine and no jail time.

“He could be conning everybody, but this is an economic crime and he’s an old man,” the newspaper quoted Woodrich as saying. “My view is let him go… and good riddance.”

Paddock then went back to the Lone Star state and lived there until his death in 1998. Laurel Paulson, a woman he met while living in Oregon, told the Eugene Register-Guard that he got by on a VA pension and helped her run a machine shop.

“He was a man that people either loved or hated,” she said. “He always said he was a dinosaur.”



THERE HAVE BEEN 1,518 SEPARATE MASSACRES SINCE SANDY HOOK, ACCORDING TO THE YAHOO ARTICLE BELOW; AND THE GOVERNMENT STILL WILL NOT EVEN DRAFT A BILL ON GUN CONTROL. EVEN BERNIE SANDERS ISN’T PUSHING FOR ONE. NOBODY NEEDS MORE THAN TWO OR THREE FIREARMS; AND THOSE FULLY AUTOMATIC RIFLES, AS THE VIDEO REPORT SAID THAT PADDOCK’S ARE, ARE ENTIRELY USELESS EXCEPT IN WAR OR TO COMMIT A MASSACRE. THIS IS SO VERY SAD AND INFURIATING TO ME. I HOPE SOME KIND OF CAUSE FOR THIS ABSOLUTELY CRUEL ACT IS FOUND.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/portrait-mass-killer-details-dont-add-231217887.html
Portrait of a mass killer: The details don't add up
Andrew Romano
October 2, 2017 1 hour 30 minutes ago

Stephen Paddock (Photo: Facebook)

As mass shootings have become almost routine in America — at least 1,518 have taken place since 2012’s Sandy Hook massacre, according to the Gun Violence Archive — so too have the details that have typically emerged about the shooters themselves in the hours after these heinous attacks.

He kept to himself, a co-worker will say. (The perpetrator is almost always a “he.”) Didn’t talk much, others will add. Troubled. Angry. Political. Ideological. Bigoted. Even mentally ill. The portrait never matches up in every single one of these respects — but most of the time, it’s fairly close.

The strange and scary thing about multi-millionaire real estate investor Stephen Craig Paddock, the 64-year-old Nevada resident who secretly hauled 10 or more rifles to the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas on Sunday before opening fire on concertgoers below, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 520, is that few if any of the details that have surfaced at this point play to type.

A mass killer’s biography usually helps explain his actions, offering hope that the next shooter can somehow be stopped.

But so far, the man behind the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history is too much of an enigma to provide even that coldest of comforts.

“We have no idea how or why this happened,” Paddock’s brother, Eric, told ABC News, adding that there is “exactly no reason for this” and that there are “no secrets in his [brother’s] past.”

Photograph -- Eric Paddock, left, brother of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock, speaks to members of the media outside his home, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017, in Orlando, Fla. Paddock told the Orlando Sentinel: “We are completely dumbfounded. We can’t understand what happened.” (AP Photo/John Raoux)

“As they drill into his life, there will be nothing to be found,” Paddock concluded. “We don’t understand.”

(ISIS released a statement claiming Paddock as a late convert to Islam and a member of the terror group, but as of late Monday, there was no corroboration of the claim. A quick Google search suggests there is no mosque in Mesquite, a city of about 17,000.)

Before Sunday, Stephen Paddock seemed be easing into his older years in relatively unremarkable fashion.

He lived in a new cookie-cutter house in Mesquite, Nev., 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

With the exception of minor citation, now resolved, he had never had a run-in with the law, either in Las Vegas, Mesquite, or Texas, where he lived before moving to Nevada.

Paddock was active, being both a licensed hunter and pilot who owned two planes, according to public records.

Photograph -- Police personnel stand outside the home of Stephen Paddock in Mesquite, Nev., Oct. 2, 2017. (Photo: Mesquite Police via AP)

To earn his private pilot license, which recently lapsed, Paddock would have had to prove that he hadn’t been diagnosed with psychosis, bipolar disorder or any severe personality disorder.

Paddock wasn’t a loner, either: He had a girlfriend, 62-year-old Marilou Danley, and he had been married before, 27 years ago, to a woman now living in Southern California.

And Paddock did well financially, first as an accountant or auditor (at one point for Lockheed Martin), then buying, selling and managing properties, and finally, in retirement, as a “professional gambler” (his term) who, according to a Washington Post report, would take frequent trips to Las Vegas with Danley to play high-stakes poker.

Neighbors in Florida, where Paddock owned another home, described to the Post’s reporters a couple that lived on “Vegas time,” staying “up till midnight and sleep[ing] in till noon” — which is unusual, perhaps, for most 60-somethings, but less so for the tens of thousands of casino goers who populate the Silver State.

“My brother is not like you and me,” Eric Paddock told the Post. “He sends me a text that says he won $250,000 at the casino.”

Photograph -- A photo of Eric Paddock, left, brother of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Craig Paddock, right, is displayed on the back window of Eric Paddocks car outside his home, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017, in Orlando, Fla. (Photo: John Raoux/AP)

Some neighbors in Reno, Nev., where Stephen Paddock owned yet another home, told the Post’s reporters that he was “reclusive” or “quiet” or “unfriendly.” But others, in Mesquite and Florida, where Paddock seemed to spend more time, said that he was “a good neighbor” and that “there was nothing strange about him.”

Either way, these conflicting accounts could accurately describe the same person; moods change. Neither, however, suggests a man on the verge of shooting hundreds of people.

By far the most unusual thing about Paddock isn’t really about Paddock at all. Paddock’s father, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, it turns out, was a notorious criminal himself; he even appeared on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list from 1969 to 1977. Born in Wisconsin in 1926, the elder Paddock, whose nicknames included “Old Baldy” and “Chromedome,” robbed banks in Arizona, escaped prison in Texas and tried to start a new life in Oregon as “Bingo Bruce,” the manager of a bingo parlor — an effort that ended in 1987 when the state attorney general filed seven bingo-related racketeering charges against him. As an FBI wanted poster once put it, the elder Paddock was a man who had been “diagnosed as psychopathic,” seemed to have “suicidal tendencies” and “should be considered armed and very dangerous.”

This photo combination shows an image from a 1960s FBI wanted poster of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, left, and a 1977 file photo of Paddock, who went by the name Bruce Ericksen, when he was on the lam in Lane County, Oregon, following his escape from a federal prison in Texas, where he had been serving time for a string of bank robberies. Paddock’s son, Stephen Paddock, was the gunman who opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. (Photos: FBI and Wayne Eastburn/The Register-Guard via AP)

Perhaps Stephen Paddock inherited some of those traits from his father; perhaps they lay dormant until the son hit his mid-60s and decided, suddenly, to commit mass murder. The rapid spread on social media of stories about “Bingo Bruce” suggests that we want to believe as much.

Or perhaps not. We simply don’t know. So far — and it’s early yet — all we know is what Paddock’s brother Eric has told us.

“There’s absolutely no sense, no reason he did this,” Eric Paddock told the Post. “He’s just a guy who played video poker and took cruises and ate burritos at Taco Bell. There’s no political affiliation that we know of. There’s no religious affiliation that we know of.”

“We know nothing,” Paddock concluded.

Eventually, more information will surface. But right now, in a moment when we’re used to explaining these shooters in familiar terms — religious, political, psychological, whatever — none of the usual explanations apply. Stephen Craig Paddock seems as if he could have been anyone. And that, ultimately, may be the most terrifying thing about him.

Read more from Yahoo News:

Sandy Hook mother tears into Congress after Las Vegas massacre
Graphic eyewitness reports from Las Vegas show terrifying scene
Las Vegas, a ‘soft target,’ long feared an attack
Las Vegas attack is deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history
Photos: Scenes from the Las Vegas mass shooting



THERE WAS NO OBVIOUS IMMEDIATE TRIGGER FOR THIS SHOOTING. MORE FASCINATING, THOUGH, IS THE FACT THAT THE NUMBER OF GUNS HE SEEMED TO HAVE WITH HAD HIM KEEPS GOING UP – NOW IT’S 17. WHY WOULD HE HAVE BROUGHT SO MANY TO THE HOTEL ROOM, AND WHEN/WHERE DID HE GET THEM?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gunman-killed-50-las-vegas-150900674.html?soc_trk=gcm&soc_src=b651dd5b-b580-37ac-a559-8c110b17ac33&.tsrc=notification-brknews
Brother: Las Vegas gunman was wealthy real-estate investor
Associated Press
KEN RITTER and GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press•October 2, 2017

MESQUITE, Nev. (AP) — 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 58 people were killed and more than 500 injured in Paddock's attack on the Route 91 Harvest Festival, where country music star Jason Aldean was performing for more than 22,000 fans. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The 64-year-old gunman killed himself in the hotel room before authorities arrived.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, without offering evidence, but Aaron Rouse, the FBI agent in charge in Las Vegas, said investigators saw no connection to international terrorism.

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. Eric Paddock, who spoke with reporters outside his home near Orlando, Florida, said even if his brother had been in financial trouble, the family could have bailed him out.

"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, was "not an avid gun guy at all," though he had a couple of handguns and a long gun, he said.

Eric Paddock also told The Associated Press that 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 said.

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. He said he was not aware that his brother had gambling debts.

"He had substantial wealth. He'd tell me when he'd win. He'd grouse when he'd lost. He never said he'd lost four million dollars or something. I think he would have told me."

Heavily armed police searched Paddock's home Monday in Mesquite, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Arizona border, looking for clues. Paddock lived there with his 62-year-old girlfriend, who authorities said was out of the country when the shooting happened. Eric Paddock described her as kindly and said she sometimes sent cookies to his mother.

Police also searched a two-bedroom home Paddock owned in a retirement community in Reno, 500 miles from Mesquite.

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.

The oldest of four children, Paddock was 7 when his father was arrested for the robberies. A neighbor, Eva Price, took him swimming while FBI agents searched the family home.

She told the Tucson Citizen at the time: "We're trying to keep Steve from knowing his father is held as a bank robber. I hardly know the family, but Steve is a nice boy. It's a terrible thing."

An FBI poster issued after the escape said Benjamin Hoskins Paddock had been "diagnosed as psychopathic" and should be considered "armed and very dangerous." He'd been serving a 20-year sentence for a string of bank robberies in Phoenix.

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.

Stephen Paddock bought his one-story, three-bedroom home in a newly built Mesquite subdivision for $369,000, in 2015, property records show. Past court filings and recorded deeds in California and Texas suggest he co-owned rental property.

He previously lived in another Mesquite — the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas — from 2004 to 2012, according to Mesquite, Texas, police Lt. Brian Parrish. Paddock owned at least three separate rental properties, Parrish said, and there was no indication the police department had any contact with him over that time, Parrish said.

He has been divorced at least twice, including marriages that ended in 1980 and 1990. One of the ex-wives lives in Southern California, where a large gathering of reporters congregated in her neighborhood. Los Angeles police Sgt. Cort Bishop said she did not want to speak with journalists. He relayed that the two had not been in contact for a long time and did not have children.

According to federal aviation records, Paddock was issued a private pilot's license in November 2003. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game said he obtained three-day, nonresident fishing licenses in 2009 and 2010.

In 2012, Paddock sued the Cosmopolitan Hotel & Resorts in Nevada, saying he slipped and fell on a wet floor there. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed by a judge and settled by arbitration.

Reached by telephone, Paddock's lawyer at the time, Jared R. Richards, said he could not comment because of client confidentiality concerns.

Paddock kept a vacation home in Heritage Isle, a gated retirement community in Viera, Florida, from 2013 to 2015, said Don Judy, his neighbor there. Judy said gambling, online and in person, was how Paddock claimed to make his living. One time, he said, Paddock showed Judy's wife his laptop as evidence that he had won $20,000 in an online game.

"He never gave me any indication that he was strapped for money or needing money," Judy said. "He said he was a gambler by trade, a speculator."


Judy described Paddock as "a real nice guy" who typically dressed in a polo shirt and shorts and didn't stand out among other part-time residents.

"The second time I met him, he pulled out his keys and he gave me his house key," Judy said.

When Paddock was away, Judy said, he would bring in his mail and the newspaper and walk through the house to make sure the air conditioning was working and that there wasn't any flood damage after storms.

"He would call me every so often to ask if everything was OK with the house. Just so ordinary. ... There's nothing to profile this guy by."


Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Terrance Harris and Tamara Lush in Orlando, Florida; Jennifer Kay in Miami; Florida; David Warren in Dallas; Michael Sisak in Philadelphia; Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City; and Jeff Donn in Plymouth, Massachusetts, contributed to this report.


THE BEST SOURCE FOR THE KILLING ITSELF IS IN THIS STORY. THIS IS ANOTHER OF THOSE STORIES THAT IS OVERWHELMING TO ME. SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS IS SOMETHING THAT GOES UNDETECTED TIME AFTER TIME. THIS WAS A WEALTHY AND FINANCIALLY SUCCESSFUL MAN, THOUGH FROM THESE THREE ARTICLES I GATHER THAT EITHER PEOPLE DIDN’T KNOW HIM WELL, OR HE DIDN’T ALLOW ANYONE UP VERY CLOSE TO HIM. I WANT TO KNOW WHY HAD SO MANY GUNS AND WHERE HE KEPT THEM. HIS BROTHER KNEW ONLY ABOUT A HANDGUN AND A RIFLE. COULD HE POSSIBLY BUY THAT MANY AT ONE TIME? IS IT POSSIBLE THAT HE WAS A GUN DEALER, INSTEAD OF SOMEONE WHOSE LIFE GAVE LITTLE EVIDENCE OF THE SOURCE OF HIS PLENTIFUL SUPPLY OF MONEY. AN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY LIKE THAT WOULD EXPLAIN HIS WEALTH. MAYBE HE WAS CONSCIOUSLY WALKING IN HIS FATHER’S CRIMINAL FOOTSTEPS.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/las-vegas-shooting-stephen-paddock-what-we-know-about-shooter/
By STEFAN BECKET CBS NEWS October 2, 2017, 11:15 AM
Stephen Paddock: What we know about the Las Vegas shooter

Video – Las Vegas massacre – deadliest mass shooting in American history

Police have identified Stephen Paddock as the gunman who opened fire on concertgoers from a hotel room in Las Vegas, killing at least 58 people and leaving 515 wounded in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Paddock, 64, began shooting from the window of his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino just after 10 p.m. local time Sunday evening, police said. A SWAT team found Paddock dead in his hotel room and suspect he killed himself.

stephen-paddock-suspected-vegas-gunman.jpg
Stephen Paddock in undated image

Police said Paddock had "at least 10 rifles" in the room. He had been staying in the room since Sept. 28. Police identified a female companion named Marilou Danley, who has been overseas and spoke to police Monday. Danley is not believed to have been involved in the shooting.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse said in a press conference Monday morning that the bureau had found "no connection with an international terrorist group."

Paddock had been living in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, about 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas, according to the Mesquite Police Department. He had no criminal record beyond a routine citation several years ago that was handled in court.

Eric Paddock, the gunman's brother, spoke to reporters outside his home Monday morning. Eric Paddock said he is "horrified" and "dumbfounded" by his brother's actions. "No religious affiliation. No political affiliation. He just hung out," Eric Paddock said.

"He had a couple of guns but they were all handguns, legal," Eric Paddock said. "He might have had one long gun, but he had them in a safe."

"Horrified" brother of Las Vegas suspect says he's "dumbfounded"
Play VIDEO
"Horrified" brother of Las Vegas suspect says he's "dumbfounded"

President Trump called the shooting "an act of pure evil" in remarks Monday morning. He hailed first responders and said that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are working with local officials in the investigation.

Investigators are still trying to determine Paddock's motive. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the shooting, but offered no proof. U.S. officials tell CBS News there are no signs that Paddock had ties to radical Islamic groups or showed signs of being radicalized. Police obtained a search warrant for his home in Mesquite and are securing the site, a law enforcement source said.

Records show Paddock moved to Mesquite, Nevada, in June 2016. He had previously lived in Reno, Nevada, from 2012 to December 2016, and was listed at an address in Melbourne, Florida, from 2013 to 2015. Paddock moved between Texas and California from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.

The Associated Press reports Paddock lived in Mesquite, Texas, from 2004 to 2012. Lt. Brian Parrish told the AP that property records showed Paddock lived in the Dallas suburb during that time period and possibly longer. He said Paddock owned at least three rental properties in the area, and police found no indications of interacting with Paddock while he lived there.

Paddock worked for a "predecessor company" of defense contractor Lockheed Martin from 1985 to 1988, the company said. Lockheed said it was cooperating [with] authorities to provide details of his employment. The company declined to say what position Paddock held.

Court records show Paddock sued the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Resorts on the Las Vegas strip in 2012, alleging he suffered substantial injuries when he slipped and fell in the hotel. The case was dismissed by both parties, indicating they had reached a settlement.

Paddock was a licensed hunter and had a license to fly a small plane, records show.