Las Vegas shooter’s girlfriend returns to US from Philippines

The girlfriend of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock returned to the United States on Wednesday from the Philippines, where she had received $100,000 from him before he massacred 59 people, authorities in Manila said.

Marilou Danley flew out of Manila’s international airport on Tuesday night for Los Angeles, immigration bureau spokeswoman Maria Antoinette Mangrobang told AFP.

Aviation websites showed the Philippine Airlines flight that Mangrobang said Danley had taken landed in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening, local time.

The Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said the FBI, its US counterpart, had sought help in finding Danley, 62.

“Danley arrived in the Philippines last month, and then there was a wire transfer to her account for $100,000 from Stephen,” NBI spokesman Nick Suarez told AFP.

“The FBI has coordinated with the Philippine office of the Interpol to look for her.”

Suarez said the FBI considered Danley a “person of interest,” but not necessarily a suspect.

Paddock, a 64-year-old gambler and retired accountant, killed 59 people and injured at least 527 others when he used a vast arsenal of weapons to shoot at a Las Vegas concert from a hotel room on Sunday.

Danley is an Australian citizen who moved to the United States 20 years ago to work on the casino strip, the Australian government confirmed Tuesday.

“There are reports her ID was used for booking the hotel or some such detail,” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said. “Australia will support the US authorities in their investigation in whatever way we can, but we have not had contact with Marilou Danley directly.”

Media reports said Danley was born in the Philippines, although the Philippine foreign department and Suarez said they could not confirm that.

Paddock killed himself after mowing down the concertgoers.

Authorities are trying to determine what led Paddock to go forward with the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

They have been speaking with Danley and “anticipate some information from her shortly,” Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said hours before she arrived.

Lombardo said he is “absolutely” confident authorities will find out what set off Paddock, a 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and retired accountant.

Authorities released police body camera video that showed the chaos of the attack as officers tried to figure out the location of the shooter and shuttle people to safety. Amid sirens and volleys of gunfire, people yelled “they’re shooting right at us” while officers shouted “go that way!”

Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said the shooting spanned between nine and 11 minutes.

Investigators are still trying to trace that money and also looking into a least a dozen financial reports over the past several weeks that said Paddock gambled more than $10,000 per day, the official said.

The cameras Paddock set up at the Mandalay Bay hotel casino were part of his extensive preparations that included stockpiling nearly two dozen guns in his room before opening fire on the concert below. McMahill said the cameras included one in the peephole and two in the hallway.

“I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody,” Lombardo said.

During the Sunday night rampage, a hotel security guard who approached the room was shot through the door and wounded in the leg.

“The fact that he had the type of weaponry and amount of weaponry in that room, it was preplanned extensively,” the sheriff said, “and I’m pretty sure he evaluated everything that he did and his actions, which is troublesome.”

Lombardo said the investigation is proceeding cautiously in case criminal charges are warranted against someone else.

“This investigation is not ended with the demise of Mr. Paddock,” the sheriff said. “Did this person get radicalized unbeknownst to us? And we want to identify that source.”

In addition to the cameras, investigators found a computer and 23 guns with him at the hotel, along with 12 “bump stock” devices that can enable a rifle to fire continuously, like an automatic weapon, authorities said. Nineteen more guns were found at Paddock’s Mesquite home and seven at his Reno house.

Video shot outside the broken door of the room shows an assault-style rifle with a scope on a bipod. The sheriff said an internal investigation has been launched to find out how that footage was obtained.

Some investigators turned their focus Tuesday from the shooter’s perch to the festival grounds where his victims fell.

A dozen investigators, most in FBI jackets and all wearing blue booties to avoid contaminating the scene, documented evidence at the site where gunfire rained down and country music gave way to screams of pain and terror.

“Shoes, baby strollers, chairs, sunglasses, purses. The whole field was just littered with things,” said Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt after touring the site Monday. “There were bloodstains everywhere.”

More than 500 people were injured in the rampage, some by gunfire, some during the chaotic escape. At least 45 patients at two hospitals remained in critical condition. All but three of the dead had been identified by Tuesday afternoon, Lombardo said.

As for what may have set Paddock off, retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente speculated that there was “some sort of major trigger in his life — a great loss, a breakup, or maybe he just found out he has a terminal disease.”

Clemente said a “psychological autopsy” may be necessary to try to establish the motive. If the suicide didn’t destroy Paddock’s brain, experts may even find a neurological disorder or malformation, he said.

He said there could be a genetic component to the slaughter: Paddock’s father was a bank robber who was on the FBI’s most-wanted list in the 1960s and was diagnosed a psychopath.

“The genetics load the gun, personality and psychology aim it, and experiences pull the trigger, typically,” Clemente said.

Paddock had a business degree from Cal State Northridge. In the 1970s and ’80s, he worked as a mail carrier and an IRS agent and held down a job in an auditing division of the Defense Department, according to the government. He later worked for a defense contractor.

He had no known criminal record, and public records showed no signs of financial troubles, though he was said to be a big gambler.

Nevada’s Gaming Control Board said it will pass along records compiled on Paddock and his girlfriend to investigators.

His brother, Eric Paddock, said he was at a loss to explain the massacre.

“No affiliation, no religion, no politics. He never cared about any of that stuff,” he said outside his Florida home.

The FBI discounted the possibility of international terrorism early on, even after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Eric Paddock said his brother did show a confrontational side at times. He apparently hated cigarette smoke so much that he carried around a cigar and blew smoke in people’s faces when they lit up around him.