Las Vegas Shooting: Stephen Paddock’s Girlfriend, Marilou Danley, Returns To U.S
The girlfriend of Stephen Paddock, the man who massacred nearly 60 people attending a music festival in Las Vegas, has returned to the United States from the Philippines, according to media reports.
Marilou Danley, 62, was met at Los Angeles International Airport by FBI agents on Tuesday night after flying from Manila, multiple media outlets reported. Investigators named Danley as a “person of interest” in the investigation. Prior to her arrival, Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said “we anticipate some information from her shortly.”
Authorities in the U.S., the Philippines and Australia were involved in the search for Danley, who travels on an Australian passport, CNN reported. She was in the Philippines at the time of the shooting, according to media reports.
Immigration documents in the Philippines say that Danley first arrived there on Sept. 15, departed on Sept. 22 then returned three days later on a flight from Hong Kong.
She landed in Los Angeles at about 7.30 p.m. local time Tuesday, CNN reported.
Paddock, 64, killed at least 58 people and injured 527 others Sunday night in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The Associated Press put the death toll at 59 Wednesday. Paddock killed himself in the 32nd floor hotel room he used as a vantage point to rain bullets down on people attending the Route 91 Harvest festival.
Lombardo said he is “absolutely” confident authorities will find out what set Paddock off.
Paddock also used surveillance cameras to monitor police approaches to his room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino — including a camera he positioned in the peephole of the door.
“I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody,” Lombardo said.
At a late-night press conference Tuesday, authorities said Paddock, a high-stakes gambler and retired accountant, made his attack even more deadly by adding more lethal components to his weapons. He had devices attached to 12 semiautomatic rifles that allowed them to mimic fully automatic gunfire.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Special Agent in Charge Jill Schneider said Paddock had a combination of rifles, shotguns and pistols in the three locations.
The gun attachment that mimics automatic gunfire is a little-known device called a “bump stock” that is not widely sold. The stocks have been around for less than a decade, and Schneider said officials determined they were legal.
Before Danley moved in with Paddock and became a “person of interest” in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, she was an outgoing person and a “great neighbor,” people who knew her said Tuesday.
Danley would host parties, sleepovers for the neighborhood kids and slip-and-slide get-togethers at the two-story tan home that she lived in with her then-husband in a newer community in northeast Sparks, Nev. She lived a “normal life” with her “normal husband,” neighbor Troy Riley said.
Paddock and Danley most recently lived in Mesquite. Before moving to southern Nevada, the couple lived in a house Paddock bought in 2013 in a retirement community in northwest Reno. They were last seen by neighbors at the Del Webb Parkway home in early August.
