Las Vegas shooter’s girlfriend probed

Team Udayavani, Oct 5, 2017, 11:20 AM IST

Los Angels (USA): FBI questions Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s (64) girlfriend Marilou Danley (62) after returning from the Philippines where the killer had sent her away and wired $100,000 the week before he slaughtered 58.

The FBI started further probing on the Los Angels massacre and got in touch with gunman’s girl friend to enquire if she had any clue on the killings.

The officials said Marilou was interviewed at the bureau’s field office in Los Angeles and was with her attorney. Danley was returned to the U.S. on Tuesday night from the Philippines after a weekslong trip abroad.

Danley’s sisters have since broken their silence insisting she was unaware of Paddock’s motives, while her brother says she told him she has a ‘clean conscience’. 

“He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen,” Danley said in a written statement.

“I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man. I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together with him,” she said. “It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone.”

“I am devastated by the deaths and injuries that have occurred and my prayers go out to the victims and their families and all those who have been hurt by these awful events,” Danley said.

Danley said that she left the country because Paddock bought her a ticket to visit her family in the Philippines. While there, she said, Paddock wired her $100,000 and explained it was meant to help her purchase a home for Danley and her family.

“I was grateful, but honestly, I was worried, that first, the unexpected trip home, and then the money, was a way of breaking up with me,” she said. “It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone.”

Danley, an Australian citizen of Filipino origin, said she flew back to the United States voluntarily “because I know that the FBI and Las Vegas Police Department wanted to talk to me, and I wanted to talk to them.”

58 people died and over 500 were injured when Paddock, gunned at an outdoor concert on Sunday night from his 32nd-floor suite of the Mandalay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

He took his own life before police got into his room, where they found as many as 23 guns, bringing the total death toll to 59.

Twelve of his rifles were fitted with bump stocks, officials said, allowing the guns to be fired almost as though they were automatic weapons.