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| Marilou Danley and Stephen Paddock |
THE GIRLFRIEND who police hoped would give some insight into the mind of the man who committed the country's deadliest mass shooting says she was surprised as everybody else.
Marilou Danley's first public statement says she had no inkling that her boyfriend Stephen Paddock, was going to gun down scores of concert goers in Las Vegas, killing 58 and wounding almost 500 more.
Police hope that Danley will provide some insight to Paddock's motivations after she arrived from the Philippines late in the night of Oct. 3.
“It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone,” reported The Washington Post reported Danley said in a statement read by her attorney.
Danley pledged to cooperate fully in the investigation to help investigators to get to the bottom of what happened. She flew back to the U.S. from the Philippines when she heard what Paddock did in shooting up a Las Vegas concert.
“Anything I can do to help ease suffering and help in any way, I will do,” she said according to CNN.
“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 was interviewed Tuesday for several hours by the FBI in Los Angeles where she arrived from the Philippines in the late evening of Oct. 3.
"I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man," Danley said in the statement. "I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together with him."
Danley said that, more than two weeks ago, Paddock told her he had bought a plane ticket for her to fly to her native Philippines, saying that he wanted her to visit her family.
While she was in the Philippines, Danley said, Paddock wired her $100,000 that he said was for her to buy a house for her and her family.
Danley said she was grateful but "worried" that the unexpected trip home and the money "was a way of breaking up with me."
Danley’s sisters described her as “madly in love” with Paddock, in an interview with 7 News Sydney.
Danley's sisters told Australian media that Paddock surprised Danley with a ticket to the Philippines several days before he checked into the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas strip, across the street from the outdoor concert venue.
“She was sent away. She was away so that she will not be there to interfere with what he’s planning,” her other sister said. “In that sense, I thank him for sparing my sister’s life but that won’t be to compensate the 59 people’s lives.”
“Marilou Danley is my sister, she is a good person and gentle soul. A mother, grandmother, a sister, a friend,” the sister added. Danley moved to the U.S. in 1989. She married Geary Danley. Their marriage last 25 years until their divorce in 2015.
Danley and Paddock met while she was working as a waitress at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa.
Paddock's brother, Eric, claimed that Stephen “went of his way to be nice to her,” a rare occurrence for a person who “expected people to wait on him for the most part.”
“He would do what she wanted to do,” Eric Paddock said. “He would defer to her in the way that he wouldn’t to the rest of humanity. Even me.”
However, others painted a different picture of their relationship.
Employees at a local Starbucks allege that they often saw him verbally abuse her in public.
“He would glare down at her and say — with a mean attitude — ‘You don’t need my casino card for this. I’m paying for your drink, just like I’m paying for you.’ Then she would softly say, ‘OK’ and step back behind him,” Esperanza Mendoza, supervisor of the Starbucks in the Virgin River Casino, told the Los Angeles Times. “He was so rude to her in front of us.”
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