Stephen Paddock’s criminal father had once been a self-ordained minister who married couples in Las Vegas and had plans to open his own church in the city.
Investigators probing last week’s deadly mass shooting have been looking into every aspect of Paddock’s history, and that includes his late father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock.
It emerged soon after the massacre that the gunman’s father was a bank robber who was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list until 1977.
Investigators probing last week’s deadly mass shooting have been looking into every aspect of Paddock’s history, and that includes his late father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock (above in 1979)
Described as an avid gambler, he spent nearly a decade as a fugitive after springing from a Texan prison in 1968. An FBI poster described him as a ‘psychopath’ who should be treated as ‘armed and very dangerous’.
He was eventually found one year after he was removed from the list in 1978 in Oregon where he had been running a bingo parlor while on the lam.
Ben had started a church in Oregon to exploit a loophole in state law, which allowed him to pocket the proceeds of his bingo parlor, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.
He was eventually caught and was charged in 1987 with running an illegal gambling operation but he avoided prison.
In 1989, Ben tried to start another church in Las Vegas.
Investigators still don’t know what drove Paddock, a reclusive 64-year-old high-stakes video poker player, to kill 58 and wound hundreds before taking his own life
It emerged soon after the massacre that the gunman’s father, Ben Paddock, was a bank robber who was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list until 1977
An FBI poster described him as a ‘psychopath’ who should be treated as ‘armed and very dangerous’
‘He wanted (to locate the church) in Nevada because he liked to go there and gamble,’ Bernie Sue Warthen, who became friends with Paddock in his 60s, said.
Warthen said Ben had invited her to Vegas in 1989 so they could start the Holy Life Congregation. The church, while incorporated, never actually eventuated.
Ben had also started representing himself as a self-ordained minister in Las Vegas and married couples in the late 1980s.
Details about gunman Paddock’s history continue to emerge a week after he gunned down concert-goers from his high-rise hotel suite at the Mandalay Bay casino.
Federal agents started hauling away piles of backpacks, prams and lawn chairs left behind by fleeing concertgoers at the weekend who scrambled to escape raining bullets from the gunman.
Investigators still don’t know what drove Paddock, a reclusive 64-year-old high-stakes video poker player, to begin shooting at the crowd, killing 58 and wounding hundreds before taking his own life.
Workers board up a broken window at the Mandalay Bay hotel, where shooter Stephen Paddock conducted his mass shooting along the Las Vegas Strip
People look at the makeshift memorial which has popped up at the famed ”Welcome to Las Vegas” sign
Federal agents started hauling away piles of backpacks, prams and lawn chairs left behind by fleeing concertgoers at the weekend