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 and will be questioned very soon, authorities said Wednesday.
Marilou Danley, 62, was met at Los Angeles International Airport by FBI agents Tuesday night after flying from Manila. Authorities were expected to begin questioning Danley in California before she returns to Nevada, a federal law enforcement official said Wednesday.
Investigators named Danley as a “person of interest” in the investigation. Prior to her arrival, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said “we anticipate some information from her shortly.”
The federal official, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said Danley is not considered an accomplice, though investigators are expected to subject her to extensive questioning about the gunman’s activities prior to the assault, the extensive cache of weapons acquired by Paddock and the state of his finances.
Authorities have been examining Paddock’s recent transfer of $100,000 to the Philippines prior to the assault. The purpose of the transfer was not immediately clear, though Danley has deep family ties in the area.
Paddock also engaged in several unrelated transfers of thousands of dollars, believed to be related to his high-stakes gambling activities in Las Vegas.
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.
The Australian Associated Press reported that Danley was born in the Philippines and moved to Queensland in eastern Australia in the early 1980s. She left Australia for the U.S. in 1989, where she worked in casinos, it said.
Paddock, 64, killed at least 59 people and injured 527 others Sunday night in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. 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, police said.
Lombardo said he is “absolutely” confident authorities will find out what set Paddock off.
Investigators say that the shooting rampage was meticulously planned and included specially modified weapons. Investigators found a computer and 23 guns in Paddock's hotel room. Nineteen more guns were found at his home in Mesquite, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, and seven at his house in Reno.
Jill Snyder, special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, told CBS This Morning that in the last year alone Paddock bought 33 guns, most of the rifles.
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.
