Las Vegas mass murderer Stephen Paddock’s bank-robbing con man father claimed to be many things – including, apparently, a killer of three people.
It’s unclear if his claim in a 1980 court interview was sincere, but some people who knew the now-deceased Patrick Benjamin Paddock doubt it’s true.
The elder Paddock’s life of swindles, heists, and time behind bars is well-documented, and his apparent claim to have spent 7.5 years in prison for murder would be difficult to fit into the chronology of his prison terms alone.
As he turned 20 years old in 1946, Paddock began an Illinois prison sentence for a “confidence game-auto larceny charge.” Seven years later, in 1953, he began a second term for a similar charge, according to a 1960 article in the Arizona Republic.
After moving to Arizona, The Republic reported that Paddock, then a 34-year-old father of four, including seven-year-old Stephen, was apprehended in Las Vegas by the FBI in 1960 after a series of Phoenix bank robberies that had netted about $25,000.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but escaped on New Year’s Eve in 1968 and stayed free nearly a decade – despite being on the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted” list, called a diagnosed “psychopath” on a wanted poster.
After reportedly robbing a bank in San Francisco, Paddock settled in Oregon, where he sold used cars and opened a gambling business in 1977.
Using a loophole for nonprofits, Paddock – calling himself Bruce Ericksen – opened a bingo hall on main street in Springfield, Ore., where he took a cut of proceeds before the FBI learned his true identity and returned him to prison.
Amazingly, the elder Paddock was released on parole about a year after he was busted in 1978 for escaping prison.
His apparent claim to have killed people came in a 1980 court record addressing a misconduct complaint he filed with the state bar association against his former lawyer.
A trial board probed Paddock’s credibility, asking him to admit he had been convicted of armed bank robbery, car theft, and fraud.
Asked to confirm he escaped from prison for about nine years, Paddock said, according to the transcript: “Yes. I’ve been No. 1. Also had three killings that don’t appear on that, for seven and a half years.”
It’s unclear if Paddock’s intonation would have communicated insincerity, but it’s difficult to fit a 7.5 year prison term, which he appeared to suggest, into the timeline of his adult life.
The FBI’s wanted poster for Paddock says he is dangerous, but does not call him a killer.
“I don’t know anything about the killings,” said a former bingo hall associate who was in the facility on the night Paddock was busted by the FBI. The man, who asked not to be named, recalls Paddock as a smooth-talking con man but does not recall any discussion of murders.
The FBI’s national press office declined to comment on the elder Paddock, who returned to the bingo hall after his release on parole and claimed it was a church in a bid to avoid the appearance of an illegal gambling business.
“I don’t remember him saying anything about killing people,” said Don Bischoff, a journalist formerly with the Eugene Register-Guard. Bischoff first met Paddock in 1977 and punctuated a 1998 obituary with the word “Supposedly,” highlighting his many deceptions.
Bischoff pointed to one line in his remembrance that noted: “In addition to illegal activities, he claimed that he’d been a Dixieland band singer, pilot, auto racing crew chief, Chicago Bears pro football player, survivor of the World War II mine sweeper sinking, and a wrestler named ‘Crybaby’ who traveled with Gorgeous George.”
Paddock left Oregon in 1988 after pleading no contest to criminal charges related to the bingo hall. He settled a civil racketeering case for $623,000, Bischoff reported, and avoided jail time on the criminal charges by telling the sentencing judge he had cancer, receiving a $100,000 fine instead.
“He could be conning everybody, but this is an economic crime, and he’s an old man,” Circuit Judge George Woodrich said at the time. “My view is, let him go … and good riddance.” Paddock lived another 10 years.
His former bingo associate said Paddock was able to pay hundreds of thousands in penalties because he likely was skimming money from the bingo hall during its decade in operation. The associate said the hall – now an antiques shop – could fit about 150 “little old ladies” seated at three long tables.
Some biographical details of the elder Paddock are not well known, such as how he spent the final decade before his death in 1998 or what became of any remaining money from his lifetime of ill-gotten gains. His final romantic partner claimed to Bischoff that he lived a quiet life in Texas atoning for his past, living off income from a machine shop and a veterans pension.
Many details of Stephen Paddock – who murdered at least 59 people at a Sunday concert in Las Vegas – and his connection to his father, personal and financial, also are unknown.
A younger brother of the gunman told reporters in series of interviews from his Florida home that their mother falsely claimed their father died long ago.
Eric Paddock said he and Stephen co-owned a real estate business for years, and that Stephen made about $2 million when they sold it.
“He’s a multimillionaire,” his brother told reporters about the Las Vegas gunman, who reportedly gambled as much as tens of thousands of dollars a day in the city. “He helped me become affluent; he made me wealthy.”
