"I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man," Marilou Danley said in a statement read by her attorney Matthew Lombard. "I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together with him.
"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 added that two weeks ago, Paddock had told her he found a cheap plane ticket for her to visit family in the Philippines.
"Like all Filipinos abroad, I was excited to go home and see family and friends," that statement said. "While there, he wired me money, which he said was for me to buy a house for me and my family."
She said she became concerned at that point, thinking he wanted to break up with her.
"It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone."
Donald Trump arrives in Las Vegas to meet shooting survivors and emergency services
Danley said she was devastated by Sunday night's attack on concertgoers -- the worst mass shooting in modern US history -- and her prayers went out to all the victims.
"I am a mother and grandmother and my heart breaks for all who have lost loved ones," she said.
Danley, who said she had voluntarily flown back to Los Angeles on Wednesday, added that she was cooperating fully with the FBI in their investigation.
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Her relatives in the Philippines told news media she had a “clean conscience” and no prior knowledge of the attack, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
Las Vegas police on Thursday revealed that Paddock meticulously planned the event and spent decades acquiring weapons, while he lived a secret life.
More than 500 people were injured, some trampled in the pandemonium, when Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on an outdoor country music festival for about 10 minutes on Sunday night. He killed himself before police stormed his room on the 32nd-floor of the hotel, where they found as many as 23 guns.
Twelve of his rifles were fitted with bump-stock devices, officials said, allowing the guns to be fired almost as though they were automatic weapons.
US President Donald Trump landed in Las Vegas on Wednesday to pay respects to the dead and support first responders, marking the first time he has had to deal as president with a major mass shooting of the type that have killed hundreds of people in recent years in the United States.
Trump, who has called the massacre “an act of pure evil,” said unanswered questions surrounding the investigation would be revealed “at the appropriate time.”
Investigators have focused on Paddock’s girlfriend Danley, 62, who arrived in Los Angles from her native Philippines on Tuesday night. A US official said Danley was not under arrest but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation hoped she would consent to be interviewed voluntarily.
Danley had assured her family she has a “clean conscience” following Sunday night’s rampage, her brother told ABC News in the Philippines.
“I called her up immediately and she said, ‘Relax, we shouldn’t worry about it. I’ll fix it. Do not panic. I have a clean conscience,'” Reynaldo Bustos told ABC in Manila.
Investigators were examining a $100,000 wire transfer Paddock sent to an account in the Philippines that “appears to have been intended” for Danley, a senior US homeland security official said on Tuesday.
Paddock’s brother Eric told reporters the money transfer was evidence that “Steve took care of the people he loved” and that he likely wanted to protect Danley by sending her overseas ahead of the attack.
“He manipulated her to be completely as far away from this and safe when he did this,” Eric Paddock said on Tuesday.
She arrived in Manila on Sept. 15, flew to Hong Kong on Sept. 22 and returned to Manila on Sept. 25. She was there until she flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday night, according to a Philippine immigration official.
Paddock had no criminal record, no known history of mental illness and no outward signs of social disaffection, political discontent or extremist ideology, police said.
“We are not there yet,” FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said on Wednesday, speaking at the Cambridge Cyber Summit in Boston. “We have a lot to do.”
However, Paddock appeared to be “descending into madness” in the months before the shooting, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed person briefed on the investigation.
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Paddock had significant weight loss, an increasingly slovenly appearance and was obsessed with his girlfriend’s former husband, ABC said.
In June he was prescribed the anti-anxiety drug diazepam, commonly known as Valium, which can lead to aggressive behavior, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, citing records from the Nevada Prescription Monitoring Program.
Reuters was not able immediately to confirm the two reports.
“He was a private guy,” Eric Paddock said of his brother. “That’s why you can’t find out anything about him. Is he such a weirdo because he didn’t have a Facebook account and post 50,000 pictures of himself every day?”
Paddock’s case is extremely rare if not unique in that he left behind no clues to his motives, said Craig Jackson, a psychology professor at Birmingham City University in Britain who has studied spree killers for the past 10 years.
“We usually find something there in the background where they see themselves to be the victims. No one has listened to them and they feel this is the last recourse,” Jackson said, adding that spree killers typically leave behind a manifesto or video diary.
“If there is something, I think we would have found it by now,” Jackson said.
