Father of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock 'ran illegal bingo parlour and tried to start his own church'

Criminal past of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock under scrutiny in search for key to killer's psychology

The father of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock was reportedly a self-ordained minister who carried out marriage ceremonies and wanted to start his own church as well as being on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list of fugitives.

In the search to understand the psychology of the mass murderer, attention has focused on the colourful criminal life of his father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock.

Although the killer had no previous criminal convictions and apparently lived in the shadows of society, rarely speaking to his neighbours, his father was a larger than life character, according to reports.

Paddock Senior spent almost a decade on the run after he was sprung from a Texan prison in 1968, with an FBI poster describing him as a “psychopath” who should be treated as “armed and very dangerous”.

Unlike his son, Paddock Senior began his criminal life early, and was first arrested in 1946 aged just 19 for stealing 12 cars, according to a Chicago Tribune story at the time.

After spending time in prison, he went on to commit a series of bank robberies in Phoenix, Arizona, before being caught and jailed again.

He was removed from the wanted list in 1977 after almost a decade evading the law, and found a year later in Oregon where he had been running a bingo parlour.

He was charged with running an illegal gambling operation after he apparently exploited a loophole in the law which allowed him to pocket the proceeds of the parlour. Despite the charges he avoided a prison sentence.

In 1989, he tried to found a church in Las Vegas – apparently to sponsor the bingo parlour which he had started up again.

“He wanted to [locate the church in] Nevada because he liked to go there and gamble”, said Bernie Sue Warthen, a 67-year-old woman from Oregon who told reporters she became friends with Paddock Senior when he was in his 60s because she and his girlfriend both had teenage daughters who were friends.

Speaking to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, she said Paddock Senior, an avid gambler, invited her to Las Vegas where they founded the Holy Life Congregation Church. She is listed as having been the Church’s secretary.

Although the Church never got off the ground, Paddock Senior began representing himself as a self-ordained minister in Las Vegas and married couples in the late 1980s.

The media as well as law enforcement agencies are continuing to pour over every detail of the gunman’s past and in a bid to understand what motivated him to open fire from his Mandalay Bay hotel room onto a country music festival, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more before killing himself.

Although the killer spent only a few years around his father, who died in 1998, the two are said to have shared a mutual love of both gambling and Vegas, as well as guns.

Stephen Paddock’s 57-year-old brother Bruce Paddock also has a criminal past, although none of his convictions are for serious offences.

Records show Bruce was convicted for minor acts of vandalism, driving with a revoked licence and probation violations, as well as drug and driving offences.

University of Nebraska associate criminology professor Joseph Schwartz, who studies genetic links to criminal activity, warned against making easy assumptions based on Paddock Senior’s history and reports of his other son’s anti-social behaviour.

“It’s human nature to try to speculate and try to understand something so terrible,” he said. “In reality, (mistreating someone) is not a precursor to collecting multiple semi-automatic weapons and shooting at people from a hotel window.”

Paddock Senior died in 1998 and is understood to have had little contact with either of his two sons.

“The only one time I asked him about his children, he said he had nothing to do with them at their request,” Ms Warthen said. “I didn’t know their names. I just saw a picture.”

“The only man I knew was kind and generous,” she said.

“He gave out turkeys at Thanksgiving and loaned his car to a neighbour who needed transportation.”