Marilou Danley said Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock was 'kind, caring, quiet'

[canetoad]

Source: The Age

BREAKING
October 5 2017 - 10:14AM

Las Vegas: The girlfriend of the Las Vegas gunman says she thought her "kind, caring, quiet" partner was trying to break up with her when he bought her a plane ticket to the Philippines two weeks ago and wired her $US100,000 ($127,000) to buy a house in her home country.

Marilou Danley, 62, arrived in the US from the Philippines on Wednesday night and has been with the FBI for more than 15 hours.

Her boyfriend Stephen Paddock, a retired accountant and multi-millionaire gambler, killed 58 people and injured more than 500 when he fired on a crowd at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival from his 32nd floor room at the Mandalay Bay hotel on Sunday night, local time.

He had 47 guns, 33 of which were accumulated over the last year, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/marilou-danley-said-las-vegas-gunman-stephen-paddock-was-kind-caring-quiet-20171004-gyulkf.html

[Mike Nelson]

1. Sounds more like...

...a pay-off than a break-up.

[cstanleytech]

6. Not necessarily as even assholes can have people they care about. nt

[steve2470]

42. Hitler had Eva Braun

He wasn't very good to her but he did marry her before he killed himself. You are correct.

[Jopin Klobe]

2. "Kind" ... "quiet" ...

... they said the same things about Jeffrey Dahmer ...

[marlakay]

3. I read a story about people who saw them together at Casinos

said he treated her like crap and talked bad to her in public all the time.

That doesn't sound kind, caring and quiet to me!

[TexasBushwhacker]

10. Yup. A barista at Starbucks said the same thing

"He would glare down at her and say — with a mean attitude — ‘You don’t need my casino card for this. I’m paying for your drink, just like I’m paying for you.’ Then she would softly say, ‘OK’ and step back behind him. He was so rude to her in front of us.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-las-vegas-shooting-live-updates-at-his-local-starbucks-vegas-shooter-1507060195-htmlstory.html

[athenasatanjesus]

4. I know a lot of assholes who if you ask other people I know will tell you they are really nice.

[JI7]

5. I don't believe her. Even if she didn't know he would do this she knew about the guns

And she doesn't want any blame.

But my actual feelings about her is that she did know he would do this and was ok as long as she got paid and won't tell anyone.

[ChubbyStar]

8. I'm with you

No adult woman lives with an asshole and does NOT know she is living with an asshole, that is the stuff a 14 year old girl would say. She is full of shit. Miss casino "hostess" needs a few more hours with the FBI.

[AtheistCrusader]

15. What would it matter if she did?

That's really not a lot of guns. There's nothing illegal about it. I know people that own hundreds of guns. Rooms filled with them. (Mostly ex-military) Nothing illegal or suspicious about it.

One would need to establish she knew something about his plans to use those guns, to show she did anything wrong.

[Hoyt]

16. It is a lot of guns, it's just there are so many like him with way too many weapons

they have been normalized.

Christ, I know xmilitary people who can't stand guns. Some guy with a room full sounds more like a militia type to me, certainly someone who needs some help.

[AtheistCrusader]

17. Some people just collect them, and they gather dust.

Different people, different hobbies, different motives.

They still all only have two arms.

[Hoyt]

19. Some people collect Nazi paraphernalia too, including Hitler's underwear. But it ain't normal.

[AtheistCrusader]

41. Some people collect bonsai trees. Not 'normal' as in not common, but fine.

[Hoyt]

46. Gunz ain't bonsai trees. Jeeez.

[AtheistCrusader]

50. Never said they were.

[moonscape]

21. Yes, it is a lot of guns. There aren't many who own that sort

of arsenal when you consider that 3% of adult Americans own half of all guns.

[AtheistCrusader]

38. Think about the math of what you just said.

~320 million americans.
350-500 million guns.
3% of americans own half of those guns.

That means VERY LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE have VERY LARGE NUMBERS OF GUNS.
3% is small as a percentage of the whole, but it's a LOT of people.

I would maybe rephrase to 'it is extremely common for gun enthusiasts to own more than 30 guns'.

[joshcryer]

29. He has the classic profile of a psychopath.

It's in his genes. He planned the thing for almost an entire year, amassing a large number of guns. One thing about psychopaths is that they're highly manipulative, highly controlling, and can't keep their mouth shut. He openly abused her in a Starbucks, treated her like trash, and so he probably told her his "plan" in specific detail. Maybe not the exact plan, but how he would do something like that "in theory" and how he loved her and how if he ever sent her off than he would always love her, etc.

At the bare minimum he manipulated the hell out of her, and his brother said as much. "That's Steve."

[raccoon]

59. Great post. Nt

[treestar]

31. Holy crap!

That is NOT a lot of guns? OMG.

I know we are so ignorant about guns. All we know is they can be used to kill many people quickly. We just don't understand!

[AtheistCrusader]

39. Normaly bias I guess.

I have 33. Some purchased, some inherited, some gifted. Some have no real use as a firearm anymore (one of my rifles, they stopped making ammo for in the 1920's) but 33 is not a lot, to me. It's actually a very small part of my life, and live inside a metal box that is 99.999% of the time, closed and locked.

[treestar]

55. So how many in use?

[AtheistCrusader]

56. Two are non-functional.

So, I would say 31 'in use'. Technically split between two adults though. My wife is 'owner' as well. Part of the reason we have so many, a rifle that is ergonomically correct for me to us, is too long for her arms, and the other way around isn't ergonomically correct for me.

Might sound trivial, but ergonomics contribute to the safe operation of any firearm.

[Hoyt]

47. LMAO. Dealing with gunners is like talking to a fanatic Trump supporter.

[steve2470]

43. sorry, he had a shit ton of guns

The median number for this country is maybe one or two, at most. I'm not counting farmers who have a gun to scare off wolves, that sort of thing.

We can agree to disagree on this one.

[AtheistCrusader]

44. The median among gun owners is quite a bit higher.

Someone upthread said '3% of gun owners own half of the guns in the US' or words to that effect, and that jives with my memory of a couple independent analysis of this issue.

3% of americans is a lot of people with much more than just 2-3 guns.


I would guess the median for 'firearms enthusiasts' would be quite high. Though the latter might define the former.

[Hoyt]

48. Just because a lot of white wing Americans have a lot of guns, that doesn't make it normal. It means

we have a lot of sick Americans and they are polluting society with their guns. Assuming they aren't already doing so, they will sell, otherwise transfer them, or have them stolen at some point. Most likely, those guns will be transferred without any background check or concern about who gets them. Finally, they are a bad role model and a little too similar to Paddock for me.

[obamanut2012]

23. I completely believe her, and the FBI apparently do, too

Almost every single one of us knows someone who has 10+ guns. You may not know they own that many, but they do. In someplace like Nevada, that would not be weird. It isn't New York City, or even someplace like rural NJ, where the gun restrictions are tight.

[Hoyt]

49. Maybe it should be "weird."

[joshcryer]

25. Me either.

She knew about the guns and being a psychopath he probably told her his plans with specific detail, whether she thought he could pull it off or was serious about it is another matter.

What stuck me is how she told family in the Philippines that she "had a clear conscious" about what he did.

How do you even say that? That's classic projecting. She knew about it, got dumped back in the Philippines, and was bestowed $100k. She's not going to implicate herself in any way whatsoever. She'll deny knowing a damn thing about it and it would be impossible to prove otherwise.

[raccoon]

27. Ding, ding. We have a winner. Nt

[yardwork]

33. Theres no evidence that she knew anything about his plans.

[CatMor]

7. Why did she not think something odd about...

him buying all those guns. It would seem most kind, caring guys wouldn't be doing that. I would question someone on why all the guns.

[QED]

9. I'd ask questions

and get the heck outta there.

[CatMor]

11. I wonder if she said...

I'll keep my mouth shut but it will cost you 100,000.

[Nitram]

35. If she had said that, whe would no longer be alive. I guarantee it.

[Sucha NastyWoman]

12. He had two houses

He had a second home in Reno. Maybe That’s where he kept the guns and she never went there

[CatMor]

14. From accounts I read she also lived in Reno with him.

[LovingA2andMI]

13. Oh....BS....

He Was A White Male Terrorist. That "Quiet and Simple" BS is just that BS.

[onetexan]

18. it's the quiet guys with guns we should be more wary of

[madokie]

20. Exactly

the quiet ones hold it in. Sometimes until it boils over as may be the case here. The loud boisterous kind keeps nothing close to the heart so they're less likely to break

The quiet, conniver type worries me way more than the loud asshole kind

[SunSeeker]

22. Sounds like she's lying.

He was known for being cruel to her in public:

Starbucks workers say they knew Stephen Paddock, the gunman responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, as a cruel customer.

Employees from the Virgin River Casino location in Mesquite, Nevadatold the Los Angeles Times that Paddock was known for berating his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, in public at the shop.

"He would glare down at her and say - with a mean attitude - 'You don't need my casino card for this. I'm paying for your drink, just like I'm paying for you,'" supervisor Esperanza Mendoza told the Times. "Then she would softly say,'OK' and step back behind him. He was so rude to her in front of us."

http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-barista-las-vegas-shooter-abusive-to-girlfriend-2017-10

[obamanut2012]

24. If he was abusive, she isn't lying, she is saving face

Victims of DV very, very often feel embarrassed/stupid they were abused.

[leftynyc]

32. But he's dead

Wouldn't that give her the comfort in coming clean about anything she knew? I want to believe she's telling the truth but they were living together and I'm finding it hard to believe she didn't know something about what he was planning. I think that $100,000 wasn't out of the goodness of his black heart - that sounds like a payoff to me.

[AtheistCrusader]

45. You'd be surprised how abuse can endure, even beyond the death of the abuser.

If that kind of emotional abuse left visible scars on the people around us, that matched the emotional scars, you'd be shocked.

To me, it's almost worse than physical abuse, because physical abuse can leave much more obvious signs, that can result in outside effort to help the victim. With emotional abuse... Harder to see. Harder to prove. Harder to do something about it.

[SunSeeker]

53. Well, if she's lying to save face, it's still lying.

But I totally get why she'd lie.

[Not Ruth]

26. The girlfriend and brother say that he was nice,random baristas and Aussies say that he was not nice

Is there a doubt over who knew him and who is getting their 15 minutes?

[OnDoutside]

30. Very fair point.

[raccoon]

28. She's lying or else she had her head up her ass. nt

[Nitram]

34. I wonder if an autopsy will uncover a brain tumor. That could explain a drastically

uncharacteristic change in behavior and personality. Theory #2: The man was deathly bored, gambling on tens of thousands of dollars a day was no longer the thrill it used to be, flying his planes didn't give him the same old adrenaline boost, he needed something more...stimulating.

[inwiththenew]

36. I don't buy it

She probably didn't know he was planning on carrying out an attack but she had to know something was off. This wasn't guy who got laid off and then in a fit of rage went back and shot up his place of employment.

[Paladin]

37. Well, it wouldn't be a proper mass slaughter via guns.....

....without the usual "He was such a nice guy, we never dreamed he'd do something like this" tap dance. This shit has gotten so predictable, over the years.

[steve2470]

40. I seriously doubt at this point she's going to admit anything bad about him

1- She wants to get out of this without going to prison
2- She may also be in serious denial how much of a psychopath and asshole he was
3- One way or another, she's going to need some serious therapy about all this. She was the girlfriend to a psychopath and mass killer.

[RainCaster]

51. The evidence contradicts her

💩💩💩💩

[MrsCoffee]

52. She also said he sent her on the trip because he found a "cheap ticket". Apparently millionaire

high rollers have to scout for bargain tickets.

[SunSeeker]

54. She also said he sent her $100,000 in Manila and she thought he was breaking up with her. nt

[AtheistCrusader]

57. They don't think of money the same way we do.

That said, it did sound like a break-up, 'get out' kinda thing.

From appearances, how he reportedly treated her, and how he snapped and what he did, I'm just glad she was found alive at all.

[lapislzi]

58. I'm going to go far out on a limb here, but stay with me.

I am a survivor of domestic violence, and what's been described by Ms. Danley resembles a kind of gaslighting my ex used to do to me.

When they’re up to something, first they send you away—far away. And at the same time they shower you with gifts and money while you’re gone. Probably to throw you off the scent. Classic gaslighting behavior.

Any time my ex became involved with another woman or some other shady escapade, I’d be put on a plane with almost no advance warning, and sent overseas for an open-ended period of time. Then I’d receive gifts, flowers, and money almost every day. He sent my parents lavish gifts and effusive letters. I know it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that this is its own form of abuse, but it’s all in place to feed the abuser’s narcissistic self-image, and to lead others to say "oh, he would never!" Of course, my ex didn’t commit any mass murders (there’s still time), but I see the pattern very clearly. The girlfriend was at least smart enough to lawyer up before she got back here. If she’s an abuse survivor, she’s doubtless picked up some useful skills along the way. There are many secrets in this case, but no mysteries.

She knows, and she's not saying.