in World News The father of Stephen Craig Paddock — the man who opened fire on a country music concert in Las Vegas on Sunday night, killing at least 58 and injuring over 500 — was a “psychopath” with possible “suicidal tendencies” who was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, the father of the Las Vegas shooter, was a serial bank robber and con-man who a 1960s FBI escaped prisoner poster described as “psychopathic” and “extremely dangerous.” In fact, he was so dangerous that he was put on the FBI’s most-wanted list for a number of years after escaping prison in the midst of a 20-year sentence for robbing a series of Arizona banks.
“Since he has utilized firearms in previous crimes, has employed violence in attempting to evade arrest and has been diagnosed as being psychopathic, [Benjamin Hoskins] Paddock should be considered extremely dangerous,” reads an escaped federal prisoner poster issued by the FBI after Paddock escaped prison in 1968.
The NY Post notes that Benjamin Paddock was incarcerated in 1960 for robbing an Arizona bank, but managed to escape in 1968, spending “nearly three years on the run before the FBI caught up to him in Las Vegas in 1971, at which point he tried to run down an agent with his car.”
Fox News provides some more details on Paddock’s “colorful life of crime and deception“:
Paddock was indicted in 1960 on three counts of robbing Phoenix branches of Valley National Bank, the Arizona Republic reported on Oct. 6 that year. He was accused of stealing close to $25,000 and was caught in the summer of 1960 by FBI agents after returning to Arizona from Las Vegas.
The 6-foot-4, 245-pound Paddock was convicted and slapped with a 20-year prison sentence, but the lengthy jail term was cut short when he busted out of a federal prison in Texas in 1969, the Eugene Register-Guard reported. …
About six months after the escape, Paddock was involved in an armed robbery at a bank in San Francisco and in September 1978, he was awaiting trial related to charges from that incident, according to the Oregon newspaper.
During his lengthy criminal career, which later included racketeering charges, Paddock made several false claims about himself, including “being an auto crew racing chief, Chicago Bears football player and survivor of a World War II mine sweeper sinking.” Paddock ended up getting off easy on the racketeering charges in the late ’80s with only a $100,000 fine. He died in 1998 in Texas.
In an interview Monday morning, Eric Paddock, the brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, suggested that his brother “snapped.”
“He was just a guy. Something happened, he snapped or something,” said Paddock, who lives in Orlando, Florida. “He has no political affiliation, no religious affiliation, as far as we know. This wasn’t a terror attack.”
Eric, who said he talks to his brother “occasionally” but doesn’t have a “very close” relationship with him, said the family was completely caught off guard by his murder spree.
“We know absolutely nothing, this is just … we are dumbfounded,” Paddock told the Daily Mail, adding, “There’s no rhyme or reason here, it makes no sense.”
Read the interview with the shooter’s brother here.
Read more on Stephen Paddock here.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/21817/las-vegas-shooters-psychopathic-father-was-fbis-james-barrett