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On Sunday evening, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured more than 500 when he shot attendees of a country music festival from his 32nd floor hotel window in Las Vegas. It is the deadliest mass shooting in history.
After the massacre, Paddock killed himself in his 32nd-floor hotel room of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Yesterday, media outlets including the Eugene Register-Guard reported that Paddock had connections to Oregon. His father, Benjamin Paddock, fled to Lane County while on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, which he occupied from 1969 to 1977.
Benjamin Paddock had a lengthy criminal history, including a string of bank robberies, automobile larceny and "confidence game," according to an FBI poster. The poster also he was also diagnosed as "psychopathic," and as having "suicidal tendencies," and "should be considered armed and very dangerous."
According to the Register-Guard, Benjamin Paddock first came to Oregon in 1971. He lived in Junction City in 1972 and 1973, and opened Oregon's first legal* bingo parlor in Springfield in 1977, where he went by the name of Bruce Ericksen, as well as the nicknames "Bingo Bruce" and "Big Daddy." Paddock was given the nickname partly due to his size: He was reportedly 6'5″ and 270 pounds.
*The Oregon Attorney General's Office eventually filed charges of racketeering against him, alleging that he had been running an illegal gambling operation. When the Parlor opened in 1977, it was described as the first legal bingo parlor in Oregon.
By 1978, the FBI arrested him, but he was so well-liked by his community, that he made parole in 1979 after 1,600 people reportedly sent letters and signed petitions to plead his case, according to the Register-Guard.
Reportedly, Junction City then-mayor Chuck Ivey even described Paddock as "a nice guy" who "helped a lot of people financially and did one hell of a lot for the kids," in a letter.
A 1979 Register-Guard article announcing Paddock's return from prison has the headline "Springfield Gets It's 'Big Daddy' Back." Paddock told the paper: "My name is Ericksen now. Paddock is dead."
In 1987, Paddock was charged with racketeering and fraud, but he avoided jail time by paying a large fine. He died in 1998 in Texas.
The Register-Guard printed a long obituary for Paddock, who they described as "one of Eugene-Springfield's most colorful rogues—a con man who loved to stick his pudgy thumb in the eye of authority."
Paddock's partner Laurel Paulson is quoted in the article. Of Paddock, she said:
Yesterday, Eric Paddock, Stephen Paddock's brother, told the Washington Post that the brothers rarely spent time with their father. Eric Paddock told the Washington Post: "I was born on the run…my dad was about to be arrested for robbing banks."
According to the Register-Guard, a 1971 Tuscon Daily Citizen article describes the Paddock family living together in Arizona, and neighbors taking then 7-year-old Stephen Paddock to swim while the FBI searched the house.