‘Most boring’ son: Las Vegas gunman was a contradiction

USA

The house advantage

By the 2000s, with both of his marriages long over, casinos became Paddock's habitat. He liked being waited on, seeing shows and eating good food.

"He likes it when people go, 'Oh, Mr. Paddock, can I get you a big bowl of the best shrimp anybody had ever eaten on the planet and a big glass of our best port?" Eric Paddock said.

Gambling made him feel important, if not social.

"You could tell that being in that high-limit gambling environment would lift him up," said Weinreich, the Atlantis casino host in Reno. "He liked everyone doting on him."

He sometimes called for company, inviting his brother Eric and his children for a free weekend in a luxury suite. But mostly he stayed alone.
A couple of years ago, Paddock stayed in one Las Vegas hotel gambling for four months straight, said a gaming industry analyst here who was briefed on Paddock's gambling history.

The analyst described him as a midlevel high roller, capable of losing $100,000 in one session, which could extend over several days. He said Paddock may have lost that amount at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas within the last few months.

Playing a slot machine can be mindless and is usually a guaranteed win for the casino. That is not what Paddock played. His game, video poker, requires some skill. Players have to know the history of a particular machine. They can do that by reading a pay table, which tells them what each possible winning hand pays out.

One of the ways that video poker players gain an advantage is to play casino promotions, which essentially pay out bonuses to winners, said Richard W. Munchkin, author of "Gambling Wizards: Conversations With the World's Greatest Gamblers." A gambler like Paddock will often "lock" a machine, meaning he or she monopolizes it and makes sure no one else uses it during a gambling session.

For one casino promotion, Paddock showed up two hours early, locked two machines and played them for 14 hours straight, Munchkin said, based on information he had compiled from other gamblers who were there at the time. The promotion lasted 12 hours, he said, "but he wanted to play for two hours before anybody got those machines. He knew they were the best machines based on pay tables."
Paddock "knew the house advantage down to a tenth of a percent," he said.
As for the mystery of why Paddock would go on a shooting rampage at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and then kill himself, most in the gambling industry do not believe it had anything to do with money.
He was in good standing with MGM Properties, the owner of the Mandalay and the Bellagio, according to a person familiar with his gambling history. He had a $100,000 credit limit, the person said, but never used the full amount.
The absent neighbor
Paddock spent so much time in casinos that he was mostly a ghost in the neighborhoods where he had homes.
Colleen Maas, a neighbor of Paddock's in Reno, said she had not seen him once in a year and a half, despite walking her dog three times a day and going to line-dancing events with Paddock'd girlfriend, Danley, at the community center.

He did travel. On his 60th birthday, April 9, 2013, he flew to the Philippines on Japan Airlines and stayed for five days, according to a spokeswoman for the Philippine Bureau of Immigration. Danley's family lived there, and she was visiting the country at the time. The couple went again for his birthday the following year.

When he did appear at his Reno home, he could be curt. Another neighbor, John McKay, recalled a day when he was hanging Christmas lights on a railing in his front yard when Paddock walked by. McKay said hello and yelled out, "Merry Christmas!" Paddock kept walking. "He said nothing," McKay said. "Not a word. No eye contact."

Even more baffling, when McKay tried to strike up a conversation with Paddock about Donald Trump during the election campaign, he got no response.

"Almost everyone has a reaction to Trump," said McKay's wife, Darlene.

Darlene McKay said that she would usually get up early each morning to watch the sunrise and, when Paddock was at his home, she would see him dressed in his gym clothes walking to the community center for a workout. Darlene McKay recalled something peculiar: "He always walked across the street and would never pass in front of our house."

John McKay said that he rarely saw a window or a door open at the house. One day, he saw Paddock's garage door open and noticed a large safe inside.

It is not clear what set Paddock on his path to destruction. As early as 2010, he could no longer fly his planes. His medical certificate expired, according to FAA records, and there are no indications that he renewed it.

Paddock bought his last house in Mesquite, Nevada, a retirement community of 18,000 people about 90 minutes from Las Vegas that attracts golfers and gamblers from around the country. He seems to have paid in cash, according to property records, and, as he did with other houses, spent very little time there.

His neighbors added personal touches to their yards — decorative pots, plants of all colors and sizes. Paddock's house was unadorned. One of the few things neighbors remembered about him was the solid-panel fence he erected. The message was clear: Paddock was a man who did not want to be seen. On Thursday, investigators had left. A tiny paint-splattered easel, its brush drawer open and empty, stood in the backyard.

Danley worked in Mesquite. She took a job booking sports bets at a local casino called the Virgin River, where gamblers sat together in rows watching horse races and waitresses circled in tight black skirts.

Several days a week, she attended morning Mass at a local Catholic church, said Leo McGinty, 80, a fellow parishioner who knew her from the casino.

Danley dressed smartly and modestly, he said. She usually sat alone.