Federal agents reportedly met the Las Vegas shooter's girlfriend as she landed at the Los Angeles airport

(Image credit: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department via AP)

last updated 4 October 2017

Marilou Danley, the live-in girlfriend of Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from the Philippines on Tuesday night, and federal agents were there to meet her, The Associated Press reports, citing a law enforcement official. Danley was born in the Philippines, though she has Australian citizenship, and was in her birth country when Paddock fired down on a crowd at a music festival, killing at least 59 people, from a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel that he had transformed into a sniper's nest.

U.S. authorities, still searching for a motive, are eager to interview Danley. Paddock had wired $100,000 that "appears to have been intended" for Danley to an account in the Philippines last week, a U.S. official tells Reuters, and the working assumption is that it was a sort of life insurance payment for Danley. She had arrived in the Philippines from Hong Kong on Sept. 25, a Filipino news outlet reported. Danley and twice-divorced Paddock, an avid gambler, met several years ago when Danley was working as a high-limit hostess at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, according to Paddock's brother, Eric Paddock. Eric Paddock suggested that his brother made sure Danley was out of the country when he went on his shooting spree.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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