Bizarre: The Family History of the Las Vegas Shooter Holds a Troublesome Secret

Ok. This just took a really weird twist.

After the statements from the Las Vegas shooter’s brother that Stephen Paddock was “just a guy,” there’s a definite need to expand on that statement.

Stephen Paddock was “just a guy,” whose dad was once on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.

Wut?

Yup.  The Washington Examiner is reporting that Stephen Paddock’s younger brother, Eric, has confirmed that their father, Patrick Benjamin Paddock – alias Benjamin Hoskins Paddock – was a bank robber, who made the list in the 60s.

The elder Paddock was born in 1926 and had been convicted of bank robbery, automobile larceny, and confidence game, according to an FBI wanted notice published in 1969. He was also diagnosed as “psychopathic” and had “carried firearms in commission of bank robberies.”

“He reportedly has suicidal tendencies and should be considered armed and very dangerous,” the notice read.

And somebody sold the wanted poster early Monday morning on eBay.

A 1971 article from the Tucson Daily Citizen stated that Paddock made the list after staging a prison break from a federal prison in La Tuna, Texas on December 31, 1968. He was there on a 20-year stretch for a Phoenix bank robbery in 1960.

The FBI flyer showed he had an array of aliases, including Perry Archer, Benjamin J. Butler, Leo Genstein, Pat Paddock, and Patrick Benjamin Paddock. When asked for confirmation, the FBI sent the Washington Examiner a link to the page of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, who was removed from the FBI’s most wanted list in 1977.

“The FBI can confirm that an individual named Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List on June 10, 1969, as the 302nd person on the List. He was wanted for being an Escaped Federal Prisoner after he escaped from a federal corrections institution in La Tuna, Texas, on December 31, 1968. At that time, he was serving time for robbery. Paddock spent 7 years, 10 months, and 26 days on the List and was then removed from the List on May 5, 1977, when it was determined that he no longer fit the criteria required to be on the List,” the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs told the Washington Examiner in an email.

He was apparently one of those old school, Bonnie and Clyde-styled ruffians. He wasn’t a true gangster, but a slippery character.

He apparently was able to elude capture for a decade. Court documents from the Supreme Court of Oregon show an arrest in 1978, when he was arrested and booked under the alias, “Bruce W. Ericksen.”

His arrest at that time wasn’t for the prison escape a decade earlier, but for managing an illegal Bingo operation.

On Oct. 28, 1980, he elder Paddock told a court trial board that he had been convicted of bank robbery, auto theft, forgery, and confidence crimes in the past.

One of the questions was: “At the time of your arrest, you had been an escapee from the West District of Texas for approximately nine years?”

Paddock answered: “Yes. I’ve been No. 1. Also had three killings that don’t appear on that, for seven and a half years.”

We still don’t know what caused his eldest son to commit the atrocity he committed on Sunday night in Las Vegas, but it certainly sounds like there was dysfunction in his early home life.

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