Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Mass Shooter, Was Armed To The Teeth

LAS VEGAS, NV — Stephen Paddock armed himself with 23 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his hotel room and had several pounds of ammonium nitrate — a compound used in bomb-making, including the one in the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — in his car, police in Las Vegas said Monday, a day after the 64-year-old Mesquite, Nevada, resident opened fire on an outdoor music festival from his perch on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

In addition, police report 19 firearms, explosives and several thousand rounds of ammunition were recovered from Paddock's home.

Paddock's reputation as a regular guy was upended in the hours since the massacre, which left at least 59 dead and more than 515 wounded and has been called the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Police are still searching for a motive, but what is known about Paddock is that he was a high-stakes professional gambler and real estate investor, a licensed pilot who owned a couple of airplanes and a devoted son who bought his elderly mother a walker when he learned she needed one.

Watch: Gunman Had 23 Firearms At Hotel, 19 More At Home

Paddock was found dead in his 32nd-floor hotel room at the Mandalay Bay after police used explosives to break open the door. He committed suicide before officers arrived, police said. He is not believed to be affiliated with any foreign terrorist groups.

“Right now, we believe it’s a sole actor, a lone-wolf-type actor,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said. (For updates on the shooting and daily news from Las Vegas, sign up for the Patch morning newsletter and breaking news alerts.)

Watch: Gunman's Retirement Community Stunned By Carnage

One of the most interesting facts to emerge in the hours since the shooting is that Paddock, who has no known criminal record, is the son of a "psychopathic" bank robber who was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was serving a 20-year sentence for a string of bank robberies in 1968, when he escaped from the Federal Correctional Institution at La Tuna, Texas.

Known to his associates as "Chromedome," "Old Baldy" and "Big Daddy," the convicted bank robber had been "diagnosed as a psychopathic" who used firearms in the commission of his crimes, according to an FBI wanted poster, New York magazine reported. The elder Paddock was captured in 1978 in Oregon, where he was running a bingo parlor

Paddock was 7 — the oldest of four children — when his father was arrested for the robberies, and a neighbor took him swimming while FBI agents combed through the family's home. "We're trying to keep Steve from knowing his father is held as a bank robber," Eva Price told the Tuscon Citizen at the time, the AP reported. "I hardly know the family, but Steve is a nice boy. It's a terrible thing."

Paddock owned 27 residences in the California, Nevada and Texas, NBC News reported, citing public records. In 2013, he bought a new house in Viera, Florida, north of Melbourne. He sold it two years later for $235,000, according to property records. Don Judy, a neighbor in the gated retirement community where Paddock lived in Florida, described him as "a real nice guy," the AP reported. He was "just so ordinary ... there's nothing to profile this guy by," Judy said.

To escape Florida’s humidity and because he liked to gamble, Paddock moved to Nevada two years ago, the Orlando Sentinel reported. He bought his one-story, three-bedroom home in the Mesquite subdivision for $369,000 in 2015, property records show.

The house is located on the 1300 block of Babbling Brook Court in an upscale retirement community called Sun City in Mesquite, located 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The retirement community is nestled around the award-winning Conestoga Golf Club, an 18-hole championship course designed by Gary Panks that features rough-hewn terrain, flashy bunkers and mountain panoramas. The community also has indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a recreation center. Children are not allowed at Sun City Mesquite, which is limited to adults 55 and older.

The Latest: Las Vegas Mass Shooting

A licensed pilot, Paddock owned two planes and obtained three-day, nonresident fishing licenses from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in both 2009 and 2010. Eric Paddock told The Washington Post his brother didn't hunt and rarely fired his gun.

Paddock had been married and divorced twice. One of his ex-wives, who lives in southern California, told police she and Paddock divorced 27 years ago and they had not been in contact for many years. He did not have any children. Paddock lived with Marilou Danley, 62, at his Mesquite residence. She was out of the country at the time of the massacre. She has been described as a kind woman who sometimes sent Paddock's elderly mother cookies.

Paddock made several gambling transactions in the tens of thousands of dollars recently, but it was not immediately clear if he won or lost the money, NBC reported. His brother, Eric Paddock, of Orlando, Florida, told the FBI that his communications with Paddock did not indicate he had accumulated large gambling debts or was in financial trouble. "I have absolutely no information he lost a bunch of money," the brother told the FBI, according to The Washington Post. "The casino would know that."

Eric Paddock told the AP he last talked to his brother about six months ago, but the two had communicated via text message. In one, he asked how family members in Florida had fared during Hurricane Irma. He had recently sent the brothers' 90-year-old mother, who lives in Florida, a walker. Another text included a photo that showed "a picture that he won $40,000 on a slot machine. But that's the way he played."

Paddock had worked as an accountant, his brother told The Washington Post, but was also a multi-million-dollar real estate investor, his brother said. The gunman had worked for the defense giant Lockheed Martin for about three years. "Stephen Paddock worked for a predecessor company of Lockheed Martin from 1985 until 1988," the company said in a statement. "We're cooperating with authorities to answer questions they may have about Mr. Paddock and his time with the company."

Las Vegas Shooter's Brother: No Logic To Explain The Shooting

Eric Paddock described his brother as "a guy who had money" and "went on cruises and gambled." Stephen Paddock was disinterested in politics and religion, his brother told reporters. Public records don't indicate any financial problems, and even if he had been in debt, the Paddock family could have bailed him out, Eric Paddock said.

"He had substantial wealth. He'd tell me when he'd win. He'd grouse when he'd lost. He never said he'd lost four million dollars or something. I think he would have told me," Eric Paddock said.

Last week, he wired $100,000 to his girlfriend's home in the Philippines, NBC News reported, quoting multiple senior law enforcement officials. But whether the money went directly to Danley, to her relatives or for some other purpose is unclear. Danley is due back in the United States Wednesday, and authorities are hopeful she can answer some of their questions about Paddock's motivation.

Authorities are baffled.

Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI hostage negotiator and supervisor in the bureau's behavioral science unit, said Paddock is much older than the typical shooter and was not known to be suffering from mental illness.

"My challenge is, I don't see any of the classic indicators, so far, that would suggest, 'OK, he's on the road either to suicide or homicide or both," Van Zandt said.

On Thursday, Sept. 28 Paddock checked in to the Mandalay Bay, police say. It appears he opened fire on the 22,000 fans attending the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival from his hotel room window. Police said they found at least 17 weapons in his hotel room, some of them apparently purchased from Guns and Guitars Inc. in Mesquite. The owner of the gun store issued a statement saying Paddock had passed required background checks and that "he never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time."

Paddock was known to local law enforcement agencies, but officials had no “derogatory information” about him, CNN reported. Mesquite police said they had no previous contact with Paddock, The New York Times reported. Mesquite police spokesman Quinn Averett said a search of Paddock's home turned up weapons and ammunition, but he didn't give details.

"What's unique for us is the gunman, the shooter, and the person with him, we in the Mesquite Police Department have not had any contact with these people in the past. We haven't had any traffic stops, any law enforcement contact, no arrests or nothing," Averett said.

Family members are at a loss to explain what happened. Eric Paddock told the Orlando Sentinel family members are “completely dumbfounded” by the attack. “We can’t understand what happened,” he said. Nicole Paddock told WKMG-TV that she was “shocked and disturbed” to learn her uncle had been named as the shooter.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse said at a news conference Monday the Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the shooting without providing evidence. Newsweek had reported that Jihadoscope, a cyber-monitoring company that watches jihadi activity, said the Islamic State took responsibility for the shooting in a statement, translated from Arabic: “Attacker of the #Las_Vegas shooting is a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to targeting coalition communities.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo courtesy of Eric Paddock via AP