A story that gets stranger by the moment.
Patrick Benjamin Paddock, father of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, was a bank robber and prison escapee who once made the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.
Stephen Paddock’s brother Eric confirmed Monday that Patrick Paddock was his father, and New York dug up his old “Wanted by FBI” poster, which reveals that Patrick Paddock also went by such names as Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, Perry Archer, and “Big Daddy.” […]
When Stephen was around three years old, the family moved from Chicago to Tucson, Arizona. There, Dolores would give birth to three more children before her husband was arrested for bank robbery.
A July 1960 article from the Tucson Daily Citizen bears the headline: “Little Children Underfoot As FBI Agents Move In.” It describes the scene at the Paddock home just after Patrick Paddock was arrested, as three-year-old Patrick Jr., 18-month-old Bruce, and six-month-old Eric “cluttered distractedly underfoot as Mrs. Paddock showed the three FBI agents” around.
Patrick Paddock was arrested on July 28, 1960, in Las Vegas, where he had fled after the bank robbery in Phoenix. “The FBI said Paddock tried to resist arrest and attempted to run down an agent with his car,” reports a July 28, 1960, article in the Citizen. “A shot was fired and Paddock surrendered.”
The FBI agents found nearly $3,000 and a loaded .38 caliber revolver in his car.
Police suspected Paddock had committed several Phoenix-area bank robberies, netting him a total of around $25,000. But he was only tried for one of the robberies. In December 1960, a jury found Paddock guilty and Judge Peirson M. Hall sentenced him to 20 years in prison, the maximum allowable sentence.
While in prison, Paddock was apparently diagnosed as suicidal and psychopathic. After eight years of incarceration, Paddock escaped from a Federal Correctional Institution in La Tuna, Texas, and was placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.
