The girlfriend of the Las Vegas gunman claims that she thought he sent her to the Philippines and sent her $100,000 in order to break up with her.
Marilou Danley, 62, said in a statement through her lawyer Wednesday that then-boyfriend Stephen Paddock, 64, had bought her a 'cheap' ticket to the Philippines two weeks ago, out of the blue.
He suggested she visit her family, something she was happy to do, she claimed.
But when he wired the massive sum to her during her stay there, she began to worry that he was breaking up with her, she said.
She had no idea that Paddock was planning Sunday's rampage, which claimed 59 lives, including his own, and injured 527 people, she said.
In a prepared statement read out by her lawyer, Matt Lombard, Danley said: 'I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man.
'I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together with him. He never said anything to me, or took any action that I was aware of, that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.
'A little more than two weeks ago, Stephen said he found a cheap ticket for me to the Philippines and that he wanted me to take a trip to see my family.
'Like all Filipinos abroad, I was excited to go home and see family and friends.
While there, he wired me money which he said was for me to buy a house for me and my family.
'I was grateful, but honestly I was worried that first, the unexpected trip home and then the money, was a way of breaking up with me.
It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone.'
The statement continued: 'I have not made a statement until now because I am cooperating with the authorities
And I voluntarily flew back to America because I knew that the FBI and Las Vegas police department wanted to talk to me - and I wanted to talk to them.
I will cooperate fully with their investigation, and anything I can do to help ease suffering or help in any way, I will do.'
Lombard left without answering any questions, including one about the weapons that Paddock had stockpiled in the home in Mesquite that he and Danley had shared.
FBI agents began questioning Danley on Wednesday for clues to what drove Stephen Paddock to slaughter 59 people from his high-rise hotel suite, a law enforcement official said.
The official said she was interviewed at the bureau's field office in Los Angeles and was with her attorney. T
he official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Danley, 62, returned to the U.S. on Tuesday night from the Philippines after a weeks-long trip abroad.
Her sisters have since broken their silence, insisting she was unaware of Paddock's motives, while her brother says she told him she has a 'clean conscience'.
Three days after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, why someone with no known record of violence or crime would open fire on a country music festival was still a mystery.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo on Tuesday called Danley a 'person of interest' in the attack.
A receptionist at the office of Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney Matthew Lombard confirmed he was representing Danley but would not comment any further.
Paddock, a 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and real estate investor from Mesquite, Nevada, killed himself as police closed in on his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay hotel casino. More than 500 people were injured in the attack.
Danley's sisters in Australia said in a TV interview there that they believe she couldn't have known about Paddock's murderous plans and that he must have sent her away so she wouldn't interfere.
The sisters - whose faces were obscured and their names withheld - said Danley is 'a good person' who would have stopped Paddock had she been there
'She didn't even know that she was going to the Philippines until Steve said, 'Marilou, I found you a cheap ticket to the Philippines,'' said one of the sisters, who live near Brisbane.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump met privately with victims of the shooting at a Las Vegas hospital Wednesday.
'It's a very sad thing. We are going to pay our respects and to see the police who have done really a fantastic job in a very short time,' Trump said before leaving the White House. He said authorities were 'learning a lot more' about the gunman.
Whatever Paddock's motive, authorities said he planned the attack methodically, not only stockpiling nearly two dozen guns in his hotel room but setting up cameras in the peephole and on a service cart outside his door, apparently to watch for police closing in on him.
During the rampage, a hotel security guard who approached the room was shot through the door and wounded in the leg.
'The fact that he had the type of weaponry and amount of weaponry in that room, it was preplanned extensively,' the sheriff said, 'and I'm pretty sure he evaluated everything that he did and his actions, which is troublesome.'
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, speaking at a cybersecurity forum Wednesday in Boston, said investigators are busy 'reconstructing the life, the behavior, the pattern of activity of this individual and anyone and everyone who may have crossed his path in the days and the weeks leading up to this horrific event.'
Asked if investigators had determined why Paddock carried out the attack, he said, 'We are not there yet.' He suggested that was unusual.
'This individual and this attack didn't leave the sort of immediately accessible thumbprints that you find on some mass casualty attacks,' McCabe said.
Paddock had been stockpiling guns since 1982 and bought 33 of them, mostly rifles, over the past year alone.
He was still buying guns up until three days before the attack, Jill Snyder, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told CBS on Wednesday.
He had rigged 12 semi-automatic rifles with devices that allowed the guns to fire like an automatic weapon, she said. Authorities previously disclosed that he had such 'bump stock' devices with him at the hotel.
Snyder said authorities would not have been notified of the rifle purchases but would have been informed if two or more guns were bought at one time.
Paddock wired $100,000 to the Philippines in the days before the shooting, a U.S. official briefed by law enforcement but not authorized to speak publicly because of the continuing investigation told the AP on condition of anonymity.
Investigators are still trying to trace that money and are also looking into a least a dozen financial reports over the past several weeks that said Paddock gambled more than $10,000 per day, the official said.
