SYDNEY: Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock’s “regular companion” was an Australian woman who moved to the United States 20 years ago to work on the casino strip, the government confirmed Tuesday.
Marilou Danley, 62, was initially said to be a “person of interest” but has since been cleared of any involvement in the shocking shooting that left 59 dead and more than 500 injured.
American authorities said she was out of the country at the time retired accountant Paddock, 64, unleashed his reign of terror on concert-goers from a hotel window.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop tweeted: “I understand US authorities have ruled out Australian Marilou Danley as a person of interest.”
She added to reporters that “US authorities were in contact with us about Marilou Danley.”
“There are reports her ID was used for booking the hotel or some such detail. Australia will support the US authorities in their investigation in whatever way we can, but we have not had contact with Marilou Danley directly.”
US reports and officials said she is either in the Philippines or Japan, although neither country was able to confirm her whereabouts.
Australian media said she was on holiday in the Philippines with three girlfriends.
News Corp. Australia newspapers said the Filipino-Australian used to live on the Gold Coast tourist strip and still had a sister there.
“I can’t comment at the moment, I can’t say anything,” her sister Liza Werner told the Sydney Daily Telegraph, which said she was a grandmother.
The newspaper cited friends as saying she resided on the Gold Coast for more than a decade and was married to an Australian man who has since died.
She moved to the US about 20 years ago and reportedly shared a house with Paddock in a new golf course development in the desert just outside Mesquite, Nevada, 80 miles northeast (130 kilometers) of Las Vegas.
It was not clear if they were in a relationship or simply friends, with some reports referring to her as his “regular companion.”
Paddock, a high-stakes gambler with no criminal record, killed himself after mowing down concert-goers with burst of automatic weapon fire from the 32nd story window of a swish Las Vegas hotel.
A motive is yet to be established.
Vegas shooter’s ‘companion an Australian granny’
Vegas shooter’s ‘companion an Australian granny’
Near record number of small boat migrants reach UK in 2025
- The second-highest annual number of migrants arrived on UK shores in small boats since records were started in 2018, the government was to confirm Thursday
LONDON: The second-highest annual number of migrants arrived on UK shores in small boats since records were started in 2018, the government was to confirm Thursday.
The tally comes as Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party Reform UK surges in popularity ahead of bellwether local elections in May.
With Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer increasingly under pressure over the thorny issue, his interior minister Shabana Mahmood has proposed a drastic reduction in protections for refugees and the ending of automatic benefits for asylum seekers.
Home Office data as of midday on Wednesday showed a total of 41,472 migrants landed on England’s southern coast in 2025 after making the perilous Channel crossing from northern France.
The record of 45,774 arrivals was recorded in 2022 under the last Conservative government.
The Home Office is due to confirm the final figure for 2025 later Thursday.
Former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak vowed to “stop the boats” when he was in power.
Ousted by Starmer in July 2024, he later said he regretted the slogan because it was too “stark” and “binary” and lacked sufficient context “for exactly how challenging” the goal was.
Adopting his own “smash the gangs” slogan, Starmer pledged to tackle the problem by dismantling the people smuggling networks running the crossings but has so far had no more success than his predecessor.
Reform has led Starmer’s Labour Party by double-digit margins in opinion polls for most of 2025.
In a New Year message, Farage predicted that if Reform got things “right” at the forthcoming local elections “we will go on and win the general election” due in 2029 at the latest.
Without addressing the migrant issue directly, he added: “We will then absolutely have a chance of fundamentally changing the whole system of government in Britain.”
In his own New Year message, Starmer insisted his government would “defeat the decline and division offered by others.”
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, urged people not to let “politics of grievance tell you that we’re destined to stay the same.”
- Protests -
The small boat figures come after Home Secretary Mahmood in November said irregular migration was “tearing our country apart.”
In early December, an interior ministry spokesperson called the number of small boat crossings “shameful” and said Mahmood’s “sweeping reforms” would remove the incentives driving the arrivals.
A returns deal with France had so far resulted in 153 people being removed from the UK to France and 134 being brought to the UK from France, border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said.
“Our landmark one-in one-out scheme means we can now send those who arrive on small boats back to France,” he said.
The past year has seen multiple protests in UK towns over the housing of migrants in hotels.
Amid growing anti-immigrant sentiment, in September up to 150,000 massed in central London for one of the largest-ever far-right protests in Britain, organized by activist Tommy Robinson.
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with around 111,000 applications made in the year to June 2025, according to official figures as of mid-November.
Labour is currently taking inspiration from Denmark’s coalition government — led by the center-left Social Democrats — which has implemented some of the strictest migration policies in Europe.
Senior British officials recently visited the Scandinavian country, where successful asylum claims are at a 40-year low.
But the government’s plans will likely face opposition from Labour’s more left-wing lawmakers, fearing that the party is losing voters to progressive alternatives such as the Greens.
