FBI: Father of Las Vegas shooter escaped from La Tuna prison in ’68

Th father of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was a bank robber in the 1960s and 1970s who escaped from the La Tuna prison in Northwest El Paso County.

The FBI told ABC-7 Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List on June 10 , 1969.

“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,” an FBI statement emailed to ABC-7 states.

Paddock spent seven years, 10 months and 26 days on the list until he was removed on May 5 , 1977, the FBI said.

A wanted flier for Paddock shows that the warrant was issued on Feb. 3, 1969 out of El Paso and that Paddock was charged with escape. The agency said that the fugitive had been ‘diagnosed as psychopathic’ and also had possible ‘suicidal tendencies.’

The Associarted Press reports Benjamin Hoskins Paddock operated an Oregon bingo parlor after escaping from prison in the late 1960s.

An Oregon Supreme Court opinion from 1981 says FBI agents arrested Benjamin Hoskins Paddock on Sept. 6, 1978, at the Bingo Center in the small city of Springfield. He went by different names and was identified by the court as Patrick Benjamin Paddock.

Despite the escape, Paddock was paroled the following year and returned to Oregon. He continued the bingo operation until authorities shut it down in 1987 and charged him with racketeering.

Don Bishoff, a columnist for The Register-Guard of Eugene, wrote in 1998 that Paddock pleaded no contest to the charges, but he received no jail time. He wrote that Paddock spent the last decade of his life in Texas.

The columnist described Paddock as one of the Eugene-Springfield area’s “most colorful rogues.” Paddock was also known as Bruce Ericksen.