At first glance, it seemed Stephen Paddock, 64, was set for a quiet life in a desert retirement community where he bought a new home in 2015. From there it was only an hour's drive to Las Vegas — where he would embark on the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history.
Public records point to an itinerant existence across the American West: a few years in coastal California, a few years in other parts of Nevada. Paddock had a hunting license in Texas, where he lived for at least a few years. He got his pilot's license, and had at least one single-engine aircraft registered in his name.
In early 2015, he bought a modest two-story home in a new housing development for retirees on the dusty edge of Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers that straddles the Nevada border with Arizona.