One of the four sons, Patrick Paddock II, said on Tuesday that their mother never explained to them what had become of their father. “She kept that secret from the family,” he said. 
 
 Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was born in Sheboygan, Wis., in 1926, and served in the Navy during World War II. Afterward, he landed in Chicago on the wrong side of the law: he was imprisoned in 1946 for stealing cars and running a confidence game. He was out long enough to marry in Reno, Nev., in 1952 and to father Stephen, before being imprisoned again in 1953 for a fraudulent check scheme, according to an Associated Press report. 
 
 When he got out in 1956, the Paddocks moved to Arizona and Stephen’s parents started going by different names: Benjamin became Patrick, and his wife, Irene, became Delores, according to The Daily Citizen. 
 
 On their quiet street, they seemed to be a model midcentury family. 
 
 “Mr. Paddock was such a nice man,” the neighbor across the street told The Daily Citizen in 1960. “He was so attentive to his wife. He was so kind to the children, and he was always doing helpful things around the house.” 
 
 In town, he was active in the shortwave radio club and managed what the newspaper called a “younger-set nightclub” called Big Daddy’s. He was Big Daddy. 
 
 But he also had developed a knack for robbing banks. Over an 18-month span in 1959 and 1960, Mr. Paddock hit two branches of the Valley National Bank in Phoenix — one of them twice — and made off with $25,000, according to The Arizona Republic, citing an indictment. Each time, the report said, he showed the teller a snub-nosed revolver tucked in his belt, and fled in a stolen car that he abandoned a few blocks away to switch to the family’s new Pontiac station wagon. 

 Stephen Paddock’s father was rarely around. 
 
 Following the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Eric Paddock said that he and his brother, the suspected Las Vegas gunman, did not see their father much during their childhood. Their dad, a bank robber and con man, was in and out of prison — and often on the run. 
 
 “We didn’t grow up under his influence,” Eric Paddock told reporters outside his home in Orlando on Monday. 
 
 “I was born on the run,” he added, noting that “my dad was about to be arrested for robbing banks.” 
 
 Benjamin Hoskins Paddock escaped from federal prison in 1969, earning a spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. 
 
 He was described in the FBI’s wanted poster as “psychopathic’’ with suicidal tendencies. According to news accounts, he was not captured until 1978, when he was nabbed while running a bingo parlor in Oregon. 
 
 Officials confirmed that he was the father of Stephen Paddock, who authorities said opened fire from the window of a 32nd-floor hotel room overlooking a concert on the Las Vegas Strip, where 22,000 people had gathered for a three-day country music festival. At least 58 people were killed, including an off-duty police officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, authorities said. More than 500 others, including two on-duty officers, were injured. 
 
 After the shooting, he was found dead by Las Vegas SWAT officers in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. 
 
 [The carnage when shooters take aim from above] 
 
 More than five decades earlier, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was in the same town, running from suspected crimes of his own. 
 
 According to newspaper clippings from the summer of 1960, FBI agents had been searching for Paddock, who was accused of robbing banks in Arizona. When agents approached him in Las Vegas in late July of that year, he jumped into his car and tried to run one of them down, the newspaper reported. 
 
 He surrendered after an FBI agent fired through his windshield. 
 
 “It was a harrowing experience,” the agent, John T. Reilly, said at the time. 
 
 Reilly said he aimed at Paddock “to save my own life,” adding that the fugitive’s car stopped about a foot away from him — “so fast that it [the car] was rocking.” 
 
 Benjamin Paddock had already served time behind bars in the 1940s and 1950s, according to articles in the Arizona Republic. 
 
 After his capture by the FBI, he was convicted in 1961 of bank robbery and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. But on Feb. 3, 1969, he escaped. 
 
 At the time, Stephen Paddock would have been 15 years old. Eric was half Stephen’s age and said Monday that they had two other brothers, Bruce and Patrick. 
 
 Benjamin Paddock died in recent years, Eric Paddock said, adding that it was news to him: He said he grew up thinking his father was dead. 
 
 At 6-foot-4 and 245 pounds, Benjamin Paddock used a host of aliases, and was also known as “Chromedome” and “Old Baldy,” according to his FBI Most Wanted alert, which bore J. Edgar Hoover’s signature. 
 
 The Arizona Republic reported in July 1960 that Paddock was “known as a hot rod racer” and shaved his head so he would look like actor Yul Brynner. In addition to bank robbery and escape, his rap sheet included auto theft and a confidence scam. 
 
 “He was a larger-than-life kind of outlaw thing-y,” Eric Paddock said. 
 
 The FBI noted in its 1969 bulletin that Paddock was an “avid bridge player.” His son, Stephen, was known as a high-stakes gambler, The Post reported Monday. 
 
 The elder Paddock remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted list until 1977, when he was removed for reasons that aren’t clear. The FBI said he was “removed from the list when it was felt he no longer fit the ‘Top Ten’ criteria.” 
 
 Barbara Liston in Orlando contributed to this report. 
 
 More reading: 
 
 How the Las Vegas Strip shooting unfolded 
 
 Las Vegas shooting attack kills at least 58, more than 500 people injured 
 
 A closer look at the carnage when shooters take aim from above 
 
 50 years of mass shootings
– One of the more unusual details to emerge about Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock is that his father was a bank robber who spent about a decade on the FBI's most wanted list. In fact, Benjamin Paddock also had a history with Vegas: In 1960 FBI agents arrested him there for three bank heists in Phoenix. The agents say Paddock tried to run one of them down in his car and stopped only when one of them fired through his windshield, according to newspaper accounts of the time culled by the Washington Post. Paddock ended up in a federal prison in Texas but escaped in 1968 or 1969 (accounts differ). The resulting FBI poster says he is "diagnosed as psychopathic," has suicidal tendencies, and should be considered armed and "very dangerous." It also notes that he's an "avid bridge player" and a con artist. Upon his escape, Paddock robbed one more bank and made his way to Oregon, where he assumed the identity of Bruce Werner Ericksen. There, "Bingo Bruce" opened the first permanent bingo parlor in the state and lived as Ericksen until the feds finally caught up with him in 1978, reports the New York Times. He went back to prison but was released on parole the following year. He eventually moved to Texas, avoided jail on racketeering charges in the 1980s, and died in 1998. Paddock apparently played no role in the raising of his four children. Eric Paddock, brother of Stephen, says he grew up thinking his father was dead. Stephen would have been about 7 when his father was first sent to prison. Authorities still don't have a motive for Sunday night's massacre, but Stephen Paddock had a hotel room full of guns.