The girlfriend of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock returned to the United States from the Philippines as authorities in Manila said they were looking into reports he transferred $100,000 to her.
Marilou Danley flew out of Manila's international airport on Tuesday night for Los Angeles, immigration bureau spokeswoman Maria Antoinette Mangrobang told AFP.
She was met in the United States Tuesday evening local time - Wednesday in the Philippines - by FBI agents.
Related reading
Why America's gun laws are unlikely to ever change
The 62 year-old is classified as a "person of interest" to investigators but remains free to go wherever she wants, US media reported.
The Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said the FBI, its US counterpart, had sought help in finding Danley.
"The FBI has coordinated with the Philippine office of the Interpol to look for her," NBI spokesman Nick Suarez told AFP.
Mr Suarez said the NBI was looking into reports Danley arrived in the Philippines last month and that Paddock had sent $100,000 to her via a wire transfer.
He initially said the FBI had shared to the NBI the information on the date of her arrival and the money transfer.
But Mr Suarez later revised his statement, telling AFP that information was from the media.
Paddock, a 64-year-old gambler and retired accountant, killed 58 people and injured at least 527 others when he used a vast arsenal of weapons to shoot at a Las Vegas concert from a hotel room on Sunday.
Danley is an Australian citizen who moved to the United States 20 years ago to work on the casino strip.
"There are reports her ID was used for booking the hotel or some such detail," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.
"Australia will support the US authorities in their investigation in whatever way we can, but we have not had contact with Marilou Danley directly."
Media reports said Danley was born in the Philippines, although the Philippine foreign department and Suarez said they could not confirm that.
Paddock killed himself after mowing down the concert-goers.
"We have a lot of questions," Las Vegas undersheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters on Tuesday.
America mourned victims of the worst gun massacre in recent US history Tuesday as investigators probed the motive behind an apparently senseless attack on Las Vegas concertgoers.
President Donald Trump, who was to visit the desert city Wednesday, branded the attacker as a "demented man."
But beyond that diagnosis, authorities were at a loss as to why a 64-year-old gambler and retired accountant had hauled a vast arsenal of weapons to the hotel and launched his assault.
Meanwhile, the attack's victims began to be identified in the media, each new story stirring emotions as America once again grappled with calls for reforms to its permissive firearm control laws.
Mr Trump was not ready to suggest answers.
"What happened in Las Vegas is in many ways a miracle," he said.
"The police department has done such an incredible job, and we'll be talking about gun laws as time goes by."
US officials have reacted cautiously to a claim by the Islamic State jihadist group that the shooter, Stephen Craig Paddock, had carried out Sunday night's massacre on its behalf.
Experts cautioned that the group - under pressure in its Syrian and Iraqi heartlands - may be trying to rally its supporters with a false claim.
IS claimed Paddock was one of its "soldiers" but the FBI said it had found no such connection so far.
Authorities said Paddock, who had no criminal record, smashed windows in his hotel room shortly after 10:00 pm on Sunday and rained fire on a crowd of 22,000 attending a country music concert below.
In footage of the massacre, the sustained rattle of gunfire is heard as people scream and bolt for cover with little idea of where the shots were coming from.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Paddock blasted through the door of his hotel room and hit a security guard in the leg.
But when a SWAT team stormed the room where Paddock had been staying since September 28, they found he had killed himself.
Inside were 23 firearms including automatic weapons.
Cameras in hotel room
Lombardo also said Paddock had cameras in his room -- including one apparently monitoring the corridor approach.
Leaked photographs, which Lombardo's department is investigating, showed scope-mounted assault rifles and a floor covered with expended shells.
Other pictures show a neatly stacked pile of ammunition clips, and other rifles piled up on lounge chairs.
Investigators additionally found another 19 firearms along with explosives and several thousand rounds of ammo at Paddock's house in Mesquite, Nevada, 80 miles (130 kilometers) away.
'Mind of a psychopath'
So far, investigators have found nothing to explain the actions of a gunman, but were continuing to hunt and trace every possible clue about a gunman they described as a "psychopath."
"For this individual to take it upon himself to create this chaos and harm is unspeakable," Sheriff Lombardo told journalists Tuesday, saying the shooter's degree of preparation made it clear the attack was extensively premeditated.
Details started to emerge Tuesday about some of the victims -- a kindergarten teacher from California who had married her childhood sweetheart, a Tennessee nurse, a high school secretary from New Mexico.
Stories of heroism also surfaced. Bruce Ure, deputy police chief of the small Texas city of Seguin, was in the concert's VIP section when the gunfire broke out.
He sheltered from the bullets between two buses, then tended to three people who had been shot. Ure loaded the bleeding strangers into a passing car and rode with them to a hospital.
"They were all crying, and I was too," he told AFP. "They were saying that 'We're going to die, we're going to die,' and I still remember telling them: 'Not tonight, not tonight. Tonight's not your night. You're going to be ok.' Because I truly believed it."
Trump will visit Las Vegas Wednesday, but the White House has rebuffed calls to reopen the fraught US debate on gun control in the latest atrocity's wake.
It remains unclear why Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival crowd. Source: AAP
Congress did however shelve a controversial plan to make it easier to purchase gun silencers and make it more difficult to classify certain ammunition as "armor piercing."
'Two doors from a lunatic'
According to his brother, Paddock was a high-stakes gambler and their bank-robber father was once on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
But Eric Paddock said his brother had led an otherwise normal life.
"He liked to play video poker. He went on cruises. He sent his mother cookies," he said.
"We're lost," his brother said.
Paddock's neighbors in Mesquite were similarly dumbfounded to discover the killer lived in their midst.
"This is just a quiet, sleepy little community. It just blew me away," said Rod Sweningson.
"We've never even thought about locking our doors. We didn't know we lived two doors down from a lunatic."
Paddock had wired $100,000 to an account in his girlfriend's native country of the Philippines in the week before the shooting, NBC reported Tuesday, citing multiple senior law enforcement officials.
But it was not known who was the intended recipient. Danley, 62, who is Australian by nationality, was overseas at the time of the shooting and investigators said she was not believed to have been involved.
The Las Vegas attack is the deadliest shooting in recent US history, exceeding the toll of 49 dead in an attack on a Florida nightclub in June 2016.
Mourners pay tribute at a makeshift memorial on the Las Vegas Strip for the victims of a mass shooting. Source: AAP
