A Bella Vista man was once married to a woman identified yesterday as a companion of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock and social media posts wrongly linking him to the shootings produced death threats against him.
Geary Danley of Bella Vista married Marilou Danley in Las Vegas in 1990 and they divorced in Nevada in 2014 after separating in 2013. She had worked as a casino hostess. Geary Danley and family members told 40/29 yesterday that Marilou Danley, identified as a live-in companion of Paddock, had never lived in Arkansas, despite some website directories that indicated she had.
Marilou Danley was in Tokyo Monday and has not been identified as having a role in the shooting, various news accounts have said. But an early request by police for information about her led people on the Internet to find that she had been married to Geary Danley and to erroneously conclude that he was involved in the shooting.
Danley, joined by children, said he didn’t know Paddock or anything about his relationship with his former wife.
“The people are hurting and they want to lash out and they are lashing out at the wrong family, wrong people,” Geary’s daughter said.
The family said that they have been receiving death threats because of their connection to Marilou. They said they want people to know that social media has spun this out of control and jumped to conclusions that their father was involved.
“That’s because your name is Danley or anything, that you happen to know anything about this or be affiliated with it and that you would want anything like this to happen to anyone is a terrible thing,” his daughter said.