The Las Vegas Massacre Connections- Finding Strength Through Tragedy After America's Deadliest Mass

On October 1, 2017, Mary Jo von Tillow’s world changed forever.
Her husband, Kurt, was killed in the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest in U.S. history. In just eleven minutes, her life—and the lives of thousands of others—were shattered.

But what followed was more than grief. Out of devastation came unexpected bonds with other survivors, advocates, and families who knew the same kind of loss. From a 9/11 firefighter who turned his pain into kindness, to a victims’ rights attorney who changed national law, to fellow widows and survivors who refused to give up, Mary Jo discovered what it means to carry tragedy together.
The Las Vegas Massacre Connections is both a deeply personal account and a collective portrait of resilience. Through Mark Gray’s in-depth reporting and Mary Jo’s courage to share her story, this book captures the enduring impact of Route 91 and the human strength that rises after unimaginable loss.


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's the Opperman Report, and now here is investigator Opperman.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Okay, welcome to the Opperman Report. I'm your host, private
investigator Ed Opperman. If you want to get a hold
of may you just email me at Oppermaninvestigations at gmail
dot com. I get read banks we're talking about today
about the Las Vegas shooting, and I got that. I
think it's a four hundred page report from Las Vegas
Meshel Police Department. But otherwise you can read this book
that just came out. Mark Gray wrote this book about

(00:32):
the Las Vegas massacre, the October first uh Las Vegas
Mandalay Bay shooting. The book is called the Las Vegas
Massacre Connections, Finding Strength through Tragedy After America's Deadliest mass
shooting by Mark Gray and Mary Joe von Tillo, the
co author. So, Mark Gray, are you there?

Speaker 1 (00:54):
I am here. Thanks for having me know, man.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thank you so much, and once again, I thank you
for getting back to me so quickly. That's a huge help.
Before we get into the Las Vegas mask of Connections,
tell us by yourself? Who is Mark Ray?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I asked that every day about myself. Ed. So I
am a longtime journalist. Well, I'll just start here. I
am a twenty year resident of Las Vegas, originally from
Salt Lake City. I was a crime reporter in Salt
Lake City at one of the local newspapers there for
several about four and a half years or so, and

(01:29):
then I moved to Las Vegas did public relations for
about a cup of coffee, and then I got a
job with People Magazine in two thousand and six. And
ever since then I have worked for People Magazine in
some capacity or another, be it on staff, freelance, contract work,
you name it, I've done it all. And I also

(01:50):
write for Rolling Stone Magazine from time to time as well.
And you know, and I I'm also the author of
this book, Las Vegas Masacar Connections.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
So I guess you were living in Vegas when this happened, right.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
I was, Yeah, I was living in Vegas when this happened.
I was. Actually I was there at the Route Anyone
Harvest Festival in twenty seventeen, working for Rolling Stone. This
was the fourth festival that had happened. It started in
two thousand and fourteen, and so this is the fourth
installment of it. I'd been to every one of them.

(02:31):
I believe I'd been working for every one of them
as well, but I know I had attended then, that's
for sure. And this one on year four in twenty
seventeen had started off and shaped up to be very
similar to all the others, which is a great time.
You know, a lot of you know, a lot of music,
a lot of friends, a lot of some some beer,

(02:52):
some and yeah, it was all good. In fact, my
job that weekend in twenty seventeen was remember this was
it was a three day festival, and I was supposed
to write. I was hired to write the ten Best
Things I Saw this weekend at the Route ninety one

(03:14):
Harvest Festival, and Jason Alden was the final act on
the final day of the third day, and so nine
of those ten items had been written already, they were done,
ready to send in and file away to the editors.
And the tenth item I was earmarking for something involving

(03:34):
Jason Alvin Set. Considering he was the headliner, I kind
of thought I should probably have something about him in
this story and the ten Best Things I Saw, And
obviously that story dramatically changed four songs into Jason Alden Sets.
On October first, twenty seventeen.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh my god, I could imagine. So then I was
going to ask you because I remember hearing about it
on Facebook first, but it was even on the news.
You people on Facebook started talking about it. But you
were right there, you heard the shots?

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, in fact me, so I was right there. I
was standing on the west side of the venue, probably
about twenty five yards or so, from twenty yards twenty
five yards from the stage. I had a very very
close friend of mine was one of the He works
for a big company who was one of the sponsors
of the festival, and so he had kind of a

(04:25):
little VIP area right there, which wasn't really a whole
lot of you when you think of VIP, you think
you know big, you know, luxurious, you know things and
sweets and whatnot, and this was not that. This was
more of a there was a you know, a railing
kind of separating you from everyone else, and then there
was an area, an indoor type of area you could
go to. But it was pretty much a refurbished trucking

(04:50):
container really what it was. So it was, you know,
it was an aluminum can. It's really what it was.
At the end of the day. So you had that
and they kind of made him nice. It was windows,
and so you could theory stay inside this trucking container
and watch the concert if you wanted, but it wasn't anything,
you know, this wasn't a brick building for protection. And

(05:11):
so I was actually there. I was standing kind of
right in the doorway of this quote unquote suite, if
you want to call it that, and I was talking
to a friend during jay saldi and set during that
fourth song, and just then I hear three quick pops,
you know, pop pop pop, and there was a pause,

(05:34):
and there was a woman who was about twenty five
feet to my left. I did not know her at all.
Of this woman's just screamed, just shrieks really loudly, and
I'm assuming she was hit. I don't know that, cause
again I don't know her, but she just shrieked so loud,
and I turned and looked, and I thought to myself,
you know, what kind of jerk brings fireworks into a concert.

(05:58):
And because that's why I thought it was, I thought
it was fireworks, especially considering there was just these three
quick pops, you know, pop pop pop. I thought, you know,
somebody's trying to be funny and clever and cute, and
none of those things are clever, funny or cute, but uh,
that's what I thought initially. And there was a pause,
and then there's three more pop pop pop again, and
I still think, Okay, you've had your fun, mister firework guy.

(06:23):
You know, let's let's let's just you know, go on
with the concert here. And after that second, that second
round of popping, that's when there was there was another pause,
and then that's when it just the barrage of bullets
started happening. And it was within about probably five or
six seconds that you realize what was going on. And

(06:47):
you didn't you certainly you didn't understand the scope of
it at that point. You also didn't, you know, you
really know anything. And I assumed that there was someone
inside the festival, or maybe multiple people inside the festival
with guns, and so I say, I ran into this
sort of suite area, if you will, and a bunch

(07:09):
of other people were running back, running in there too,
kind of looking for protection. Ran into I ran into
the corner at the back corner and got down on
the ground, and people were running in. People were busting
out the windows of this thing to try to get
in because they thought there was some sort of protection there,
and there was. I mean, there was more protection than
being completely out in the open, but it wasn't a
whole lot of protection still and Mark, Mark.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Were you seen people dropping to the ground? Did you
see people get shot?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Not at this point. I did. Later, Yeah, so I was.
So when I was in there, you know, on the ground,
and it's sounding you know, I don't know how long
I was on the ground is probably a couple of minutes,
but it felt like it was a year. And there
were a couple of small pauses in the in this
main barras are shooting, and one of them, a friend

(07:58):
of mine, said, you know, we got to get out
of here. It's getting closer, and it sounded that way
to all of us, and so he said, you're right.
So we all got up and started, you know, it's
escaping and going our own ways. And everyone accept me
because at the time, and I was remember I was
there working, and so I had my laptop there, which

(08:19):
was very important to me at this point in time.
So I had the army crawl across the suite as
everyone's leaving to retrieve my laptop because I felt like
I really needed it. I know that's silly, but it
made sense to me then. And so I finally got
my laptop. I threw the backpack that I had, and
that's when I left as well. Now as I was leaving,
you know, isn't that crazy.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Interrupted It's like when someone fire in their house and
they go right back to It's like, you think, why,
I can risk it. You know I can risk it.
But I guess you thought you're going to make it right.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, And that was exactly that's what I thought. At
no point that I really think this laptop is going
to end my life. I just didn't think anything up
and I thought, well, I need my laptop. I can't
leave without it, and so I went and got it,
and that's when I left. And say this where I was.
I was on the east side of the venue, and

(09:11):
I escaped out of one of the east side gates
as well. But when you when you're leaving there on
the way between where I was and the gate you're running,
you're going through just thronging of people who are also
trying to escape, and that's when you start seeing victims.
You're seeing you know, I didn't see anyone take a bullet.
But I did see victims on the ground, and one

(09:36):
of them was more than likely fatal. I have no
way of knowing this at this point in my life,
but one guy was on the ground and he had
a bandan over his face, which I'm assuming someone probably
put there. But yeah, that was And then I saw,
you know, some I saw photos afterwards of the grounds,

(09:56):
photos that have never seen the light of day to
this day. Still, you know, kind of the w horror
that was. So it was it was a chaotic, chaotic event,
and then you and then of course the escape was
also you know, when I'm getting out of there, the
bullets are still flying, so there's every chance you can
take a bullet to the back. Yeah, you know, that's

(10:16):
that's very that's a very real possibility, and especially when
at that time you still think that the shooter or
shooters are inside the venue and maybe outside the venue
waiting for people to leave, or.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Maybe even a second shoot of the wait. Correct, Yeah,
now weren't people also too, They were like they made
like a little bridge or a ladder to get over
the walls to.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
The Yeah, what had happened was there was a right
where on the east side of the venue now if
you picture this, so the.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
The shooting happened. It's called the Las Vegas Village, which
is really a parking lot, and it's right across the
street from Mandeley Bay. So the Mandalay Bay is on
the west side of the Las Vegas Strip, also known
as the Las Vegas Bullard, same same thing, and the
village is on the east side of the Las Vegas Boulevard.
Now just east of that is there's a dirt field
and then the Las Vegas Airport and so a lot

(11:11):
of people were people were going every which direction during
when they were escaping. Some people got out and went left,
some people went went right. I went straight back towards
the dirt lost and you know, you don't really I
don't really know why, but I just did. And to
get there, there was a chain link fence that kind

(11:32):
of separates, you know, the dirt lot from on a
normal day, the dirt lot from the road. And someone
had torn down the fence already and there was am
you think of a chain link fence, you know, they're
connected by these big tall posts, and there was this
what I remember is climbing over the fence and every
time you climb over the fence. The post of the

(11:53):
fence is hitting the hood of this red car like
a Honda, just pounding this hood for everyone climbing over.
I can't even imagine what this car's would look like
by the end of that evening, because it was just
every single person was climbing over the fence in the
post is slamming the hood of this car. That of course,
I just probably parked there for we're gonna go see

(12:15):
a great concert. I got a great parking spot. Yeah.
And so when I was in the dirt lot, there
was a huge dirt field and I ran straight back
toward the airport. Now, some people did go to the airport.
There were reports of people that were going on the runway.

(12:35):
I did not go that far.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
They took down that fence to where they went over
that fence. That's a big fence.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah. Yeah, And they think those people who went into
the airport, they actually got there, had to take a
bus to Thomas and Mack, which is where UNLV plays
college basketball. They'd go there. I said, I did not
go that far. When I was there was this huge
dirt field and I went out there and there was
a semi parked out there. Now, I assume that semi
was probably probably holding some of the band's crew equipment,

(13:03):
and that's where they were parked there. So I got
behind this big semi big semi trailer. There were people
behind it already as well, and we all kind of
waited it out. And at the time, I still don't know.
I still can't remember when the shooting stopped, but I
do remember thinking, I I thought, Okay, they must have

(13:29):
gotten the shooter, must have made an arrest, killed the person.
I didn't know, but I just knew I think I'm
safe now because I haven't heard bullets in a long time.
So at that point I started making my way back
toward I was actually going to Mandalay Bay. Unbeknownst to me,
that's where the shooting was happened. But my sister worked there,
and she worked at a bar at Mandalay Bay. In fact,

(13:51):
she worked at a bar right above the shooter. And
she called me and techt me during it because she
was working that night, and she said, I'm a freak out.
Let me know, you know, are you okay? And I said,
I'm fine, you know right now, but let me call
you this. Let me let me, I'll call you when
this is all over, because I don't know if I'm
making another thing alive. And so I was planning on

(14:12):
going back to her work and just giving her a
hug and calling it a day. And I tried to
go back to Mandalai Bay. The place was already evacuated.
And in between all that, my sister had sent me
a text message and said they're staying the shooters inside
Mandalai Bay. Now in my mind, I think casino floor.
I think he's out there, you know, on the casino
floor doing it. And no point have I still ever

(14:35):
come to this realization that this man is in a
room in a suite, no less, in a corner suite,
shooting down, shooting down at all of us. That was
never a part of my thinking when I heard Mandalay Bay,
and there wasn't until probably another hour later where I
realized that it was coming from a room inside Mandalay Bay.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
So no one saw like muzzle flashes coming from the building.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
No, I mean I was. I remember when I was
looking at manually, but at the building when I was
walking towards it, and I thought I saw something, but
it you know, it was also what I was looking
out of the time was probably probably the seventh righth floor.
This man was much higher up. He was on the
thirty third floor, thirty or second floor, So so I

(15:18):
was never looking that high whatsoever. And my you know,
people have claimed they saw muzzle flashes. I don't know
if that's true or not. You know, every all these
years have gone by, and there's a lot of people
who have I think, you know, an altered altered history
a little bit, and an altered perspective of oh I
knew it was gunfire immediately. There's very few people who

(15:41):
I know who knew immediately was gunfire. There are very
few people who I know who thought, oh I knew
it was coming from Mandala Bay. You know, now all
the you know, eight years later, there are people who say,
oh I knew immediately. Now I don't know if I
believe them, and I don't have to believe him.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well, I think even the police, you know, only the
police knew is because the mental based security there was
a door a jar they had. That door went off
and then they went up to the explore and just
just correct stumbled on and so even the police didn't
know where it was coming from.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
What about you.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Hear these people, they're obsessed with these YouTube videos, and
they swear that there was a YouTube video that had
a helicopter and there were Saudi Arabians or hanging out
of the helicopter or Katarians. I forget exactly which did
you have. Let's start with this. Did you see a
helicopter at all? I'm shooting helicopters, just helicopters.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
I did not. I will say though, that where the
venue is, you are less than a mile from the
big Maverick helicopter company where they do tours of Las
Vegas Strip, right, So they take off from there, they
run the strip, they go up all the old downtown
on Fremont Street, and then they whip around and they

(16:58):
come on. They come back. They were around Allegian the Stadium,
which is where the Las Vegas Raiders play football, and
they go back to the helicopter area. That is not
far from from these site. So if there was a helicopter,
it is quite possible the people on that chopper were
more than likely just getting a nice view of the

(17:19):
Win Hotel or something like that. But I did not
see a helicopter. I don't know that I was I
wasn't exactly looking for them either.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
I think it's Laura Loomer when it started, the whole
helicopter thing. Although several people say credit for it, you know,
they're competing or who had the craziest story.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
There are no shortage of conspiracy theories about it, that's
for sure.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know. What about what about
the police response though? And then when you're when you're
running for your life out of there, and again the
police were tipped off that was going on up on
the thirty third floor up there, But what about on
the ground. Did you notice any kind of police response
or ambulances fired apartment?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Oh yeah, by the time. So by the time I
got out of there, So the shooting was still happening
by the time I escaped the venue, my guess. And
I did not have a stop watch, obviously, but when
I left the venue, my guess is probably seven minutes
into it or so something like that. And when I

(18:23):
got out of there, there were already police blocking off
roads and you could hear sirens from as far as
the ear could hear. But there were police already there,
police cars blocking off streets. They were there very very quickly.
That's one thing I will say is for anyone who says, well, police,
you know, took their time, they absolutely did not. They
were there incredibly quickly for a hectic situation where they

(18:49):
said no idea what was going on either.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, they blocked off the entrance to the two fifteen
down in Green Valley Ranch, right, I lived in Green
Valley Ranch and they had blocked Yeah. Yeah, so that
was oh oh yeah, it was a huge response to Matt.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, I had, and I had. I had actually uber
down to the festival that day. Uh, And so I
didn't have a car, and of course, as far as
I could see, you couldn't there. Roads were blocked off already,
so you couldn't get an uber take get you home.
You couldn't get a taxi cab or take you home.
I was playing a walking home at that point, which
is about ten miles from the venue, and I was
I was, I was determined to And eventually a friend

(19:25):
who was also at the festival called me and said,
where are you. I told him where I was, and
he said, meet me at this bar. So we met
at a bar because we couldn't think of anywhere to
meet at. So we went to this bar met there
and then some other friends who were not at the
festival drove down from the west side of Las Vegas,
picked us up and took us home. But yeah, there
was I mean there were they were blocked. Roads were

(19:47):
blocked off as far as the I could see.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Now, I remember too. One thing that struck me and
then all I'll never forget is the next morning on
Fox five they had stage hands were being interviewed and
they were talking about how the ambulances were not allowed
to enter into the venue and that they were putting
people on those yellow.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Wheel barrels, the wheelbarrows, right, and so did you see that? Yeah, yeah,
so that was what the thing was. Because when a
lot of the emergency services got their ambulances, paramedics, things
like that, bullets were still going on, they were still flying,
and so they wouldn't These people were staged pretty far away.

(20:28):
I mean, I think the main staging area was actually
on the Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana, which is close
but not that close from where this veestival was taking place.
And so people were, you know, there were whether it
was people going to the concert or you know, security

(20:49):
at the concert or whatever it was people were just
kind of doing making do with whatever they had. So
there were people were taking wheelchairs, taking beer carts, taking
the decorative wheelbarrows like the yellow ones, yeah, and putting
victims in it and taking him to you know, the
closest fire, the closest ambulance they could find. In fact,
I know I spoke to as many people over the

(21:09):
years who you know, one woman I know, her husband
got shot fatally and at the time someone quickly put
him in one of those wheelbarrows and took him to
an ambulance. And this woman for three days, had no
idea where her husband was, no clue.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, people up from a distance have no idea the
chaos and yeah, yeah, and even you know, I always
try and tell people that late I think it was
like Thursday of that week, my daughter's school was closed
on because it was a threat at the school of
a second show. Like, people just have no idea, you
know how this whole thing was. Who's your your co
author here, Mary Joe von Tillo. She had a person, yeah,

(21:48):
no tragury in her life.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Right, Yeah, So Mary Joe was there that night as well,
and so Mary Joe, I did not know what that
on October first, twenty seventeen, I should say, but she
was there with her family. She was her husband, Kurt,
her daughter Jessica, and then she was there with her
her sister in law and her niece. So it was
a whole family affair. And they'd go every single year

(22:10):
to this route, anyone festival, and they'd you know, stand
up the same exact place every time. They knew exactly
where they would be, they knew their view, this was,
this was their spot. I was I joked that they
might have had a parking spot there with a sign
that said reserved these people because they were there so
much at the same exact spot. So she was there
with the family and as soon as the since the

(22:31):
shooting starts, Mary Joe turns to look at her husband
to ask, Kurt, you know, are those gun shots? And
she and he was standing to her right and just
barely behind her, and so she turns her head to
look and says, to those gun shots, and there was
no Kurt. Kurt had already been shot and he was
already on the ground, face down out dead immediately, and

(22:56):
Jaysonaladin was still on stage singing at that point. So
there's no way of really proving this. But if Kurt
may have been the first person fatally shot, if he wasn't,
he was certainly among them based on the fact that
al Den was still on stage singing. You know, eventually
Yalden realized what was going on. You know, he's always
he's talked about it in past interviews to saying he

(23:17):
thought it was the crackle in his his innere monitors,
you know, a speaker going out or something. But he eventually,
like you know, ran off stage as well and ran
to his pregnant wife. But you know, he was on
stage when Kurt went down, and Mary, Joe, you know,
the whole family's got down on the ground. When they
realized what was happening, they started doing CPR and Kurb

(23:38):
they rolled him over. First off, his eyes were still open,
and there.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Were his kids. They were right there.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, well his daughter, his son, their son was that
he looked back east. He didn't go that year. He
went every other year. But Jessica, their daughter, was there.
And Jessica was at the time, I believe in her
early thirties, like let's say about thirty one thirty two
at that time. And so when Kurt went down and

(24:08):
Jessica started. They rolled him over and Jessica started doing
chest compressions on him. Mary Joe knew it was it
was futile. She knew he was gone already, but she
wasn't going to tell her daughter to stop. And then
at that point Arana and Dianne, who were Mary Joe's
sister in law and niece, both screamed that they were

(24:31):
shot also. They both were shot in the legs. And
so Jessica stopped doing chest compressions and she actually got
into a purse and pulled out a cell phone chord
and create a tourniquet for her, her cousin or Arania,
who was shot pretty badly. And so she didn't, you know,
made a little tourniquet for her that you know, I

(24:53):
don't know that I saved your life, but I know
it didn't hurt. And they were all, you know, throughout
the whole that whole festival, you know, through all these
years later, and I I've heard so many stories. There
were so many small acts of heroism that took place.
You know, things that you know are never going to
make the news, that you know meantal meant the world
to somebody, whether it's something like that, you know, whether
it's someone stealing a beer cart and putting a victim

(25:14):
on on taking them, whether it was you know, I
had some woman who I remember vividly. She was kind
of really panicking and I just looked at her and
I said breathe, and she met. She found me on
Facebook a week later and told me how much that
meant her, and I said, oh, I did just tell
you to breathe. I didn't do anything heroic. And there

(25:35):
are all these little acts of heroin that happened all
over the place, and so and Mary Joe. So when
that happened, they all got on the ground, you know,
pretty quickly. Once her niece and sister in law were
shot and they were taken in uh and I think
it was they got a beer cart, if I remember,
crupty for them and put in a beer cart and
wheeled away to the ambulances and they went to the

(25:57):
hospital very quickly. Now Mary Joe was on the ground
playing dead, as was Jessica, her daughter, and Jessica's then
husband at the time, and they just kind of thought, well,
this might be our time to go. And people eventually
got up and ran away and moved for safety. As
time went on, bolts are still flying. Some guy who

(26:20):
was who was off duty police officer who was just
there as a guest of the concert, came by and
he said, you guys have to get up. You're the
only ones to live out here, which is what a
thing to hear. And they so they decided, okay, but
Mary Joe said, I'm not leaving Kurt. I'm not leaving
his side. And this guy eventually convinced convinced her along

(26:43):
with Jessica and her daughter convinced her, you know, we're
going to die out here. We have you have grandkids,
you know. This guy said, hey, how about I move
you over here? You know, and I'm making sound very
very lovely, but this was very chaotic at the time.
He said, you know, let's let's move over here. And
there were some bleachers that were kind of for a
VIP area not far from where she was, so he

(27:05):
put her under these bleachers where she could still see
Kurt's body. And so she's watching Kurt and it is
just chaotic at this point, and she's screaming, she's hysterical,
and some person who was near her decided, this woman
is really having a hard time and I'm going to
do a good deed. So he went to go get

(27:28):
Kurt and bring his body to her. The problem was
this person didn't know which person she was looking at,
which body, which corpse she was looking at, and brought
her a different person. And so suddenly this guy says,
here's your husband, and it's the She's suddenly looking in

(27:49):
the face of a different dead man standing in front
of her, being held up in front of her, and
so she was just and she's she is still to
this day haunted by this moment. She found out who
the man eventually was, and the only reason she found
out was because his name was Jack Beaton and Jack

(28:09):
was there with his wife, Laurie, and Laurie had Jack
was shot, you know, somewhat early on also, and Laurie
was on the ground, and at some point she decided,
I need to get out of here and you know,
kind of save my own life. So she started leaving,
then decided, no, I don't want to be without him,
so she turned around and came back into where she

(28:29):
was with Jack. When she got back, Jack was not
there anymore, and so she had this moment of hope
of oh my god, he maybe he wasn't dead. He
must have actually like you know, crawled to safety or
you know, or something like this, and any hope, you know,
any hope, any hope, because he was most certainly not

(28:50):
there where she last left him. And you know, if
he was dead, he'd obviously still be there. So she
was holding onto all kinds of hope. And it wasn't
until you know, it was quite a later where Mary
Joe found out this story of this woman saying, you know,
how can my husband has moved? I don't understand why
he wasn't there. And Mary Joe kind of told her

(29:10):
that he told her what happened, and they had a big,
you know, very emotional conversation about it, and there was
no ill will towards it was just just what happened.
But yeah, Mary Joe was haunted by this moment still
of seeing you know, Jack's you know, when this when
this person who is trying to do a good deed,
I'm going to bring her husband to you, and then
brings a different person to her.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah, just what a story, man, That's just incredible, Just
like one of the little tidbits, and then then this
whole the greatest mask we've had in this country. Now
what about Uh. I remember listening to the police scanners
that night, and it was chaos up and down the
strip because everything the way they were announcing other shooters
at just I am all the way down the South Strip. Yeah,

(29:56):
you know what I mean everywhere. Now, Yeah, did you
get into all that? Because that was chaos.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
It was in fact, when I told you, when I
went to that bar to meet my friend, that was
the first time where I didn't understand the scope of
it yet, but I started realizing kind of what was happening.
And when I went to that bar, they had all
the TVs on, and at that time, there was a
report of a gunman inside New York, New York casino,

(30:21):
and I said, wait, there's something in New York, New York.
And I'm a camera with my friend or a bartender
or somebody said yeah, they're taking over the city. And
so at this point I thought, oh my goodness, I'm
I never thought this would happen. And it turns out
all those were false. But you know, in fact, the
New York, New York went turned out it was actually

(30:42):
a security guard New York York, So no wonder he
had a weapon. But yeah, there was a lot of
those stories that kind of came through, and I mean
it was it's hard to explain lest you were there,
just how you know, how wild this was? This you know,
not just those eleven minutes or of the shooting, but
also that you know, hour afterwards.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, they and then even days afterwards, they was showing
like a video of police entering Hooters, you know, and
saying it was like for me three years earlier, you know,
But just what would make someone do that? I guess
because they don't live there. They don't they haven't been
through it. But what would make someone put up these hoaxes?
You know, like a yeah, just to for what reason?

(31:25):
You know, It's just so crazy.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's all for It's all clickbait, right, it's all for clicks.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
I guess, man, I guess. So, yeah, what are you married?
Did you go home to your wife? What happened?

Speaker 1 (31:36):
At the time? I was actually dating my she's now
my wife. At the time, I was dating my girlfriend
and we were doing long distance and I lived in Vegas.
She lived in San Diego at that point, and she
was actually uh I called her during the shooting, and well,
let me say I didn't call her let me back up.

(31:56):
I had dialed her number and I think it rang
on and I hung up because I realized this isn't
over yet, and I'm not sure I'm gonna make it
out of this obviously still, so I hung up. Now
she called pretty immediately back. She thought I was calling
to oh, maybe it's a song we like from Jason

(32:17):
Aldine and I'm you know, holding my phone up so
she can hear it or something. You've seen this in
all different concerts. She thought I was going to be
that guy, and I answered, and she is very chipper hello,
you know, happy to hear from her boyfriend at a concert.
And I apparently I just told her. I said, you know,
I'm running, I'm running. There was a terrorist attack, and

(32:40):
I know it was not labeled that way, but let's
be really it was, but she, uh, yeah, So I
told her, I said, I will call you when this
is done. I don't know how, I'm how it's gonna end.
And I hung up. And you know, say, my sister
called it this point too, and I remember her saying,
I'm freaking out, and I said, I'm safe right now.
I'll call you when it's over, and I hung up
so and eventually my girlfriend stay from San Diego. She

(33:07):
got on the first flight out from San Diego that
next morning, and she was in my kitchen in Las
Vegas at about six thirty or seven o'clock in the morning,
so not more than nine hours after those the first
bullets started flying. She was in my house and she
in fact, she was a she's a lawyer, and she
was she was a lawyer then too. She'd actually just

(33:28):
called her boss from the airport and said Mark was
involved in the shooting. I'm going to Las Vegas. I
don't know when I'll be back, and she just left
a voicemail boss.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
I can imagine what security was like at the airport
and did she had mentioned it.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
No, she never did. Also, you know, when she was
flying in, so I'm sure flying out was much different.
But I know in terms of Mary Joe, they had,
you know, a week later, but Jessica, her daughter, had
lost her ID in the chaos and everything, so they
had to go through the FBI to get her on

(34:06):
a plane. So she gets through security and things like that.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Wow, Yeah, that happened to me recently too. I had
a suspended license in Arizona, got pulled over and then
I trying to get on a plane back and they
put me you know, when they put those kids in
those cages, they put me over there with the line
with those I was just about to be in the
cages that the kids UH close to all. But now,
what did you cover in your book once again, the

(34:32):
Las Vegas massacre? Uh connection finding Strength through Tragedy after
the American's deadlys mass shooting? Did you cover like what
went on? Because it was chaos that whole week? You know,
it was Yeah, did she get into about that? Because
unless you really lived there, because like I said, the

(34:53):
next day, I didn't bring my kid to school. I
get my kid home from school.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
You know, we yeah, we didn't really get to that.
Because this book is very much based on Mary Joe
Antello's sort of path and kind of not her story,
per stay, but her path, and you know, so it's
really told a lot from it's told someone from her
standpoint of. You know, she had gone to the hostel

(35:18):
and her husband eventually you know, got shot, and she
got out of the venue. She went to the shop
at Canna Hotel, which is certainly no longer there, but
she went there with her daughter, her niece and her
sister in law had already been taken to a hospital,
and so eventually Mary Joe went into shock and she
was taken on the hospital as well, and it wasn't

(35:39):
and she finally, you know, kind of came to a
little bit. And it was that morning at about six
thirty or so when she went back to to Caesar's Palace,
which is where she was staying at that time, and
she still didn't know the scope of this whatsoever. She
had no idea. She didn't know that the bullets were
coming from Mandela Bay, she didn't know there was you know,

(36:00):
how many victims there were. She didn't know any of
this stuff. And it wasn't ntil she got to see
those palace where she started watching the news. And you
know a lot of people they turned off the news
and said, I don't want to watch it. Mary Joe
was the opposite. She wanted She consumed everything. She was
slipping from, you know, every local, national, international TV channel
there was any knew she could read Twitter, Instagram, it

(36:22):
didn't matter. She's going through all of it because she
wanted to see what did I go through? What just
took my husband's life? And so for a while you know,
she didn't know what to do. There was very very
much a I have no idea what I'm supposed to
do here, because you know, you're on vacation, you're not
even home, and my husband's no longer with us, and
his here is his suitcase next to me with all retreats.

(36:47):
And so she called up the police to try to
figure out what would I do next, and they told
her to fill out a missing person's report. She told them,
he's not missing. I know exactly where he is. He's missing.
But you know, it was just so no one knew
what to do, whether even though even the police for
that matter, And eventually they kind of, you know, figured

(37:09):
out the game plan. And she was working with the
coroner's office quite a bit and they went and identified
him officially her husband. I've heard the story a lot.
I heard there's one woman in particular, her husband was
shot and he's taken out in one of those yellow
wheelbarrows you mentioned. He lost his wallet on the way,
and so she had no idea for three days where

(37:29):
he was, and he was he was identified through his
tattoos at the corner's office, through through her. But there
was a lot of this that this one was a
lot of victims of you know, we don't know where
to go, what to do, who to speak to, because
nobody planned for this.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Well and now had I toop it. And they had
to close the corner's office because so many and once
again conspiracy theorists were harassing the corner correct And at
one point they were saying the whole thing was fake
and nobody.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Tell right, yeah, everyone's actors. That was another thing they said, yeah, yeah,
And I said, well, I've never been an actor. I
think I was when I was probably you know, I've taught,
probably played a tree when I was in elementary school
for some school play. But that's about my only acting experience.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Well, people will still be listening to the show and
think you're you're in on it, you know, and I'm
in I'm serious.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
I get those I believe it.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Yeah. No, the books barely came out, and how has
it been received as far as or is it it's
just too new?

Speaker 1 (38:31):
It's it's it's very new, and there's no question about that.
It's very new. But so far, the everything's been very positive.
You know, I know, everything comes in waves where you're
gonna hit with the positivity, and then the and then
the hate. It's going to come after that, and you
don't know what you're talking about, and the conspiracy theorist
will come. I know that's coming, you know, you know,

(38:52):
And as long as they buy the book, I don't
really care, because you know, these conspiracies, they don't they
don't change the fact, you know, they don't. The fact
of the matter is I still had to live through it.
The fact of the matter is Mary Joe still doesn't
have her husband, and there's these seven other families who
don't have a family member because of this night. So
I don't give any of these conspiracy series any kind

(39:13):
of oxygen because it doesn't change the reality of what
were left with.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Eight years later, I remember the most frustrating one for me,
not the helicopter with the Arabs, you know, but the
most frustrating one for me, which, by the way, Wayne
Allen Root that that creep. He actually gave traction to
that one. But the one that drove me nuts was
that the Four Seasons was located at the top of
the Mandalay Bay. That because because the fourth which there's

(39:41):
four Seasons, a totally different hotel, but because they broke
us some hotel rooms and they had some ownership some
rooms at the top of the Manly that the Important
Seasons levitated, you know, and it was like a link
online to some tourist website that had that said that
they you know, it's just up send me that, like
sand Ed, you're wrong the Four Seasons that is at

(40:03):
the top of Mental at Bay. Yeah, when our baby
shower at the Four Seasons, I know where it was.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, I have not. I've not heard that every time
I got to hear a new conspiracy theory there. I mean,
I actually I weirdly love hearing them because they're all
hilarious because they're also just incredibly wrong and they're so
all landish, and I think, Wow, you should probably write
a book with that kind of imagination.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, you know, what about did you include the official report,
the October first mass casualty shooting report from.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, yeah, we yeah, we included that in there, the
number of bullet case scenes and stuff like that. Yeah,
I mean I comb through that. Uh, then that giant
report time and time again. And also it wasn't the
first for this book. That wasn't the first time I've
read that report either, because I had to. You know,
I covered this quite a bit for People Magazine and
Rolling Stone over the years on different things. So this

(40:58):
this is the you know, I don't want to be
known certainly as the trauma guy or the root anyone guy,
but it really has been a big part of my
life for the last several years, you know, through I
don't say no fault of my own. I just happened
to be there, and I believe that I was the
only reporter there when it actually happened. There were two

(41:20):
photographers there that I know of, you know, photo journalists,
but there was I believe I was the only actual
reporter there at that time because there was a media
room behind backstage where you could do interviews with a
bunch of the artists and things like that. But all
those people had left. I was still there, So I'm

(41:42):
not I don't know for sure that I was the
last reporter there, but I can say that I've not
heard in eight years of any other reporter saying they
were there.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Let me ask you now, Mary Joe Tille there, what
was her experience like then? Navigating through the like the
theme moves there. Red Cross was there, uh, the insurance companies,
the FBI. I was interviewing people what were and then
the settlements that was run by Cislac before he was Cislac,

(42:14):
before he was uh right, governor.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
County County Commission's sist Lack at that time.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
You know that's right. They put him in charge of
the money. Now I did all that work out? Did
she have a civil lawsuit? Did? How did she navigate
her way through all this?

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah, she was involved in the lawsuit against MGM. And
also what happened was there was a a official go
fundme that it happened as well, and these gofundmes happened
with a lot of mass casualty situations pretty much almost
all of them really. You know, it's happened with poulsnight Club,
It's happened with you know, Uvalde, Texas, Parkland, a bunch

(42:51):
of these different things. And there's one man who is
kind of the go to guy for established for dispersing
all these funds and managing this fund and doing it
the right way and determining how to divvy it up.
He puts people in different tiers of you're going to
get this much and this much and this much. That
man's name is Jef Dion He's actually featured in this
book as well, there's an entire chapter on him. But

(43:14):
so she was involved with a lot of that stuff.
She was involved in the civil lawsuits, she was involved
in all that. She One thing she has told me, though,
was I had asked her specifically about what has the
FBI told you? And this was I remember asking her
this four and a half years after when I was
the day I met her. I said, what did the

(43:34):
FBI tell you? And she said, we never heard from
the FBI except for when they helped her daughter get
through the airport. Because she didn't have the idea. She said,
we never heard from the FBI. We never heard from
any authorities whatsoever. The only person we ever heard from
who was actually the warmest personality, the person who really

(43:55):
kind of gave us a lot of hope, was the
coroner's office, which I thought was fascinating. She said, they
were the most gentle people in the world of the
corner's office. It wasn't the police, it wasn't the FBI,
it was the coroner's office. Was she she was?

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Was she satisfied with her settlement as far as or
how was that to handle down?

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yeah? She was satisfied. I mean, there's no there's no
price you can put certainly on your husband. And that's
one thing she'd always said, is there's no you know,
there's no price. But you know, I asked her specifically,
do you you know, do you blame you know? And
Mandolai is owned by MGM Corporation, And I said, do
you blame MGM for this? And she said I do,

(44:36):
and her and I differ on that, you know. But
I also didn't lose anybody that was super super close
to me. I had a distant family member who was
fatally shot that night too, but we were, you know,
kind of distant, so the but you know, I don't
really blame MGM for that. I think I blame one
crazy lunatic. But she does. She thinks there could have
been a lot more things done, and she has that

(44:58):
right to believe that. And so she was, you know,
she's very satisfied with how it's gone down. She and
I'm which is completely understandable in fact, for this book.
The cover of this book is, you know, some of
the skyline of Las Vegas, and initially she thought manually

(45:23):
Bay was on the cover, and I had to tell
her I said, no, it's not this one's stratosphere. This
one's when this one Caesar's you know, and uh, and
she felt so much better that Manually Bay was not
on the cover because she really doesn't doesn't she has
a really strong distaste for that place. Now, she actually

(45:46):
loves Vegas, though she has a very a lot of
victims have said, you know, I'll never go to Vegas.
In fact, her kids really at all possible. Mary Joe's
exact opposite. She actually loves coming here because the way
she says it is that's the last place I was
with my husband. So she actually sees it as almost

(46:08):
a pilgrimage in a way to come and you know,
the last place to really kind of be with her
husband or his memory was in Vegas. So she comes
quite a bit. She comes to Vegas, you know, several
times a year, and.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Every year it changes so much from one year, it does.
You don't recognize the place, man, it does. Yeah, I've
never seen any place change so quickly. I even moved
that there in two thousand.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
And Yeah, it's just amazing. She went to the you know,
and then I think it was at say we're in
twenty twenty five, right now. So it was twenty twenty
four where she went to the actual spot and still
on the spot where he was shot. I was actually
with her that day. We went to they opened up
the venue for a bunch of the survivors and the

(46:50):
families and things like that, and she went out there
and stoo on the spot and it was a really
emotional time. And a lot of the victim's families were
there at the same time, so even for me and
I again, I didn't lose anybody, but I went and
you know, stood near where I was also. And it's
one of those things where you're looking up at Mandalay
Bay and you can't help but not look up there

(47:11):
and look to where this came from. But that's an
emotional situation for her. But she loves there. She comes,
she comes here all the time, and she's really you know,
she doesn't hold it against the city at all. She
does hold it against Mandalay Bay or MGM, and she
certainly holds it against that shooter.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Well, Mark Ray and like you said, you've been living
with this eight years. You know you were there in
the scene, but writing this book, wrote other articles for
people in Rolling Stone. What is your conclusion because so
many people say, well, we have no idea what the
motive was, and most people never read the report and
one of one hundred and eighty seven page I got
up on a Patreon for free. By the way, now,
but what conclusion did you come to, Mark Ray?

Speaker 1 (47:51):
You know, I didn't come to a conclusion. I thought
that was kind of important for me to not do that,
because this wasn't a to me, This wasn't a project
about we're going to try to figure out why there's
enough of those articles out there. There's some books out
there about that. In fact, you know, every book about
Blas Vegas, they all come from the stamp, with the
exception of this one. I just put out a think.

(48:12):
It seems that what I could tell, every book came
has come out as from the standpoint of the shooter
or from the standpoint of maybe a first responder, you know,
a firefighter or a nurse or a cop or something
like that. There's nothing that really kind of deals with
the victims. And this is the first to my knowledge
that does. And this isn't a Route ninety one book
per se, although that is the centerpiece of it. It is,

(48:34):
you know, all the things that have happened to Mary
Joe and all the people she's met because of that day,
and all the things that all the things that have
happened and changed the world because of that day, with
all these different people that are highlighted and vignetted in
all the different chapters. So I didn't really think it
was that important to come up with a conclusion of
why this guy did it. We don't mention him in

(48:55):
the book. That's not by accident. I refuse to say
the person's name, refuse to acknowledge him. We so we
didn't say his name, We didn't really say where he's from.
We didn't say anything of his history other than he
was a millionaire high roller. That's the extent of our
discussion about him. So I didn't see it. The way

(49:19):
I thought was, this isn't my job to get into
the psyche of this man who I'd never met, and
there's actually very little reporting on him, and I and
I've and I've done all the research on it for
different stories, and I cannot come up with any kind
of conclusion. Now I have. I have some theories that
I think that do I think certain people knew or

(49:41):
had an inkling that he was going to do something
I do. I think there's people out there who are
still living in the shadows about that. Now. I don't
know that for sure, but that's just that's just a
theory I have. But it's not my job to get
into this guy's mind and figure why he decided, you know,

(50:01):
today's the day to shoot fifty eight people, and you know,
cause chaos and really kind of changed the directory of
the city. You know, to this there's still I mean,
I've been here for twenty years. This was eight years ago.
There's not a day that goes by, right. I don't
see a Vegas strong sign, whether it's on a marquee
of a hotel, whether it's on you know, a sign

(50:22):
at a bar, or whether it's you know, in a
restaurant or someone's T shirt or a Roote ninety one
tattoo or something like this. So this is something we
live with every single day. And you know, whether it's
the shooter, whether it's conspiracy, is nothing changed that fact
that we still live with this every single day, and
Mary Joe lives with this every day, and you know,
she wakes up and you know she has a new

(50:43):
new man in her life. And he's a wonderful, wonderful guy.
But you know, and you know, she still wakes up with,
you know, the side of the bed cold.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
You know, I tell you, Mark, I always it struck
me as far as motives go. Is his lawsuit for
depressions and having been caused depression competing in those poker tournaments,
those slam machine tournaments. You know what I mean, nineteen
hours a day. That can't be healthy for you. And

(51:13):
I can tell you why certain industries in Las Vegas.
You know, I'm not going to mention any particular, but
industry wouldn't want to play that up and would want
to diminish that and go more into the helicopters and Arabs.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Now, yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
But the thing is, what was I going to say?

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Did you receive any kind of pressure from the because
a lot of his tourism is so powerful, man, and
the gaming industry is so powerful, did you receive any
kind of pressure from them to direct your story?

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yet? Lay?

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Now, No, I did not. I was you know when
I wrote the stories Rolling Stone and People Magazine, you know,
I kind of did a bunch for I did a
lot for Rolling Stone. Actually more so for them than people.
But no, I was just kind of going about my business,
doing my thing, and I was and you know, to me,
this is always a story about the victims. This was

(52:16):
never a story about the hotels or the gaming or
anything like that. And it was a Las Vegas story, yes,
but it always still felt like it was a story
of the people involved. And so I was always talking
to the people as opposed to you know, the hierarchy
of Las Vegas. You know, I always reached out to

(52:37):
I reached out to a lot of them for comment
on certain things, and you almost always got the no
comments type of thing. But you know, I never really
I never heard from the convention authority who was you know,
swings a really heavy bat out here, And never heard
from anyone really of that sort of stature. Whether I

(52:58):
will now, we'll see. But they missed the vote. It's
too late.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Now, you'd be surprised. Because they also get to authors
and then they when they tell them not to say
things during interviews after it comes down the book, then
they get to them and get them not to talk
about stuff at interviews. That's what happens. What about Mary
O Tilla, she's doing interviews say it again, she was
Mary Joge. Does she do interviews? Is she going to
promote the book?

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Not? Yeah, She's done a few. So she did. Right
after the shooting, she did a lot of interviews actually,
and that was that was a problem for her children
and the fact to her kids had to actually say
to her, you know, if you keep doing this, you're
going to become the face of the shooting. And you
don't want that, right, And she did not, Mary Jose,
I did not want to be the face of this,
you are correct. And there were a lot of people

(53:42):
who were really angling for any camera they could find
after this. I'm sure you saw some of the same
people over and over again, and a lot of them
actually didn't lose anybody. They were just there. No different
than me really. But she's so she stopped doing a
lot of those. In fact, when I talked who were
four and a half years after the shooting happened, that

(54:03):
was the first interview she'd done in quite a while,
in several years. And so she's done. But since this
book is now out, she's done a couple. Did she worked.
She spoke with recently Shan and Steak, who is a
big NASCAR reporter and does a huge she has a
big podcast and things like that. Shit. Because Mary Joe's husband,

(54:28):
Kurt was a huge NASCAR fan. Mary Joe's boyfriend is
also a huge NASCAR fan, so they had actually ran
into Mary Joe ran into Shannon on the street actually
in Chicago when they were there for a NASCAR race
with her boyfriend Dennis, and so they kind of arranged that.
So she's been doing some promotion for this book as well,

(54:48):
doing interviews.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, I tell you, I remember when you lived there,
and I mean this was the focus of everybody's focus
for for like a month, you know, even longer for
someone like yourself who actually was there. But everyone people
at church, you at the bank to tell her. At
the bank, everybody knew someone who was there, or they
were there, or they worked security at Bellagio, and you know,

(55:12):
so they had us. Everyone had a story, had a
first hand personal experience. So you talked about this stuff
all day long. And I can remember listeners telling me
they saw a YouTube video of a cab driver who
heard gunshots and they were saying, ed, go interview that
cab driver, get the cab. And one guy actually hired

(55:33):
me as a private investigator to verify it that the
cab driver had a cab driver's license, that he had
an actual Las Vegas license to drive a cab to
verify the cabs.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
What a crazy Yeah, you're right, everyone seemed to know someone. Now,
the irony was that based on the ticket sales, in
the zip codes of the ticket sales, because you have
to buy with a credit card. Obviously, the majority of
the people actually from southern California who attended this festival
more so than Vegas. It happened here, but this affected

(56:05):
Southern California every bit as much as it affected Las Vegas.
And also it affected the nationale community very much so too.
In fact, I was speaking with friends two days later
who lived in Nashville, and they said to me, you
would think this would have happened here based on how
this city is feeling right now. And you know, Nashville's

(56:25):
a long ways away from Las Vegas, and they were
feeling it every bit is deeply because it really went
to their court, the country music situation. But yeah, Southern
California was a big, big part of the story. But
you're right, everyone, everyone seemed that in Vegas everyone knew
somebody who was there or you know, was involved in
Mandelet Bay or whatever it was. But yeah, and everyone's

(56:51):
got a story. That's why I would say, you know,
I was there with a bunch of people, bunch of friends,
and all of our stories started the same way, and
they ended all differently because of how we all escaped,
which is completely different. You know. I one of my
best friends was there with the girls. She got shot
in the butt actually, so they took her to it,
and they took her to the Hooters hotel. Uh, And
they banged on the door and they got into one

(57:11):
of the kitchens over there, and they put her on,
you know, one of the tables. So I hope not
use that.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
I think I saw the YouTube video of that. Mark Gray, listen,
thank you so much. When we're out of time, brother,
but thank you so much, man, or what I say it.
Unless you live there, man, you really don't know. And
I see that the further away you get from these things,
the bigger the expert you are from watching That's true,
watching YouTube and looking at pictures. Mark Gray the Las

(57:37):
Vegas massacre connections finding strength through tragedy after America's deadliest
mass shooting. Checked this thing out by Mark Gray. You
can find Mark Gray, by the way, I forgot to
mention it earlier on Twitter and Instagram at the Mark Gray.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
That's right the the marker.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
If they's say the Marker you got the wrong Mark
Gray and you can meet in person. October twenty third
at the Old Red I guess it's like a bookstore
there in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
It's a bar in Vegas. Actually we're going straight for
the bar.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Well, then there you go, man, buy him a drink.
At Cavin said they're gonna have to carry Mark Ray
out of those yellow wheelbarrows. Hey, Mark, thank you so much. Man, Okay,
good night, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
This is great.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Thank you sir,