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On October one, twenty and seventeen, Mary Joe Vontillo's world changed forever. Her husband Kurt was killed in the Route ninety one Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest in US history in just eleven minutes, 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 nine to eleven firefighter who turned his pain into kindness, to a victim's rights attorney who changed national law, to fellow widows and survivors who refused to give up. Mary Joe 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 Marry Joe's courage to share her story, this book captures the enduring impact of Route ninety one and the human strength that rises after unimaginable loss. The book that were featuring this evening is them The Las Vegas Massacre Connections, Finding Strength through Tragedy after America's deadliest mass shooting with my special guest, journalist and author, Mark Gray. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview, Mark Gray.
Hewy you doing, Dan, Thanks for having me on.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book, The Las Vegas Massacre Connections.
Thank you so much. It was a labor of love a long time coming.
You right that you've been published probably thousands of times via your work and entertainment journalism, writing for People Magazine, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and many others. Tell us about the origins of this book project and your relationship you developed with Mary Joe von Tilo.
Yeah, so it all started, I was, I guess I could start from even prior to that was in twenty seventeen, I was hired by Rolling Stone to cover the Root ninety.
One Harvest Festival.
It was a three day festival, and the initial story was supposed to be the ten best things I saw this weekend at Route ninety one, and Jason Alden was the last act of the last day, so nine of those items were written. Of the ten best things I saw, of course, one space was being earmarked for a Jason Alden set, and of course the story drastically changed when we were you know, all twenty two thousands were shot at. So I went home that night and I didn't really
know what I was supposed to do. There was no handbook for this kind of thing, and so I just decided to write my personal experience, which I rarely have ever done. I'm usually a pretty prototypical reporter, you know, you let the sources do the talking and things like that, and then let the interviews do the talking. But for this particular thing, I just did it from perspective and I sent it in. I didn't really know if it was any good or not.
It was what. It was, very very raw, and it took off like a rocket ship. So did that.
About four and a half years later, I was chatting with my editor at Rolling Stone and he had said, it's the five year anniversary coming up of Route ninety one. We want you to go out there and talk to a bunch of these victims and these survivors. Every single year, there was one. It sounds kind of crazy, but there's one Angels baseball game in Anaheim, California. There's one Angels game that a bunch of survivors go to, and they
sent me out there. I was just tailgating basically with a bunch of these survivors and chatting and getting their stories.
I ended up sitting right behind a woman named Mary Joe.
Vontillo at the actual baseball game, who had no interest in speaking to me whatsoever. Initially, Thankfully, baseball is a very long game, and I wore her down, I think, is what happened, and I started speaking to her about her experience. Fast forward a year later and she calls me out of the blue and she says, Hey, you know, I read that story you wrote in Rolling Stone on the Fiber anniversary. I had this idea for a book, and I really want to talk to you about it.
So I flew to her home in at the time southern California and we just got to talk and we spent all day with each other, and the dialogue continued for, you know, another two years or so between her and some of.
These other victims. And that's kind of where it all started.
So it's not really a it's not a Root ninety one book per se, but that is sort of the centerpiece of it. That's where it all sort of begins, is on October one, twenty seventeen, with the murder of her husband.
You start this book with the von Tillo family and their annual pilgrimage to the Root ninety one Harvest Festival. Tell us a little bit about what you found out about the family and the importance of this Route ninety one Harvest Festival.
Yeah, the festival was on its fourth year when the shooting happened in twenty seventeen, and the Vontilla family had come every single year. Mom and Dad, Mary, Joe, and Kurt lived in at the time in Cameron Park, which is near Sacramento, California. Their son at the time lived in lives in South Carolina now, but he lived in the East Coast.
Daughter lived in the East Coast as well.
She lived in Connecticut at that point, and so they would all kind of come together in Vegas as a family and meet there. Just something they always look forward to every single year. They would book their tickets pretty much, you know, after the one would end that they would book for the next year already, and it was something they look forward to every single year. And they had their same exact spot they would stand in every single year.
They knew exactly where they were going.
They you know, they was sometimes they would their daughter might meet them a couple hours later. You knew exactly where to go because again, these people were they were diehards for this festival, and so they would go every single year, and that was it became an important pilgrimage for them because it almost became in a way a family reunion because just because of the distance that they all had as far as their living arrangements in their situations.
Now you were at this festival as well. But now you've got the account for von Tillo from Mary Joe, tell us a little bit about just preceding this concert, what the family did and what happens at the concert. Like you say, at the fourth song of this performer named al Dean, Sure, the.
Family had like I said that they came, you know, a few days before the festival, or a day before the actual festival started as a three day festival again, and they came and did their Vegas thing, you know, they they drank, they gambled. Kurt was a big, big, big beer drink or he loved his cores light. And in the lead up that day, it was a Sunday, they just decided, you know, to do a typical fall sun activity.
So they woke up a little bit hungover, certainly from.
The night's activities and went the sports book, gambled on a bunch of football games and things like that, and they all they all won actually that day. They they've all been very quick to telling me they won their bets that day. So eventually, you know, around five or so, they headed out to the Las Vegas Village, which was the location of the concert, and that was on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, right across from
Mandalay Bay. So Mandalay Bay is on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard, more commonly known as the Strip, and the Las Vegas Village was on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard. So they went there in the you know, around you know, five o'clock or so five thirty. I think the concert started with you know, a lot of the smaller acts, of course, start earlier in the day, and they worked their way up I remember correctly. I believe the concert started around three thirty or four o'clock.
So they were there for certainly the good majority of the day. So as the night goes on, the Montilla family was hanging out. They would typically hang out on the west side of the concert venue, you know, probably around twenty yards from.
The stage or so.
Every now and again they'd work their way up get closer. And this is one of those festivals where you could do that. This wasn't like a Coachella situation where you're packed in like sardines. Now, this festival got very very busy. Certainly it was twenty two thousand people, but you could move around, and so sometimes they'd move close, sometimes they move back, but they kind of really settled into their spot more often than not, which would say about twenty
yards from the stage on the west side. It's pretty close to the west side VIP area. There was a kind of a bunch of risers over there, so they were there. They'd planned to leave early that next morning at the six am flight. Mary Joe knew this was never going to happen, but Kurt was adamant that we're gonna get on that flight. Of course, you know, probably around eight o'clock that night or so, Kurt is having a good time, The whole family's having a good time, and Kurt says, change our flights.
We're not leaving at six.
Mary Joe was, of course, she was a little bit annoyed because she said, Kurt, this always happens.
I knew this is gonna happen. We should have booked that later flight anyway.
So she's on her phone changing their Southwest flight from Las Vegas back to Sacramento, you know, and they get that handled and so then around you know, ten o'clock rolls around, and were waiting for Jason Aldeine to come on, or he's actually he went on right before ten o'clock, but you know, waiting around waiting for Alden to come on. He finally gets on stage, performs a couple of songs,
and all was well, everything was great. He was you know, he'd played I believe the first Route ninety one festival in year one, so everyone kind of had an idea of what they were gonna get with him, and he's a great performer. They were there and by the fourth song, you know, probably about twenty or thirty seconds into that fourth song, there are three pops you know, pop pop pop, and no one thought much about it, you know, myself, I was there. I thought it was I thought someone
brought fireworks into the concert venue. And I kind of thought to myself, what kind of jerk brings fireworks into a concert?
You know.
Now, there was a woman who was probably twenty five feet to my left and I did not know her, but she started shrieking, just screaming, and I think she was hit. Now again, I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe a bottle rocket hitter or something like that. So there were three pops and then a pause. There were three pops again, and then another pause, and then that's when the bombardment of bullets started happening. So, you know, I retreated back to, you know, the area where I
felt was safe. Now marry Joe again, who I did not know at that point in time. They were on the opposite side of the venue that I was. I was towards the east side. They were on the west side. There's no way of knowing this, but Curvontillo may have been the first person fatally shot. If he wasn't, he was certainly among them. They know this because al Den was still on stage singing when Kurt went down, so they were there. You know, Kurt gets you know, gets shot.
He got shot in the collarbone, and then the bullet proceeded directly to his heart and he was dead instantly. He was down, based down on the ground.
Turned.
In fact, Mary Joe was standing there. She heard these popping noises. She turned to look at Kurt to ask, you know, is that are those gunshots?
Or what is that?
And there was no Kurt when she turned around, because he was already on the ground. So it's pretty devastating obviously to think about, and for her certainly, And so they knew immediately that was gunn fire. They the whole family got on the ground with Kurt, rolled him over. His eyes were still open. He certainly wasn't breathing anymore, and they could see blood already starting to trickle out
from his body. And this was so early on in the shooting lasted eleven minutes, so you know, for you know, ten minutes and let's call it thirty five seconds or so. You know, they know this man is gone, and they are just kind of trying to fight for their lives and dodge bullets like the rest of us, while also tending to you know, her fallen husband and Jessica's fallen father and all this kind of thing.
Not only was Kurt shot, that Kurt's sister was shot as well.
Correct, Yeah, Kurt's sister and Kurt's niece, they were both shot. One was shot in the ankle or they both had lower body injuries and both survived. They both went into they both got transported really quickly. So in the chaos of all this, what was happening was people were very much fending for themselves.
Among the chaos of this thing. People were taking you know, wheelchairs, people were taking beer carts to transport victims. There were there was a a merchandise area towards the back of this venue, and there were decorative wheelbarrows that had been set up just to sort of showcase a bunch of the merchandise. People were taking the wheelbarrows and putting people in wheelbarrows and taking them, you know, out of the venue.
To say to say, for places, and so Dianne and Arana, the niece, and the sister in law, Kurt sister, Mary Joe's sister in law.
They were taken really quickly out now, But.
When they were on the ground nursing their injuries, Jessica, who is Kurt and Mary Joe's daughter, pull a cell phone cord out of her purse and create a tourniquet for Arania. So there were little acts of heroism that happened all over the place that night, that being certainly one of them. You know, something as simple as you know, telling someone stand over here, or you know, I remember specifically telling one woman to breathe, and she found me on Facebook a few about a week or so later
and told me how much that meant to her. And I said, I didn't do anything. All I told you was to breathe. But there were things like that that really meant a lot to certain people. And Jessica was certainly one of those people who they created tourniquet. And I don't know, she certainly saved her, you know, her cousin's life, but certainly didn't hurt that's for sure.
You have a dramatic and very vivid scene though that Mary Jove does not want to leave Kurt on that asphalt, but she's convinced that at least she should move and she could still see Kurt. Now, somebody thinking that was a great idea, thought, maybe I'll drag this husband to their family so that they could see him. And meanwhile, maybe you can tell us why this was such a bad idea.
Yeah, Mary Joe still, she's still to this day haunted by that moment. What happened was Kurt was down, and you know, we're in the midst of the shooting, and the whole family is on the ground and they they thought, like I thought also, that there were multiple gunmen and they were all in the festival. None of us knew this person was at Mandela at Bay across the street. But the bullets are coming, and these this family decides our best best chance right now is survival, is to play dead.
So they did.
They just played dead, and they were just on the ground, staying for a very long time, and bullets are hitting the pavement all around them. Mary Joe still speaks about there's a swath of kind of fake grass of fake turf there, and she said she could still feel the grass hitting her legs from the bullets hitting the grass and bouncing up onto her. But so she was there and everyone kept saying, Okay, we got a move, we gotta move, we gotta move. She kept saying, I'm not leaving.
I'm not leaving Kurt. I'm not going to Eventually, an off duty police officer runs out to her, and this guy was there just attending the concert. He runs up to her and he said, you're the only ones alive still out here. You have to move or else you're going to be shot and you're going to die as well.
She refused to move.
He finally convinced her to move just a little bit to the west and under a couple of bleachers for some sort of protection. And in that way she was protected, but she could still see Kurt, and that was her very important to her, was I still want to be able to see my husband.
And she refused to do these. She refused to not.
She had to see him, It just wasn't that wasn't up for debate, and so she did so. Stefani moved to this area where she could see the husband and get a little protection, and she was hysterical, and someone decided I'm going to help this woman out, and I'm going to bring her husband to her. So this person, who Mary Joe does not know, goes out and brings this man to her and says, you know, basically a corpse.
Essentially brings this corpse to her and says, here you go. Now, this man brought to Mary Joe was not her husband. So here she was looking another dead man, not her husband, in the eye, and she is haunted by this moment. She didn't know who it was. She later found out who it was. And there's a side story of this man. His wife survived. They were there celebrating their wedding anniversary. They were from the East Coast as well. They were
there celebrating the anniversary. This woman, realizing that her husband was gone, left the venue in the midst of the shooting and then decided, I need to go back for him. So she came back and her husband wasn't there, and she didn't know why, And of course she immediately got hopeful, thinking maybe he crawled, you know, maybe he wasn't dead, and maybe he crawled the safety because he's definitely not
where he was laying down a minute ago. Couldn't figure it out, and then it turned out, of course he was dead, and for weeks she had no idea how her husband moved. And finally Mary Joe got kind of information about this woman and her confusion, and Mary Joe reached out to her and told her this is why he was moved, you know, through no fault of her own.
But you know you had two grieving widows here. You know, Mary Joe's certainly trying to trying to see her husband and sees someone else, and this other woman over here goes back to her husband who's not there, and then has this mean can you imagine this moment of hope where oh my god, he must have made it out and it turns out he didn't, and find out why because someone actually moved the body.
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you say they marry Joe and her family. Mary Joe's in shock when she's taken to the hospital, so she's touch and go in a lot of ways. But later they the whole family watches television, watches the news coverage on the various television stations. But then they look to themselves and marry Joe inside to say, what do we do next? They had no practical experience whatsoever.
Yeah, no idea. They had no idea. You know.
Number one, they weren't they were on vacation. They weren't home. You know, what do you do when you're on vacation your husband is murdery or just even dies for that matter, even of natural causes. Let's say this certainly was not
natural causes. They didn't know what to do. And you're right, they you know, when they went to the hospital, you know, they had to leave Kurt eventually, and Mary Joe went to the Tropic Cana Hotel, which is no longer there, but they moved her down there into the base of the Tropic Hana with her. Her daughter was there, at which point her niece and sister in law had already been transported to a local hospital. And so they're all,
you know, she's there with her daughter. They're making their phone calls, they're trying to figure out what's going on, and Mary Joe is in shock, so much so that she actually gets transported to the hospital as well. And they had called family members and very close friends to tell them kind of what had happened. And they see, know Kurt's gone. Mary Joe is certainly alive, but she's not doing well understandably, and.
So yeah, they go to the hospital. Everything.
They kind of settle down a little bit and eventually make their way to Caesar's Palace, which is where they were staying. They got to Caesar's around seven in the morning. They went to their hotel room, and that was the first time they found out they realized the scope of this. It was also the first time they found out the shooting was coming from Mandalay Bay. They had up until then they assumed people were on the ground, which of
course only fuels the conspiracy theories. But that was where they found out everything and where a lot of victims who have spoken to said they wanted to avoid everything. Mary Joe was the exact opposite. She wanted to know everything. She was consumed by it watching. She was, you know, flipping through every news station she could imagine, you know, local news, national news, international news, you know, Twitter, every kind of sort of social media she could think of.
She was looking at it because she really wanted to find out what happened, what was I just a part of and what took my husband from me? And then what's the next step on top of that, because there was they just didn't know what to do. And Mary Joe had called the police and said, explain what had happened, and they told her to file a missing person's report. Her response was, well, he's not missing. I know where he is.
You know, I know exactly where he is. He's not missing, So what do we do now?
And so they end up going to the Convention Center in Las Vegas, which is they would very quickly turned into an area where all the the all the victims and survivors went to kind of identify, you know, loved ones and maybe pick up loss and found items and things like that. Eventually they kind of figured out how to manage the situation, and they found Kurt in the
coroner's office. They found him there. She was Mary Joe was on the phone with the corner's office frequently, very very frequently, and developed a relationship actually with the Las Vegas corner, the Clark County corner. And her whole thing was, she said, you know, I don't want him out there in the baking sun, just his body laying there on
this you know, dark pavement in the baking sun. Is there a way to you know, where is he in the corner assured her and said, okay, what happened was around three or four in the morning, they had a refrigerated truck came out and picked up all the bodies. So they said, he's he was not his He's not out there now, he's been long gone. He's in our facility. And the irony is Kurt was a trucker and he
actually drove refrigerated trucks as well towards the end. So Mary Joe kind of thought it was rather fitting that he went out, you know, the way he went out was in a refrigerated truck, which is what he loved.
He was a trucker.
He loved the trucking industry. So in her eyes, he was kind of fitting. It was sort of the perfect way to go. If there was any perfect way to go, that was the one for him.
You're right that trying to move forward, she was invited. Mary Joe was invited to attend the Country Music Awards in Nashville and the Breeders Cup in Kentucky, and she was also asked to speak at conventions, including one in Florida for victims of crime. Tell Us about this evolving work that she began doing.
Yeah, Mary Joe, you know, this kind of goes back to very similar to when she was in Las Vegas in the hotel room, not knowing what to do. Once she got home, she still didn't know what to do.
You know.
Her you know, she had she was a very prominent she had a very prominent job with Bank of America. But she also her life was devoted to her husband and her kids. And so she got home and everything was just she was so lonely. Now her daughter stayed with her for quite a while, but eventually, you know, her daughter had her own children, had children of her own, or she had to go home to the East Coast. And so Mary Joe just didn't want to sit around and there was no she didn't know the right way
or the wrong way to do anything. So she just decided, I'm going to leave. So she started traveling a lot and going through these different things, and she was invited, like you say, to the Country Musical War, and they did that particularly year, they did a big tribute to all the fifty eight victims of the shooting, and so she was there. A bunch of the families of the other fifty eight were also there, which is where she connected with Tony Burditis, who was also featured in this book.
And then she got invited to you know, some of these other things like say the Breeders' Cup in the in the Seminar for mass Victims for mass violence, and so that was sort of the beginning of her healing journey, was leaving and speaking to other people who have experienced sort of shared trauma. And she did this for quite a while. You know, her I spoke with her children quite a bit about this, and they said, you know, this is not how we would do it, but that's
how she did it. And you know, there Kurt would have wanted her to continue living her life. That was what they've all said, and they all maintained that, and that's kind of what she did. And she did that for quite a while, and that was kind of where this book started in some ways, because that's where she met a lot of these people.
Was on these travels.
She met Tommy maher doing this, She met Tony Burditis doing this, you know, and in terms, she met Dean Green doing this as some of these others. She met Lindsay Lawler when she was in Nashville for the CMA Awards. So it was very much kind of the beginning of her journey, her post Kurt life.
You mentioned Tommy Mayer and September eleventh, two thousand and one and his sorry introduction into activism. He was a sanitation worker and he heard a loud low and noise at that September eleventh, and a fellow firefighter. He found out much later childhood friend had perished in the attack, which propelled them into activism. Tell us what that Tommy Mayer's activism manifests itself into.
Yeah, So Tommy was he's, like say, a sanitation worker, and he was also a fire commissioner, a volunteer fire commissioner at the time in Long Island. He had a childhood friend named Joe Hunter, and Joe was a just a real badass of a firefighter and he was he went to you know, on nine to eleven, he went to the towers and you know, he was in there when the towers fell and they never found him. They
found his helmet eventually. Tommy was just obviously heartbroken. This was his childhood friend and adult friend also, and you know, Tommy went down there, he was helping during the covery efforts. He was there when George Bush did his famous speech in the Bullhorn, and he would always think about Joe Hunter and he wanted to find a way to honor Joe, but he could never figure out how. Twenty years later,
you know, after Vegas happens, Tommy had an epiphany. And Tommy was he had he was not a Vegas guy necessarily, he lived in New York. He'd had you know, he had no sort of you know, strong feelings towards Vegas or negative feelings either way, and he had an epiphany.
It's like, I'm going to.
Go to I'm going to go to the hometown of every victim of Las Vegas and do a random act of kindness in their name on my own dime. And that's gonna be my way of honoring Joe as well. So at the time, Tommy had a van. He still has that same van. He calls her Bessie, and he said, I'm gonna take Bessie around all the hometowns.
Are these places, he told his wife.
His wife thought he was crazy, but she supported him, and he just decided to a few weeks later, he got a gun in the van, drove to Pennsylvania, went to his first first stop, and he eventually started going to these different hometowns and he'd learn about the victims and what they were, what their interests were, and he if he if let's say they were into coffee, for instance, he'd go to Starbucks and he would go buy the
next twenty people their coffee. But he always made notes as well, and the note was, you know, this coffee or this bicycle or whatever it is, is brought to you by and he'd say the victim's name, a victim of the Route ninety one shooting in Las Vegas. So he'd always give you he'd make these little cards, little pieces of paper and give him to everyone who received his gifts, so they knew that this is why this is happening. And he eventually worked his way through the
country and ended up in Vegas. Certainly after that he really kind of found his calling and started doing it for a lot of the other mass incidents in the United States. You know, he went to Pittsburgh after the synagogue shooting, he went to El Paso after that shooting at the Walmart, but all around the country doing this kind of stuff ever since Vegas.
You write that.
In April two thousand and eight, Mary Joe heard through a cousin that to somebody was using Kurt's photo and doing these random acts of kindness. So eventually she connected with him and within ten minutes felt that he was a genuine person and was honorable in his intentions.
Yeah, she wasn't really sure what was going on because she had heard this, and that was one of Tommy's things was Tommy never contacted the family because he didn't He wasn't in it for the glory, he wasn't in it for the pat on the back. He just wanted to do it because he felt like it was the right thing to do, and so he and eventually when he was going to some of these towns, people would figure out after a while, they figure out who he
was and what he was doing. And Mary Joe found out through her cousin, you know, this guy is coming around and he's using Kurt's name and photo for these things. And Mary Joe immediately thought, you know, this guy must be a scam artist of some kind, and what does
he want. He's looking for money because she had gotten hit up a lot by these scam artists who were you know, you know, Kurt was you know, people would call her and say, Kurt was investing in this company, we just need the last thirty thousand dollars or something like that. And she always knew this is all scam and in Tommy's case, she thought this might be just another scam artist, but there was something about him that was different, and she kind of thought, maybe this guy's
legit and he just has a good heart. So she was going to be in the East Coast. Tommy lives in New York. She was going to be in the East Coast, and she decided, let's just meet this guy. So she reached out to him and they met in Central Park at a little restaurant there, and or not Si to Park, one of the parts of New York, at a restaurant there, and within ten minutes she realized this guy's legit, and he's everything that.
We wish the world was.
This guy who is not in it for the glory. He just ready to do the right thing and honor his buddy. They've become fierce friends to this day. In fact, we're recording this on October eighth, eighth anniversary of the October for shooting. Was just a week ago to the day, and Tommy Marr came out to Las Vegas and met up with Mary Joe just last week.
You also say that in twenty nineteen, Mary Joe met Dion Green his father, Derek Fudge, and they had went out at night and a mask them and opened fire and killed them. So she was hesitant to meet Dion Green, but she did meet with him and it was a successful relationship developed, isn't it.
Yeah, Deon Green was. He's a fascinating story too. Dion Green was a He was a former drug dealer, he makes no bones about that. And he was in prison. He went to prison for several years for he was arrested on rico charges, which is you know what they usually get the mobsters for. But you know, he and he reformed and all that kind of thing, and he got out, got out of prison, and he was just living his life, doing his thing and turned his life around.
And it was on Memorial Day of twenty nineteen he was in his home and a tornado came through Dayton, Ohio and just really tore his home to shreds, to the point that it was almost unlivable, and to the point that it later did become unlivable. Dion was really his life was kind of almost in shambles in a way literally because of this home. And he'd spent you know, several weeks just trying to clean up and clean up and clean up. And he finally decided, I need a
day off from this life. And so he called his dad, Derek Fudge, and he said, Dad, let's go. Do you want to go drinks tonight in the Organ district in Dayton, Ohio. It's a very popular district out there, you know, restaurants and bars and coffee shops and things like that. It's kind of where the area you go if you want to, you know, have some drinks in the evening in Dayton, Ohio. So he went out there, you know, really just kind of take his mind off of the tornado that had
essentially leveled his house. And there with his dad there leaving, they're actually standing outside the bar just waiting for his sister to see if she's gonna come out or not, or if she wants to stay. And next thing you know, a gunman comes around the corner and starts shooting people, and Derek Fudge is one of the people's shop that night, he actually died in Dion's arms. And so Dion was a you know, within I think it was about eleven weeks.
He lost his home to a tornado and his father to a mass shooting, all in that in that three month span. So Dion had actually heard of Tommy Maher and so Tommy, and so he reached out to Tommy and so I'd like to meet you. And Tommy was, you know, passing through it, because again this has become his life, was these you know, helping out people in
these mass casualty incidents. And so Mary Joe at the time had been traveling with Tommy because again she just didn't know what to do or how to act, and so she just went around and Tommy invited her on some of these trips, so she did so when they were in Dayton, Ohio, Tommy had said, I want you to meet this I got to meet this guy, Dion.
I want you to meet him. Now.
Mary Joe said, I have nothing in common with this guy. She said, you know, I'm you know, I'm in my fifties. This kid is in his you know, late twenties. He's I'm a I'm a white woman from California. He's a black kid from Middle America, Ohio. You know, I'm a conservative, he's a liberal. We have nothing in common. And she said, I don't really want to meet with him, not that I'm sure he's a fine human being, but we have nothing in common. Tommy convinced her and said, listen, just
meet with him for a second. If you don't want to talk anymore, just say, just just use the restroom and just don't come back, you know, the.
Old Irish goodbye as they call it. She was planning on.
She was very much planning on getting up and using the restroom and not coming back. And Tommy just sat back and watched as these two mets for the next you know, hour and a half two hours, there was not a break in the conversation. Mary Joe and Dion related very quickly through again, shared trauma in a lot
of ways. Mary Joe at this point had been through a lot of what Dion was experiencing with, you know, scam artists coming around looking for money, family members coming around, you know, long lost family members looking for money, who hasn't spoken to in you know, decades. Mary Joe went through the same thing, and so she was able to sort of help guide Dion through you know, this initial the days after the initial shooting, essentially so and they became fast friends.
To this day.
They still check on each other. They send Christmas cards to each other, the whole, the whole gambit.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. One very very fascinating part of this story is that when you talk about Bessie, this vehicle, this fifteen passenger vehicle that they used on these what would become the Honor Network, on these Honor Network trips, one day he felt with the mounting bills, the donations really
weren't sufficient to cover all of their expenses whatsoever. He said, he did something unusual, but he prayed before he went into the casino, tell us about this very interesting one hundred dollars bet.
Yeah, So Tommy he was, you know, the money was drying up. Like I said, it was very much drying up. And because he was doing this all in his own dime. Now he had created a nonprofit. But you know, like many nonprofits, there wasn't a huge influx of cash coming out at that time. And so Tommy had decided him and a bunch of firefighters decided to go to Atlantic City to honor another firefighter who had died on the line of duty just recently at that point. So it
wasn't Joe Hunter. It was a different person altogether. But they decided, we're gonna go to Atlantic City and honor this guy. So they were there just planning on going for the weekend. It was Tommy's wife's birthday, actually, and she was more than happy to let him leave. He said, I think the birthday gift was space at that point. So Tommy went to Atlantic City with his buddies and he just wanted to smoke a cigar, that's all he wanted.
He was, you know, they'd done their gambling. He was, you know, pretty much broke broken even for the most part throughout the day of gambling and you know, having a couple of cocktails and things like that, and he just really wanted a cigar. But he at that particular causino, you couldn't smoke anywhere. He knew, however, that you could smoke cigars in the high limit area. So he said, I'm gonna go there just so I can light up a cigar.
That's it. He sat down at a Wheel.
Of Fortune machine you know, lit up his little stogy there and decided, you know, I was gonna put a hundred bucks in, just because I'm sitting here taking up space in the high limit area. He put the hundred bucks in, you know, hit the button and nothing happened. Hitting the button, nothing happened. And then by the third spin he hits and the machine starts screaming, and he, you know, he's looking at it. He doesn't have his glasses on, and he knows he's won some money, but
he doesn't really know how much. And he's excited because you know, the machine is talking to him obviously, and he's looking up and he thinks he's one, you know, you know, a couple of thousand bucks. He's not sure, but he's happy's certainly about the couple thousand dollars. And another guy comes behind him because he of course here's the machine going as well.
This is a random person.
That random guy walks up and he's looking on the machine, looks look at the look at the looks at Tommy looks at the reels and says, no, you didn't. You didn't win a couple of thousand, you went over a million dollars. So this man, he hit. He hit a will of fortune. I don't say, I guess a jackpot. Yeah, I was gonna say lottery. It's not the lottery.
But he won. He won the jackpot and the will of fortune for over a million bucks.
What a what a boon for this guy who was, you know, doing all these things at the goodness of his heart and going broke doing it to suddenly, you know, have just this influx of money. Now he's not touched that money to this day. It's uh, he's used it for his kid's education. That's going into a fund for all them. Yeah, in fact, they still He called and he called his wife. I think this was around midnight, one o'clock or so East Coast time when this happened.
And he called his wife, Cindy, and she was asleep, and she woke up very annoyed, wondering why Tommy was calling her, and of course she kind of thought, Tommy's probably drunk or something like this and calling me. And you know, Tommy can barely speak because he's so excited, and he says, you know, you'll never guess what happened. I just you know, I just one, you know, just hit the jackpop and she says, Tommy, you don't know what you're talking about. You know how much of you
had to drink. You know, you're a you know, this is this, This can't be right. So he, uh, he says, FaceTime me so I can see. So Tommy hangs up facetimes. His wife shows the machine and sure enough it's legit. And at that point a bunch of the casino workers are coming by to of course protect Tommy, and they make him fill out the paperwork for the irs and things like that because he did indeed win. You know what, it's an incredible silver lining for someone like that.
Absolutely, that's an amusing story. But let's get to a very important person in this story, Jeff Dion and his sister, Paulette Dion. She's at the She was attending the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. She had a degree in communications, but she wound up working sort of a managerial position at Arby's Restaurant and they wanted her to relocate to Atlanta. Tell us what happens when she moves into an apartment and the laundry room. April seventeenth, nineteen eighty two.
Yeah, so she moved to like say, she moved to Atlanta's, a suburb of Atlanta, and to work in an Rby's.
And she really she liked the job. She was really on the fast track there.
And it was a one of those apartment buildings where the apartments themselves didn't have their own washer and dryer. So he went down to a laundry mat. It was inside the building, but it was downstairs. So Paultte went down there one day to do her laundry, and there was a room, kind of a storage room, off to the side, and she saw that there was a man in there. Now, typically this storage room is always locked and closed and you didn't really notice it. But on
this particular day, she sees a man in there. And the man looked really just unkempt. He had, you know, dirty, dirty close and crooked teeth and things like this, and you know, certainly hadn't seen a shower in a long time. She you know, told the guy, hey, you know, you're not supposed to be here. He didn't really say anything to her, and she didn't really follow up. She just kind of told him that and went about her business.
And she put her laundry into the machine and went back to her apartment, you know, of course about you know, forty five minutes later, she goes back down to check on her laundry, and she is hoping that the man is gone.
And she gets down there. The man is not gone. She's also the only one down there.
Very quickly, this gentleman attacks her eventually kills her, he you know, and then he he carved the He also took out a little hit a pocket knife. After he killed her, he pulled his pocket knife out and carved the date into her body.
Wow.
And then he also, you know, not to get too graphic, but he took his pants off and then ejaculated on her as well. And then he just left the left the building, went into the night. It wasn't until a a neighbor found her found Paulat's body down there a little bit later and called the cops and all that.
Kind of thing. And so Jeff d On the time.
Was just a teenager and he, you know, he was actually working at an Italian a church festival, I think it was an Italian festival sponsored by the church at the time, when his father came through and said, I had bad news and told him about his sister.
So Jeff was just distraught, like the entire family was. I mean, he adored his older.
Sister and he kind of was trying to figure out as much as he could about the situation. His parents were very much trying to shield him from the facts of the case because they are pretty gruesome, but Jeff was adamant about finding out as much as he could, and which was again not there was not much info to go on. So he started, you know, not cold calling, but he would send letters to the police department, so cold cold lettering, if you will, the police department, trying
to ask for info, and he wasn't getting anything. And in his mind he said, you know, you know, I wasn't stabbed or you know, or assaulted, but I'm a victim too. My entire family, we're all victims of this. And so he decided to because of that moment, that inspired him to basically become a victim's rights lawyer, and he still does that to this day. All all spurned by this. And then it turned out, you know, as time went on, they couldn't, you know, they couldn't figure.
Out who did this to Paul Atte.
Eventually, however, and arrest was made Jeff was got picked up from school. His mother picked him up from school on his way to an orthodonist appointment, and she broke the news to him in the car and said, hey, you know, they found Paulett's killer and you'll never guess who it is.
Now. Jeff was terrified at this statement because he thought, please, don't tell me. It's somebody that I know. And it wasn't.
But Jeff had heard of the person and what it was was his mother said it was Tool, and he thought for a second, whose tool?
Otis? Tool? Otis? Tool was at the time.
A notorious serial killer who was most known for killing Adam Walsh, the son of John Walsh from America's Most Wanted Yes. Jeff grew up in Hollywood, Florida, which is where Adam was taken from that mall. Jeff remembers riding his bike around constantly, you know, the teenager, seeing you know, missing posters of little Adam Walsh all over the place. So he just never would have guessed that the same person who you know took Adam Walsh's life also took a life of his sister.
You're right that his sister had a degree in communications, but she had written something very profound, and he reread this. At some point she wrote that everyone has the right to dream, everyone has the duty to aid mankind, and everyone has the opportunity to change the world. I think these words are part of the inspiration for Jeff Dionna and his work as an attorney very much.
And he was he was in school, and his sister was always just a whiz when it came to her words, much more better than certainly I am, that's for sure. But she was wonderful at debating, and so Jeff really it's not that he wanted to follow in her footsteps, but he certainly admired what she did.
And so he took this class.
And there was one notorious professor or teacher at that point at at.
The high school.
And and the kind of the the big project every year was this, you had to come up with the teacher would give you a topic and you had to do this speech about it, essentially for the whole class. And that and it changed every single year. And so Jeff was always waiting for waiting for his moment for what his was. And after his sister had passed, he was all right, So he let me back back track. So he got his he got his assignment, and he
did his assignment. He did it really well. I think he got an A minus on it and his Uh, he called his sister very excited, saying, Hey, you'll never guess what happened. I got you know, I got an an on my on the on the contest. His sister was very proud of him. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she got an A, but uh,
that's just kind of the woman she was, Jeff. After her passing, he went through a bunch of her her items in the room, you know, things like hair brushes, you know, he found a box of a bunch of items, things like hair brushes and you know, just some schoolwork. And he found her paper for that for that assignment, and he read those words. He kind of felt that
that was a lasting gift to him. And he read those words over and over and over again, and to this day he can, he can recite them verbatim because that was He feels as though those were left for him by his sister to really help guide him through through life in general. But he sees that as the last, the lasting gift of his sister.
You say that he decided the best way to honor his sister was to become a victim's rights lawyer and support those who suffered the worst kind of loss. And he also established the nonprofit Mass Violence Survivor's Fund, a mechanism for distributing charitable donations in the aftermath of mass violence. Tell us about Jeff and his team and the incredible strides that they made in this effort.
Sure, and this is where and this is where Mary Joke ties into the story too, is so Jeff, through that project, he is the person who essentially the the local governments go to after a mass casualty event. So what happens often with these things is go fundmes get set up. Some of these local governments don't really know how to you know, give you out the money for this, or the best way to do it and the best way to split it up and all these kind of things.
And that's where Jeff comes into place. So they hired Jeff essentially to do this. So Jeff takes over the go fundme accounts and it's almost like a turnkey situation at this point because they've done so many of them.
Unfortunately, So in Vegas, for instance, he.
Did a big meeting with all the families of the victims, and that's where Mary Joe met him, and he was discussing, Okay, like, you know, we have this process set up where if you you know, lost.
Someone, you're on this this tier.
If you got shot, you're this tier, and so on and so forth, and it's broken down very eloquently and you know, very detailed, so you know exactly where you stand. There's probably nobody who's more trauma informed in this world than Jeff Dan, to be honest with you, because he has done this so many times and so many events. He did it for Vegas, He's done you know, he was the go fund me distributor for.
The Orlando Pulse nightclub.
He was the distributor for Uvalde Elementary School after that one in Texas.
He's done this all over the place.
And he goes and he meets the victims, he reads all their letters and he kind of figures, he kind of figures it all out on who, you know, who should get what. And he's also done something that a lot of people haven't really tapped into is Jeff takes into account psychological trauma and no one had really ever put a price on that until Jeoff Dion came around and he said, you know, no, there is there is such a thing as psychological trauma, and these people are
also living with it too. Now they might not have been shot, necessarily are stabbed or whatever the case is, but they're living with, you know, this trauma that they've been through through no fault of their own. And so Jeff is he's kind of yeah, he's turned this sort of this entire operation into just an incredible, incredible organization that helps victims. That's their entire purpose is to help victims,
and he's done an incredible job with it. In fact, I spoke with a couple people who he's helped, you know, one certain Mary Joe being one of them, and another one being this woman from Uvall Day School who she was actually the person who was I don't know if you remember back, but she was one of people who was initially blamed for allowing that gunman into the s
now It video later cleared her. She was adamant that I did not do this, she said, you know, she was the whole community looked down on her, and Jeff was the one who came to her rescue and said no, like you've you've experienced something, You've experienced not only psychological but also physical trauma from this woman was crouched down under her desk for hours on her toes and now she has a hard time walking. She can't hear loud sounds,
loud noises, things like that. And so this man is he really is a godsend to a lot of the victims of mass violence.
You're right that late twenty twenty three, Jeff set up a new victims fund, the Mass Violent Survivor's Fund, and he's also the CEO of Zero Abuse Project. Can you tell us about those victims of abuse and what kind of litigation? And he dropped it.
Yeah, so Jeff is h Yeah, so he's the he's involved in the CEO of the Zero Abuse Project, which the which aims to sort of eradicate sexual abuse of minors.
Now, Jeff was abused as a miner as well from.
A Scout leader. He didn't come clean until many many years later because.
He he just thought, you know, this is.
Uh, this person who did this to me is he's older now. But then eventually Jeff realized, you know, sexual predators never retire, and so he decided to come Clain with his come forward with his claims. Now because of what happened to him, he decided to start the or become a part of the Zero Abuse Project, and he has since taken on sexual predators through litigation and things like that for to kind of get not not settlements, but to you know, help put these people away or
to make things easier for sexual beast victims. So whether that's changing the statute limitations, which he's done in several states to allow for a longer time, because he realizes like himself, that people don't come out and admit these things the day of or the next day of the
week of. Sometimes it takes years or decades, like in his case, but he has changed laws in multiple states to help with this, and in fact, his work was changing the setual limitations and a lot of these things is what helped actually take down a lot of the Boy Scout leaders of America when that whole scandal happened, and also some of the Catholic Church when that happened,
with some of the priests and things like that. He also technically, in a roundabout way, that work also was what allowed for some of Jeffrey Epstein's victims to come forward too. Because of the statue limitation was changed and made it so you could have a longer runway to come clean.
Let's use this as an opportunity. Need to stop to hear these messages. Now you introduce you mentioned before Lindsay Lawler and her fiance Seamus Frawley and their wedding day September twenty twenty three. But you talk about her her music career and the intersection with Mary Joe and the fifty eight Survivors and Country Music Awards. Can you tell us about that?
Yeah, Lindsay Lawler is what she's a saint of a human being, is what she is. Lindsay Lallata. She got married in a during a national a actual certified national disaster in Texas. And her husband actually is works in the TV world, and he was one of the sound guys for Jackass some of that and Wild Boys. Wild Boys was a spin off of Jackass and things like that.
So a bunch of those sort of guys were at the wedding, and when the wedding ended up being just an absolute disaster because of weather, a bunch of the Jackass guys actually put on headsets and started basically producing the wedding. It's kind of a fun little tidbit just how you know, her life with Seamus started. She was a she's a singer songwriter in Nashville, and she started and she works very very closely with the trucking industry. She has a serious XM radio show which is a
listened to my very popular in the trucking community. And so she was at her home in Nashville one day reading about the Vegas shooting and you know, reading some of the victims, and she came across Kurt Bontillo's name.
And she realized he's a trucker.
So she thought, you know, this man is you know, he's near and dear to her already because of that, because of his profession. So she reached out to Marry Joe saying, hey, you know I'm doing I do a bunch of stuff for the trucking industry. I'd like to honor him at this you know, annual gathering this of truckers. And again, like you know, Mary Joe thought might be a scam artist or something who was trying to, you know,
weasel some money out of me. But she was in Nashville for the Country music Awards already, so she said, I'll meet with this woman and Mary and Mary Joe had her family with her also, So there was a bunch of people that vet out Lindsay to see if this person was legit. And they met with Lindsay and sure enough they found out this woman is everything she said she was. And so she meets Mary Joe and the family and very quickly they develop an incredible bond.
They honored Lindsay set up so they were able to honor Kurt at this trucking expo and they gave him, you know, an award Mary of course, and the whole family accepted it. She has really kind of become a just someone to lean on for this family. She you know, they always talk about how she's she's not blood, but she's family. Lindsay has gone to help spread Kurt's ashes having never met the man.
You know.
Lindsay also not just because her wedding was quite traumatic actually, but she's been through trauma of her own. I'm sure we're probably gonna talk about, but she has not dealt with, you know, murder such you know, which in the case of some of these others like Jeff Dion or Mary Joe or Dian Green type of thing. But she's had her own sort of trauma in her life too. She was sexually assaulted by a She's a singer songwriter in Nashville and she was sexually assaulted by a record executive
one day. Now she refuses to name who that was. She will not say who it is. That's kind of where her trauma lize too, is that, and she'd found a way to take that, turn it on its head, and you know, kind of find her own sort of happiness and her own path.
Similar to Mary Joe.
You introduce Tony berdidas Special Forces in Iraq. Tell us about the meeting with Mary Joe and Tony Brudidas.
Yeah, so, Mary Joe and Tony met actually in Nashville at the Country Music Awards for the first time, and they become Titus can be because they actually have a lot of shared Their situations are very very similar. Tony was attending the Route ninety one festival with his wife Denise, and they had come I think it was their first year coming to this particular one, but they would always find different festivals to go to. Tony was Army Special Forces.
He was basically John Wayne. This guy was just an absolute, just a certified badass. So he had been in the military for a very very long time, decided it was his time to retire, and so him and Denise decided, you know, they kind of moved to West Virginia, which is where they're from, and they came to Vegas for the Route ninety one festival. Prior year, they stayed at the Luxore, which is across the street from where the shooting happened. This particular year, they were in Bally's which
is Center Strip of Las Vegas. They were there and Denise had right before the shooting, right around when Genna study was starting, she started feeling not great and she said, you know, I'm not really feeling it. And Tony had told her, let's maybe we should go, and she no, let's and Denise told him, no, let's give it a minute.
Let's give it a little bit longer, and I'm sure I'll work my.
Way through it and maybe it's just a little bug or something. And so they stayed and then the shooting started happening. And Tony, he still kicks himself over it is he didn't recognize that it was gunfire immediately. Now he knew pretty quickly, but not immediately, and in fact, Denise had asked him, was that gunfire? And he said no, And then when it became pretty clear that it was, he said, we got to get out of here.
So he started leading Denise through the crowd on the way out of the festival.
There were anyone festival, and Denise was wearing flip flops, which she never did, but she did that day anyway, and so he's leading her through there and he tried to look to ask if she was okay, and as soon as he looked back, he saw her take a bullet to the head and she went down. Tony, being in the military and being in many a war zone over the over his years his career, he knew it was pretty dire immediately, and he got down on the ground with her and he was talking to her.
He couldn't.
He was just begging, please, you know, you gotta stay with me, You gotta stay with me. He finally after a while, they were just on the ground for what felt like an eternity, and Tony was saying, you know, you can take me. I'm fine, go ahead and shoot me to Hi'm good. At one point he thought people were on the He thought people were in the festival like a lot of us did, and he, a police officer,
got on the ground with them. Is his female, and he kept looking at her gun, and he started thinking, you know about the exit plan, thinking, you know, if I leave here, maybe more gunmen are going to come in through this gate over here, and I'm going to take this one's gun and I can end this thing right now, because this guy is again you know, this dude, is this is this is a this is a man here that we're talking about. He never did take the gun, but he eventually got Denise out of there the help
of someone else. But by then there were no ambulances to be found. You couldn't go anywhere. Just then a these two women in a truck pull up and they knew the situation very quickly, and they told him put her in the back. We'll get her to the hospital. Tony had never seen these two women in his life, didn't know their names, didn't know anything. But he thought, you know, this is good. This is the best of a bad situation. So he got in the back of
a truck with his wife. A nursing student also jumped in with them. As well, who he also didn't know, and this woman starts just flying through the streets of Las Vegas, trying to get them to the hospital as fast as possible. And it was actually on the freeway getting to the hospital where Tony realized that Denise's her heart had stopped, so she technically died. Even though she's pronounced dead in the hospital, she actually really died on
the freeway in the back of this woman's truck. They were stuck in a traffic jam because the whole city was in chaos. So the woman, actually the driver of the truck, got out. She had a blanket in the cabin for truck, and she pulled a blanket, put it over Denise and Tony and said, let's give her some privacy. And so Tony went the rest of the drive to the hospital under this blanket with his wife who had just passed. And he's very similar to marry Joe, and
that their age is very close. They'd been married roughly the same amount of years. They both had, you know, grandkids around the same age. They had kids around the same age as well. And some of I talked to a bunch of Tony's lifelong friends and Denise's lifelong friends, and they even say that Mary Joe reminds them.
Of Denise, and they even think they look alike a little bit.
So there is a very strong connection between these two, between Mary Joe and Tony, and Tony is outside of Mary Joe. Tony's story probably touches me the most of all the people featured in this book, only because it's similar to mine, because I was there at root anyone as well. But also, I mean when I met Tony, we actually met the very first time in Las Vegas.
He was here on vacation when I met him, and I sat with him for probably four or five hours, and this man was just this, you know, this man who has seen the worst of the world in war zones, and you know it's a Army special Forces and this man was reduced to a puddle of tears almost through half of the half of the chat. I mean, this is a man who absolutely loved his wife and adored his wife. So his story really touches me in a lot of ways.
You have one more heartbreaking story of Ronald Benjamin and Amy franco H. Can you tell us briefly about this incredible story.
Yeah, so this is a This is an interesting tie in, and you know what we wanted to do with is what we wanted to do with this book was, you know, highlight different people that have come into Marry Joe's life because of Route ninety one, because of that awful day, and things that have happened because of that awful day that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Now, Ronald, you know, oh, Ronnie.
Ronnie is a he's a machinist who lives in the Boston area and he went to the doctor one day and they said, you know, you have you have cancer and it's not looking good for you. And you know, he didn't know what to think.
He had.
It was a stage four cancer. It went it went to his liver, and they gave him months to live. He actually got an actual death sentence and they kind of hit him and his wife tried to find They tried everything they possibly could to to work this out. They could never find the right thing to do. They were going to different doctors who gave them bad advice.
They finally went to one doctor who said, you know, there's a couple of things we can do, and he said there's one last resort, but this is way in the way out a left field, and it's a live liver transplant.
But you have to to do that.
You have to find someone with the same blood type as you, and someone who's living, and someone who is willing to donate their liver to you or a portion of their liver. Because on all these you know donation lists that we you know, we all hear about these donation lists when people you know pass in that you know, whatever it be, whether car accidents or natural causes or whatever, and you can donate you know, livers and kidneys and
eyes and things like this. If it's a live liver, those lists, I should say, are very very long, and they take years to get through. If it's a live liver transplant, that you get moved to the front of the list basically because someone is willing to give their liver to you. They're not just willing to give their
liver to some random person. And so Ronnie and his wife Amy, they were desperately looking for someone to kind of bequeath part of their liver to them, and they couldn't figure they couldn't find it, and it's a it's a big ask. Obviously, Tommy had had an old but a golf buddy of his. Tim Tim had a was dating this girl who has you know, they've been together for a few years, about two years or so, and
Tim and away. Tim had talked about Ronnie with his girlfriend Jessica quite a bit and he said, oh, this guy, you know, and what a sad situation he is.
You know, he's got these two these young kids, and he's.
Got stage four cancer and it's not really working out well, and you know, he needs a live liver transplant. And Jessica said, I didn't even know what that was, you know, and she meets she end up meets meeting Ronnie one day at a bar, and uh, and Ronnie's telling her everything and she said, I didn't know you could actually donate a liver as from a life human being to another.
And then Ronnie explained to her. He said, yeah, you know, I had to do a crash course on it myself, but it's possible. You can do this kind of thing.
And you know, you have to get cleared, and there's such a process to go through. You have to get tested for every single thing there is, you know, every kind of blood test you can imagine. You have to do and it all has to work out, every every box has to get checked. And Jessica told him I'm going to I'm gonna be your donor. She knew her blood type and she knew it mattch Ronnie's and Ronnie. So I appreciate that. But you know, I they think
this went over. It's a you know, I'm not asking for this you offered, but you know, think this one over because this is this is something just not to you know, do overnight here. So Jessica spoke with her boyfriend about it, and her boyfriend was very much against it initially, and spoke with her mother about it. Her mother was very much against it initially as well. And now you're thinking yourself, where is where's the tie in with you know, Mary Joe? Where's the time of rout
ninety one? Jessica is Mary Joe's daughter. Jessica was the one who was there ninety one that night. She's the one who had the cell phone cord to create the turnic it. And she always said, had my father not passed that day, I never would have done something like this. Now she looked at Ronnie the way that in the same light that she looked at her own father of this man who's just a wonderful human being who has young children who you know, and she says, you know,
I lost my dad at a young age too. Now Jessica was in her thirties at that point, but she said, you know, I lost my dad in my thirties and it really sucks, and these kids are going to grow up without a father if I don't do this. And so Jessica went through. She eventually convinced her mom and her boyfriend and the whole family that she was going to do this. And when Jessica sets her mind to something, there is pretty much no talking her out of it. She's a very strong woman. And so she decided to
go through with it. And you know, they did all the tests and everything like that and all matched, and sure enough, she decided, let's make it happen. So they found a hospital and the right doctors to make this happen. And it was near Buffalo where the went to the hospital one day, and sure enough, they did a live liver transplant. Jessica gave thirty five, thirty five or sixty five percent of her liver. I can't remember.
One of them gets sixty five.
I think Ronnie gets sixty five Jessica keeps thirty five percent, and the liver can obviously grow back.
So and all these.
Years later, they're both happy and healthy and Ronnie is alive today because of Jessica, who again would not have done this had it not been for ninety one.
You're right in the end.
March twenty twenty five, Mary Joe receives a Christmas card. Tell us about that Christmas card and its message.
Mary Joe was around this time in life. She's now dating a new man and he's wonderful and he lives in Florida, and Mary Joe's now retired. So Mary Joe spends a lot of her time and she actually just moved to Florida recently, but she at that time, she's spending a lot of her time in Florida with Hit, with her boyf friend, and a lot of time in Connecticut, which is where Jessica lives, and her son lives now in South Carolina, so she was out there as well. So she was really spending a ton of time on
the East Coast. And even though her home was in Newport Beach, California, and so she was when she would come home she would just have three months of mail stacked up. So she got home one day and it was it was in March, like you say, you know, three months after Christmas, and she's going through old Christmas cards.
In fact, there was one from me in there, but there was a there was a Christmas card from the Benjamin family and there was a picture of the entire family there, all looking happy and healthy, and you know, it said Merry Christmas from the Benjamins.
She flipped the card over.
And there was a hashtag on the bottom and it said hashtag bank you jess And that moment just melted Mary Joe because you know, this card would not have been it certainly would not have featured that whole family, the whole bench and family, had it not been for Mary Joe's daughter Jessica and that live liver transplant. And so that was one of those things where it just really kind of tied a bow on this whole experience of you know, of trauma and and how one one moment, one.
Night can have a lasting impact on so many people.
And I think, you know, and Ronnie's life is really been saved because of kind.
Of Root ninety one and in a roundabout way.
You know, Jessica's is she she blatantly says, I would not have done this had it not been for Route ninety one and my father. But she felt like this was the perfect way to honor her father. You know, she was was questioning how her mother went about her business after Root ninety one and traveling and meeting all kinds of people, and you know, Mary Joe was speaking at h conferences like we mentioned, and she was talking to newspapers and things like that, and that just wasn't
Jessica's thing. She said, that's not how I want to honor my father. And she went years trying to figure out how to do it. And when she met Ronnie Benjamin, that was when she knew, this is how I honor my dad.
I saved the life of another human being.
This has been an extraordinary, real victim story of survival. I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about this incredible book, The Las Vegas Massacre Connections Finding Strength through Tragedy after America's deadliest mass shooting. For those people that might want to find out more about this book, can you tell us about a website or any social media you.
Do yeah, it'll be available.
It goes out for wide release on October fourteenth on Amazon and wherever books are sold. But Amazon is really kind of the I guess we live in an Amazon world, don't we. So yes, but yeah, October fourteenth, right, and it's currently available on pre order on Kindle, but on the fourteenth it goes wide with hardcover, paperback audio ebook. The Whole Kitten, Kaboodle and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
Could find out more about me on my personal instagram, which is Instagram at the Mark Gray and Gray is g r a Y.
Thank you so much, Mark Gray for the Las Vegas massacre connections. Thank you so much for this interview, and you have a great evening and good night, Thanks Dan. Thank you