{"id":20385,"date":"2017-10-20T08:05:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T16:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=20385"},"modified":"2020-10-12T07:29:20","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T15:29:20","slug":"mandalay-mystery-deepens-today-vegas-tomorrow-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/mandalay-mystery-deepens-today-vegas-tomorrow-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandalay mystery deepens; Today Vegas, tomorrow the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MGM Resorts International<\/strong> finds itself on the defensive following the <strong>Stephen Paddock<\/strong> killing spree. <strong>Rachel Sheppard<\/strong>, a <strong>California<\/strong> woman who survived three gunshot wounds, <a href=\"http:\/\/news3lv.com\/news\/local\/motion-filed-to-preserve-evidence-in-1-october-shooting\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is suing MGM for negligence<\/a> (she&#8217;s also going after the maker of the <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12994\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Mandalay-Bay-pic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Mandalay-Bay-pic.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Mandalay-Bay-pic-150x103.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>bump stocks that enabled Paddock to fire so indiscriminately). To that end, she&#8217;s obtained a court order that MGM preserve anything &#8220;of evidentiary value,&#8221; an order that will be revisited on Oct. 30. MGM, for its part, is taking Paddock&#8217;s suite out of rotation permanently.\u00a0\u201cThis was a terrible tragedy perpetrated by an evil man. We have no intention of renting that room,&#8221; read a company statement. Good on MGM.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F7gj1FoRIfE\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Simultaneously, security guard <strong>Jesus Campos<\/strong> (he of the controversial timeline) is on media lockdown, for fear his statements could <!--more-->have probative value in the expected wave of litigation. Worried that\u00a0inconsistent accounts of the fatal event\u00a0could crop up in court, MGM has only permitted him to appear on <em>Ellen<\/em>. No <em>Hannity<\/em> or <em>Rachel Maddow<\/em> for you, Jesus! (Campos, who had booked a slate of TV appearances, is at the center of a timeline that has been changed\u00a0thrice over by <strong>Clark County<\/strong> Sheriff <strong>Joe Lombardo<\/strong>, creating headaches for MGM&#8217;s public-relations department.) <strong>Las Vegas Metro<\/strong> says that Campos called for police backup immediately but an earlier timeline had him waiting six minutes before whistling in the law, a possibility that would open MGM to massive allegations of liability.<\/p>\n<p>Campos&#8217; union boss, deplorably, was booking Campos&#8217; exploitive slate of interviews, before the guard went to ground. (Under pressure from MGM?) &#8220;I was in a meeting with MGM\u2019s upper management and they were definitely concerned about how <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-20387\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Hickey-284x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"284\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Hickey-284x300.jpg 284w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Hickey-142x150.jpg 142w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Hickey.jpg 306w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 284px) 100vw, 284px\" \/>tough someone like [<strong>Sean<\/strong>] <strong>Hannity<\/strong> would be on him and they voiced their opinions,&#8221; said\u00a0<strong>International Union, Security Police &amp;\u00a0Fire Professionals of America<\/strong> prexy <strong>David Hickey<\/strong> (<em>left<\/em>), who absolves himself of responsibility for the media circus. &#8220;I thought they were being negative, telling him that someone was going to be tough and how they were worried about his health \u2014 it wasn\u2019t the thing he needed to hear four hours before the interviews were going to begin.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-admin\/post-new.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">For conspiracy theorists<\/a>, Hickey&#8217;s story was that MGM execs took Campos into a bedroom to have a private chat and that when Hickey went looking for him, Campos had disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>Campos, who implied that Paddock had bolted shut an emergency-exit door next to his suite, did all his talking in what <strong>Fox News<\/strong> called an appearance that &#8220;did nothing to quell rampant speculation and rumors surrounding the horrific attack.&#8221; Adding to the confusion was <strong>Ellen DeGeneres<\/strong>&#8216; assertion that hers was the only interview Campos agreed to do. (Five others were booked, according to Hickey.) Helpfully, the <em>DailyMail<\/em> has posted all three of the disputed timelines and you can compare the discrepancy. For instance, the first has Campos approaching Paddock&#8217;s sniper&#8217;s nest at 10:14 p.m. &#8212; nine minutes into the barrage. In the second, he arrives at 9:59 p.m. &#8212; six minutes before Paddock starts shooting at the crowd. In the third, Campos also reaches the room at 9:59 p.m. and is shot six minutes later, presumably before Paddock turns his arsenal upon the festival grounds. The lawyers are going to have a field day with this.<\/p>\n<p>While MGM seems to be doing the right thing, by and large, some wackdoodle took &#8220;<strong>#VegasStrong<\/strong>&#8221; to a really sick place, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/news\/4719410\/halloween-2017-display-las-vegas-shooting-victims-gravestones\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">decorating his front yard for Halloween with 58 gravestones<\/a>, signifying each <strong>Mandalay Bay<\/strong> fatality. Clueless neighbor <strong>Leo Rullodah<\/strong> told the <em>Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/em>,\u00a0\u201cI still don\u2019t understand why other people are offended.\u201d Whoever was responsible for this doesn&#8217;t understand the difference between honoring the dead and exploiting them for cheap kicks.<\/p>\n<p>*\u00a0<strong>Budget Suites of America<\/strong> owner and UFO aficionado <strong>Robert Bigelow<\/strong>, having succeeded in attaching an inflatable pod to the <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-20388\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Space-hotel-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Space-hotel-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Space-hotel-150x85.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Space-hotel-768x433.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Space-hotel-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Space-hotel.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>international space station is thinking big, <strong>Las Vegas<\/strong>-style big. The Sin City businessman wants to orbit the <strong>Moon<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/bigelow-aerospace-robert-bigelow-lunar-moon-depot-2017-10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">with an inflatable hotel<\/a>, which he&#8217;s touting as a way to kick-start\u00a0&#8220;significant lunar business development.&#8221; Don&#8217;t laugh: Bigelow has already enlisted <strong>Lockheed Martin<\/strong> and <strong>Boeing<\/strong> in the project. He&#8217;s also got an aggressive timeline, predicting it will be open for business by 2022. The &#8220;Bigelow Expandable Activity Module&#8221; is described as being superior to aluminum structures because its pods\u00a0\u201cprovide for greater volume, safety, opportunity and economy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The space hotel would require mega resort-sized dollars ($2.3 billion) and Bigelow expects to get funding from <strong>NASA<\/strong>. The normally thrifty Trump administration seems positively inclined, and some of the first guests might be astronauts <em>en route<\/em> to a permanent installation on the Moon, or even headed to <strong>Mars<\/strong>. Bigelow has already been picked to pitch ideas for a &#8220;Deep Space Gateway&#8221; in the vicinity of the Moon. As outlined, Bigelow&#8217;s idea seems outlandish at first blush but the deeper you look, the more plausible it becomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MGM Resorts International finds itself on the defensive following the Stephen Paddock killing spree. Rachel Sheppard, a California woman who survived three gunshot wounds, is suing MGM for negligence (she&#8217;s also going after the maker of the bump stocks that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/mandalay-mystery-deepens-today-vegas-tomorrow-the-moon\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[228,11,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20385"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28125,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20385\/revisions\/28125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}