My Dear, Sweet, Tom Brady,
I need your help. 

On the night of Thursday, September 7th, a criminal committed a terrible act of thievery and I believe you are my only chance of catching them. Shortly after losing a fair amount of money on the Patriots/Chiefs game, I did the only thing I could think of as a born-and-raised Patriots fan to recover from such a devastating financial and emotional loss, I hit the blackjack tables. This, however, is not a story of the thievery I witnessed during my 7-hour run at the blackjack tables, but the events that transpired afterwards.

I headed back to my room at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas around 5:30AM where I was staying with my friend, Thomas. On the way to my room I decided to stop at the front desk and book an additional night at the hotel. Our flight wasn't until 10:20PM that night, so we felt it would be best if we could sleep in and not worry about lugging our things around town with us all day. For reasons I can only assume are related to the Flamingo being a huge dump, extending our stay required the hotel to issue us new room keys. During this story I will admittedly make two very costly mistakes, what happened next being number one.

Mistake #1

Since Thomas was still in the poker room, he would have no way of getting into our room because our keys had changed. The following is a text conversation between Thomas and I, and a very important part of our investigation.

Now I didn't actually end up leaving a key under the door, but rather I used the deadbolt to prop the door open. I found this to be just as effective and secure as leaving a key out in plain sight. Knowing what I know now, I definitely should have hand-delivered his key before I headed off to sleepy town.

Mistake #2

After my ingenious door-propping method, I placed my belongings on the bedside table which included my beloved Patriots hat, my Apple watch, and my money clip containing around $1,000, credit cards, driver's license, and my insurance cards. Should I have used the safe in the closet? Absolutely. Did I? Absolutely I did not.

The morning after

I awoke around 12pm to the following text messages.

Now, I ignored the text from Thomas. It didn't really matter that there was no key under the door because I left the door open, right? Though Thomas wasn't in the room when I woke up, I had woken up briefly a few hours earlier and saw that he was there, asleep. I wasn't worried about him. I WAS worried about my credit card being used to buy anything at a place called the Shoe Palace.

I thought maybe I had left my credit card at the front desk, or maybe even the restaurant from the night before. All I had to do was check to see if it was still in my wallet. I jumped out of bed in a panicked frenzy like someone that just had a dream they threw down a bunch of money on the Patriots, only to see them get blown out in the first game of a season in which they were rumored to go undefeated. Like the undefeated Patriots, the wallet was nowhere to be found.

**Note: At this point we had 6 room keys, and it turns out none of them worked. Thanks again, Flamingo
** Also Note: Thomas is not an asshole, he just didn't see my text about how much worse my night was than his.

After checking with security at multiple casinos, I met up with Thomas at the front desk of the Flamingo to wait in a 30 minute line to get our 7th and 8th room keys. We discussed what I was going to do with my last day in Vegas sans any sort of ID or a dollar to may name, and what these two things would mean when I try to fly home that evening. We realized we had only one option: to launch a full investigation. We felt it was best not to investigate on an empty stomach, so we headed to our favorite local Las Vegas dining establishment, Wahlburgers.

Wahlburgers

It was a combination of the cool mist that rained down on us and our food from the ceiling of Wahlburgers' patio roof misters, and the sustenance provided by the BBQ Bacon Chopped Salad that got our investigatory juices flowing. We had so many questions. Where did I leave my wallet? Why did I play blackjack for 7 hours straight? Why is the Flamingo such a huge dump?

The most important question, however, was why couldn't Thomas get into the room last night? I was 100% sure I had left the door open, and Thomas was 100% sure that the door was shut and locked (a door propped with a deadbolt would be hard to miss, as later confirmed by our reenactment at the scene of the crime). This lead us to only one terrifying explanation: In the 40 minutes between me leaving the door open and Thomas arriving to find the door locked, I was robbed.

We were assured by the woman at the Flamingo check-in desk that they had security cameras in the hallways so Thomas and I discussed how that footage, or footage from any of the stores my credit card was used, would bust this case wide open. I mean... we knew when the theft occurred and even had time stamps from when the fraudulent purchases took place (which we used to track our killer, I mean thief, to an outlet mall a few miles north). Easy, right?.

Wrong. 

Access Denied

We were denied access to all of the above. The Flamingo doesn’t even have cameras in the hallways. It seems that St. Thomas Investigation Inc, LLC Co. (as I would later name us) didn't have as much pull with rent-a-cop authorities as we'd have liked. We were invited to discuss our situation in the basement of the casino where, if the Flamingo security team didn’t have the motivation of the Atlanta Falcons in the third quarter, I imagine they would take card-counters to be roughed up. Instead of any amount of usefulness most of our interaction involved them cracking jokes about the Patriots losing as I filled out an online police report on a computer that I’m pretty sure was connected to the internet by way of an AOL 10,000 Hours Free CD.

After crunching the numbers Thomas and I  believe that if we were awarded approximately $17.38 worth of investigatory resources, or even just 12-16 minutes of useful interaction with the Flamingo security staff, we could have had our perp rotting behind bars (or at least feeling like a real silly billy).

Break in the Case

As I started to believe all hope was lost, the delicious brain food that is Wahlburgers gave me one last thought that somehow found space in my stomach for another knot. I had placed a bet. Alongside the cash and cards in my wallet lay a bet for $1000 that the Patriots will win at least 13 games in the 2017 NFL season. What did this mean? 1) My dad is going to be pissed, as half of the bet was with his money. 2) If the Patriots come through then the thief will have to turn in the ticket! Oh shit, it's on.

We headed straight to where I placed the bet and put a lock on the ticket. The trap, unintentionally created by my unwavering love for the Patriots, was set. This is where you come in, Tom. Should you claim victory thirteen times over, all we will need is for the thief to show their stupid fucking face and try to turn in the winning ticket. I can just imagine how they will approach the ticket counter, likely wearing a smug look of joy as they are about to collect much undeserved cash, only to have the kibosh put upon their whole world by the forces of Brady, Wahlberg, and St. Thomas Investigation Inc, LLC Co.

Tom Brady

I need you, Tom Brady. My father needs you. We need you now, more than ever. 13 victories. I believe in you so much that I have already booked my return flight on the always-reliable Frontier Airlines, to be sure that I don’t miss this opportunity, and a room at the lovely Flamingo Las Vegas Resort and Casino, because I know they have my back. I’ll be waiting at the ticket counter, cuffs in hand, to do my part. Mr. Wahlberg has already done his part. Will you? Not just for me. Not for the fans. For justice.

To this day I still find it hard to believe that someone would be brave enough to rob an occupied hotel room but, hey, #vegasbaby.

**Bonus: Thomas created a Trello board to help us organize our thoughts, and we even reached out to some local Vegas crime fighters for assistance.