South Dakota Woman Seeks Wedding Ring Lost in Las Vegas Three Days Before Husband Died

Tammy Bishop lost her husband three days after their Las Vegas wedding, and she is still missing the wedding band he wore for less than a day. Bishop and Will Mulroy married Oct. 20 at the Viva Las Vegas Chapel, then rode a party bus to celebrate along the Strip. At a bar that evening, Mulroy looked down and found the ring gone.

"He lost it. He started crying," Bishop said. Mulroy told her the band fit two sizes large because he had dropped weight. Bishop said it could have slipped off on the bus, while he transferred into his wheelchair, or as he rolled down the Strip. The couple retraced their route and alerted the bus driver, and everyone searched without finding it. The next day Bishop joked that he had not kept a ring on for 24 hours before losing it. Everyone laughed, she said. "I said it's not a big deal; we will buy you a new one, but now that he is gone it is a big deal to me," Bishop said.

Mulroy died Oct. 23, three days after the wedding. Bishop said he complained of pain on the flight home and talked about going to an emergency room once they reached South Dakota. The following morning he was heavily congested, and she told him to skip work. When she could not wake him, she called 911. At the hospital doctors declared him brain dead, Bishop said. He remained on life support for 24 hours, and his heart stopped three times in the emergency room.

The two met in July 2023 and began dating in March 2024. A week later Mulroy was hurt in a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed, Bishop said. "There was a lot of anger at first," she said. He continued to propose, and she accepted this summer. On her Oct. 4 birthday he told her he had booked a Las Vegas ceremony and that her friends would travel with them. "It was a perfect day," Bishop said. "He was on cloud nine," she said.

Bride and groom prepared separately, and Mulroy first saw her in her dress when she stepped onto the party bus. Bishop described him as mechanically skilled and able to fix things himself. He worked at Fleet Farm and had experience with party buses, and the couple had planned to launch a party bus company together.

Bishop is asking anyone who finds the band to come forward. "The rings were blessed, and that was our wedding ring, and that was him and how much it meant to him. That's why it means so much to me," she said.