GleamBlog

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 1, 2000; Page A01 LAS VEGAS, March 31—The splashy New Vegas, the family-fun resort destination with its musical-pirate shows and roller-coaster rides, sometimes seems to have scrubbed this town's past clean.

But on the dirty side streets, and in the corner offices and sprawling ranch homes of power and privilege, the seedy Old Vegas appears to live on--and the murder trial that began here today brought back the drugs, mobsters and bar girls that once earned the city its dubious reputation.

The crime is the murder of a prominent, multimillionaire scion of Vegas gambling royalty--killed, according to authorities, by having heroin and anti-anxiety pills stuffed down his throat, and then suffocating.

The accused? A pair of reported lovers.

In hundreds of pages of pretrial documents, and today in the downtown courtroom, Sandy Murphy is portrayed as a gold-digging, home-wrecking, foul-mouthed vamp, a 28-year-old former cocktail waitress at a topless lounge who wiggled her way into the gated home and, finally, the Last Will and Testament of Lonnie Ted Binion.

And Binion?

He was the 55-year-old son of the infamous Benny Binion, a Texas bootlegger, horse-breeder and operator of a huge numbers racket, who rolled into Vegas in 1947, took over the old El Dorado and christened it the Horseshoe Casino, which is still operating and in family hands.

As Murphy's defense attorneys will no doubt point out, Benny's son, Ted Binion, was a junkie who smoked tar heroin on and off for almost two decades, popped pills and gave prescription drugs away as tips, collected roomfuls of silver coins and firearms, had mobsters as his associates--and was believed to be worth $50 million at the time of his death.

As Clark County's chief deputy district attorney, David Roger, told the nine-woman, three-man jury this morning, Murphy conspired to murder Binion with her reported lover, Richard Bennett Tabish, 35, a tall, handsome man who ran trucking businesses and gravel and sand mining operations.

Today, as Tabish and Murphy sat together at the defense table, prosecutor Roger began his long opening statement by showing the jury a picture of a smiling Ted Binion.

"We're not about to paint a picture of a saint," Roger said.

His friends and family describe Binion as the possessor of a brilliant mind, a high-stakes poker player with a head for mathematics. But he was also a very hard drinker. He was an associate of mobster Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein, who was found shot to death in his Vegas home in January 1997.

According to Ted Binion's ex-wife, Doris Binion, Binion had been using smack for almost two decades. He hated needles, however, and so he smoked the tar heroin in little pipes made of tinfoil. Doris Binion and others, however, said Binion never ate heroin.

A creature of habit, Binion often kept as much as a million dollars in cash in his home. He also buried and hid his money and silver coins. Shortly before his death, he hired Tabish to build a vault on his ranch property in Pahrump, Nev., about 60 miles from here, and there they buried in a concrete vault some 46,000 pounds of silver coins and bars--about $6 million worth.

Binion apparently met Murphy at Cheetah's Topless Club, a strip joint filled with lap dancers on Western Road, a few blocks from the famous Strip. After finding out about their affair, Doris Binion filed for divorce in 1995.

Shortly afterward, Murphy moved into Binion's 8,000-square-foot home on Palomino Lane, within sight of the towering casinos on the Strip. Murphy got a new Mercedes convertible and the use of one of Binion's MasterCards, prosecutors say. Her average bill was about $5,000 a month.

According to a civil suit--in which Murphy is seeking, as Binion promised in one version of his will, his home and $300,000 in cash--Murphy was hired to maintain the home, cook for Binion and help him entertain.

While he was living with Murphy, Binion also became associated with Tabish, whom one person described as "a meat and potatoes" blue-collar worker originally from Missoula, Mont. But Tabish was a man with a hunger to succeed--and to live the high life.

Tabish started a telemarketing firm in Montana, then a trucking business, which he moved to Las Vegas. He hung out at Piero's restaurant here, a fancy watering hole for the city's movers and shakers.

But he was also a two-time felon, convicted of burglary and possession with intent to sell drugs in Montana.

The prosecutor said to jurors today that Tabish told several friends and associates he wanted to see Binion dead--and was planning on getting his stash of silver.

According to Tabish's friend, Kurt Gratzer, a former Army Ranger whom he knew in Missoula, Tabish also was having sex with Murphy and discussed with Gratzer the best way to kill Binion.

After Binion's death, Gratzer asked Tabish how Binion died. "Tabish declined to answer the question directly," according to the prosecutor's affidavit. "However, as he drove off, Tabish roared with laughter and yelled out the window, 'Xanax!' "

Attorneys for Murphy and Tabish say that this is all a witch hunt, and that Binion died of an overdose, perhaps accidental, and that Murphy is being smeared because of her unusual relationship with Binion. Tabish, they say, was only trying to save Binion's silver for Binion's daughter.

Murphy and Tabish have denied being lovers. But witnesses, as their stories were related in court documents, say the couple seemed romantically involved. They constantly called each other's cellular telephones. They checked in together, according to witnesses, at the Beverly Hills and Peninsula hotels in Beverly Hills, the last time the weekend before Binion's death.

When a search warrant was served after the death at Murphy's home, Tabish was sitting on the couch at seven in the morning, his hair rumpled. Murphy was wearing pajamas.

A manicurist at Neiman Marcus told investigators that a week before Binion's death, Murphy had come into the salon, either high on drugs or drunk, and predicted that Binion would be dead of an overdose in three weeks.

On the day before Binion died, Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones came to his house. Jones was mounting a run for governor. She told investigators that Binion was in good spirits and gave her $40,000 in cash as a campaign donation.

That same day, his neighbor and personal physician, Enrique LaCoya, gave Binion another prescription for Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug that Binion used to ease his withdrawal symptoms. Binion picked up the pills later in the day.

Also, that evening, Peter Sheridan, a dealer who told investigators that he had sold Binion heroin in the past, brought twelve balloons filled with tar heroin to Binion's home. Sheridan said that Binion always smoked the drug, and that tar heroin has a very bitter taste, so junkies do not eat it. Binion paid for the heroin and gave Sheridan a handful of Xanax as a gratuity.

The same day, Binion told his lawyer Jim Brown, "Take Sandy out of the will, if she doesn't kill me tonight. If I am dead, you will know what happened."

Investigators believe that Binion was killed sometime early on Sept. 17, 1998. By whom? Investigators are not sure who actually forced the drugs into Binion.

Tabish called Murphy that day at 3:47 p.m. The call lasted one minute, according to phone records. Seven minutes later, Murphy called 911, "My husband has stopped breathing. . . ." Then the call was disconnected.

Fire Department paramedic Kenneth Dickenson was the first on the scene, and found "an apparently hysterical" Murphy outside the house. Dickenson said that Binion appeared to have been dead for some time.

At first, the authorities were content to consider the death an overdose. But two days after Binion's death, Nye County sheriff's deputies found Tabish and two other men digging up Binion's vault of silver in Pahrump at 3 a.m. Tabish said that Binion had asked him to get the silver, in the event of his death, and give it to his daughter. But the three men were arrested.

The prosecutor today described Tabish as a man desperate for cash--with huge debts coming due and the Internal Revenue Service on his tail.

Shortly after Binion's death, one of attorneys was present as a locksmith drilled open a safe at the Palomino house. On the inside door was a handwritten note, believed to be in Binion's own hand, that included a threat to anyone who might steal the contents of the safe.

The only item found inside was a single dime.

© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company

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