Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

BINION TRIAL VERDICT: Reversal of fortunes

Jurors acquit Tabish, Murphy of murder

Sandy Murphy hugs attorney Michael Cristalli after she was found not guilty in the death of Ted Binion on Tuesday. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Rick Tabish is congratulated by one of his attorneys, Joseph Caramagno, after Tabish was acquitted of murder in Binion's death. In front is Tabish's lead attorney, J. Tony Serra. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Rick Tabish and attorney J. Tony Serra enjoy the moment after Tabish's acquittal in the death of Ted Binion. Tabish was convicted in a plot to steal Binion's silver Photo by Jeff Scheid. To the rear, Jack Binion reacts to a jury's finding that Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy are not guilty in the death of Binion's brother, Ted. In front of Binion is Las Vegas police homicide Detective James Buczek. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Ted Binion's sister, Becky Behnen, glances at Rick Tabish as the verdict was being read in the trial of Tabish and his co-defendant, Sandy Murphy. Murphy and Tabish were acquitted of murder but convicted of burglary, grand larceny and conspiracy to commit burglary and/or larceny. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Click image for enlargement.

His own addictions, not his girlfriend and her lover, killed Ted Binion, jurors decided Tuesday in the retrial of what was dubbed Las Vegas' trial of the century.

The forewoman said some jurors thought it was possible Binion was slain, but all agreed prosecutors did not prove Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish suffocated Binion, a son of late gaming legend Benny Binion.

"It did not seem like murder," one male juror said.

In the verdict that local television stations carried live, jurors found Murphy and Tabish guilty on charges relating to the attempt to steal $7 million worth of silver Binion had buried in Nye County.

Upon hearing the split verdict, Tabish nodded his head to the jury. Minutes later, he sought out his father, Frank, in the packed courtroom.

"This murder thing is behind me, man ... where's my father?" Tabish said.

A teary-eyed Frank Tabish walked up to his son, and the two embraced in a bear hug.

"It's because of this man that all this has happened," Rick Tabish said. "I love you so much. We'll get the rest of this cleaned up. Done with it. Done with it. I'm speechless right now."

Murphy buried her head in a garbage can and retched while waiting for the jury to enter the courtroom. She later trembled as the verdicts were read.

"The only way I could sum it all up is that even though I was vindicated today, nobody wins. I still lost four and half years of my freedom and six years of my life. They can never give me that back even with a not guilty verdict," Murphy, 32, said later Tuesday afternoon during an interview with the Review-Journal.

Members of Binion's family appeared stunned upon hearing the verdict and had little to say afterwards.

"Disappointed," said Binion's brother, Jack. "But that's the way it is."

Binion, 55, was found dead on the den floor at his Palomino Lane home on Sept. 17, 1998.

Police initially treated the death as a drug overdose. By his own estimation, Binion spent $1 million on heroin in his lifetime. The addiction led state regulators to take the gaming license of Binion, a former executive at Binion's Horseshoe, the downtown casino his father founded.

Two days after Binion died, Tabish and two other men were arrested when Nye County deputies caught them digging up Binion's silver fortune in Pahrump.

Convinced that Binion was killed, officials with his estate hired former Las Vegas homicide detective Tom Dillard to investigate. Based largely on evidence gathered by Dillard, police arrested Tabish and Murphy in June 1999.

Murphy, a California native, was Binion's live-in girlfriend. They met while she was working as a stripper at Cheetah's. Tabish was a contractor from Montana who befriended Binion.

At their first trial in 2000, jurors found Murphy and Tabish guilty of murder and other charges and sentenced them to life in prison. That trial held Southern Nevada spellbound, and Court TV carried the proceedings in their entirety.

The Nevada Supreme Court overturned the convictions last year. The justices said District Judge Joseph Bonaventure should have severed charges in connection with an unrelated extortion plot in which Tabish was implicated.

That ruling paved the way for the retrial, which began in October, also before Bonaventure.

On Tuesday, jurors acquitted Tabish and Murphy of murder, robbery, and conspiracy to commit murder. The jury convicted the pair of burglary and grand larceny, both felonies, and conspiracy to commit burglary and/or larceny, a gross misdemeanor. The judge set sentencing for Jan. 28.

The three convictions carry possible sentences of probation to 21 years in prison. But Bonaventure could give each defendant credit for time served. Tabish has spent more than five years in custody, while Murphy was in prison for nearly four years.

Murphy's attorney, Michael Cristalli, said he does not expect Murphy to go to prison and said she has no prior felony convictions. "If she doesn't get credit for time served, she should get probation for any time she has left," Cristalli said.

Tabish's attorney, J. Tony Serra, said even if Bonaventure imposes a moderate prison sentence for Tuesday's convictions, he expects his client to be paroled in three to four years.

Serra, a flamboyant San Francisco hippie whose life story inspired the movie "True Believer," said he believes his client's decision to get on the witness stand and proclaim his innocence was a huge factor in the case.

"People who are innocent, they want to take the stand," Serra said. "There was no question. We were always going to take the stand. Why? He's not guilty! He wasn't hiding."

Pending sentencing, Tabish will remain at High Desert State Prison at Indian Springs, where he is serving a sentence of three to 20 years for the extortion of a former sand pit owner. Murphy remains free on bail.

District Attorney David Roger, who successfully prosecuted Murphy and Tabish in 2000, said he and prosecutors Christopher Lalli and Robert Daskas were disheartened by Tuesday's verdict.

"We're obviously disappointed with the verdict, but we believe in the criminal justice system, and we accept the jury's verdict," Roger said. "Robert Daskas and Chris Lalli are fine prosecutors. They did everything that prosecutors should have done in this case."

Jurors said afterward they voted not guilty on the murder charge largely because nine different medical experts presented by Murphy and Tabish's defense attorneys said Binion died of a drug overdose.

Two prosecution medical experts, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Lary Simms, testified that Binion was the victim of a homicide, and only Baden said Binion was suffocated.

"Those of us who felt it was murder, there had been reasonable doubt, and our instructions very clearly said, if there was reasonable doubt, we had to go with not guilty," the jury forewoman said during a news conference at which seven jurors spoke on condition their names not be used.

The jury rejected Baden's theory that Binion was burked, which is a method of suffocation designed to leave few marks. Jurors in the first trial deemed Baden's testimony critical.

During the retrial, Baden testified that Binion's killer or killers sat on his chest while covering his mouth and nose. Baden based his theory in part on the premise that red marks found on Binion's chest were marks left by buttons pressed into his body when the killers sat on him.

"We pretty much felt that they weren't button marks," the jury forewoman said.

A male juror said Binion's decades of substance abuse made it hard to conclude he was murdered. Large amounts of heroin and the prescription drug Xanax were found in Binion's system after he died.

"The lifestyle that Ted lived had made it hard for us," the juror said.

Jurors said they did not give the testimony of Tabish any extra weight as evidence. "I regarded him as I did every other witness that was on there," one female juror said.

During his two days on the witness stand, Tabish said that he was not at Binion's house the day he died and that Binion had told him that if he died, Tabish was to secure his silver from the vault in Pahrump, so his daughter, Bonnie, would get it.

"It didn't matter whether Ted told him to do it or not," one male juror said. "He shouldn't have been there. It was a bad choice to make."

Montana resident Kurt Gratzer testified that Tabish talked to him about killing a casino owner named Ted before Binion's death. But Gratzer, who behaved erratically on the witness stand, said Tabish made the comments in a joking manner.

"We didn't believe most of what he said," a female juror said of Gratzer.

Prosecutors called witnesses intended to corroborate Gratzer's claims. Those witnesses, including a hair stylist and a convenience store owner from Tabish's hometown of Missoula, Mont., said Gratzer told them of Tabish's comments before Binion's death.

But jurors said the witnesses might have been confused about the dates when they spoke with Gratzer.

Jurors said they think Las Vegas police botched the crime scene investigation.

Jurors said they thought that police concluded prematurely the death was likely a drug overdose and that potential evidence was not properly secured until well after the crime scene was contaminated.

"We did feel because they had decided it wasn't a murder, it was an accidental overdose, that there was a lot that they should have done that they didn't do," the jury forewoman said.

Prosecutors argued that circumstantial facts indicated Murphy and Tabish drugged Binion, then suffocated him. One of those facts involved Binion telling his attorney to take Murphy out of the will the day before he died.

Attorneys for Murphy have said that, under the terms of the will, she was entitled to Binion's house, its contents and $300,000 if Binion died while they remained a couple.

After Murphy's first trial in 2000, Binion's estate successfully argued that her murder conviction rendered Murphy ineligible to collect under the will.

Now that she has been acquitted, Murphy's attorneys could return to civil court and demand Binion's estate give her the compensation she was entitled to under the will.

Binion's estate has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Murphy and Tabish. That lawsuit has been inactive, but attorneys for the estate could seek to reactivate the case. The standard of proof in a civil case is lower than in a criminal action.

Commenting after Tuesday's verdict, jurors said they viewed with mild skepticism the testimony of witnesses who received reward money from Binion's estate.

One such witness was former manicurist Deanna Perry, who testified Murphy came into the Neiman Marcus beauty salon a week before Binion's death and predicted he soon would die of an overdose.

"Binion bought a prosecution," Serra said. "Therefore, it was never bona fide. Witnesses were paid thousands of dollars to curtail the truth and shade it in the direction the Binions wanted."

Dillard, the private investigator for Binion's estate, said his investigation was solid.

"Obviously I disagree with the verdict," Dillard said. "I feel good for Mr. and Mrs. Tabish. They stuck with their kid from the beginning, and that's what parents are supposed to do. But I think they (the defendants) got a stroke of luck from day one."

He declined to elaborate.

Tabish's father said he always believed his son would be exonerated.

"I have dealt with hundreds of thousands of people," said Frank Tabish, a businessman in Montana. "I think I can read people, and I thought I could read those people (jurors). They were fair people and had fair faces."

Frank Tabish said that his son's defense has cost more than $1 million and that Rick Tabish hopes to reunite with his children, who are in the custody of Rick Tabish's ex-wife.

"They're little kids," Frank Tabish said. "What's great is that today we proved their father is not a murderer."

Review-Journal writers Carri Geer Thevenot and Frank Geary contributed to this report.