Binion’s coins missing

Monday, Sept. 28, 1998 | 10:48 a.m.

Ted Binion's valuable collection of old coins and currency is missing from his Las Vegas home, his lawyer confirmed Sunday.

The revelation has lead to more questions about the former gaming executive's Sept. 17 death, which police suspect was the result of a drug overdose.

Attorney Richard Wright said the collection, which contains U.S. currency that predates the Civil War, remains "unaccounted for" as Binion's belongings are documented for his multimillion-dollar estate.

Wright said he didn't know how much the collection was worth, but he suggested it was "very expensive."

Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke, meanwhile, said today his detectives in Pahrump are looking into the disappearance of the collection.

Detectives investigating the Sept. 19 theft of as much as $4 million in buried silver from Binion are trying to determine whether the collection at one point may have been kept at Binion's Pahrump ranch, Lieseke said.

In another development, a longtime Binion friend who was summoned to Binion's Las Vegas home a day before he died, said Binion told him he kept $500,000 in a safe there.

The friend, who asked to remain anonymous, said Binion personally showed him another $50,000 he was carrying in his pocket that day.

Wright said no cash was found at Binion's Palamino Lane home the day he died, and there was "nothing of value" in his safe.

Binion friends said it was not unusual for Binion to carry around a lot of cash, as well as to store large amounts of money at his home.

Controversy began swirling around Binion's death after one of his friends, Montana contractor Rick Tabish, was arrested with two other men in Pahrump for allegedly stealing Binion's buried silver fortune from an underground vault.

The arrests were made less than 36 hours after Binion had died.

His girlfriend, ex-topless dancer Sandy Murphy, discovered his body about 3:55 p.m. Sept. 17 lying on a sleeping bag in his den. An empty bottle of the prescription sedative Xanax Binion had obtained a day earlier was next to his body.

Metro Police found no evidence of foul play at the scene, and an autopsy did not reveal signs of trauma on his body.

But homicide detectives and the coroner are waiting for a toxicology report, which should be completed this week, before determining the cause of his death.

Binion's sister, Becky Behnen, has urged detectives to treat his death as a homicide until a drug overdose can be proven.

Though Binion had a well-documented history of heroin use, Behnen said, he was not someone who liked taking pills.

On the day Tabish was arrested, Nye County sheriff's deputies found evidence of a possible romantic relationship between Tabish and Murphy, who stands to inherit part of Binion's estate.

Behnen has been told the Tabish and Murphy were seen together at a posh Beverly Hills hotel the weekend before Binion's death.

Tabish, a two-time convicted felon who once pleaded guilty to stealing a valuable painting from his lawyer, was at Binion's home the day before he died. Tabish, however, has denied any romantic ties to Murphy and has said he dug up the silver in Pahrump at Binion's request.

Murphy's lawyer, David Chesnoff, has declined to comment on her behalf.

Meanwhile, others have stepped forward to raise questions about Binion's death.

His housekeeper told the SUN last week that Binion and Murphy had been fighting in the month leading to his death, sometimes over his return to heroin use and other times over Murphy's spending habits.

On the morning of his death, the housekeeper said, Murphy told her not to go to work because Binion was sick.

Brad Parry, the man who installed video cameras outside Binion's Palomino home, said Binion asked him two days before he died to repair a damaged recorder linked to the cameras.

The recorder, Parry said, had appeared to be tampered with.

Parry said he took the recorder out of the home to have it examined, which meant there was no way to document who was coming in and out of the home in the hours before Binion's death.

All of Binion's friends and associates, including his lawyers, interviewed by the SUN have indicated he was in good spirits and was not prone to taking his own life. Friends also said he was very aware of the limits of his drug use, which casts doubt on the accidental overdose theory.

In recent years, Binion had landed in trouble with gaming regulators because of his drug use and associations with underworld figures.

His gaming license was revoked in May because of ties to murdered Chicago mob associate Herbie Blitzstein.

During the investigation into Blitzstein's 1997 slaying, FBI agents picked up information that his killers once had considered Binion as a target.