Friend: Tabish discussed murder

Tuesday, Aug. 10, 1999 | 11:02 a.m.

Rick Tabish discussed several ways to kill Ted Binion -- including staging a suicide -- with a friend prior to the gambling figure's Sept. 17 murder, police documents show.

The friend, Steven Kurt Gratzer, disclosed details of his conversations with Tabish in a March 19 voluntary statement to homicide detectives after receiving immunity from prosecution.

Gratzer, a 36-year-old Montana man who once trained as an Army ranger, stepped forward four days after Clark County Coroner Ron Flud held a news conference to declare Binion's drug overdose a homicide. Police at first suspected a suicide or accident.

Tabish, a 34-year-old Montana contractor, and Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, were arrested June 24 and charged with Binion's slaying. Gratzer is expected to testify at next week's preliminary hearing for Tabish and Murphy.

The Sun has obtained a copy of Gratzer's 62-page statement and the grant of immunity that prohibits him from talking about the Binion murder to reporters, literary agents and filmmakers without the permission of the district attorney's office.

Gratzer said Tabish first told him in late August or early September about his plans to kill Binion. The discussion took place at a telemarketing company owned by Tabish in Missoula, Mont., where both men reside. Gratzer worked at the firm.

"He wanted me to help him commit a murder of ... Ted, a casino owner, and he explained to me how I'd be paid, uh, through insurance settlements of ... the girlfriend of the casino owner, Sandy," Gratzer told detectives.

"And, uh, he was going to steal the guy's money and silver (and) a lot of valuables he had in the house."

Tabish was arrested in Pahrump on Sept. 19 after he had dug up Binion's $4 million silver fortune from an underground vault. Tabish built the vault.

Along with the murder counts, Tabish and Murphy later were charged with stealing the silver and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of valuables from Binion's Las Vegas home.

Tabish, Gratzer said, described Binion as "pretty much of a monster who was beating up his girlfriend" and "needed to be done away with."

Attorneys Steve Wolfson and Bill Terry, who represent Tabish and Murphy, have declined to discuss the evidence police have been compiling against the two defendants.

Gratzer told homicide detectives that after he had read about Binion's death in the Missoula newspapers, he was convinced it wasn't a suicide.

"I knew it was a murder and that these things were taken out of the home, as Rick said he was going to do once he carried out this murder," Gratzer said.

Gratzer said Tabish told him he had created an alibi for taking the silver. Tabish, he said, planned to tell authorities that Binion had instructed him to remove it so that his brother, Jack Binion, wouldn't get it.

After his two-hour debriefing with homicide detectives, Gratzer called Bill Koot, chief of the district attorney's Major Violators Unit, to report information he had forgotten to tell police.

Koot conveyed that information in a March 23 memo to Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor in the case.

"At about 3:30 p.m., Kurt called me and advised me that he had left something out of his voluntary statement," Koot wrote. "When I asked him what it was, he stated that on one occasion when Rick left Kurt's apartment sometime after the murder, he asked Rick who was next, Jack or Becky (Binion's brother and sister), and his response was, 'We'll talk about that later."'

Gratzer, meanwhile, said Tabish had considered several ways to kill Binion.

One idea, he said, was to introduce Gratzer to Binion and let him show the Army veteran his many handguns at his Las Vegas home.

"He'd be handing me a weapon, and (Tabish) suggested that I take one of these weapons and shoot Ted in the head," Gratzer said.

Tabish also allegedly raised the possibility that Gratzer could act as a sniper and shoot Binion from afar while he was at his Pahrump ranch.

But Tabish, Gratzer told detectives, was most interested in staging a suicide because of Binion's well-known heroin habit.

Tabish talked about mixing a lethal combination of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax that Binion was taking and getting it into the casino man's body, Gratzer said.

An autopsy report obtained by the Sun says Binion was given a deadly cocktail of heroin and Xanax. Both drugs were found in a gray-brown fluid in his stomach, and police believe the death scene was staged.

Tabish at one point, Gratzer said, asked him to question a pharmacist about how much heroin and Xanax it would take to kill a person. Gratzer said he asked a pharmacist, but reported back to Tabish that he couldn't get an answer.

Murphy telephoned Tabish three times during their conversation about Binion, Gratzer said.

Tabish, he said, acknowledged that he was having an affair with Murphy and that he had her in his "back pocket" and she'd do anything he wants her to do.

Tabish told Gratzer that they both stood to gain more money if Binion's death was found to be a suicide. Tabish believed that Murphy would receive an $875,000 life insurance premium after his death, Gratzer said.

In the end, Gratzer said, Tabish expected to get all of Murphy's money as well.

Gratzer said Tabish promised to buy him a new Pontiac Trans Am and let it be known he could earn as much as $3 million by participating in the murder plot.

Sometime after Binion's murder, Gratzer said, he ran into Tabish and Murphy in Missoula and that Tabish appeared to be acting as if he had gotten away with something.

Tabish and Murphy told Gratzer they were interested in obtaining rocket launchers and grenades and asked for his assistance. Tabish was talking about wanting to blow up a Denny's restaurant, Gratzer said.

After their meeting, Gratzer said, Murphy instructed him not to talk to anyone about their conversation.

At a subsequent meeting with Tabish, Gratzer told detectives he asked Tabish how he had gone about "getting those chemicals down the guy's throat."

"And he said to me, 'I'll tell you Gratz when I see you murder somebody. If I ever see you kill somebody,' " Gratzer said.

Then, as Tabish drove off in his pickup, Gratzer said, he smiled and yelled back, "Xanax."

Gratzer told detectives that he stepped forward because he was afraid that Tabish was going to set him up to take the fall for Binion's murder.

Homicide detectives traveled to Missoula to interview Timothy Boileau, a juvenile detention officer whom Gratzer had told of the murder plot to protect himself from the setup.

In his 18-page statement to police, Boileau confirmed that Gratzer told him after Binion's murder that Tabish had wanted to hire Gratzer to kill the casino man.

Boileau quoted Gratzer as saying Tabish had offered his friend $100,000 to participate in the murder scheme.

Gratzer, meanwhile, told detectives he was afraid of Tabish, who had implied that he had ties to the Chicago mob.

"I don't want anything to happen to my family," he said.

"I don't want anything to happen to me. I've been living in hiding for months, occasionally breaking out and ... retreating back to my apartment and keeping my shades drawn at all times ... and I'm not sleeping ... life's been a living hell for me."