Housekeeper links Binion’s girlfriend to July 1998 torture case

Monday, Aug. 16, 1999 | 1:10 a.m.

Late information provided by Ted Binion's housekeeper led prosecutors to file five new criminal charges last week against his girlfriend, Sandy Murphy.

The charges, which include extortion, assault and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, relate to the July 1998 torture of Jean sand pit operator Leo Casey.

Murphy, 27, and her reported lover, Rick Tabish, 34, have been charged in Binion's Sept. 17 murder.

The housekeeper, Mary Montoya-Gascoigne, told the Sun this morning that she saw Murphy with Binion's thumbcuffs in late June or July, prior to the reported Casey torture.

Homicide detectives believe the thumbcuffs were used to restrain Casey while he was beaten and forced into turning over his interests in the sand pit operation and acknowledging he had embezzled money.

Three of Murphy's co-defendants -- Tabish, Steve Wadkins and John Joseph -- also are accused of participating in the plot, which occurred two months before Binion's body was found at his home next to an empty bottle of the prescription sedative, Xanax.

Police believe Tabish, a Montana contractor with two felony convictions, needed money to keep the pit operating and that provided a motive to kill the wealthy gambling figure.

In a new nine-count complaint filed in the murder case last week, Murphy was accused of supplying the thumbcuffs to her co-defendants.

"She said she was going to lend them to a friend to get some money back," Montoya-Gascoigne said this morning.

That friend, detectives believe, was Tabish.

The housekeeper said Binion was looking for the thumbcuffs a couple of days before his death.

She said she told Binion they were in Murphy's possession, and he wondered what she would be doing with them.

After Binion's murder, the thumbcuffs were found in a large bag of silver coins behind an entertainment center in Murphy's bedroom at the former casino executive's 2408 Palomino Lane home.

Binion's estate kept the bag in a safe at the office of private detective Tom Dillard for several weeks without knowing the thumbcuffs were inside. They were discovered by an appraiser examining the coins.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, who is prosecuting Murphy and Tabish, learned about Montoya-Gascoigne's knowledge of the thumbcuffs last week when interviewing her for this week's preliminary hearing.

Montoya-Gascoigne is expected to testify at the hearing, which gets under way at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Prosecutors plan to call about 30 witnesses over the next two weeks in an attempt to persuade Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti to order Murphy and Tabish and four other defendants to stand trial on the charges in the new complaint.

Two other men, David Mattsen and Michael Milot, are charged with Murphy and Tabish in a scheme to steal Binion's silver fortune from an underground vault in Pahrump two days after his murder.

Murphy and Tabish also are charged with robbing Binion's home of its valuables, including a $300,000 collection of rare coins and currency.

Montoya-Gascoigne has provided homicide detectives with a long list of cash, coins and jewelry missing from the 55-year-old Binion's home.

Binion's safe, she said was cleaned out of coins.

On Friday Togliatti delayed the preliminary hearing, which was to start today, for 24 hours so that Murphy's defense lawyer, Bill Terry, could have time to prepare for the new charges.

"These additional counts should not be much of a surprise to the defense," Roger told Togliatti.

Tabish's attorney, Steve Wolfson, tried to persuade Togliatti to ban the media from the hearing, but Togliatti refused.

Wolfson, pointing to a recent series of Sun stories shedding new light on the case, said he was concerned the added publicity would hurt his client's chances of getting a fair trial.

But Togliatti said there was no precedent in Justice Court to bar the media from covering the hearing, which is expected to be carried live on Las Vegas 1.

Police believe the death scene at Binion's home was staged. Lethal levels of heroin and Xanax were found in his body.