Housekeeper says Binion feared girlfriend would shoot him

Angie Wagner

Friday, Aug. 20, 1999 | 6:47 a.m.

A housekeeper testified Friday that gambling figure Ted Binion unloaded several guns in his home a week before his death because he feared his girlfriend would try to shoot him.

"He said, 'Well, when she points this at me, it'll be empty.' I said who, and he said, 'Sandy,' " Mary Montoya-Gascoigne testified during a preliminary hearing for six people linked to the Binion case.

Binion's live-in girlfriend, Sandra Murphy, and her reported lover, Missoula, Mont., contractor Rick Tabish, are charged with Binion's Sept. 17 murder.

Prosecutors claim the two plotted to kill Binion to get his fortune. Binion's family operates the downtown Horseshoe Club hotel-casino.

A medical examiner testified Thursday that Binion died after being forced to ingest a lethal mixture of heroin and the prescription drug Xanax, but another doctor testified that he believes Binion was suffocated. Prosecutors will likely offer both theories to a jury should the case go to trial.

Ms. Montoya-Gascoigne, who worked at Binion's home five days a week, also testified that Ms. Murphy called her the morning of Binion's death and told her not to come to work because Binion was sick.

"She said, 'Ted wasn't feeling very good this morning and we're just going to sleep in all day and rest because he was sick all night,' " Ms. Montoya-Gascoigne said.

She also testified that several items - including silver coins and foreign currency - were missing from the home when she toured it with a private investigator a month after Binion's death.

Ms. Montoya-Gascoigne said she found a will with Ms. Murphy's name on it and "$1 million" scribbled out.

She also said she remembers Binion looking for a pair of thumbcuffs the day before his murder. Ms. Montoya-Gascoigne testified that she saw a pair of thumbcuffs in Ms. Murphy's bathroom a couple of months before the death.

She said Ms. Murphy said, "I'm going to lend them to a friend because I gotta get some money back. That's how we do things. Sometimes we have to use a little force."

Prosecutors accuse Ms. Murphy of providing the thumbcuffs used to restrain the victim of a 1998 extortion plot. Officials say the cuffs were used to restrain Leo Casey while Steven Wadkins and Tabish beat him until Casey agreed to sign over his interest in a sandpit operation in Jean.

Police say Casey was also forced to sign documents indicating he embezzled money and equipment from his business partner, John Joseph.

Murphy, Tabish, Wadkins and Joseph are charged with kidnapping, assault and extortion in the kidnapping of Casey. Authorities contend Tabish was trying to take control of a sandpit owned by Casey.

Murphy, Tabish, David Mattsen and Michael Milot have been charged with the attempted theft of about $7 million worth of silver Binion had buried in a vault in Pahrump, Nev. Tabish, Mattsen and Milot were arrested two days after Binion's death while digging up the silver.

Only Murphy and Tabish are charged with murder. She is free on $300,000 cash bond while he is being held without bond.