Credibility of chief witness questioned

Monday, Aug. 30, 1999 | 11:31 a.m.

Defense lawyers today planned to attack the credibility of a chief prosecution witness who claims he was tortured into turning over his interests in a Jean sand pit as part of a plot to murder Ted Binion.

Leo Casey was to return to the witness stand this morning under intense cross examination, as the preliminary hearing for Binion's accused killers, Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, and four other defendants charged with related crimes enters its third week.

The hearing, conducted by Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti, was expected to wrap up by Wednesday. At the conclusion, Togliatti will decide whether the defendants should stand trial.

The 64-year-old Casey gave riveting testimony Friday explaining how Tabish and his kidnapping co-defendant, Steven Wadkins, drove him to the Jean sand pit at gunpoint on July 28, 1998, and forced him to sign documents giving up his share of the company and acknowledging he had embezzled money.

The extortion scheme allegedly was hatched by John B. Joseph, the pit's chief owner, who also is facing charges.

"I was scared to death," Casey told Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger from the witness stand. "I said I'd sign anything they had."

Casey, the last of some 30 prosecution witnesses, denied that he had embezzled any money. But defense lawyers today were to present evidence suggesting he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from his business partners.

Prosecutors contend Tabish, a 34-year-old Montana contractor and two-time convicted felon, murdered Binion less than two months after the Jean incident to gain access to his money so that he could keep the sand pit operating.

At the time, Tabish was said to be having a romantic affair with the 27-year-old Murphy, who was Binion's live-in girlfriend.

Murphy also is charged in the kidnapping plot. Prosecutors presented evidence earlier in the preliminary hearing that she supplied the thumbcuffs used to restrain Casey while he was tortured on July 28. The thumbcuffs, which were Binion's, were found in a large sack of silver coins in Murphy's bedroom after the gambling figure's Sept. 17 death.

On Friday, Casey testified that Tabish told him in April he planned to "get his hands" on the former Horseshoe Club executive's silver fortune in Pahrump. Tabish and two other men, Michael Milot and David Mattsen, were arrested in Pahrump on Sept. 19 after they had dug up the buried silver from a vault Tabish had built for Binion.

Casey said Tabish explained that it would be easier to get to Binion's millions because he was "laying the pipe" to Murphy.

Tabish, he said, told him he planned to give drugs into Binion, who had returned to using heroin.

Police believe Binion's killers tried to pump his body with drugs and then suffocated him. A liquid mixture of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax was found in his stomach.

Casey, meanwhile, described Friday how his kidnappers beat him over the head with a telephone book and stuck a gun in his mouth and ears and a pocket knife under his fingernails.

He agreed to sign the documents after his torturers dug a shallow grave with a front loader and threatened to bury him in it.

Casey testified that he then was driven back to a lawyer's office in Las Vegas, where he turned over everything to Tabish and Joseph.

Afterward, he said, he was told to leave town or his family would be harmed.

The next day he left Las Vegas, he said.

Prosecutors presented other witnesses Friday, such as Joe Booher, a security guard at the Jean sand pit, to corroborate Casey's story.

Booher, who lives in a trailer at the sand pit, saw Tabish and Wadkins driving with Casey at the pit on July 28.

Troy Morrison, a heavy equipment operator for Casey, testified that Tabish later asked him to run the plant sometime in August 1998.

Tabish, Morrison said, told him that he had beaten Casey over the head with the phone book and threatened to harm him further because he owed him $450,000 to $500,000.

Tabish bragged that he had put thumbcuffs on Casey during the attack, Morrison said.

He added that he saw Murphy with Tabish at the sand pit a dozen times in late 1998.

On Tuesday, defense lawyers are expected to focus on the charges related to the Pahrump silver theft.

Among those subpoenaed to testify is Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieske, whom Tabish claims was fully briefed on the plans to dig up Binion's silver fortune.