Murphy expected to provide handwriting samples this week

Monday, July 26, 1999 | 11:34 a.m.

Prosecutors expect to take handwriting samples from Sandy Murphy this week in an effort to determine whether she wrote a seven-page list of coins reportedly stolen from Ted Binion's home after his murder.

On Friday, Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti ordered Murphy to provide the samples despite objections from Murphy's lawyer, Bill Terry.

Tanya Cropp, a close Murphy friend, has told prosecutors Murphy authored the handwritten list, which identifies coins dating to 1878. Homicide detectives suspect it was faxed to Murphy's murder co-defendant, Rick Tabish, in Montana after Binion was killed.

Last week, the Sun reported the existence of the list and confirmed that the 24-year-old Cropp, who spent time with Murphy and Tabish in the hours before and after Binion's Sept. 17 murder, has become a prosecution witness.

Following Friday's hearing, which was attended by Murphy, who is under house arrest in Binion's slaying, Terry refused to discuss Cropp and the list of coins.

But he told the Sun the existence of the list is not a surprise to him.

Terry said he expected prosecutors would seek the handwriting samples this week from the 27-year-old Murphy.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor in the case, declined comment today.

But on Friday, Roger referred to the coin list in court as a recently received "multiple-page document" that he believes is "incriminating" to Murphy.

Roger told Togliatti that he was racing to tie up loose ends before next month's preliminary hearing for Murphy and Tabish and four other defendants charged with lesser crimes in the murder case.

Togliatti refused Friday to give the four others separate hearings.

Murphy and Tabish, her 34-year-old reported lover, are charged with giving Binion fatal doses of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax at his home and stealing his valuables in Las Vegas and Pahrump.

Missing from the former casino executive's home are hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold and silver coins, antique currency, diamonds and cash.

Homicide detectives believe Binion's killers staged his death scene.

An autopsy report obtained by the Sun suggests Binion may have been given a fatal cocktail of heroin and Xanax. A brown-gray fluid of the two drugs was in his stomach, the report said.

Last week, the Sun reported that Binion's heroin dealer had told police the slain gambling figure always smoked heroin.

The dealer said he sold Binion 12 balloons, about one dose each, of "crude tar" heroin the night before his death.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, believe Cropp has key information about the activities of Murphy and Tabish, who have denied killing Binion, before and after his death.

Court documents show Cropp, hired as Binion's secretary the day before his slaying, visited his house that day to do office chores for him. Both Murphy and Tabish were at the house at the same time.

Cropp, documents show, went to Valley Hospital to console Murphy after Binion's death and helped put her to sleep later that night at a Binion neighbor's home.

Cropp was with Murphy the next day at Binion's house, when Murphy became embroiled in a confrontation with a lawyer for his estate.