Binion’s maid lists missing items

Tuesday, July 27, 1999 | 11:23 a.m.

A month after Ted Binion's murder, his housekeeper provided investigators with a long list of cash, coins and jewelry missing from his home.

The Sun has obtained a copy of the two-page list, as well as more than 100 pages of transcripts of taped interviews investigators did with Mary Montoya-Gascoigne over a period of eight months in the aftermath of Binion's Sept. 17 death.

Most of the interviews were done by private detective Tom Dillard, who has been investigating Binion's slaying for his $30 million estate. But homicide detectives also questioned Montoya-Gascoigne Oct. 7, after she had led them on a tour of the slain gambling figure's 2408 Palomino Lane home.

The interviews were conducted prior to the June 24 arrests of Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her reported lover, Montana contractor Rick Tabish, on charges of killing the 55-year-old gambling figure and stealing his valuables.

Homicide detectives are said to be trying to determine whether any of the missing coins match those identified on a seven-page, handwritten list that surfaced a week after Murphy and Tabish were taken into custody.

Tanya Cropp, a close Murphy friend, has told detectives Murphy wrote the list of coins believed to have been taken from Binion's home after his death. Cropp, who spent time with Murphy and Tabish in the hours before and after his murder, has agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

Murphy today was to provide handwriting samples to police in their effort to determine whether she's the author of the coin list.

Montoya-Gascoigne, who last worked at Binion's house the day before he died, was asked about the list she had written in a Nov. 4 interview with Dillard, the second of three formal meetings with the private investigator.

She said the bottom half of the safe in Binion's garage was emptied of old silver coins, primarily dollars. She estimated the pile of coins, which she last saw a month before Binion's death, was about 6-8 inches high.

In his bedroom, coins in a night stand and closet and an inch-thick stack of Canadian bills in his desk also were missing, the housekeeper said. So were two gold antique pocket watches and a cigar box filled with small bills.

A coin collection encased in plastic was missing from Binion's den, as well as his checkbook and other papers a wooden box on a coffee table in his living room, Montoya-Gascoigne told Dillard.

The jeans Binion was wearing the day he was murdered also did not contain any cash, she said. Binion, she added, generally had large sums of money in his pockets.

A locked box in a hallway dresser drawer also was broken into, the housekeeper said. Investigators believe Binion kept diamonds in the box.

Montoya-Gascoigne said she also noticed that a pound of marijuana Binion kept in a metal box was gone. Binion, she said, often would hide the box from Murphy.

The housekeeper said Binion once told her that Murphy had the combination to his safe, and he confided in her prior to his death that he thought Murphy or a member of her family had stolen 1,000 coins in the safe.

Montoya-Gascoigne told homicide detectives Oct. 7 that she had observed about $40,000 in a curio cabinet in Binion's den at one point before his death. She also said that he had asked her to deposit $20,000 at the bank for him the day before he died.

Even Murphy told James J. Brown, a lawyer for Binion's estate, the day after Binion was found dead that $20,000 was missing from the house.

During the October tour of Binion's house, Montoya-Gascoigne pointed out several other oddities for detectives. She said Binion's bed did not look the way she had made it the day before.

She also told investigators that a plunger she saw in a closet in the laundry room on Sept. 16 was by the toilet in a bathroom in Binion's den.

Binion's body was found on top of a sleeping bag in his den next to an empty bottle of the prescription sedative Xanax. An autopsy report obtained by the Sun shows he had lethal levels of Xanax and heroin in his body. The report suggests Binion was given a fatal cocktail of the two drugs.

Detectives believe his killers moved his body after his death and cleaned up and staged the death scene.

Montoya-Gascoigne told Dillard less than two weeks after Binion's murder that Murphy telephoned her the morning of Sept. 17 and asked her not to come to work that day. She said Binion was feeling sick.

The housekeeper said she often saw Binion and Murphy fighting in the weeks before his death and that Binion several times told her he didn't like Murphy's spending habits.

She said the fights often would be over money.

Montoya-Gascoigne said she never saw Binion sleeping on a bedroll on the floor of his den in the year she had worked for him.

Binion, the housekeeper said, took her around the house before his death and emptied all of his guns of bullets because he was afraid Murphy might use one during an argument.

She also said she was convinced Binion did not kill himself.