Arrests provide sense of relief to family, friends of Binion

Jeff German and Jace Radke

Friday, June 25, 1999 | 11:08 a.m.

Thursday's arrests in the murder of Ted Binion have brought a sense of relief to his family and friends.

Binion's sister, Horseshoe Club President Becky Behnen, said she was eager to see what information homicide detectives have gathered during the well-publicized probe.

"I feel like a great deal of weight has been taken off my shoulders," Behnen told the Sun this morning. "I'm not surprised by this. From the moment I heard about his death and the circumstances surrounding his death, I've always felt it was a homicide."

Behnen was the first to suspect foul play in her brother's Sept. 17 death. In an interview with the Sun the day after his body was discovered at his home, Behnen encouraged police to treat his death as a homicide.

Private detective Tom Dillard, who has been investigating Binion's death for his $30 million estate, said he was "elated" with the arrests of Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her reported lover, Montana contractor Rick Tabish.

"I knew it was a homicide from the very first week I was on the case," Dillard said today. "It's an extremely complex case, and we're not done. There's still a lot of work to do." Homicide detectives and Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, who has been spearheading the probe, all have credited Dillard's relentless investigative work with helping break open the case.

"It's only through this joint effort that we've been able to come to a conclusion in this case," Roger said.

Attorney Richard Wright, who represents Binion's estate, praised the work of authorities.

"I know how diligently they were working it," Wright said. "They impressed me."

Wright said he's glad that there now will be "some accountability" for Binion's death.

Harry Claiborne, another estate attorney and longtime Binion friend, said: "I take no pleasure seeing anybody being charged with a crime, but if they are proven guilty at the time of trial, then I hope justice will be done.

"My first comments at the death scene was that it was staged, and I felt in my heart that he was murdered. That was not an accident or a willful overdose."

When homicide detectives arrested Tabish and Murphy at a Green Valley supermarket Thursday they reached the home stretch in an investigation that started nine months ago.

"No one incident brought us to this point today," Homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen said. "It was a culmination of months of work on a complex case. The file for this case is the largest in the office, and the biggest I've ever seen in the over two years since I joined homicide."

The file is about 4 feet tall if measured from end to end, according to Petersen.

"Detectives Jim Buczek, Thomas Thowsen and Sgt. Ken Hefner have been working on this since the beginning," Petersen said. "It means something for the officers to be able to go down, put the handcuffs on and make an arrest after so much work."

Petersen added: "No investigation is ever complete until a case has been fully adjudicated. More information could come forward now that they are behind bars. There could be people that were unwilling to talk before who will now come forward."