Columnist Jeff German: Binion case finally has right label: homicide

Sunday, March 21, 1999 | 9:25 a.m.

HOMICIDE it is.

Clark County Coroner Ron Flud raised the stakes last week in the investigation into Ted Binion's death, when he told the world that the colorful casino executive was murdered.

The revelation came as no surprise to many -- most notably Binion's sister, Horseshoe Club owner Becky Behnen, who was the first to suspect murder, and private detective Tom Dillard, who guided Flud and homicide detectives to the point where they could confidently say that Binion's life had ended in foul play.

Homicide is the word Binion's friends and family members had been waiting to hear from Flud for months.

And when it was uttered at a news conference crammed with reporters and cameramen, Binion's death officially became a mystery murder that attracted instant attention from the national media. Even local reporters who ignored the story for months woke up and started digging for scoops.

To police, the mystery hasn't been who did in the 55-year-old Binion, the son of the late gaming legend, Benny Binion -- but how they did it.

After receiving a call from Binion's 27-year-old live-in girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, about 3:55 p.m. on Sept. 17, police found his body on the floor of his den next to an empty bottle of the prescription sedative, Xanax. Drug tests later showed Binion had lethal levels of heroin and Xanax in his system. A large portion of the heroin was in his stomach, which didn't go unnoticed by homicide detectives. Binion was known to smoke heroin, not ingest it.

Last week, at Flud's news conference, Homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen refused to name the suspects, but he gave us a big clue to their identities when he suggested it was obvious who had a motive and opportunity to kill Binion.

The two people coming under the most suspicion are the high-strung Murphy, who was on the verge of being cut out of Binion's will, and her reported lover, Rick Tabish, a 33-year-old Montana contractor who was arrested in Pahrump two days after Binion's murder while digging dug up a fortune in silver Binion had buried there.

Through their lawyers, Murphy and Tabish contend they had nothing to do with Binion's death.

Both have refused to be questioned by homicide detectives and have taken the Fifth Amendment when quizzed in court about hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets missing from Binion's $30 million estate.

As Flud and the police have turned up the heat, defense lawyers have gotten more defensive.

Louis Palazzo, who represents Tabish, a two-time convicted felon, called the coroner's news conference "a knee-jerk political reaction."

Palazzo said the change in theory of the manner in which Binion died was "somewhat peculiar," and he questioned how Flud could call the gaming figure's death a homicide not knowing how the heroin wound up in Binion's stomach.

Another defense lawyer, James "Bucky" Buchanan, accused police of pressuring his client, former Binion ranch hand David Mattsen, to cooperate in the murder investigation. Mattsen, charged with Tabish in the Pahrump silver theft, may face additional firearms charges in the near future. Police believe he's a convicted felon who had weapons, which may have belonged to Binion, in his possession illegally.

To a degree, Buchanan is right. Detectives, though they are collecting all the circumstantial evidence they need, are indeed looking for someone within the inner-circle of Murphy and Tabish to roll over and talk.

That's why they issued an arrest warrant for Linda Susan Carroll as a material witness in the probe. Carroll, who lives in Southern California, is a close Murphy friend who spent several hours with her after Binion's death. Other Murphy friends already have been hauled before a county grand jury assisting police.

And while Flud sent the investigation into high gear last week, national newspapers, the television networks and of course the TV tabloid shows all began taking another look at the case.

Even "Unsolved Mysteries," which did some filming here last fall, indicated that CBS finally had found air time on April 23 for its segment on Binion's death.

By then, however, there may not be any mystery to the homicide investigation.