Binion trial spotlight shines on Pahrump couple

Monday, Oct. 18, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.

A Pahrump couple is expected to receive more attention from prosecutors as they prepare for the March 13 trial of Ted Binion's accused killers.

David and Thressa Mattsen have been thrust into the limelight in the wake of a judge's decision last week to try Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish without the other defendants charged with lesser crimes related to Binion's death.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure granted a separate trial Friday for the 54-year-old David Mattsen, who is charged with helping Murphy and Tabish steal Binion's silver fortune after his Sept. 17, 1998, slaying.

Bonaventure also refused to release Murphy from house arrest, and he ordered Tabish to remain behind bars at the Clark County Detention Center, where he has been held since his June 24 arrest. Murphy and Tabish are charged with pumping Binion with drugs and suffocating him at his Las Vegas home.

Prior to his appearance in Bonaventure's courtroom, Mattsen was arraigned on federal firearms charges before U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt. He's facing a stiff prison term if convicted and is considered by prosecutors as a likely candidate to cooperate in the murder case. Cell phone records show Mattsen had contact with Murphy and Tabish in the hours surrounding Binion's death.

Mattsen's lawyer, James "Bucky" Buchanan, said last week that Mattsen remains committed to fighting the local and federal charges, but he did not rule out the possibility of seeking a deal down the line.

Prosecutors also now are considering calling Mattsen's wife to testify against Murphy and Tabish at their upcoming trial. Thressa Mattsen appeared before a county grand jury investigating Binion's murder in April, but she would not provide testimony against her husband. Before she went inside the grand jury room, she described herself as a born-again Christian.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger agreed to take her testimony on the condition that anything she said would not be used against her husband. In the court system, a husband and a wife have the right to refuse to testify against each other.

Roger had not planned to call Mattsen to the witness stand at trial as long as her husband was facing charges with Murphy and Tabish. But now that David Mattsen has been severed from the case, his wife can testify against the accused killers without having to worry about damaging her husband's defense.

Thressa Mattsen testified before the grand jury that Murphy gave her husband $1,000 last November, according to a transcript obtained by the Sun.

"Did there come a point in time when your husband received some cash from Sandra Murphy," Roger asked Mattsen.

"Yes," she responded. "He told me he went and picked up some cash from her. She said she sold her car and felt sorry for us. That's what David told me."

Roger than asked: "How much cash did your husband come back with?"

Mattsen responded: "$1,000."

She also told the grand jury that her husband received a new truck from Tabish after Binion's death and was put on the payroll of MRT Transport, a company owned by Tabish, in October or November. She said her husband received checks from MRT, but he never did any work for the company.

Mattsen recalled a visit she made with her husband to MRT in November to pick up a payroll check.

During that visit, she testified, Murphy told her she expected to inherit Binion's 125-acre ranch in Pahrump. Prior to his arrest for stealing Binion's silver, David Mattsen had been managing the ranch.

"She said my attorneys ... say, you know, I'll probably get the ranch," Thressa Mattsen told the grand jury.

Mattsen said she recorded her thoughts about that conversation with Murphy in a daily journal homicide detectives seized from her during a March raid at the Mattsen home in Pahrump.

Then she read the entry in the journal.

"I didn't feel good talking to her," she wrote. "I felt real strong that she had something to do with Ted Binion's death. It hurts me think that someone hurt him."

Roger then asked: "What is it about that conversation with her that led you to draw that inference, to write that entry?"

She responded: "I didn't see no remorse. No hurt. When somebody you love dies, you hurt, and I didn't see any with Sandy."

The criminal case involving Binion's slaying, meanwhile, now has been split into three trials.

Murphy and Tabish are being tried first on March 13, followed by the trial of Mattsen and Michael Milot in the silver theft.

The trial of Steven Wadkins and John B. Joseph, who are charged in a plot to torture a Las Vegas businessman two months before Binion's death, also will follow the murder case.

Murphy and Tabish will be tried together on charges relating to all three criminal conspiracies.