Focus shifts to alleged theft of silver

Thursday, April 20, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

Prosecutors shifted gears today and began calling witnesses in the attempted theft of $6 million in silver from Ted Binion following his 1998 slaying.

Binion's accused killers, his girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her lover, Rick Tabish, are standing trial on charges of killing the wealthy gambling figure on Sept. 17, 1998, and stealing his valuables.

Tabish and two other men, including Binion's Pahrump ranch manager, David Mattsen, were arrested in the early morning hours of Sept. 19, 1998, after they had dug up the silver from an underground vault in the heart of downtown Pahrump.

Murphy, a 28-year-old onetime topless dancer, is charged with conspiring with Tabish, Mattsen and a fourth defendant, Tabish employee Michael Milot, to steal the 48,000 pounds of silver bars and coins. The trials of Milot and Mattsen are set to follow the murder case.

First on the witness stand today was Willie Alder, a former truck driver for Tabish's MRT Transport company.

Alder testified that he received a call from Milot about 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 18, 1998, instructing him to load an excavator onto a tractor trailer that was to be used to dig up the silver in Pahrump.

By 6:30 p.m, after the excavator was loaded, Alder said, he received a call from Milot to bring the equipment to the truck stop at Interstate 15 and Blue Diamond Road.

He said he received nine to 10 calls from Milot asking him to hurry up.

By 7 p.m., Alder said he arrived at the truck stop and saw Milot and Tabish working on another tractor trailer carrying a large belly-dump.

Tabish left the truck stop driving the trailer with the excavator, and Milot left with the belly-dump, he said.

Alder said he then got a ride back to MRT Transport.

Other MRT drivers were to be called today as prosecutors looked to set the stage for the alleged silver theft.

On Wednesday, defense attorneys grilled the prosecution's chief witness, famed New York pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden, for the second day in a row under cross-examination.

Baden, director of forensic sciences for the New York State Police, testified that suffocation cases are some of the hardest to diagnose because generally no marks are left.

He wound up nine hours of painstaking testimony over the two days acknowledging that his opinion that Binion was suffocated differed significantly from the conclusion of Chief Medical Examiner Lary Simms, who had performed the autopsy on the former casino executive's body.

Simms testified prior to Baden that he believed Binion died of heroin and Xanax intoxication.

Prosecutors contend Murphy and Tabish first tried to kill Binion by pumping him with drugs, but were forced to suffocate him after his gardener arrived the morning of his death to mow his lawn.

Attorney Robert Murdock, who represents Tabish, took just 15 minutes to cross-examine Baden after Murphy's lawyer, James Shellow of Milwaukee, worked feverishly for hours attacking the pathologist's credibility, sometimes with his own words in his book, "Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner."

Murdock forced Baden -- a consultant on some of the biggest murder cases in the United States, including O.J. Simpson's trial -- to concede that there was a disagreement between him and Simms over the cause of Binion's death.

"What we have here is reasonable doubt. Isn't that true doctor?" Murdock asked.

Baden responded a terse, "No."

Then, under questioning from Chief Deputy District Attorney David Wall, Baden testified that both he and Simms agreed that Binion was a victim of a homicide.

Defense lawyers have been trying to create reasonable doubt about Binion's death in the minds of the 12 jurors during the three weeks of testimony presented by prosecutors.

The defense hopes to create further doubt when it presents its case that Binion committed suicide with an overdose of drugs. Another well-known pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht, is expected to support that theory on the witness stand.

Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. He can be reached at (702) 259-4067 or by e-mail at german@lasvegassun.com.