DA refutes call for new Binion trial

Friday, Aug. 4, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

The discovery of an FBI report disclosing a mob plot to overdose Ted Binion on heroin doesn't warrant granting his convicted killers a new trial, a prosecutor said in court papers Thursday.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, who helped obtain convictions against Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish in Binion's September 1998 slaying, said it was "absurd" to suggest the information in the seven-page report was important to the defense.

Roger was responding to a motion for a new trial filed last week by Murphy's lawyer, John Momot, who contended the FBI report should have been turned over to the defense prior to the murder trial.

The prosecutor said he never had the report, which defense lawyers contended they obtained independently after their clients were convicted.

Furthermore, Roger said the defense has been unable to establish that information in the report would have changed the outcome of the trial.

He wrote that both Murphy and Tabish maintained during the trial that the 55-year-old Binion, a known heroin abuser, committed suicide or died of an accidental overdose.

Murphy, who reported discovering Binion's body at his home, puts herself in a legal predicament if she now acknowledges that her boyfriend was slain, Roger said.

"By changing her position to establish that Ted Binion was murdered, defendant places herself at the scene of Ted Binion's murder," Roger said. "By making such admissions, defendant becomes an accomplice to the organized crime figures who allegedly talked about killing Ted Binion."

FBI Agent Charles Maurer said in his April 1999 report that he had been provided details of the mob plot to kill Binion by Antone Davi, one of three men who pleaded guilty in a scheme to shoot to death Herbie Blitzstein, a Binion friend and former top lieutenant of slain Chicago mob kingpin Anthony Spilotro.

Blitzstein was killed at his home in January 1997 as part of an attempt by the Los Angeles mob to take over street rackets in Las Vegas.

The scheme to overdose Binion was hatched after Blitzstein's slaying, Maurer wrote. One of Blitzstein's other convicted killers, Richard Friedman, had suggested using a stun gun on Binion at his home and then pumping him with heroin, he said.

Murphy and Tabish were convicted two years later of forcing Binion to take heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax and then suffocating him.

In his court papers, Roger said it was important to note that the reputed organized crime figures who talked about killing Binion were in jail on charges of murdering Blitzstein by the time of Binion's 1998 death.

"Therefore, it is very unlikely that they would have been involved in Ted Binion's murder," he said.

Roger also charged that defense lawyers were negligent by not pursuing the mob allegations themselves prior to the trial.

The mob plot, which first surfaced during the Blitzstein murder case, was reported in the Sun long before the trial, he said. One of Murphy's investigators was working for the defense in that case. So was Tabish's former lawyer, Louis Palazzo.

Roger said that Momot, who used to represent Blitzstein, "knew many of the alleged mobsters who were involved in Blitzstein's murder" and logically could have obtained a copy of the FBI report from their lawyers.

Momot also failed to subpoena Maurer and Davi in the Binion case, Roger added.