Goodman aide told he needs license to work

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2000 | 11:53 a.m.

The Nevada Private Investigators Licensing Board has told suspended mayoral aide William Cassidy that he needs to obtain a license if he plans to do any future work as a private detective or security consultant.

William Bertram, an investigator with the board, sent Cassidy a three-page letter Monday informing him of the state laws requiring a license and the misdemeanor penalties for not complying.

"As you can see from the above statutes," Bertram wrote, "before a person can advertise or perform services of a private investigator or security consultant in the state of Nevada, they must be properly licensed as required by law," Bertram wrote.

Bertram has been investigating allegations Cassidy, a top City Hall aide and political operative for Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, was working without a license while serving as a defense investigator in the Ted Binion murder case. He had taken a leave of absence from his city job to assist the defense.

Cassidy, who ran Trial Consultants of Nevada, a company that commissioned polls for the defense during the Binion trial, could not be reached for comment today.

He was suspended for a month on Aug. 3 in part for using his City Hall cell phone on Binion matters. He had piled up a $1,686, phone bill, the highest of all city employees, from January to July. The Binion trial took place between March and May.

The disciplinary action came two days after the Sun reported Cassidy had proposed breaking into the homes of key prosecution players in the Binion case and planting eavesdropping devices.

Cassidy called the allegations "fiction," and lawyers for Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, who were convicted of killing Binion, said they never heard such talk during defense strategy sessions.

Sources close to the defense told the Sun they didn't believe the plan was ever carried out and that Cassidy merely was pumping up himself to win a lucrative consulting contract from Murphy's latest benefactor, William Fuller. Cassidy ultimately was paid $217,000 for less than three months of work.

The break-in talk was expected to surface at a hearing last week to win Murphy and Tabish a new trial, but it never did because defense lawyers opted against pursuing accusations Cassidy ran interference for Goodman within the defense during the trial.

The claims against Cassidy were dropped after District Judge Joseph Bonaventure ruled that he and former defense lawyers in the case, including Goodman, could testify with an unlimited waiver of the attorney-client privilege to defend themselves against the allegations.

Murphy and Tabish did not want to risk giving up the privilege, which would have allowed Cassidy and the others to reveal the defense's innermost secrets upon cross-examination by prosecutors.

Tabish's current lawyer, William Terry, had filed court papers alleging his client's former attorney, Louis Palazzo, had been more interested in protecting Goodman's interests in the case than Tabish's.

Terry charged that Palazzo allowed Cassidy to call the shots behind the scenes.

The Sun reported in June that Murphy had brought bags of silver coins believed to have been stolen from Binion to Goodman's law office days after the gambling figure's death. She later took back the coins.