Tabish headed for hard time

Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2000 | 11:04 a.m.

Rick Tabish is heading to Nevada's toughest prison to serve time for killing wealthy gambler Ted Binion.

The 35-year-old Tabish, a contractor from Montana, will be housed at the Ely State Prison, the only maximum security facility in the state, prison officials confirmed Monday.

"He's going to mix it up with the big boys up there," one law enforcement source close to the Binion murder case said.

Nevada's death row inmates are among those incarcerated at Ely, which has traditional guard towers manned 24 hours a day by heavily armed officers.

Prison officials have spent the past 10 weeks evaluating Tabish at the High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs, about an hour from Las Vegas.

He was transferred there from the Clark County Detention Center on Sept. 21, one week after District Judge Joseph Bonaventure had sentenced him to spend a minimum of 25 years in prison as a result of his murder conviction.

Tabish and his 28-year-old lover, Sandy Murphy, both were convicted of killing Binion on Sept. 17, 1998, and stealing his valuables. Prosecutors had charged that they pumped the casino man with drugs and suffocated him at his posh Las Vegas home.

Murphy, Binion's live-in girlfriend at the time of his death, is serving 22 years behind bars at the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas.

She has been given a medium security classification, according to Glen Whorton, a spokesman for the prison system.

Tabish has been classified as someone who needs "close supervision," which is a notch about medium security and just below maximum security, Whorton said.

The decision to send Tabish to Ely was made as a result of the length of his sentence, the nature of his offenses and the potential for risk he brings to the prison system, Whorton said.

The general inmate population at Ely, Whorton said, is regarded as maximum security.

Whorton said prison security guidelines prevented him from disclosing when Tabish would be transported to Ely.

Tabish and Murphy were convicted of killing the 55-year-old Binion on May 19 following the most well-publicized murder trial in Las Vegas history. Binion was the son of the late Benny Binion, the legendary founder of the Horseshoe Club downtown.

Both defendants are appealing their convictions to the Nevada Supreme Court. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz is reported to be assisting in the appeals.