Tabish gets new home in prison system

Friday, Dec. 15, 2000 | 10:17 a.m.

Rick Tabish has been transferred to the maximum security Ely State Prison to serve time for killing wealthy casino executive Ted Binion.

Glen Whorton, a spokesman for the state prison system, said Tabish arrived in Ely on Wednesday and immediately was placed in "administrative segregation" while officials investigate rumors of death threats against him being circulated by the media.

The threats reportedly stem from Tabish's days of incarceration at the Clark County Detention Center.

Whorton said he didn't know when Tabish would be housed in the general inmate population at the Ely facility, which is regarded as the toughest facility within the prison system.

"We'll deal with the issue, talk to him and get enough information as we can to make a decision on his status that's appropriate," Whorton 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 near Indian Springs, about an hour from Las Vegas.

He was transferred there from the 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, a 35-year-old Montana contractor, 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.

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.