Expert says mark on Binion’s chest may have been left by gun

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

A crime lab expert for the prosecution has suggested that a circular red mark on slaying victim Ted Binion's chest could have been the result of pressure from a firearm.

Charles Morton, a forensics scientist from California, said in a report for the prosecution that the size of the red mark was "compatible with the muzzle end" of a weapon.

Morton also said in his three-page report that a smaller red mark on the gambling figure's chest could have been the result of someone pressing down on his chest.

Prosecutors filed papers late Tuesday saying they intend to call Morton at next month's murder trial to corroborate the testimony of famed pathologist Dr. Michael Baden that Binion's accused killers forced him to ingest drugs and then suffocated him at his home in September 1998.

Baden suggested that Binion was restrained by handcuffs, but Morton, a tool mark expert, said he could not positively link marks found on Binion's wrists to handcuffs. Morton, however, did not rule that out as a possibility.

A Pennsylvania toxicologist, meanwhile, also will testify at the March 13 trial that it is "overwhelmingly unlikely" that Binion died from a heroin overdose. He said Binion's body contained an "average simple street dose" of black tar heroin.

"On the other hand," Fredric Rieders concluded in a three-page report filed by prosecutors, "it is not unlikely that such a dose made Mr. Binion sedated, sleepy ... and more easily manipulated and pliable than his normal state."

Rieders, who also found that Binion had only a small amount of the prescription sedative, Xanax, in his system, said the heroin would have made it harder for the former casino executive to resist any acts of "forcible constraint, persuasion and interrogation."

Morton and Rieders are among 18 experts, including Baden, that prosecutors intend to call at the trial of Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her reported lover, Rick Tabish.

Defense attorneys for Murphy and Tabish, contend Binion, a known heroin user, died of a drug overdose.

They filed a list of four expert witnesses they expect to call at the trial, including pathologist Cyril Wecht, a close Baden friend with a national reputation of his own. Both Baden and Wecht worked on the O.J. Simpson murder case and have been involved in numerous other high-profile court cases and forensic investigations.

Prosecutors said they also still intend to call Clark County's chief medical examiner, Lary Simms, who performed the autopsy on Binion's body.

At last August's preliminary hearing, Baden contradicted Simms, who testified that he believed Binion died of a forced drug overdose.

Simms did not rule out the possibility that Binion was suffocated, and he agreed with Baden that Binion was the victim of a homicide.

Binion's body was found by police on the floor of his den next to an empty bottle of Xanax he had obtained a day earlier. Police have concluded the death scene was staged by his accused killers.

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