Columnist Jeff German: Murphy says she’s not a ‘rat’ for the FBI

Sunday, Jan. 16, 2000 | 10:19 a.m.

Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. Reach him at german@ lasvegassun.com or 259-4067.

IT'S CRUNCH TIME in the high-profile Ted Binion murder case, and tempers are flaring.

With her trial just two months away, Sandy Murphy, against the advice of her lawyer, has thrust herself into the escalating war of words at the courthouse.

Murphy, the onetime topless dancer charged with killing the 55-year-old Binion, hurled a couple of barbs at this column last week.

She telephoned to say she didn't appreciate last Sunday's report about courthouse rumors that she might be a "rat."

The column pointed out there was much speculation that Murphy had gone to the FBI with dirt on the Binion family to muddy up the waters before her March 13 trial.

John Momot, her smooth-talking, seasoned attorney, was quoted in the column as saying such talk was "absolutely not true."

But the 27-year-old Murphy felt the need to drive home Momot's point in a telephone message just hours after the column came out.

"I'll never talk to a cop as long as I live," Murphy said. "Until the day I die, they'll never hear one word from my mouth.

"I'd rather die than talk to the FBI or the police or anybody that has anything to do with law enforcement after what they did to my old man (Binion) and what they did to me."

Her "old man" lost his gaming license six months before his slaying because of ties to murdered Chicago underworld figure Herbie Blitzstein, once a confidante of slain Mafia kingpin Anthony Spilotro.

Binion, though he acknowledged having a heroin habit, always felt that gaming regulators hounded him out of his beloved Horseshoe Club. Murphy once took the Fifth Amendment to protect Binion when questioned by regulators during the licensing investigation.

But Murphy hasn't always been uncooperative with lawmen.

Though it's true she has managed to duck homicide detectives investigating her reported connection to Binion's Sept. 17, 1998, slaying, she didn't mind talking to gaming agents after her boyfriend's death.

Murphy went to agents just hours before Binion's funeral with derogatory information about his sister, Horseshoe Club President Becky Behnen, and her husband, Nick.

Behnen, suspicious about Murphy's relationship with Binion, was the first to publicly urge police to investigate her brother's death as a homicide and has since provided detectives with valuable leads.

Detectives regarded Murphy's statements to gaming agents as self-serving and didn't take them seriously.

What she told agents, however, may end up being used against her at the March 13 trial.

She said Binion, a heroin addict, was depressed over losing his license and killed himself, a claim detectives and family members quickly discarded.

Detectives believe Murphy and her reported lover, Rick Tabish, pumped Binion with drugs at his home and suffocated him. The death scene, they believe, was staged to make it look as though he had died of a drug overdose. Traces of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax were found in his stomach.

In her message last week, Murphy did not say whether she might indeed have dirt on the Binion family.

But you may recall she once put the word out that people would be surprised to learn what "this little girl" knows.

Last summer, Nick Behnen, who has never gotten along with Murphy, said Binion told him a week before he died that he was trying to retrieve secret tapes Murphy had made of his conversations with "prominent people."

Murphy, it seems, had a habit of recording Binion's telephone conversations from her bedroom at his home.

Binion, according to Behnen, was concerned that the tapes could land him in prison.

Behnen, who has never been interviewed by detectives probing Binion's slaying, said he didn't know if his brother-in-law obtained the tapes before his death.

If the tapes still exist, Murphy never has confirmed their existence.

Now that Murphy says she has no desire to talk to law enforcement authorities, she probably doesn't need the tapes, anyway.

Then again, people say a lot of things they don't mean at crunch time, especially when they're facing life in prison if convicted of murder.