County coroner stands behind Binion autopsy

Thursday, Jan. 20, 2000 | 11:06 a.m.

Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said Wednesday he stands behind disputed autopsy findings that Ted Binion died of fatal doses of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax.

The findings, presented by Chief Medical Examiner Lary Simms, were contradicted in District Court last August by well-known New York pathologist Michael Baden, who concluded Binion was suffocated.

Prosecutors have since incorporated Baden's theory in their criminal case against Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her reported lover, Rick Tabish, who are charged with killing Binion Sept. 17, 1998, and stealing his valuables. Prosecutors believe the accused killers pumped Binion with drugs and suffocated him in a scheme to make it look as though he had overdosed on drugs.

Flud, in his first public comments on the subject since Baden's testimony, said his office can't rule out suffocation as the manner in which Binion died. But he said he has confidence in the autopsy findings advanced by Simms.

"The cause of death we used is one we can back up with scientific facts," Flud told the Sun. "We haven't wavered from that original stand one bit."

Flud also denied reports that Baden's testimony has caused a rift between his office and the district attorney's office. He said it's not unusual for pathologists to disagree.

District Attorney Stewart Bell joined Flud in saying relations between the two offices have not been affected by the differing death theories in the high-profile murder case.

"I see Flud all the time, and we work together regularly," Bell said this morning. "Reasonable minds can differ. That doesn't mean anything." Bell said he doesn't know whether Flud's remarks will have a bearing on the murder case being put together by Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor.

"David Roger is working on being able to demonstrate to the jury the cause of death and reconciling the theories, and I don't know how far he's gotten on that," Bell said.

Despite their differences, both Simms and Baden concluded that Binion was the victim of a homicide.

The two opinions, however, are expected to be exploited by defense attorneys who contend Binion, a known heroin abuser, died of a self-induced drug overdose.

"It just widens the gap in the state's two theories," Murphy's attorney, John Momot said. "They should choose one theory."

In papers filed January 10 seeking to dismiss the charges against Murphy, Momot said prosecutors presented no evidence that anyone forced Binion to take the drugs that "he alone obtained to satisfy his own ... cravings."

Roger declined to comment on Flud's remarks.

But at the March 13 trial, Roger is expected to steer Simms on the witness stand to Baden's position.

Baden -- who served as a forensics expert in the death of John Belushi and the murder trial of O.J. Simpson -- has much more experience than Simms, conducting 20,000 autopsies over his 40-year career.

Simms, who has performed 3,000 autopsies, acknowledged under oath in August that congestion he found under Binion's lower eyelids could be a sign that the gambling figure was suffocated.

Earlier this month Tabish's lawyers, Louis Palazzo and Robert Murdock, dropped a push to exhume Binion's body to test Baden's suffocation theory.

Baden had testified that fibers from a pillow that might have been used to smother Binion should be present in his nose and mouth.

But Palazzo and Murdock abandoned their efforts after learning the body had been cleaned and embalmed and that it would be unlikely to find any fibers.

Flud said Simms looked for fibers in the nose and mouth when he conducted the autopsy.

Simms did not indicate that he had found any fibers in his autopsy report.

Binion's body was found on the floor of his home next to an empty bottle of Xanax. Police believe his accused killers had moved his body and staged the death scene.