Murphy defense on attack over private detective’s role

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2000 | 10:23 a.m.

Defense lawyers are turning up the heat on the private detective who broke open the investigation into Ted Binion's slaying.

Last week, attorneys for Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, the two people charged with killing Binion, did what most courthouse observers expected them to do. They filed a motion attacking Tom Dillard, who has made life difficult for them in the biggest murder case in Las Vegas history.

The motion seeks to declare Dillard an "agent of the state" and suppress any evidence he may have gathered for police.

Dillard, a former homicide detective working for Binion's $50 million estate, spent countless hours interviewing more than 100 witnesses and providing leads to police investigating the 55-year-old gambling figure's Sept. 17, 1998, death.

Defense attorneys charged he also had "unlimited" and "warrantless" access to Binion's home, where the former casino executive's body was found next to an empty bottle of the prescription sedative Xanax.

Dillard has been open about his role in the Binion investigation.

From the beginning he has acknowledged being best friends with Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor in the case, and he has told both sides that his marching orders were to provide police with every piece of information he picked up while helping the estate pursue its wrongful death lawsuit against Murphy and Tabish.

"Essentially wearing twin hats of state investigator and private detective, Dillard was the primary individual through which the Las Vegas police department and district attorney developed their case," Murphy's lawyer, John Momot, wrote in his motion.

That relationship, Momot alleged, resulted in the "contamination" of the death scene and violated his client's constitutionally guaranteed due process rights. Murphy had been living with Binion at the home for three years.

Momot contends Metro Police should have declared the house a crime scene and taken measures to preserve it when they first suspected Binion might have been the victim of foul play. Clark County Coroner Ron Flud didn't declare Binion's death a homicide until March 15, 1999, months after his death.

"Police were just sitting there, and everything was being placed at their doorstep," Momot said in an interview. "They had a civilian conducting the investigation who wasn't bound by any of the constraints set forth in Metro's internal policies, the Nevada Revised Statutes, the Nevada Constitution and the U.S. Constitution."

Roger, who has until Feb. 28 to respond to Momot's arguments, said he's prepared to defend Dillard's role in the well-publicized investigation.

"There is no legal authority to suppress witness statements provided to a private investigator," he said. "Tom Dillard did not interview any of the suspects, either on his own or at our request."

Roger's boss, District Attorney Stewart Bell, said he doesn't understand what the fuss is all about.

"This isn't any big deal," Bell said. "We get information from private citizens all the time, sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly. But either way we get it."

Dillard expressed confidence that his work will hold up in court.

"I'm not concerned about it," he said. "The evidence is going to speak for itself, and we'll leave it up to the court to make a decision."

Legal observers, in the meantime, expect Momot's motion will be used by defense lawyers as a springboard for an all-out assault on Dillard, as the case moves closer to its March 13 trial.

To Momot, the motion is the most serious of all of those filed by defense attorneys last week in their bid to gain an advantage at the trial. He wants District Judge Joseph Bonaventure, who will be presiding over the trial, to conduct a hearing.

"This opens the door to scrutinize Dillard's entire investigation," Momot said. "It sets the tone for the whole case. This is in essence the product of the Binion money machine."

Dillard disagreed with that conclusion.

"We have a wrongful death action," Dillard said. "It's just common sense that evidence applicable to a wrongful death action is going to be applicable to a homicide.

"In this instance the estate's goals and the prosecution's goals were the same -- the search for the truth."

To some, there appears to be irony in Momot's attacks on Dillard.

It turns out that Momot's own private investigator, Michael Wysocki, helped police in similar fashion in another high-profile case.

Wysocki was credited with cracking the 1996 murder case of Las Vegas bookmaker Bruce Weinstein. The prosecutor at the time was Roger.

"He has gotten too used to having private investigators do the job that homicide detectives should be doing," Momot said.

In the earlier case, Weinstein's live-in girlfriend, Amy DeChant, was convicted of killing the gambler in part because of Wysocki's testimony.

Wysocki, who was hired by Weinstein's family, had provided police with information that led to DeChant's arrest.

But Wysocki pointed out key differences between his role in the Weinstein investigation and Dillard's in the Binion probe.

He said that unlike Dillard he never interviewed any witnesses and that once Weinstein's disappearance turned into a criminal case he let police take the lead in the probe.

"There was no evidence in the trial that had my name on it," Wysocki said. "Once I found it was a crime scene, I turned it over to police."

Dillard, meanwhile, seems ready to justify his work, too, as Wysocki's colleagues turn up the heat on the private investigator who broke open the Binion murder case.