Columnist Jeff German: Mob ghost still haunts Binion case

Sunday, March 5, 2000 | 9:17 a.m.

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.

The mob angle: It may be the only theory involving Ted Binion's slaying that hasn't been fully explored by prosecutors and defense lawyers as they prepare for the March 13 trial of the gambling figure's accused killers.

Prosecutors definitely are interested in whether underworld figures played a role in Binion's demise. But in a case that already has generated more than 40,000 pages of documents and taken nine months to charge two people close to Binion with murder, the idea of pursuing evidence against additional suspects with the trial fast approaching hasn't been all that appealing.

One guy hot on the mob trail, however, is private detective Tom Dillard, who has been probing Binion's Sept. 17, 1998, slaying for his $50 million estate.

"We're still investigating that aspect of the case," Dillard said last week. "We're exploring new leads."

Dillard, credited with breaking open the murder probe, went to Chicago a couple of weeks ago looking for more ties between Salvatore Galioto, a reputed Chicago mob associate, and Montana contractor Rick Tabish, who along with Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, is charged with killing the former Horseshoe Club executive.

A man who identified himself as Galioto visited Tabish at the Clark County Detention Center on Aug. 16, a day before Tabish's preliminary hearing in the case.

Dillard has established through cellular phone records that Tabish telephoned Galioto's beeper number in the weeks before Binion's death and again in the immediate hours after his killing.

One call, which occurred at 5:58 p.m. on Sept. 17, 1998, may have been made while Tabish was at Binion's home with other friends after word about Binion's death had spread through his neighborhood. Tabish telephoned the number again at 8:50 p.m. and three more times the next day, just hours before he headed to Pahrump with an excavator and a belly dump truck allegedly to dig up Binion's $6 million silver fortune.

Galioto, who has links to the movie industry, is said to run in some of the same circles as Las Vegan Joseph Cusumano, another reputed Chicago mob associate who reportedly has tried to strike a movie deal with Tabish about the Binion slaying.

Last week Jason Lee Frazier, a Tabish friend and business associate now cooperating with prosecutors, shed new light on Galioto's relationship with Tabish. Frazier testified in District Court that he and Tabish once had dinner with Galioto and that the reputed mob figure was supposed to help Tabish with union connections at his trucking company.

Tabish and his lawyers have refused to discuss the ties between Galioto and the murder defendant.

At the same time, the defense has been pursuing its own mob angle with the trial coming up.

Last week Louis Palazzo, who represents Tabish, and John Momot, who is defending Murphy, filed court papers asking prosecutors to turn over Ron Mortensen's jailhouse notes detailing a mob plot to kill Binion.

Excerpts from the notes appeared in this space Jan. 30.

Mortensen, a 35-year-old former Metro cop convicted in the December 1996 drive-by shooting of Daniel Mendoza, provided FBI agents with copies of his notes just weeks after his May 1997 trial. The notes summarized his cellblock conversations with Antone Davi, who was awaiting trial at the time in the mob-style shooting death of Herbie Blitzstein, a Binion friend and confidante of slain Chicago mob kingpin Anthony Spilotro.

Davi had reported to Mortensen that Binion wanted to hire Blitzstein's killers to "hit" his sister, Horseshoe Club President Becky Behnen. But the mob figures, the notes said, planned to kill Binion instead and gain access to what they thought were millions in cash stashed away at his home.

In their papers last week, Momot and Palazzo told District Judge Joseph Bonaventure that they wanted access to Mortensen's notes because they show that "parties not related to Ms. Murphy and Mr. Tabish had ample motive, if not concrete plans, to kill Lonnie Theodore Binion."

But at a hearing, Bonaventure denied the defense motion after Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor in the Binion case, said he didn't have the notes and would like to see them himself.

The mob angle, it seems, remains on the minds of prosecutors and defense lawyers, as the Binion murder trial kicks into high gear.