Ex-wife may hurt defense

Friday, March 31, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

Ted Binion's former wife, Doris, was listed as the prosecution's leadoff witness today in the trial of the wealthy gambling figure's accused killers.

Doris Binion has not testified in prior hearings during the 18-month probe into her former husband's Sept. 17, 1998, slaying. But she once gave a statement to private detective Tom Dillard, who has been investigating Binion's death for his $50 million estate.

The Sun obtained a copy of her Oct. 26, 1998, statement and published excerpts in July.

In her statement, she said Binion often kept $100,000 to $1 million in cash at the couple's 2408 Palomino Lane home. Her ex-husband also kept a prized collection of coins and antique currency at the home and hid "loose stones," including diamonds and emeralds, she said.

Binion's accused killers, his girlfriend Sandy Murphy and her reported lover Rick Tabish, also are charged with stealing his valuables.

Last June, in an 109-page affidavit, Metro Police homicide detective James Buczek said Doris Binion was "very familiar" with her former husband's addiction to drugs throughout their 30-year relationship. She told Buczek that Binion became hooked on heroin in 1980.

Doris Binion was expected to support the police theory that her ex-husband never ingested heroin.

She said in her statement that Binion always smoked the street drug because he hated needles.

Police have alleged that Murphy and Tabish pumped Binion with a liquid mixture of the drugs and suffocated him. But defense lawyers contend he died of a self-induced overdose. An autopsy found heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax in Binion's stomach.

Doris Binion also told Buczek that she blamed Murphy for breaking up her marriage to the 55-year-old Binion.

In March 1995, after learning that Binion and Murphy planned to spend time together at the Binion's Pahrump ranch, Doris Binion said she moved out of the Palomino Lane home and later obtained a divorce.

Her divorce lawyer, Josh Landish, was scheduled to follow her on the witness stand this afternoon.

Landish was present when the 28-year-old Murphy was deposed on Feb. 15, 1996, during the divorce proceedings.

In that 102-page deposition, obtained by the Sun last October, Murphy acknowledged under oath that she danced topless in March 1995 at Cheetah's adult nightclub, a Binion hangout.

Murphy, who described herself as a topless version of a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, testified that she went to Cheetah's to earn back some $13,000 she had lost gambling at Caesars Palace while visiting from Southern California. She said she originally planned to help a friend sell costumes, but found it more lucrative to dance on stage.

She also explained how she met Binion at Cheetah's and moved into his Palomino Lane home a month later.

And Murphy was forced to acknowledge how her relationship with Binion turned violent months after moving in with him.

Binion's longtime friend Steve Morris, who can recall how Binion and Murphy met at Cheetah's, was among those on today's list of witnesses.

Prosecutors also were expected today to begin laying the foundation for the reported romantic relationship between Murphy and Tabish, a 35-year-old married contractor from Missoula, Mont.

Among those scheduled to be called to the witness stand were the custodian of records at the Las Vegas Sporting House, where the two often worked out together, and a clerk at the Beverly Hills hotel in Southern California, where prosecutors allege Murphy and Tabish stayed together in August 1998.

Dante Cabanas, who waited on Tabish and Murphy at their hotel cabana, and limousine driver Keith Johnson, who drove them to dinner one night, also were on today's witness list.