Binion’s housekeeper called most believable

Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

Ted Binion's housekeeper, Mary Montoya-Gascoigne, was the most believable witness at the high-profile murder trial last year, a defense team pollster has concluded.

Montoya-Gascoigne, who testified about defendant Sandy Murphy's strange behavior the day Binion was killed in September 1998, scored the highest in a poll of avid trial watchers conducted by Marvin Longabaugh and his Magellan Research company at the close of testimony.

Of those questioned, 73.7 percent said they believed her testimony.

Another key prosecution witness, Steven Kurt Gratzer, a friend of defendant Rick Tabish, fared the worst. Only 43.2 percent reported that they believed him.

Longabaugh included the results of the survey of 623 members of his "electronic jury" in a 63-page article he's hoping to submit to the UNLV Law Review.

He concluded in the poll, which has a 4 percent margin of error, that defense lawyers needed a strong rally at the end of the trial to avoid losing.

"The polling data gathered at the end of testimony indicated the defense was likely to lose unless they scored big points in closing arguments or put one or both defendants on the stand," Longabaugh wrote in his article.

The defense lawyers did not have access to the poll before they gave their closing arguments, which courthouse observers concluded were disappointing.

Longabaugh, who is attending the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV, said he conducted the survey for "scholastic reasons" after his business arrangement with the defense team was terminated prior to the end of the trial. The defense had paid for two earlier surveys.

Murphy, Binion's girlfriend, and Tabish, her lover, were convicted May 19 of killing the 55-year-old Binion following the most well-publicized trial in Las Vegas history. Neither defendant testified on their own behalf.

Defense lawyers now are trying to stop Longabaugh and the UNLV law school from publishing the article and the poll results, which they argue are part of the defense team's work product.

But Longabaugh and his attorney, Frank Flansburg, contend the article does not fall under the attorney-client privilege.

Longabaugh and the law school so far have refused defense team requests to turn over copies of the unpublished article, which has been obtained by the Sun.

According to the poll, Dr. Lary Simms, Clark County's chief medical examiner, was the second most reliable witness.

Of those questioned, 73 percent said they believed his testimony that Binion had died of a forced overdose of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax.

Simms fared better than both of the star medical witnesses presented by the prosecution and the defense.

The prosecution's hired gun, famed pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, was believed by only 61.3 percent of Longabaugh's electronic jurors. Baden testified that Binion was the victim of suffocation.

His counterpart in the defense, the equally well known Dr. Cyril Wecht, who testified that Binion died of a self-induced drug overdose, came away with a 62.1 percent believable rating.

"Thus, at least 20 percent of the respondents believed both Dr. Baden and Dr. Wecht, men whose theories could not possibly coexist," Longabaugh concluded in his article.

"When questioned about this anomaly, one of the respondents likened his opinion on the expert testimony to that of witnesses to a car accident. While two witnesses might offer entirely contradictory stories, it is possible to believe both since they are both reporting their best opinion of what they saw.

"Here, both doctors were providing expert testimony on their opinion of the cause of death. While one of them was likely wrong, it is easy to believe that each of them was telling the truth as they saw it."

The poll also showed that Binion's gardener Tom Loveday, who was mowing the gambling figure's lawn the morning of his death, was one of the prosecution's better witnesses.

Loveday, who talked about the unusual occurrences at the home that morning, was believed by 70 percent of those questioned.

But another prosecution witness, Leo Casey fared poorly. Casey, a shadowy Las Vegas businessman, testified that Tabish had beat him with a phone book in an extortion plot prior to Binion's death.

Only 49 percent of those surveyed believed his testimony.

Binion estate lawyer James J. Brown, who testified that Binion told him the day before he died that Murphy might try to harm him, received a 54.4 percent believable rating.

And manicurist Deana Perry, who reported that Murphy had bragged that Binion would die of a heroin overdose days before his death, was believed by 56.7 percent of those questioned.