Murphy attempts to stop sale of Binion home

Friday, May 11, 2001 | 11:11 a.m.

Sandy Murphy has gone to court to block Ted Binion's estate from selling his $900,000 home.

Binion had willed Murphy the 2408 Palomino Lane home, its contents and $300,000 in cash, but the Nevada Supreme Court ruled she was not entitled to her inheritance after she was convicted of killing the wealthy gambling figure.

A jury last May found Murphy and her lover, Montana contractor Rick Tabish, guilty of killing Binion in 1998 at his 8,000-square-foot home by pumping him with drugs and suffocating him.

In court papers last week, Murphy's attorney, Herb Sachs, said there was a strong likelihood the Supreme Court would overturn Murphy's conviction, which would make her eligible to receive a portion of Binion's $55 million estate.

Sachs asked District Judge Michael Cherry to put the sale of the home on hold and order an independent accounting of Binion's financial holdings.

Sachs also asked for permission to make another video of the contents of the home to determine whether the estate has removed items belonging to the 29-year-old Murphy.

A videotape Murphy made inside the home the day after Binion's Sept. 17, 1998, death played a key role in persuading a jury to convict Murphy and Tabish. The tape showed a transformation of the one-time topless dancer from grieving live-in girlfriend to foul-mouthed, greedy heiress in less than 24 hours.

Sachs, however, insisted in his court papers that Murphy, now serving a minimum of 22 years in prison, was wrongly convicted.

"There is abundant evidence suggesting that the case against Murphy was choreographed to the finale," Sachs wrote.

He accused Binion's sister, Horseshoe Club owner Becky Behnen, of hiring well-known political strategist Sig Rogich to conduct a media campaign to set the stage for Murphy's conviction.

Behnen called the allegation "ludicrous."

She said Rogich, a longtime friend, merely was helping her deal with the deluge of media requests for interviews. He was not paid.

"This is the action of desperate people," Behnen said.

Sachs also charged that prosecutors relied upon private investigator Tom Dillard, even though Dillard's tenure as a homicide detective was marred by allegations of improper conduct.

Dillard was known to "use trickery to obtain unjust results in criminal prosecutions," Sachs said.

But Dillard said this morning that Sachs recently apologized to him for those remarks.

"He said he didn't write them and wanted them stricken, but that it was too late," Dillard said. "From what I've read in the newspaper the defense's efforts are clearly misguided, and they probably should start paying attention to the real legal issues."

Sachs also charged in his papers that Dillard and Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor in the case, intimidated witnesses into not testifying for the defense during the well-publicized murder trial.

Roger said that allegation and others raised by Sachs were "unsubstantiated and absolutely false."

"These claims were addressed during the seven weeks of the jury trial, and obviously, the jury and the court rejected them," Roger said. Harry Claiborne, who represents Binion's daughter and chief heir Bonnie Binion, called Murphy's latest attack on the estate "the most arrogant act" he's ever seen.

"They're not going to get any relief from that motion," he said. "It's totally frivolous.

"The Supreme Court twice has ruled she's not entitled to any portion of the estate. She has absolutely no standing whatsoever to attack the administration of the estate."

But Sachs said in his motion that his requests are not unreasonable given the "breadth of this case" and its many twists and turns.

Murphy, he said, still has a pending $2 million palimony suit against the estate for "extraordinary services" she provided Binion while she lived with him in the three years leading up to his death.

Cherry has set a May 30 hearing on the motion.