Figure in fatal car bombing convicted in drug case

Jace Radke

Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002 | 9:13 a.m.

A man who authorities believe might have information about a 1972 car bombing that killed a former FBI agent was found guilty Wednesday of drug conspiracy and distribution charges.

Robert Marshall faces the possibility of life in prison after the verdict in federal court.

Marshall, 69, was found guilty of brokering a deal for a kilogram of cocaine in March 2001. Marshall, who has previous drug convictions in 1988 and 1985 and is a four-time felon, could get 10 years to life in prison and fines at his sentencing, scheduled for Dec. 20.

FBI agents and Metro Police homicide detectives have been unsuccessful in getting information from Marshall about the 1972 murder of William Coulthard, a former FBI agent who was the landlord of Benny Binion's Horseshoe Club at the time of his death in the bombing.

Marshall and others were also the subjects of a series of wiretaps in December 1999 as part of an FBI investigation into racketeering, drug trafficking and the possibility of co-conspirators involved in a conspiracy to kill Ted Binion, according to a sworn affidavit filed by FBI agent Gerald McIntosh.

Rick Tabish, convicted of the murder of Ted Binion, has filed suit against the Justice Department and the FBI and is requesting the conversations from the wiretaps and information in the investigation hoping that it will clear him in the murder.

Ted Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and Tabish were convicted of the 1998 murder.

Wednesday, after the guilty verdict was read in senior U.S. District Judge Lloyd George's courtroom, Marshall quietly thanked his lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Michael Kennedy.

"You've all worked very hard," Marshall said before smiling and shaking hands with Kennedy before being led from the courtroom in the custody of U.S. Marshals.

Kennedy argued during the trial that Marshall was entrapped by the FBI for reasons other than the cocaine sale.

"Why is Marshall so valuable to the FBI?" Kennedy asked the jury. "They thought he had knowledge of a car-bombing murder in 1972, and he told them what he knows, but in the 1970s some snitch told the FBI that Marshall killed Coulthard.

"That's why it's important for the FBI to have Marshall in the middle of something."

Other than Kennedy's remarks, nothing else involving Coulthard or the Binion murder came up during the case, as George kept the focus on the drug charges Marshall was facing.

During the trial Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson relied on tape-recorded conversations between Marshall and Richard Veluz, who agreed to wear a wire and work with the FBI after agents learned he was working a drug deal with Marshall, Johnson said.

FBI agents were at the Wild Wild West casino on March 10 when Veluz and Marshall met Marshall's cocaine source and purchased the kilogram of cocaine for $18,000, Johnson said. Veluz then took the cocaine, covered in pork rinds in a brown paper bag, and gave it to a buyer for about $21,000, Johnson said.

"Veluz and Marshall agreed to split the $3,000 they made 50-50," Johnson said.

At one point in the taped conversations played for the jury, the buyer, who had done deals with Marshall in the past, tells Veluz that he trusts Marshall, Johnson said.

"He's like a son to me," the buyer states on the recording. "He's a good man. He's a dangerous man. Nobody can treat him the way I can. If I hit him in the face he'd ask me why I did it before he'd kill me."