Tabish, Murphy jury deliberates for second day

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Monday, Nov. 22, 2004 | 9:05 a.m.

A Clark County jury started its second full-day of deliberations this morning as it continues to wade through roughly six weeks of evidence, testimony and arguments to try to determine how millionaire Ted Binion wound up dead at the age of 55.

Did Sandy Murphy and her then-lover Rick Tabish murder Binion on Sept. 17, 1998, or did the casino figure accidentally kill himself with drugs?

During their all-day deliberations on Saturday in the retrial of the pair, jurors asked to have the testimony of a police fingerprint expert read back to them.

Prosecutors had called Metro Police latent fingerprint examiner Ed Guenther to the witness stand twice during the trial.

Guenther testified that Murphy and Tabish's fingerprints were found on a list of Binion's money collection. Tanya Cropp, a friend of Murphy who had become Binion's secretary shortly before his death, testified that about a week after Binion's death, Murphy had asked Cropp to hang on to the list for her.

Guenther also testified that there were no complete or partial fingerprints and not even any smudges of fingerprints on the three lighters, cigarette pack and empty Xanax bottle found next to Binion's body.

Prosecutors argued that the items lacked any evidence of being handled because they were part of the staging of Binion's death scene.

District Judge Joe Bonaventure was to have Guenther's testimony read back to the jury today.

"Ted killed Ted"

In his closing arguments featuring slides highlighting his key points Friday, the theme for Murphy's attorney, Michael Cristalli, was, "Sandy did not kill Ted. Ted killed Ted."

Cristalli said Murphy "was a good person in a bad situation." He argued that medical evidence and testimony of experts proved beyond a reasonable doubt Binion was killed by a lethal self-administered overdose of heroin, Xanax and valium.

"The only way the state of Nevada could sell their theory is to paint her (Murphy) as a callous person who has the capability of killing a human being she lived with, a person she loved," Cristalli said.

He said the evidence is that Murphy "is not a callous person, not a bad person and doesn't have the capability of killing not another person, not another living creature."

Cristalli rejected the prosecution's belief that Murphy "was money grubbing" because she went to Binion's home a day after his death to obtain his property. Cristalli said the truth was that his client had lived in the home for three years and was simply protecting the property promised to her in Binion's will.

Cristalli said it made perfect sense to him that Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lalli told the jury to "forget about the medical evidence" presented in the case because "the medical evidence clearly shows he died of a drug overdose."

The defense had called eight medical expert witnesses who came to the same conclusion, but, Cristalli said, they shouldn't have felt it necessary to "go further than Dr. Lary Simms," the chief medical examiner who performed Binion's autopsy.

Cristalli said Simms reported no trauma around Binion's nose and mouth, esophagus, trachea, chest or wrists, contrary to the later findings of an expert whose conclusions are part of the foundation of the prosecution's case.

Dr. Michael Baden testified Binion's death was the result of "burking," which occurs when "the mouth and nose are obstructed and someone sits on the chest to prevent the diaphragm from moving up and down." He said it is usually done "to leave as little injury to the body as possible."

Based largely on Baden's conclusions, prosecutors allege Murphy and Tabish suffocated Binion and tried to make it look like an overdose.

The prosecution alleges that a day later Tabish went to steal Binion's silver in Pahrump, but defense lawyers contend that Tabish was simply following Binion's order to preserve the silver for Binion's daughter.

Cristalli framed the medical evidence by going through the consistencies found in each of the defense experts' testimony, with the primary constant being that accidental drug overdose and not Baden's "burking" theory.

While several defense experts and Simms "relied on six different treatises" to determine the cause of death was a drug overdose, Cristalli said Baden didn't and instead said "I just don't think they are lethal levels" of Xanax and heroin in Binion's blood.

Critalli continued to attack Baden's conclusions saying the two red marks found on Binion's chest were not caused by pressure placed on Binion's shirt by something sitting on his chest to "burk" Binion, but instead either a form of skin cancer, burn, dermatitis or herpes as countless defense experts had surmised.

He then attacked the actual investigation of the death pointing to Tabish and Murphy, saying "the investigation was created to go after this man and this girl."

Cristalli said it was inexcusable that the crime scene was never secured, that a biopsy was never done on the marks on Binion's body, that fingerprint and DNA analyses were never performed and that the pillow prosecutors have suggested was used to cover Binion's nose and mouth was never tested.

He also couldn't understand why no purity test was performed on the traces of heroin recovered from the "120 pieces of foil" from the Binion home.

Additionally, Cristalli said, while the prosecution has alluded a "lethal cocktail" was created with heroin and Xanax and forced down Binion's throat, testimony has proven neither substance was soluble.

"The only thing you can do is hold true to the evidence," Cristalli said. "If you don't speculate and do your own investigating, the only right thing to do is to return a verdict of not guilty."

A vast conspiracy?

Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas countered that if the jurors are to buy the arguments of Tabish and Murphy's attorneys, then they must accept the notion that the Binion family, investigators, Baden, the district attorney's office and 120 witnesses are all part of a vast conspiracy.

Daskas assured the jurors as he began closing arguments that both he and Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lalli got their paychecks every week "from the taxpayers of Clark County" and not the Binion family as implied by by Tabish's attorney, J. Tony Serra, on Thursday.

Daskas would spend a little more than an hour dissecting and attempting to disprove the defense's claims of innocence and allegations of conspiracy.

He began by examining the statements of two key state's witnesses, who the defense claim only came forward with damaging testimony against Tabish and Murphy to collect a share of the $100,000 in reward money the Binion estate had offered in exchange for information leading to an arrest and conviction for the death of Ted Binion.

Daskas reminded the jury of Deanna Perry, who had testified to giving Murphy a pedicure and manicure on Sept. 10, 1998. Perry had testified that Murphy predicted that Binion would die of a drug overdose within three weeks.

She also said Murphy told her of a boyfriend named Richard who was "good looking, young, married and rich." Perry said Murphy told her that Binion had silver buried in the desert and after Binion's drug overdose Murphy's boyfriend and his friends "were going to dig it up."

After Murphy left the salon that day, Perry told her co-worker, Georgia Gastone, what Murphy allegedly said, Gastone testified.

Daskas said the fact that Perry would share such information with Gastone on the very day Murphy had been at the salon shows Perry wasn't fabricating her story for a share of a reward because Binion's death wouldn't happen for another seven days.

Daskas next tackled the often confusing and contradicting testimony of Tabish's friend Kurt Gratzer. Daskas said although Gratzer didn't know Perry, "a thousand miles away at the same time Kurt Gratzer came up with the same story and knew his friend (Tabish) would kill."

Gratzer previously testified that Tabish asked him to kill Binion, asked him to discover if it was possible to determine the geographic origin of cell phone calls and what the lethal doses of two drugs were.

Specifically Gratzer said he and Tabish discussed, in a "jocular" manner, shooting Binion at his home with his own gun, hanging him, jumping out of a helicopter to shoot Binion through the window at his ranch in Pahrump, putting him in a rock crusher -- and using a tube to send lethal doses of drugs down his throat.

The defense had referred to Gratzer as "a deeply flawed" individual, but if they are to view him in such a light they also must then credit Gratzer with "having the wherewithal to come up with that plan," Daskas said.

He asked the jury if it was "a stretch" to believe Tabish -- who ordered his friend Jason Frazer to pay witnesses to create an alibi and paid his cellmate at the Clark County Detention Center, Ramon Owen, to gather witnesses to discredit Dillard -- would also ask Gratzer to kill Binion.

Daskas said Gratzer fit the bill of a man Tabish would ask to kill someone because when looking for such an individual they have to be "someone crazy enough to do it" and if they were caught no one would believe them.

"We didn't choose Kurt Gratzer. Rick Tabish chose Kurt Gratzer," Daskas said.

The prosecutor said Gratzer's testimony was corroborated by four people who didn't know Binion or Perry and lived with Gratzer in Tabish's native Missoula, Mont.: John Berman, a pharmacist; Tim Boileau, a correctional officer at the Missoula County Sheriff's department; Terry Sweeney, chief financial officer for a chain of convenience stores in Montana; and Michael Barger, a hair stylist.

Boileau, Sweeney and Barger all said Gratzer, prior to Binion's death, had told them Tabish had asked him to kill a casino owner in Las Vegas. Berman said that prior to Binion's death he received a call from Gratzer asking him what the lethal doses of two drugs were.

"Either they (Tabish and Murphy) are guilty or Perry and Gratzer were able to predict the future," Daskas said.

Although both Perry and Gratzer each received $20,000 from the Binion estate after Tabish and Murphy were convicted in the first trial, none of the people who ultimately corroborated their stories were paid by the Binion estate.

What was the motive

He asked the jury that if reward money was Perry and Gratzer's motive, what was the motive for the people who corroborated their stories?

The prosecutor said "a man's character is what he does when no one else is looking."

Daskas said in Binion's presence Tabish made it seem they were "best friends," but behind Binion's back Tabish was "sleeping with his girlfriend," accepting gifts from Murphy that Binion was unknowingly paying for and Tabish was negotiating "secret commissions" on a potential sale of Binion's silver.

Daskas said Tabish's testimony was simply "lie after lie, after lie."

Daskas said that perhaps the most blatant lie was Tabish's alibi. He said that notes Tabish wrote to Jason Frazer indicated he was attempting to pay potential witnesses to come forward and say Tabish was at work from 8 a.m. until roughly noon the day Binion died.

"He needed to pay for an alibi because he didn't have one," Daskas said. "Who says 'the rewards are going to be huge' if they already have an alibi?"

Out of the will

Daskas said Binion was murdered on Sept. 17, 1998, because Binion had found out from Murphy's friend Tanya Cropp that Murphy was cheating on him. He said upon hearing this Binion called his attorney, James Brown, and told him to take Murphy out of the will.

After Binion told Murphy she was out of the will and wanted her out of his house, she began making 24 phone calls to Tabish because the "window of opportunity was closing" according to Daskas. He said the next day Murphy and Tabish killed Binion.

He said the defense never denied Murphy was at the house during the time prosecutors allege the murder took place and Tabish's alibi is false.

Tabish was working at All-Star Ready Mix, a North Las Vegas concrete company, from 6 a.m. until the afternoon on the day Binion died. Lary Simms, the county medical examiner, and Baden have testified that Binion died between 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m on that day.

Daskas discussed the theft of Binion's silver a day after Binion's death.

Tabish and two others were arrested by Nye County sheriff's deputies for burglary after they were found unearthing Binion's $7 million silver collection from his underground vault in Pahrump. Tabish contends he was not stealing the silver, but instead was following Binion's wishes to have the silver preserved for his daughter Bonnie Binion in the event of his passing.

Daskas said Murphy's involvement in the stealing of the silver was made evident by phone calls she made to Tabish at the very time he would have been in Pahrump digging it up and the fact she predicted to Perry it would happen after Binion died.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.