On Sept. 17, 1998, Ted Binion, 55, died of unnatural causes.
Binion's live-in girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her boyfriend, Rick Tabish, were accused of murdering him.
During the seven-week trial, several medical experts testified that Binion died from an overdose of heroin, Xanax, and Valium. One expert claimed he was suffocated.
In May 2000, the pair was convicted of murder. Rick Tabish was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison, while Murphy received a minimum 22-year sentence.
Then, in July 2003, the Nevada Supreme Court found fault with the trial on a number of technicalities and overturned the murder convictions, ordering a new trial. In December 2003, Sandy Murphy was granted and posted bail and went home to California for Christmas. Rick Tabish, on the other hand, had also been convicted of lesser charges of extorting a business associate, for which he was serving a two- to 10-year sentence and wasn’t eligible for bail.
Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were retried in fall 2004. In late November, they were acquitted of murder by a jury unconvinced of foul play and citing, among other things, a contaminated crime scene and prosecution witnesses who simply could not be believed. The defendants were, however, found guilty of conspiring to commit and committing burglary and/or grand larceny. This conviction stemmed from Tabish’s attempt to steal $8 millon in cash and silver that Ted Binion had buried in an underground vault in Pahrump.
In March 2005, Murphy and Tabish were sentenced to one to five years for their burglary and larceny convictions.
Tabish had to finish serving his sentence for extortion before he could start doing his time for stealing the silver, meaning that he was facing a total of 2 to 15 more years in prison.
Murphy, meanwhile, remained free on bail pending her appeal of the latest conviction. With credit earned for nearly four years already served in prison, the most she could have ended up serving if her appeal failed was about 13 more months.
In late April 2005, Murphy was given credit for time served. She appeared at the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Center, receiving paperwork from the Nevada Department of Corrections showing she’d discharged her sentence on the theft-related convictions.
Rick Tabish had served three years in a Nevada maximum-security prison in Ely, 250 miles northeast of Las Vegas, before being paroled on the extortion conviction. However, he was transferred to the medium-security prison in Indian Springs, 25 miles northwest of Las Vegas, having to serve more time for his use of a deadly weapon in that case.
In December 2005, Tabish applied for parole on the deadly weapon enhancement. If paroled, he'd qualify for a transfer from the High Desert prison to a work farm to start serving his one to five years on the theft conviction.
However, in January 2006, the Nevada Parole Board denied him parole, with no comment. Rick Tabish won't be eligible to apply again until December 2008.
As for the stolen silver, in May 2005, the Binion estate gained control of the coin collection looted from Ted's buried vault, which was described by the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation as "the greatest collection of silver dollars that NGC has ever authenticated." Ranging in price from $69.95 up to more than $10,000 each, many of the coins are still available for purchase through Goldline International, the exclusive agents for the collection. Visit their Web site at www.binioncollection.com/ if you're interested in owning part of this historic and controversial collection. They also have the contents of Benny Binion's famous million dollar display, in front of which you used to be able to have a free photo taken, until his daughter Becky sold it in 2000. The $10,000 bank notes from that collection retail at $100k each.
