What do you know about a picture of Charles Manson that Becky Behnen says was taken in front of the $1,000,000 display at Binion’s and was confiscated by the FBI?
Yes, we've heard about it. We mentioned it briefly in a QoD about the million-dollar display posted in 2012.
What Becky Behnen claimed was repeated in a Las Vegas Sun story in January 2000, when the venerable million-dollar display at Binion's was taken down.
The Sun reported, "Celebrities lined up for photos as well. One of the most notorious, Behnen said, was Charles Manson and his 'family,' who dropped by to get their photo taken while they were staying at Furnace Creek in Death Valley. After Manson's arrest, the FBI dropped in with a search warrant and promptly confiscated the picture. To this day, the FBI still has the only copy of Manson's photo with Binion's million dollars."
And exactly that has been repeated in various places over the years.
We know that Manson himself had his photo taken with the million dollars. You can see it online by searching "Charles Manson Binion's Las Vegas" and clicking on Images. We don't know, at least from the photo evidence, that anyone who might've been with him was also photographed.
We also know that Manson and his followers occupied the abandoned Barker Ranch in Death Valley for a time in the fall of 1969, shortly after the Sharon Tate and Leno LaBianca murders in Los Angeles. In fact, the Manson "family's" antics in the national park led to their apprehension for vandalism, arson, and grand theft. It soon became apparent that they were the perpetrators of the vicious bloodletting in L.A., which the hapless LAPD had all but given up on. You can read that whole story here.
What we don't know, can't verify, and frankly take with a big grain of salt is that the FBI showed up at Binion's for the photo.
Much later, Binion's started taking digital snapshots, so they could've kept an archive of the hundreds of thousands of photos they took, though why they'd want to is beyond us. But in 1969, they were Polaroids with a limit of two per customer, so the idea that the casino kept and catalogued duplicates is far-fetched, to put it mildly.
Plus, the FBI would have had to to learn about the photo somehow, want it for some reason, and go to Binion's, where someone would have had to know exactly where it was for some reason.
None of it adds up in our book, except for Becky Behnen adding a little schmaltz to the story for reasons of hype and titillation.
Where the existing photo comes from, as far as we know, is a mystery.
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CLIFFORD
Jul-08-2023
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Doc H
Jul-08-2023
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AL
Jul-08-2023
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