- In the criminal justice system,
detectives and prosecutors face daunting challenges
when money is the motive for murder.
[dramatic sting]
- The Binion family, they have a long legacy here.
- Investigators find a rich casino mogul
dead from an overdose.
- Looking at the body, there was remnants
of some foam on his lips.
- To me, it looked like an overdose.
- It wasn't until they got the toxicology report back
that we knew something was seriously wrong.
Ted Binion had $8 million in silver buried in a vault.
It appeared they killed Ted for his money.
- Without hard evidence, prosecutors use
inventive testimony to convince a jury
this wasn't an overdose.
- You have all these little pieces that you build
to look like, this is actually murder.
- He said, "If I'm dead, you'll know what happened."
- These men and women dedicate their lives to law in order.
- To this day, clarity as to what really happened
to Ted Binion is suspect.
- These are their true stories.
[tense music]
* *
- Nine County Sheriff's deputies say
they found several holes dug in the Pahrump property,
once owned by casino heir Ted Binion.
They say a former employee broke in looking
for buried silver bars.
Neighbors say, "It's nothing new."
- It's a 20-year-old rumor
that many locals are familiar with,
that there's precious metal buried
on Ted Binion's old ranch here.
Employees and neighbors saying they're
constantly chasing people off coming in armed
with metal detectors and shovels,
hoping to find Binion's jackpot.
* *
- I never dreamed that this case would go on for six years
after that first night on September 17, 1998.
I sometimes wonder why this case keeps coming back up,
why there's so much interest in it
because it's not unusual for notable people
to meet their demise in Las Vegas
through unfortunate circumstances.
The interesting thing in this case is,
they thought their greed was helping them
or doing something good for them,
and every step of the way,
the greed ended up making things worse
and exposing everything.
So it sticks in people's minds.
[dramatic sting]
[phone ringing]
[woman sobbing]
[phone line beeping]
- I was right here when I got the call for a cardiac arrest
on Palomino Lane.
Flipped on the lights and siren, took off,
and we were there in less than a minute.
Parked right here next to that gate.
Walked through that gate towards the front door.
There's a beautiful young woman
that identified herself as Sandy Murphy,
the wife of the victim.
[tense music]
She told us, "He's not breathing."
I asked her, "Can you take us to him?"
We went right through the front door and turned right.
* *
She had come home from lunch or wherever she was
and found him dead on the floor on a sleeping bag
with a blanket over him.
I reached to his carotid artery
to see if there was a pulse.
And I felt rigor mortis in his jaw.
I ran an EKG on him anyway.
[beeping]
I got three flat lines.
His heart was not beating anymore.
There were marks on his chest.
He had a little drool coming out of his mouth.
There was a Xanax pill bottle underneath his right shoulder.
To me, it looked like an overdose.
So called dispatch, said send police officers.
* *
If we'd have a dead body in this neighborhood,
you kind of know something's up.
[radio chatter]
The scene immediately got locked down.
A police officer walked through the door and said,
"That's Ted Binion, who runs the Binion's Horseshoe."
* *
- Ted Binion was known for Binion's Horseshoe.
He was the brand ambassador at public events,
well-known with politicians.
- Ted was very well-liked.
And so he was the face of the casino.
It was Ted's job to run the world-famous poker tournament
every year, and he was worth around $500 million.
- He lived comfortably. He lived well.
But he also spent his money on some of his vises.
At the time, it was well known
he enjoyed going to strip clubs.
He also started into hardcore heroin use.
- Ted and I became acquainted when I was probably 16
here in Las Vegas, and I was aware of the fact
that he took heroin for 20 years.
But I was never around him and thought
that he was under the influence of a narcotic.
I never saw signs of it.
[camera snapping]
- Looking at the body, there was, it looked like,
remnants of some foam on his lips,
which is indicative to us of an overdose.
We saw some things that were in the adjacent bathroom.
I think it was a little piece of balloon,
a little piece of foil.
That becomes significant because balloons
are the transport mechanism for heroin
and the foil is how you would use it.
It starts to look like this is
a pretty routine drug overdose.
We still try to document as much as we can,
interview who we can.
So of course, Sandy was the person we needed to talk to.
Ted Binion was 55 years old.
Sandy Murphy was 26 years old
and came from a different background than Ted.
Sandy worked in the adult entertainment industry
in Las Vegas.
- Investigators learned that Ted had met Sandy
three years prior at Cheetah's Strip Club.
She was his live-in girlfriend who often referred
to herself as his wife.
She did say, "He was a drug addict.
"He finally did it.
I knew this was gonna happen," type thing.
- Sandy was inconsolable and extremely upset.
- Sandy was hyperventilating.
They had to treat her.
As they were wheeling her, TV cameras caught her.
- She lost her emotions and had to be taken
to the hospital.
- I make telephone contact with Lieutenant Peterson.
My working relationship with William Peterson
was probably one of the best working relationships
with the lieutenants they had in homicide.
- Normally, I would never get a call of a drug overdose death,
but this was Ted Binion, so obviously,
this is gonna make the news.
- This may possibly be an ingestion error on drugs.
We have not seen any signs of foul play.
- It's not unusual, and we have encountered in the past
where people, they over-medicate,
and that falls into the sort of definition of a suicide.
We have to wait for confirmation
or additional information from the coroner's office.
- I received a call and was told Ted had died.
I was sobbing.
It took me probably 45 minutes or an hour before I could
actually leave the office.
- As news of Ted Binion's death
spread through Las Vegas,
detectives knew their investigation
could be heavily scrutinized
due to Ted's high profile status.
- Ted Binion was the son of Benny Binion.
Benny opened the Horseshoe.
Benny Binion had five children. Jack was the oldest.
I think Teddy was second oldest,
and they had three daughters,
one of which was Becky Binion Behnen.
- Becky, with Ted, ran Binion's Horseshoe.
She was the one that was handling the nuts and bolts
and keeping the company profitable
and keeping the casino open.
[soft music]
- At 21 years old, Ted had taken over managing
the Horseshoe Casino floor.
- Later on, Ted met Doris.
They went together probably 8-10 years,
and then she got pregnant with Bonnie,
and then they married.
- Despite his family life
with his wife Doris and daughter Bonnie,
by 1994, Ted's drug use was at an all-time high,
and his mistress, Sandy Murphy,
had become a fixture in his life.
- Ted's relationship with Sandy
more or less prompted Doris to leave.
- Sandy quickly moved into Ted's home
and started calling herself Mrs. Binion.
- She was young, in her early 20s, when they met.
- Certainly, Ted, with all his money,
would be a real prize for Sandy Murphy.
Ted had given her a Mercedes and gave her a credit card.
- It was a continuous $10,000 line
that he took care of every month.
And it was a time that partying went on day and night,
and he was still involved in heroin.
[dramatic sting]
- While investigators awaited Sandy's release
from the hospital, they learned
that Ted had been suffering from depression
over a recently lost appeal
to the Nevada State gaming board.
- In 1994, Ted lost his gaming license
because there was allegations that his drug use
had gotten worse.
- Probably the saddest comment in that hearing,
he said, "This is all I am."
- I thought I'd come in here this year.
It is my, like, my whole life, my whole job.
- He was basically out of income
with not having a gaming license.
- Becky now has to ensure that her own brother
can physically not come into a casino that he grew up in.
- Ted was forced to remove all of his personal belongings
from the casino, including a large collection
of silver bars.
- He had $8 million worth of silver in there.
He felt a bank was just too expensive to hold it,
and that's when he came up with the idea
of building his own underground vault.
[tense music]
- It took trucks-- not truck, trucks--
to move this silver, to move it out to Pahrump
and bury it in the desert.
* *
- Ted still had a ton of money at the house,
irrespective of the money in Pahrump.
Everybody knew that he always had money at hand,
always had a lot of money at hand.
- The morning after Ted died, Ted's family and his lawyers
conducted an inventory of Ted's home.
- They had one of the safes drilled
by locksmiths to get it open.
And there should have been probably tens of thousands
of dollars in there.
And they found just one silver coin at the bottom.
- There was a rubber bottom with indentations
from the weight of money in the safe.
We have no idea where the money went.
- Whoever removed what was inside that safe
did it before the police responded to the scene.
- The revelation raised questions
for Ted's sister Becky.
- Becky Behnen was insistent that he was not the type
to commit suicide, that he wasn't depressed,
that he was looking forward to trying to get
his gaming license back.
- He would never have any kind of accidental overdose,
and I know it wasn't suicide.
- Becky told police and told the media
he'd been taking drugs since his teenage years.
So he couldn't possibly have OD'd because he knew better.
He knew how to do it.
- Would you please treat this as a homicide
till proven otherwise?
- Becky expressed her concerns that Sandy Murphy
was involved in Ted's death.
- His relationship with Sandy Murphy
was falling apart.
- He said, "If I'm dead, you'll know what happened."
- Why are there giant trucks out here
digging into the ground?
- The sergeant discovered silver coins falling out--
- You have all these little pieces that you build
- The day after deceased Horseshoe casino owner
Ted Binion's home safe was found empty,
his sister, Becky, and his lawyers
wanted investigators to consider his death a homicide.
[musical sting]
[phone ringing]
- Becky and two of Ted's attorneys came to my office
after his death, Richard Wright and James Brown.
They expressed their concerns.
- After three years of dating, Sandy had asked Ted
to include her in his will.
- Ted had previously been married,
and he had a daughter named Bonnie.
Sandy started putting a guilt trip on him that,
"If you die, your family is gonna throw me in the street.
I won't have any place to live."
So he agreed to give her the house in the event he died.
And he called me and had me put that in the will,
give Sandy the house and $300,000,
and the remainder goes to Bonnie.
But the day before he died, he called me.
He said, "Take Sandy out of the will
"if she doesn't kill me.
If I'm dead, you'll know what happened."
It kind of sent chills in my spine.
And I scratched out Sandy
so that Sandy would get nothing.
Based upon what he told me,
I thought it was virtually impossible
that his death was an accident.
- Binion's family believed that foul play was involved
and that Sandy's desire to protect her inheritance
of Ted's million dollar home and lay claim
to the cash in his safe was surefire motive.
- The only people that would have had access to that safe
are Sandy Murphy and Ted Binion.
Certainly, Becky Behnen had her suspicions
about what had happened.
- Because the relationship with Sandy Murphy
was falling apart, Becky had been clued in
to so many of their fights and the way things were going,
she was definitely gunning for his girlfriend,
without any question.
[dramatic sting]
- The day after he died, I had arranged to meet
at the house to get pictures for the funeral.
And I saw Sandy standing by the house.
She has a lawyer there, Knudsen.
And I said, "can I help you?"
And he said, "She's going in the house."
I said, "Wait a minute.
"Ted called me yesterday,
"told me to take her out of the will.
"It's his house.
"There are millions of dollars of value
"inside that house that's part of his estate
that has to be protected."
- Because Sandy had lived with Ted in his home,
until Brown could obtain a court order
to block Sandy's access, legally, his hands were tied.
- Knudsen had a video camera.
He says "We're gonna take a video
of everything in the house."
I said, "Fine, as long as I get a copy."
- I'm gonna take my bar gift, and my Luther Gunter,
and I've already taken my other piece of art that was in here.
- She was just opening every drawer saying,
"This is mine. That's mine."
She lifted up the piano, there was a pistol in there.
She said, "I bet you didn't even know that was in there."
- You can get a picture of the money missing.
- There was money in there?
- Well, there's $20,000 in the house, and it's not here now.
- When she made reference,
the money's gone from the safe,
I felt something was amiss, without a doubt.
[tense music]
- In the video of Sandy going through the house,
she did not seem to be grieving at all.
The circumstances and the suspicions
were starting to mount.
[dramatic sting]
It wasn't until they got the toxicology report back
that we knew something was seriously wrong.
- In the stomach contents, the levels of the Xanax
was well into the lethal range.
The level of morphine, which was a byproduct of heroin,
was in the toxic range.
And as the drug circulates through the blood
of the stomach, it usually doesn't get trapped
there at any very high levels.
And the fact that he had high levels in his stomach
would indicate that he had ingested it.
- Somehow this lethal dose of Xanax and heroin
got into Ted's stomach.
For a heroin user, that would have
been a waste of good heroin.
Ted was known to smoke heroin.
This concentration inside his stomach
would never have happened by Ted just smoking heroin.
- We conclude the manner of death
was alprazolam and heroin intoxication
and left the manner of death open and undetermined,
pending police investigation.
We needed more information
before we could call it a homicide.
[musical sting]
[ominous music]
- It was on a Friday night,
and it was right before the Harvest Festival.
We were putting out barricades for the festival parade.
We all thought it was a little bit weird that there was
somebody over in the field.
We kept seeing lights out there.
[vehicle beeping]
- This is a quiet, little rural community
where construction equipment running at 2:00 a.m.
is going to attract some attention.
- The Sergeant went over there and discovered silver coins
falling out of the belly dump.
- Nye County law enforcement are suddenly saying,
"Why are there giant trucks out here,
"digging into the ground,
- Two days after Ted Binion's suspicious death,
Sheriff's deputies in Pahrump, Nevada,
discovered three men were digging up
the former casino owner's buried silver collection
worth $8 million.
[dramatic sting]
* *
- One of the officers approached
and talked to the people.
- 33-year-old Rick Tabish explained he was a friend
of the deceased multimillionaire Ted Binion.
- And then as part of their explanation,
they started name dropping, oh, well,
the Nye County Sheriff knows about us,
just all different stories.
- There was a famous restaurant on the strip
where all the movie stars go to,
elite people from Vegas.
And Ted met Rick in the restroom
of that restaurant.
Ted took a liking to him, and when Ted decided
to build the vault, he called Rick to do it
because Tabish was in the construction business.
And only Tabish would know that it's even there.
- Tabish's story to Nye County deputies
was that Ted had instructed him to--if anything happened
to Ted that Tabish was to go get the silver
and make sure that it's safe so that it could be given
to Ted's daughter.
That's what he said in justifying why he was
caught taking all that silver.
- So ultimately, when the dust settled,
they were arrested for grand larceny
and booked into the Nye County Jail.
- The Sheriff's deputies, they took the silver,
and they had no place to put it.
So they had guards just standing around,
all night long guarding it.
- We had that transported to a storage,
where it remained until the estate sold.
- With the arrest of Rick Tabish,
yet another player joined Ted's family and Sandy Murphy
in laying claim to millions.
Two days later, an alliance became clear
when Rick bonded out.
- Sandy Murphy took all the money
that she can grab very, very quickly,
including her two-seat Mercedes that Ted had given her.
She puts all of that up in order to bail out
a friend of Ted's who was caught removing his silver.
There's no way that you can take this and put it together
in a way that looks favorable.
[dramatic sting]
- The Binion family wanted this case to go forward.
- We hired Tom Dillard, who was a former Las Vegas
Police Department Homicide detective
and had a detective agency.
Tom Dillard got on it immediately.
Tom Dillard gave us an extra set of eyes and ears.
We found that Sandy Murphy is living
with Rick Tabish in Henderson.
Before and after Teddy's death,
it came to light that Sandy and Rick had actually gone
to Beverly Hills and checked into a very upscale hotel
under the name Mr. and Mrs. Tabish.
[dramatic music]
- It turned out they were having an affair
for some time before this, so the plot thickened.
- I just became good friends with the guy,
and I'm real shocked.
Really soft spoken, compassionate guy,
and I'm real surprised.
I know he was trying to do everything he could
to straighten his life out and get back on track,
and this is a real tragedy.
- It was ultimately learned that Rick Tabish
was outside the house that night
that Ted was found dead.
And we never had any contact with him.
- Certainly, Rick Tabish was much younger than Ted Binion,
was better looking than Ted Binion.
So Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish
to get together was no surprise.
- The gardener, the maid, everybody is aware
that something is going on with Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy.
And Ted came to know it as well.
And that's when Ted said, "I'm writing her out of everything.
I'm getting rid of everything."
- Sandy reveled in the fact that she
was in this upper echelon,
money, associating with high society.
I mean, she knew she was on her way out.
She wasn't about to take that loss lying down.
I was certain that Sandy was involved, and Tabish probably.
- Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish had motive,
opportunity, and means.
In December of 1998, we presented the case
to the district attorney's office,
and they were gonna take it to the grand jury.
- As a prosecutor looking at this case,
there were a number of red flags.
The fact that the heroin that was found in Ted Binion's body
had actually been ingested, rather than having been smoked,
which was known to be his practice.
You also have developing evidence relating
to Sandy and Rick's relationship.
And so you have all these little pieces of knowledge
to make the investigators case at this point look like,
this is actually murder.
- March 1999, the coroner called a news conference
and announced that he was changing the manner of death
from unknown to homicide.
* *
That made it stronger for us.
The district attorney's office presented it
to the grand jury.
When the grand jury came back, they indicted Rick and Sandy,
and we were able to get an arrest warrant.
* *
We were able to find Rick and Sandy
at this grocery store in Henderson.
Certainly, Rick and Sandy did not seem surprised.
I think they knew it was coming.
- By March 1999, Ted Binion's death was ruled a homicide,
and three months later, Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish
were arrested and charged with murder.
[dramatic sting]
- It was called at the time, "Vegas' trial of the century."
Biggest media attention they'd ever seen.
- I think the trial was considered sensational.
It had everything.
It had lover's triangle, money.
It had all the makings of a good story.
[ominous music]
* *
- It was a circumstantial case from the outset.
You didn't have somebody saying, "I saw X shooting Y."
The prosecution had to help the jury understand
that these are the reasons, this is the evidence.
And this is why it all points to these two individuals.
- Prosecutors David Wohl and David Rogers
delivered opening statements.
- Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence will prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that Ted Binion was murdered.
He was murdered for lust, for greed.
He was murdered by someone who he trusted
and her new companion.
- The prosecutors present to the jury
Sandy's background as having worked at Cheetahs,
and then she begins to date Ted and is introduced
to a lifestyle that would have otherwise
been well beyond her means.
- Tabish ingratiated himself with Ted Binion.
- After that, he got close to Sandy.
- She was buying Rick Tabish lavish gifts,
utilizing Ted's credit card, and showing that she'd actually
flown Rick out to Los Angeles.
They'd registered at a hotel together as husband and wife.
- But what did the guest request?
- It says upon arrival, guests should have in room
a bottle of red wine, and that's a Barbaresco 706
and two dozens of long stemmed roses,
and this should be billed to the room,
and it says it's a surprise to her husband.
- They're telling the jury, look, this is someone who had
this relationship going on.
She's using Ted's money to further that relationship.
- Thank you.
That concludes direct examination.
- Thank you, Mr. Roger.
- The defense said that you could take
the exact same facts, his relationship with Sandy Murphy
falling apart and finding out about Rick Tabish, and say,
that's not evidence of a homicide.
It's evidence for why a man would commit suicide.
- Anything else? - Nothing, Your Honor.
- But prosecution presents evidence to the jury
that Rick is up to his eyeballs in debt.
He is bouncing checks all over town.
- In fact, there was one check for $29,634.54
returned on September 2, 1998.
- Yes.
- He has an IRS back payment due of $337,000.
He has a $200,000 Nevada State Bank loan
that's coming due in the next few days.
His company in Montana has defaulted on a $75,000 loan.
And then separately, his equipment company
down here has also defaulted
on $67,000 in equipment.
- September 17, 1998,
Mr. Tabish owed close to $300,000.
- Yes.
- And all of these debts are coming due at the same time.
David Roger used that masterfully to show
that Tabish was desperate.
So that desperation calls for desperate measures.
[dramatic music]
- My name is Steven Kurt Gratzer.
My last name is spelled G-R-A-T-Z-E-R.
- The prosecution called a witness, Kurt Gratzer,
who was Rick's friend from Montana.
Kurt was also an ex Army Ranger.
- Did you and Mr. Tabish discuss killing a man?
- Yes.
He told me that there was a former casino owner
in Las Vegas he had some business arrangements with
and owed him some money and wasn't paying it.
And he wanted to utilize my services to help him
in killing this man.
* *
- Kurt proposes to Rick that they
force Ted to consume a lethal combination
of heroin and Xanax.
- There was discussion about it.
And I really didn't know how to go about that.
- Kurt calls a pharmacist friend of his in Montana
and asks that friend how much Xanax is needed
to deliver a lethal dose.
The pharmacist in Montana confirms
that, in fact, that conversation did take place.
- And just days before his death,
Sandy Murphy had told a manicurist
at the Neiman Marcus salon that Ted
had a serious drug problem.
- She testified that she had told them that Sandy was
expecting to receive Ted's $3 million home soon
because she anticipated that he was going
to die of a drug overdose.
- What was her demeanor?
- Just happy and joking around, but--
- Did you find it funny? - No.
- The prosecution is establishing
the premeditation of the crime.
The fact that they are going to murder Ted
and they've been planning it for a while.
- Have a seat, sir.
State your name and spell your last name.
- James J. Brown.
B-R-O-W-N.
All I had was feelings of anger,
but I was there to testify as to the facts and what I knew.
I wrote down to the best that I could the conversation I had
with him less than 24 hours after I found out
that he was dead.
- And tell us about the conversation.
- He said, "Take Sandy out of the will
"if she doesn't kill me tonight.
If I'm dead, you'll know what happened."
I said, "All right, Ted."
- My name is Chris Sowell.
I was juror number six in the Ted Binion trial.
When James Brown made that comment
based on his conversations with Ted Binion,
you had to kind of stop and go, wow.
You know, it's almost like having
somebody speak from the grave.
That's, like, a foreboding of one's demise.
- You swear the testimony you are about to give
in this action shall be the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
- Tom Loveday, who was Ted Binion's gardener,
plays an important role for the prosecution's case.
- Had you ever seen those curtains closed before?
- No.
- Based on what you told us, was that around 10:00 now?
- Pretty close, yes.
- What'd you do after you mowed the front yard?
- Well, I was wondering where Mary was.
Mary is the maid for Binion.
She's always there by 10:00.
- In subsequent testimony by the maid,
she talked about, oddly enough, on that morning,
Sandy called her and said, you know,
"Ted's not feeling well. He's sleeping.
You know, don't bother coming in today."
So there were definitely some irregularities
that were transpiring in association with the day
of Ted Binion's death.
- The prosecution asserted the coroner believed
that by noon, Ted was dead and Sandy was busy
cleaning and staging the scene.
- The prosecution also presented
through the phone evidence that Rick actually
calls Sandy at 3:47 p.m.
And it's actually just seven minutes later that Sandy
then makes the call to 911.
- [sobbing]
[phone line clicks]
- With respect to their theory of how the murder went down,
prosecutors presented to the jury
Sandy had mixed up a cocktail of Xanax, Valium, and heroin.
Sandy and Rick forced Ted to consume the cocktail.
- May I play this video? - Yes.
You can play the videotape then to the jury.
- When investigators first start really turning
a critical eye to this case, one of the things
that they noticed, ironically, Sandy gives to them.
She had a walkthrough done with her attorney
through the home that was recorded.
- I'm gonna take my bar gift and my Luther Gunter,
and I've already taken my other piece
of art that was in here.
- And it just happened, one of the problems that the defense
faced was that when Sandy Murphy goes through the house,
there's a wine glass with a little bit
of liquid in the bottom of it,
and she grabs it and hides it away.
- And the glass, in fact, is never found.
But to have video footage of Sandy taking a wineglass
and putting it in her purse is gold, essentially,
from a prosecutor perspective
because you present that to the jury and say, look,
she's hiding a specific glass in a home
that, in theory, is hers.
And why is this glass so important?
Well, she used a wine glass to mix her cocktail of drugs
that she forces Ted to take.
[tense music]
But prosecutors contended that what
had really, ultimately, killed Ted Binion was suffocation.
- My opinion is that he died from some obstruction
to his nose and mouth, couldn't breathe in,
and pressure on his chest.
- Is there another name for that?
- Yes, that's specifically called "burking."
- Michael Baden has testified
in a number of high profile cases,
including the OJ Simpson trial.
He testified that there was bruising on his chest
in a circular form, consistent with the buttons on his shirt
because while one person is pinching closed the nose
and mouth, another person is actually
sitting on the victim's chest.
And together, they suffocate the victim.
- The killers in this case are the two people he trusted,
who stole everything Ted Binion had, including his life.
That's Rick Tabish and Sandra Murphy.
Thank you.
- So the prosecution rests, and the defense begins
to present their case.
There was no crime committed by Sandy Murphy,
and there was no crime committed by Rick Tabish.
You want to fault them for a relationship,
fault them for a relationship.
- The defense argued that Ted Binion died of a drug overdose
and there was no physical evidence
to show that Ted had died through the crime of murder.
The defense, of course, calls their own expert, Cyril Wecht,
who testifies that, in fact, it's not suffocation
because the congestion under the eyelids
is linear and not circular, and therefore,
that's not consistent with suffocation,
and that, similarly, the bruising on the chest
was likely the result of the first responders trying
to resuscitate Ted Binion.
- With that said, I would ask you
to do what's just and equitable in this case,
and that is find the defendants not guilty.
Thank you.
[dramatic sting]
[ominous music]
- Have you arrived at a verdict?
- Yes, we have, Your Honor.
- After two months of testimony,
the 12-person jury had spent four days in deliberation.
- Ms. Murphy and Mr. Tabish, will you please stand up?
* *
- All right, please hand the verdicts to the bailiff.
- Judge Bonaventure kind of looked at it,
and I wasn't sure if I caught him kind of go, Oh, OK.
A little surprised.
* *
- All right. Hand that to the foreman.
Mr. Foreman, would you read the verdicts aloud
starting from the very top, on down?
- State of Nevada versus Richard Bennett Tabish,
the verdict,
guilty of murder of the first degree.
We the jury, in the above entitled case,
find the defendant Sandra Renee Murphy as follows,
guilty of murder of the first degree.
- Of course, they went through each count, the robbery,
all the way down.
It literally-- it kind of sucks the air
out of the courtroom.
- It is guilty on all counts for both Sandy and Rick.
- I was elated.
I was elated that they were found guilty.
- You watched Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish's legs
kind of get a little bit weak underneath them.
- Sandy is sentenced to 22 years to life,
and Rick is sentenced to 25 years to life.
* *
[dramatic sting]
- Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy immediately began
working on their appeals.
Three years after their convictions,
the Nevada Supreme Court issued a decision.
- The Nevada Supreme Court determined
this hearsay statement from Ted Binion
to his lawyer, Jim Brown.
- He said, "Take Sandy out of the will
"if she doesn't kill me tonight.
If I'm dead, you'll know what happened."
- That statement was improperly admitted
without a limiting instruction.
Therefore, the Nevada Supreme Court
actually overturned the verdicts.
The trial needed to be redone.
- In a shocking move, Sandy and Rick
hired a brand-new defense team,
Michael Chris Talley and Tony Serra.
- I am an obsessive jury trial specialist.
Although the evidence was somewhat overwhelming,
I saw big reasonable doubt.
That's why I took the case.
This is a case I believed I could win.
- The courtroom this morning is packed,
filled with Binion family members,
as well as the defendants' family members.
Everyone is hanging on every last word of this trial.
[dramatic sting]
[tense music]
- Going into that second trial,
the prosecutors still believe
they have a good case and that legal technicalities
are what allowed Sandy and Rick to get
out of that first verdict.
- We worked for the Clark County
District attorney's office.
Beyond a reasonable doubt, this was a homicide.
- In the first case, they didn't want to concede
that he died of a drug overdose.
That persisted in the second trial also.
- But Tony Serra doubled down on Ted Binion's drug use,
arguing the heroin, Xanax, and Valium found in his system
was a lethal combination.
- Michael Baden said, "This isn't the way it happened.
He was burked."
There was impression of a button that shows
that someone was sitting on him.
- The button has to be, in some way, against the skin.
And if it's twisted over, I can take this button
and just twist it against my skin
and make it very nice mark, which I just did.
- I showed the marks weren't the same distance apart
as buttons on a shirt would have been.
So it couldn't have been buttons.
Your fantasy theory goes out the window, doesn't it?
Your theory goes out the window, doesn't it?
* *
Ted had severe skin disease
that could have accounted for marks that were on his chest.
Baden's whole theory dissolved
when it looked like those were
not marks from any pressure applied,
but marks that pre-existed his death.
- Over several weeks, prosecutors continue
to present their case, but without a key portion
of James Brown's testimony.
- The Judge allowed James Brown,
who was Binion's estate lawyer, to say he was called
to take Sandy out of the will.
- He scratched out the bequest to Miss Murphy, is that true?
- That's correct.
- Not that, "She's gonna kill me tonight."
* *
- I was disappointed that Bonaventure
didn't allow my statement, "If I'm dead,
you'll know what happened."
I believe it could have made a--
could have made a difference.
[dramatic sting]
- After deliberating for two days,
the jury had reached a decision.
- Sandy was scared to death that she was going
to be convicted again because she was losing it.
The second jury decided that Sandy and Rick
were innocent of murder.
You could just hear the awes.
It was just unbelievable when it came back not guilty.
- Any time you get an acquittal on murder,
it's a good verdict.
- Subsequent discussions with this second jury
revealed that whereas, in the first trial,
Dr. Baden's testimony had swayed the jury to convict.
In the second trial, the jury was not at all compelled
by Dr. Baden's testimony.
- Burking, as a whole, I think everybody got.
I think they understood that.
But it's only a theory.
Jurors have to have beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Sandy and Rick are actually released
the day that the trial ends
with the not guilty on the murders
with credit for time served.
- I was upset.
It didn't make any sense to me that they would reverse it.
It's been 24 years.
There are incidences where I still miss Ted.
He was just a good guy.
[soft music]
* *
- From what I know now, Sandy is living in Laguna Beach.
She married an art dealer and is living the high life there.
- After he was paroled, Rick saw a new fortune
could be made crypto mining.
And he did that in North Dakota and made a fortune.
* *
- This case is surprisingly polarizing
because even on the police department,
there are groups of detectives who think it wasn't a murder.
There were other detectives who were convinced it was a murder,
and they're both looking at the same information.
And that carried over into the community.
- Based on the first trial, most of Las Vegas
that had watched the trial, saw it day to day,
thought that they got away with murder.
- The Binion family got the silver.
Ted's daughter, Bonnie, ended up getting it.
There's still supposed to be a ton of silver
buried at his Pahrump ranch.
- The unfortunate thing for the Binion family and friends
is that, to this day, clarity as to what
really happened to Ted Binion was not found in the courts.
* *