Monday, July 12, 1999 | 11:24 a.m.
Copyright 1999 Las Vegas Sun
Ted Binion's daughter has told a private investigator that she had a stormy relationship with Sandy Murphy, the woman accused of killing her father.
Bonnie Binion, a 19-year-old college student who stands to inherit most of her father's $30 million estate, said Murphy once threatened to shoot both her and her father in November 1997.
The younger Binion, who has never spoken publicly about her father's death, disclosed the threat and her feelings about Murphy in a March 14 interview with private detective Tom Dillard, who has been investigating Binion's death for his estate. The interview took place one day before Clark County Coroner Ron Flud held a news conference to declare that Binion was the victim of a homicide.
The Sun has obtained a 15-page transcript of the interview, which was turned over to defense lawyers in the Binion murder case last week.
Bonnie Binion was asked whether she was ever threatened by her father's 27-year-old girlfriend.
"Um ... most definitely," she replied. "She threatened to hit me a lot of times. She would definitely get in my face. She would definitely scream at me ... At first she started doing it in front of my father, and then she started getting where she would ... um ... wait til he was gone and start speaking for him and putting me in a really bad position."
Asked if she was ever threatened with a weapon, Binion said a couple of days after Thanksgiving 1997, Murphy threatened to "shoot both of us."
"She just, I think, at that point really wasn't that mentally stable, and she had gotten kind of crazed and my dad and I were actually getting along for the first time in a long time," Binion said. "I think it was easier for her when my dad and I weren't getting along ..."
Binion said Murphy was "constantly jealous" of her relationship with her father.
When she first met Murphy, Binion said, she "didn't think much of her."
She said: "I actually told my dad that uh ... she would have to change her behavior and the way she dressed and acted to move into our house because I wasn't going to have that ... basically a whore living in our house and so she literally came back the next day a completely different person."
For a while, Binion told Dillard, she got along with Murphy whenever she would return from boarding school and visit her father's 2408 Palomino Lane home.
But things changed, and the two ended up constantly fighting, she said.
The last year of her father's life, Binion said, she felt uncomfortable visiting the home.
"(Murphy) would play these silly little games," she said. "She would have my friends over. She would tell them horrible things about me. I would come home and there were all kinds of rumors and crazy things."
Murphy, now locked in a bitter battle with Ted Binion's estate over her inheritance, often talked about the $900,000 home she shared with Binion, his daughter said.
"She spent a lot of time bragging about how she was fixing up her house and how he was going to put the house in her name," the younger Binion said.
Binion said her father usually talked about putting Murphy in his will "when he was pissed off at me."
Eventually, her father did will the home, its contents and $300,000 in cash to Murphy. But James J. Brown, the chief lawyer for the estate, has claimed in court that the onetime gaming figure instructed him to disinherit Murphy the day before his death.
Last December, a district judge sided with Murphy and awarded her the home and its contents. But the house remains in the custody of the estate, which has been sparring with Murphy over her refusal to help locate hundreds of thousands of dollars in missing Binion assets.
Murphy now faces criminal charges in the theft of the valuables, including a $300,000 collection of rare currency and coins, from the home after Binion's murder.
Bonnie Binion, meanwhile, told Dillard that Murphy turned many of her friends against her and often would party and do drugs at her father's house with the "boys in the neighborhood."
At one point, Binion said, she felt as if Murphy was trying to turn her father against her, as well.
She described an incident while visiting her father last June when Murphy came outside the house "ranting and raving about how she didn't want that little bitch in her house."
Binion said her father tolerated Murphy's tantrums, but she couldn't.
She once got so mad at Murphy, she said, that she broke into her bedroom, stole her clothes and "distributed" them among her friends. She said she later regretted doing that because it led to a further deterioration of her relationship with Murphy.
Binion also said she never wanted to live with her father because he was "like living with a little kid."
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