Jail officials continue probe of death threat

Jail officials this week still are trying to determine the validity of a reported death threat against Rick Tabish.

"It's still under investigation," Paul Martin, director of the Clark County Detention Center, said. "No action will be taken until we're able to determine whether it's an actual threat or just some inmate making a hollow threat."

Martin said intelligence officers with the jail interviewed about 20 of the 1,700-plus inmates as of Friday and planned to talk to more during the probe, which began New Year's weekend.

The investigation, Martin said, has been slowed because of media coverage of the reported contract on Tabish's life.

"It's hard for us to determine whether this is general conversation among the inmates or something that was heard before it became public," Martin said.

Tabish, charged with Ted Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, in the former casino executive's September 1998 slaying, no longer is in protective custody, Martin said.

But Martin said the 34-year-old Montana contractor, who has been held without bond since his June 24 arrest, is in a cell by himself in a small segregated unit, where he can have the same privileges as the general inmate population.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure has ordered jail officials to give Tabish access to a telephone for at least three hours a day so that he can prepare for his March 13 trial.

Tabish's lawyer, Louis Palazzo, has questioned whether the threat against his client is legitimate.

"I don't believe that there's any death threat," Palazzo said earlier this month. "I think this is being concocted and manufactured in an effort to impede and hamper his ability to participate in his defense."

Sources, however, said there has been resentment among inmates toward Tabish because of his "celebrity" status at the jail.

Tabish, despite complaints from his lawyer of bad treatment in jail, has been given special privileges such as rare outside visits to Palazzo's office so that he can work on his case, which includes nearly 30,000 pages of documents. Corrections officers have accompanied Tabish on those trips.

Jail officials have said in the past that they believed the threat was coming from within the detention center and was not the result of outside forces. Tabish is reported to have ties to Chicago underworld figures.

But Martin downplayed the reported unhappiness with Tabish among the rest of the jail's population.

"As long as it doesn't affect them personally, inmates don't care about what happens to others," he said.

Martin said he had no idea when the investigation would be completed.

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