Columnist Jeff German: Mob adds another twist to Binion tale

Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4067.

The mob angle has been the most intriguing of all in the Ted Binion murder case.

Last week the mystery was kept alive when defense attorneys made public another FBI report that suggested the same reputed underworld figures who shot to death Herbie Blitzstein also plotted to kill Binion, his good friend.

And what was the mob's preferred method of doing in the hard-drinking, drug-abusing Binion?

Overdosing him on heroin, of course.

That should sound familiar to anyone who has followed this sensational murder case.

In May local prosecutors persuaded a jury to convict Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her lover, Rick Tabish of killing the gambling figure on Sept. 17, 1998, by pumping him with heroin and Xanax and then suffocating him. Prosecutors alleged the killers tried to make Binion's death look like a suicide.

Binion died 21 months after Blitzstein, once a top lieutenant of slain Chicago mob kingpin Anthony Spilotro, was gunned down at his Las Vegas home.

Defense attorneys John Momot and Gerald Scotti last week attached the just-discovered FBI report to their lengthy motion for a new trial for Murphy. They contend Chief Deputy District Attorneys David Roger and David Wall had an obligation to provide them with information pointing to others who had a motive to kill Binion.

The seven-page report was written by FBI agent Charles Maurer in April 1999 following a debriefing of Antone Davi, one of two men who pleaded guilty to shooting Blitzstein on Jan. 6, 1997, as part of an attempt by the Los Angeles mob to take over Las Vegas street rackets.

Davi told Maurer that Alfred Mauriello, who pleaded guilty to arranging the Blitzstein hit, told him shortly after Blitzstein's death that Binion had offered $50,000 to kill his sister, Horseshoe Club President Becky Behnen. But Binion changed his mind, so the wise guys decided it might be lucrative to whack him instead. He was thought to stash millions in cash at his home.

Maurer had been aware of the murder scheme since July 1997 after word had gotten back to him that Davi was talking about it to friends in the slammer. FBI agents even tipped off Binion to the plot.

But what wasn't known at the time was how the mob planned to kill the colorful casino man. Maurer got the rest of the story when he talked to Davi in 1999.

Davi reported that Richard Friedman, the other convicted Blitzstein shooter, came up with a plan to use a stun gun on Binion at his home and then, you guessed it, pump him with heroin to make his death look like an overdose. Maurer recalled that a stun gun was found at Friedman's apartment when he was arrested in Blitzstein's slaying.

If you consider the other underworld ties to this story, the mystery widens.

There's the movie deal that Tabish tried to strike with Joseph Cusumano, another reputed Spilotro underling. And there's the jailhouse visit Tabish received from Salvatore Galioto, a suspected Chicago mob associate who runs in Cusumano's circles. There even are rumblings that the Chicago mob was going to help Tabish fence Binion's stolen silver fortune.

And Tabish himself was said to have bragged about his Chicago connections in an attempt to intimidate witnesses in the Binion probe.

Roger and Wall find the renewed talk of the mob conspiracy in Binion's death interesting, but they're not worried that their case against Murphy and Tabish will be falling apart soon.

"A lot of people thought that JFK was killed by more than one person," Roger says. "I'm not buying into the conspiracy theory. This is an attempt by Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy to blame someone else for their own wrongdoing. It's just another smokescreen."

It's also fun to talk about, boys.

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