Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001 | 11:12 a.m.
Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series of seven excerpts from the new book, "Murder in Sin City: The Death of a Las Vegas Casino Boss." The book, which takes the reader into the heart of the Ted Binion murder investigation, was written by Jeff German, the Sun's senior investigative reporter. The series, exclusive to the Sun, will run daily through Friday and conclude on Sunday.
In June 1999 the buzz at the county courthouse was that Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were about to be charged with killing Ted Binion.
By the last week of the month, District Attorney Stewart Bell had signed off on a 109-page affidavit that lead Binion prosecutor David Roger and homicide detective James Buczek had put together to obtain an arrest warrant for the two murder suspects.
"As we got close," Bell said, "we wanted them together in Las Vegas. So we decided we wouldn't get the warrant and pounce on them until we knew they both were here."
Added Roger: "I didn't want to do two different preliminary hearings. If we screwed up and caught Sandy down here and Rick up in Montana, he could have tied us up for months fighting extradition."
Roger suspected that Tabish, who still was commuting back and forth between Missoula, Mont., and Las Vegas, would want to be here for a June 25 estate hearing to determine whether Murphy could move back into Binion's 2408 Palomino Lane home.
On Thursday, June 24, the Metro Police department's surveillance squad quietly was given orders to start looking for Murphy and Tabish. Roger, meanwhile, went to Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti with the massive affidavit to get the arrest warrants.
Bell said the plan was to arrest the two on the steps of the courthouse prior to the probate hearing the next day.
But by early evening on June 24, the surveillance squad had located the two suspects going into the Smith's Food King near their Henderson apartment. The squad telephoned Buczek and his partner, Tom Thowsen, who jumped in their cars and sped to the parking lot of the grocery store.
Murphy and Tabish were taken into custody before they had gotten to the cash register. Buczek escorted a handcuffed Tabish to his car, and Thowsen took Murphy to his vehicle.
"They weren't surprised one bit," Buczek said. "They said, 'We heard you were going to arrest us. Our attorneys told us it was going to happen last week.' "
Tabish, remembering his brief chat with Buczek at the apartment in February when the search warrants were executed, struck a friendly conversation with the detective.
"I'm glad you're investigating this," Tabish told Buczek. "I know you'll do a thorough job. It's (private detective) Tom Dillard I can't stand. I don't trust him."
Buczek recalled that even then Tabish was a smooth talker, offering to buy him a beer at his favorite watering hole in Missoula the next time the detective visited his hometown.
"He said he was going to beat this," Buczek said. "He wanted to make this go away, and the only way to do that was to go to trial."
Buczek and Thowsen transported the two suspects back to the Clark County Detention Center about 10 miles away in downtown Las Vegas, where they were booked with no bail.
Reporters were waiting as Murphy and Tabish were escorted inside the jail without saying a word. Sketchy details of the arrests topped the evening news.
Detectives also rounded up four other suspects charged with related crimes in an 11-count complaint. Charged with Murphy and Tabish in the theft of Binion's Pahrump silver fortune, were Binion's ranch manger David Mattsen and Tabish employee Michael Milot.
Two other men, California banker John Joseph and Las Vegas contractor Steven Wadkins, were charged with Tabish in the torture-kidnapping of businessman Leo Casey two months before Binion's Sept. 17, 1998, slaying.
That evening the Las Vegas Sun obtained the 109-page affidavit signed by Buczek that methodically laid out the criminal case against Murphy and Tabish.
The next day the newspaper ran a series of stories disclosing for the first time the intimate details of the nine-month investigation. The affidavit explained the police theory that the death scene at Binion's home had been made to look like a self-induced overdose.
"It is affiant's considered opinion that the scene depicting Ted Binion's death was staged," Buczek wrote. "It is clear to affiant that Ted Binion's killers positioned Binion's body in a manner that is inconsistent with the way decedents are normally found in similar situations."
Buczek also said he was convinced Binion's accused killers had forced him to ingest heroin and Xanax and that Tabish was the brains behind the murder scheme.
News of the arrests brought relief from Binion's sister, Horseshoe Club owner Becky Behnen, one of the first to suspect foul play.
"I feel like a great deal of weight had been taken off my shoulders," Behnen said the next day. "I'm not surprised by this. From the moment I heard about his death and the circumstances surrounding his death, I've always felt it was a homicide."
Metro homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen, who had been badgered by reporters on a daily basis for nine months about the case, also was in good spirits the day after the arrests.
"No one incident brought us to this point today," he said.
"It was a culmination of months of work on a complex case. The file for this case is the largest in the office and the biggest I've ever seen in over two years since I joined homicide."
Petersen praised the work of Buczek, Thowsen and their team leader, Sgt. Ken Hefner.
"It means something for the officers to be able to go down, put the handcuffs on and make an arrest after so much work," he said. *
"Murder in Sin City" by Jeff German is available for $6.99 at all major bookstores in the greater Las Vegas area and around the country. It is published by Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers in New York.
THURSDAY:
Rick Tabish's reputed mob ties and his Hollywood movie deal over Ted Binion's death are exposed.
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