Murphy fires lawyer

Convicted murderer Sandy Murphy has fired her top appeal lawyer because he has teamed up on another high-profile case with two private investigators at odds with her defense team.

Murphy, defense team sources said, sent attorney Thomas Pitaro a letter from prison late last week informing him she was terminating his services over his professional dealings with investigators Tom Dillard and Michael Wysocki.

Pitaro, Dillard and Wysocki all are defending Margaret Rudin on charges of killing her millionaire husband, Ron Rudin, in December 1994.

The well-publicized murder trial is taking place in the courtroom of District Judge Joseph Bonaventure, who also presided over last year's sensational trial of Murphy and her lover, Rick Tabish, in the September 1998 slaying of colorful casino executive Ted Binion.

Dillard is credited with helping police break open the Binion investigation that led to the murder convictions of Murphy and Tabish. And Wysocki is suing Murphy's benefactor, William Fuller, for failing to pay him more than $37,000 in Binion defense team investigative fees.

The two private detectives, though on opposite sides in the Binion case, are good friends and have worked with Pitaro in the past.

Pitaro -- who was working on Murphy's appeal with her trial attorney, John Momot, and nationally-known Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz -- would not comment on his reported firing.

Wysocki also declined comment.

But Dillard said his work on the Rudin case has nothing to do with the Binion investigation.

"The criminal justice system didn't stop with Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish," he said. "There are other cases. Life goes on."

Dillard said Murphy has "lost the services of a good attorney."

Pitaro, regarded as one of the top defense lawyers in Las Vegas, was brought in at the end of the Binion trial to help the defense team with the complicated examination of medical witnesses. He later was hired as the primary attorney on Murphy's appeal.

In her one-page letter, Murphy reportedly told Pitaro she made the decision to drop him after consulting with her family.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, who obtained Murphy's conviction last May, said the loss of Pitaro is a big blow to the defense.

"Her chances of winning on appeal are greatly diminished now," Roger said. "Tom Pitaro is a brilliant attorney."

Lawyers for Murphy and Tabish had been planning to file their appeals with the Nevada Supreme Court by June. There was no word this morning on how Pitaro's departure would affect that timetable.

But Murphy's civil lawyer Herb Sachs said this morning that Murphy left a telephone message at his office on Monday asking him to take over Pitaro's appeal duties.

Sachs said he hasn't decided whether he'll accept the assignment.

Though she didn't mention Rudin's name in her letter, the 29-year-old Murphy, a one-time topless dancer, is said to be upset with her former fellow inmate at the Clark County Detention Center.

The Sun reported last July that Rudin had complained to jail officials that Murphy allegedly had become intimate with Jessica Williams, who last month was convicted in the freeway deaths of six teenagers. At the time, all three celebrity inmates were being housed in the same cell.

Detention Center officials confirmed that Rudin had raised allegations of "inappropriate conduct" on the part of Murphy and the 21-year-old Williams, who also was a topless dancer.

Lawyers for Murphy and Williams denied there was any romantic relationship between the two women, and jail officials could not substantiate Rudin's allegations.

But officials decided to separate all three inmates, anyway.

Murphy now is serving a minimum of 22 years behind bars at the Southern Nevada Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas.

Tabish, a Montana contractor who turns 36 on Thursday, is spending his 25 years at the Ely State Prison, a maximum security facility.

The two defendants were convicted of pumping Binion with drugs and suffocating him at his Las Vegas home on Sept. 17, 1998, to gain access to his millions. Murphy had been living with Binion at the time.

archive