The reckless heir to the Horseshoe Club fortune, fifty-five-year-old Vegas casino boss Ted Binion lived the high life constantly teetering on the edge -- surrounding himself with guns, heroin, cash, babes, and mobsters. But it was a beautiful ex-stripper and her new lover who gave him the final, fatal push over the side.
The gripping true story of the fall of a powerful man that culminated in the most publicized murder in Las Vegas history -- an almost perfect crime undone by the unbelievable greed of its perpetrators -- Jeff German's Murder in Sin City is a stunning account of human deterioration and depravity, a neon-tinged view of the poisonous rot that festers beneath the Vegas glitter.
This e-book includes updated trial information not included in the mass market paperback.
Steven Reincke, a veteran fire department paramedic, and his crew were the first to arrive at Ted Binion's posh ranch-style home in Las Vegas about 3:57 p.m. on September 17, 1998.
As they hurried past the opened steel security gates, they ran into Sandy Murphy, the wealthy gambling figure's beautiful twenty-six-year-old girlfriend, sobbing on the steps of the front door. Minutes earlier, the frantic former topless dancer had telephoned police to report that her "husband" had stopped breathing.
Hysterical and screaming, Murphy led the paramedics inside. They rushed along the white marble floors of the spacious sunken living room and passed the dining room on the right to Binion's den, his favorite place in the 8,000-square-foot home, where they found his lifeless body on a blue sleeping mat in the middle of the moth-colored carpeted floor. Clad only in a half-buttoned long-sleeve shirt and Calvin Klein briefs, the fifty-five-year-old Binion's arms were at his sides and his legs were straight and covered with a quilt. He was lying alongside his favorite piece of furniture, a plum-colored sofa that was worn out and spattered with cigarette burns on its left side, where Binion had often smoked and watched television on his thirty-two-inch console across the modest-sized room. Next to his body were a pair of black jeans, some loafers, three disposable lighters, an opened package of Vantage cigarettes, a television remote control and, most intriguing of all, an empty bottle of the prescription sedative Xanax that the former casino executive had obtained a day earlier. Binion, the second son of the late gaming pioneer Benny Binion, who founded the downtown Horseshoe Club, one of the most popular gambling joints in Las Vegas, was known to take Xanax to ease himself off heroin, a drug he had been addicted to for years.
It didn't take long for Reincke to discover that Binion had been dead for some time. His face looked ashen and there were signs of rigor mortis in his jaw. As Reincke examined the body, Murphy, an athletically built bottle blonde, returned to the den in an excited state.
"She came running into the room and just about fell on the body," Reincke later testified.
As his partners escorted Murphy out of the den, a twenty-foot-by-thirty-foot room with a low ten-foot-high ceiling, Reincke determined that Binion had no pulse and wasn't breathing. His pupils were dilated. Turning Binion over onto his right side, the paramedic saw large purple bruises on his back, which meant his blood had not been circulating for some time. No attempts were made to revive Binion.
Once it was clear that the casino boss was dead, police and crime-scene analysts were called to the home. Michael Perkins, a seasoned crime lab supervisor, took charge of surveying the death scene. Upon entering the house, Perkins found it odd to see a Halloween decoration, a white skeleton with “R.I P.” in large black letters, hanging over a light fixture above the doorway. Halloween, he thought, was six weeks away.
By now, word about Binion's death had spread throughout his upscale neighborhood. Reporters, friends, family members and neighbors began congregating outside his 2408 Palomino Lane home as a steady stream of plainclothes and uniformed officers made their way inside what quickly became a chaotic scene. The phone was ringing constantly in the den while Reincke attended to Binion's body. Messages from well-wishers were pouring into a recorder.
Perkins and his crime analysts scoured the den, taking photographs and looking for more clues to Binion's death. The room was filled with mementos from Binion's colorful life. On one glass end table on which Binion usually sat was a large...
