By Laura Barandes
Court TV

Three of Rick Tabish's former employees testified Thursday that the Montana businessman was at work during the hours that Ted Binion was allegedly murdered.

The trio of defense witnesses took the stand just a day after state witness Jason Frazer testified that Tabish, a long-time friend, had tried to bribe employees into providing him with a phony alibi.

Rocky Teeters, James Mitchell, and Dave Wilcox denied any sort of witness tampering and told the court that Tabish was with them at his sand mining operation on the morning of Sept. 17, 1998, the day casino mogul Binion was discovered dead.

Tabish and his lover, Sandy Murphy, who was also Binion's live-in girlfriend, are accused of murdering the millionaire in a bid to steal his buried silver fortune and free Murphy from her relationship with him.

On Wednesday Frazer testified that Tabish had instructed him to get some employees, including Mitchell, to give false statements to investigators.

But on the stand, Mitchell said he had seen Tabish working from about 7:30 a.m. until "noonish" on various projects at the sand mine.

"I don't know exactly what he was doing, he was all over the place," Mitchell said.

Teeters, who denied ever meeting Frazer, said he saw Tabish from 8 to 9 a.m. and recalled the day specifically because of a costly water meter malfunction.

Wilcox also recalled seeing Tabish "pretty steady" from 8:30 a.m. until 11:00 a.m., Sept. 17, 1998.

Las Vegas prosecutors attempted to chip away at the credibility of each alibi witness.

Prosecutor David Roger grilled Teeters about his late arrival to the case. He pointed out that Teeters never approached police with information about Tabish's whereabouts and only gave the account to a defense private investigator in February of this year.

In addition, the state suggested that by hiring a lawyer to advise them on their participation in the Binion case, Teeters and Wilcox had something to hide.

Prosecutors also highlighted an April 1999 payment of $500 from Tabish to Mitchell, a payment which Mitchell insisted was for back wages.

Mitchell added that he was testifying despite an intimidating 1999 interview session with Las Vegas homicide detectives in which they repeatedly told him about the types of sentences he could receive for lying.

"It was kinda like a threat," he said.