(Court TV) — The latest chapter in a courtroom saga salacious even by Sin City standards will open Thursday when estranged lovers Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish face murder charges for the second time in the 1998 death of Las Vegas gaming titan Ted Binion.

The sophomore murder defendants will be reunited in a Clark County courtroom for the first time since they were convicted in 2000 of murdering Binion, then Murphy's boyfriend, after an appeals court overturned their convictions.

Lonnie "Ted" Binion, whose family owns the downtown Horseshoe casino famed for its World Series of Poker, was found dead in his suburban mansion Sept. 17, 1998. The 51-year-old Binion had a long history of heroin addiction, and police initially believed he died of an overdose.

His family, however, conducted its own investigation, which focused on his much younger girlfriend. Six months after his death, armed with evidence that included information gathered by a Binion family private investigator, police detectives arrested Murphy and Tabish, a 38-year-old struggling businessman with a wife and children in his native Montana.

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During the original trial, prosecutors suggested Binion had discovered Murphy's affair with his acquaintance Tabish and was about to cut her off financially. Tabish and Murphy, the prosecutors told jurors, either suffocated Binion or forced him to overdose on his own drugs and then planned to make off with millions in silver bars and antique coins.

Prosecutors were also able to convince the same jury that Tabish, whom Binion had contracted out months before his death to hide his $8 million collection in the Nevada desert, was guilty of extorting and assaulting a business partner who had assisted him in burying the loot.

The jury took eight days to convict the pair.

A flawed trial

Then, in July 2003, as Murphy and Tabish were serving their 21- and 25-year sentences, an appeals court ruled that trial Judge Joseph Bonaventure committed errors that had prejudiced jurors against the defendants in the original trial.

The four-justice majority said Bonaventure erred in two key areas: in his decision not to hold a separate trial for Tabish on charges he assaulted and blackmailed his business partner, and his instructions to jurors concerning testimony about a conversation between Binion and his estate lawyer the night before his death.

The majority justices said prosecutors never persuasively linked the July 1998 attack on Leo Casey, a partner with Tabish in a $10 million sand-pit project, with Binion's death two months later, but the graphic testimony concerning the extortion and torture had a "substantial and injurious effect" on the guilty murder verdicts for both defendants.

James Brown, Binion's estate lawyer, testified that the millionaire called him the day before he died and said, "Take Sandy out of the will, if she doesn't kill me tonight. If I'm dead tomorrow, you'll know what happened." However, Brown had few answers for defense questions about why he chose not to tell police about the alleged phone conversation until several days after Binion died.

The appeals court let Tabish's convictions for extortion and assault stand.