LAS VEGAS — The friendship between Rick Tabish and Ted Binion began at a urinal in a Las Vegas restaurant and ended about nine months later, with Binion dead and Tabish getting caught trying to dig up the millionaire's silver vault.

More than six years after he was charged with murder, Tabish finally took the stand Friday to offer jurors his side of the often bizarre events surrounding the casino mogul's death in 1998.

Poised and relaxed, Tabish detailed his rise from truck washer to trucking entrepreneur, his move to Las Vegas, and the increasing involvement he had with his new friends Sandy Murphy and Binion.

During more than four hours of direct examination by his lead attorney Tony Serra, Tabish dropped no bombshells in his often rambling and long-winded testimony, but he did reveal several new details about his relationship with Murphy and Binion.

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Prosecutors allege that Murphy and Tabish forced Binion to drink a nearly lethal cocktail of heroin and Xanax on Sept. 17, 1998, and ultimately killed the millionaire by suffocating him.

The defense contends that Binion, a longtime heroin addict, died of an accidental overdose after consuming 12 balloons of Mexican black-tar heroin and scores of Xanax pills.

The two former lovers are charged with six counts including murder, burglary and grand larceny. A jury found the couple guilty of all charges in 2000, but an appeals court overturned the convictions and paved the way for the retrial, now in its fifth week.

They face from 20 years to life in prison if convicted on all counts.

Random encounter

Looking directly at jurors, Tabish began his testimony by stating he was not guilty of the charges against him.

"Absolutely and unequivocally, I did not kill Ted Binion," he testified.

Tabish, now 39, has been in prison since the first trial when he was also convicted of assaulting and extorting money from business partner Leo Casey.

Tabish did not testify in that trial, and Murphy has indicated she won't take the stand this time around.

After chronicling his rise from college dropout to entrepreneur, Tabish recalled how, at a urinal in the restaurant Piero's, Binion struck up a conversation with him that was followed by an awkward salutation.

"We were both handling our business," Tabish said. "I figured what the heck and shook his hand."

With several Binions, including the victim's brother Jack and daughter Bonnie, looking on stoically in the packed courtroom, Tabish referred to the late casino mogul as "Teddy" and described how they grew to be friends.

"He was a very intuitive guy. He'd drink, he'd smile, he'd talk, and he was a very intoxicating guy to be around," Tabish testified.

The friendship turned into a business relationship, Tabish said, when Binion asked him to help with his silver collection after he lost his gaming license and had to move it out of the Horseshoe casino in downtown Las Vegas.

After considering selling the collection, worth an estimated $7 million, Binion decided to hold on to it and bury it in a vault in downtown Pahrump, Nevada.

Tabish told how he had the 62,000-pound vault built and delivered to the lot, which was between a casino and a Burger King. After burying the silver on July 4, 1998, Binion insisted that Tabish have access to the safe.

"[Binion] said, 'You keep the combo. You're the silver guy. If I need anything, we'll both come out here,'" Tabish told jurors.

Tabish said an increasingly paranoid Binion referred to the silver fortune as "loose change" that he didn't want his ex-wife Doris Binion to ever get her hands on.

If anything did happen, Tabish said Binion charged him with removing the silver, selling it and putting it into a trust for his daughter Bonnie to receive when she turned 35.

Tabish's claim directly contradicts the testimony of Doris Binion, who, during the prosecution's case, said she had relinquished any claim to Binion's silver when the couple divorced in the mid-1990s.

Start of an affair

Tabish told jurors he was initially skeptical of Murphy's relationship with Binion.

"You see a young gal with an older man, you have to raise some eyebrows," Tabish said.

But as Binion receded into a heroin daze during the summer of 1998, he and Murphy, whom he referred to as his "breakfast buddy," became closer.

"I ended up seeing more of Sandy and less of Ted," Tabish said.

Murphy, dressed in a pink coat, blue jeans and pink shoes with eyeglasses pushed back on her head, looked on despondently as Tabish answered questions about their relationship.

The two slept together after a boozy night that August, he said, but both felt guilty afterwards.

Contrary to prosecution allegations of wanton indiscretions, the two only slept together twice, Tabish said, and decided to break it off the weekend before Binion's death until both had dealt with their other relationships.

"We ultimately felt if we could get through our hurdles we would be together," Tabish said.

Going for silver

Calling it the "poorest decision of my life," Tabish tried to explain to jurors how, only one day after his friend's death, he was arrested for digging up the silver vault.

Infected by Binion's paranoia that somebody was after the casino mogul's fortune, Tabish said he thought he had to act quickly.

"I got sucked into Ted Binion's world. I thought it was all right," he said, portraying the silver removal as honest. "There was nothing secret about what we were doing."

Prosecutor Robert Daskas is set to begin cross-examination Monday at 9:30 a.m. PT.

Court TV is streaming the trial live on the Web.