By Laura Barandes
Court TV

The defendants in the Ted Binion murder case ran out of luck in a Las Vegas courtroom Friday. After deliberating for more than 69 hours, a jury of nine women and three men convicted Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish of killing the casino millionaire and trying to steal his silver fortune. In total, Tabish was convicted of 11 counts and Murphy of six counts.

Murphy, Binion's live-in girlfriend, moved in with gaming mogul in March 1995, just after his wife filed for divorce. Binion befriended Montana-native Tabish after a chance meeting in the bathroom of a Las Vegas motel in early 1998. By that summer, Murphy and Tabish, who is married with two small children, began an affair behind Binion's back.

Prosecutors argued that Murphy, 28, and Tabish, 35, fed Binion a potent mixture of heroin and Xanax, either by forcing it down his throat or surreptitiously slipping it into his drink, and waited for him to overdose. However, the gardener showed up unexpectedly. Murphy and Tabish then expedited Binion's death by suffocating him on Sept. 17, 1998.

According to the state, Tabish, who headed several failing companies, was deep in debt and willing to do anything to climb out of possible bankruptcy. He was also convicted of kidnapping and extorting Leo Casey, a Las Vegas businessman.

Murphy fell in love with Tabish, but could not reconcile leaving behind her life of material luxury with Binion. For a time, it seemed she was able to juggle both men.

"Ted Binion was the human ATM machine," said prosecutor David Wall, and Murphy even used his credit card to buy expensive clothes for her new boyfriend.

By killing Binion, prosecutors argued, Murphy was again trying to have her cake and eat it, too. Binion's will left her with the $900,000 house, its contents and $300,000 in cash. In addition, Murphy seemed to think she was the beneficiary of a $1 million life insurance policy. As it turned out, Binion never got around to putting Murphy's name on the document.

And the state painted Tabish with even more sinister strokes. "If [Murphy] didn't have the money," Wall told jurors, "she wasn't going to have Rick Tabish. Rick Tabish wasn't going to leave his family for a poor Sandy Murphy."

Tabish was first arrested in the early hours of Sept. 19, 1998, as he unearthed the nearly 46,000 pounds of silver Binion had buried in an underground vault in Pahrump. Binion had been dead for less than two days. Tabish told the suspicious officers who arrived at the scene that he was acting on orders from the late casino mogul; according to Tabish, Binion said to dig up the silver immediately if he died and put it in a trust for his daughter, Bonnie.

The officers didn't buy his story, and arrested him along with his two associates. Murphy arrived soon after with her lawyer to bail Tabish out of jail.

The state also played a videotape for jurors, showing Murphy making an inventory of the house she shared with Binion for more than three years. The same woman who was wheeled out on a stretcher the day before, seemingly hysterical with grief, was angry and focused on Sept. 18, 1998. Binion's estate lawyer, James Brown, had tried to bar her from the house and she was determined to make sure nothing would be missing when the estate took possession of the Palomino residence.

However, said the prosecution, many valuable items were already missing from the house. Several witnesses close to Binion, including his ex-wife and daughter, testified that the eccentric millionaire always kept valuable coins and large amounts of cash in the house. He was known to hide money in his pants, in closets and even kept $250,000 in his boat's motor in the garage.

After Binion's death, the house was empty of money and some of his silver ended up in the hands of Dennis Rehbein, Tabish's brother-in-law. Under a grant of immunity, Rehbein testified for the state that Tabish had given him nearly 100 pounds of silver coins as collateral on a $25,000 loan.

Tabish's defense was also hampered by testimony from Jason Frazer, a childhood friend and business associate, who told jurors under a grant of immunity that Tabish asked him to pay off alibi witnesses.

Another friend, Kurt Gratzer, was granted immunity by prosecutors to testify that Tabish asked him to help kill Binion. Gratzer proved to be a shaky witness — he admitted he was on sedatives and was arrested two days later for beating his girlfriend — but the damage was done to Tabish's defense.

Sandy Murphy's friend also came back to haunt her at trial. Tanya Cropp testified that Murphy asked her to lie to investigators and to the grand jury about statements made by Tabish after Binion's death. She also said that Murphy entrusted an inventory list of coins to her, and later had her fax it to a number in Montana.

To prove their medical theory of Binion's death, prosecutors relied on famed forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden. He testified that Binion was most likely restrained, drugged and then suffocated by a method called "Burkeing." By that, Baden meant that Binion's killers covered his mouth and nose and put pressure on his chest to keep his lungs deflated. The pathologist pointed to scrapes on Binion's wrists as evidence of restraint and said the button marks on his chest were from someone sitting on or pressing a knee into it. Baden also said he found small hemorrhages in Binion's eyes, evidence of suffocation.

The defense had its own bevy of experts, however. The pathologists — Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Robert Bucklin and Dr. Jack Snyder — all testified that there was no evidence of suffocation. Even more, they said there was no evidence of foul play.

But jurors were convinced otherwise.

They looked past the lack of direct evidence tying Tabish to the scene of the crime, past the conflicting medical testimony and past the fact that Binion was an abusive, heavy-hitting heroin addict.

The jurors in the Ted Binion murder case concluded that Tabish and Murphy had the motive, means and opportunity to kill the eccentric millionaire. Their love of money and lust for each other led them to play a dangerous game of roulette with the law, and when the chips fell, they lost big.

Pending sentencing, Murphy and Tabish face life in prison without the possibility of parole.