In 1995, Ted Binion, owner of the Horseshoe Binion Casino in Las Vegas, was having trouble with drug addiction and this was also affecting his gambling license. His wife had left him, so he frequented strip clubs, where he met dancer, Sandy Murphy. Sandy Murphy was a beautiful woman, half as young as Binion. She was a finance manager before she came to California. After losing the $20 grand she saved up to win blackjack, she ended up working at the strip club.
When Binion and Murphy met, she was unimpressed by him and didn’t even believe he owned Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, and when he asked a security guard to prove his identity to her, the guard was new and didn’t know him. Murphy even called Binion “Bunion.” Then, she finally realized the truth and how much power she actually had. In 1995, she moved in with him. According to Binion’s sister, Murphy told her she was only into older men for their money. Binion’s daughter, Bonnie, didn’t like Murphy either, being closer in age to Murphy than her dad. The relationship was volatile, the gardener reporting that there was constant partying and fighting at the home. He claimed Binion beat Murphy frequently, but she put up a good fight too.
Eventually Binion lost his gambling license at the horseshoe and began using heroine more. Binion’s problems surmounted. He could no longer have sex with Murphy due to the drug use, so she began an affair with a man named Rick Tabish, who later befriended Ted, after Tabish and Murphy reportedly planned to kill him. Before his death, the secret lovers tried to get Binion to liquidate his silver collection (bars and coins) that he had stashed beneath the casino because he wanted to keep his sister from getting her hands on it. Instead, Binion had Tabish construct an underground vault on a vacant lot he owned nearby his ranch hideaway in the desert of Nevada. Because Tabish knew exactly where the silver was and how to get to it, it made sense that he and Murphy were responsible for his death two months later.
The night before Binion died, he had a conversation with his lawyer. He told him to take Murphy out of the will, but this information never surfaced to the police.
The next day, September 17, 1998, Binion was found dead as the result of a mix of heroin and Xanax, believed to be force fed to him by Murphy and Tabish. Four to 10 hours after his death, Murphy finally called 911, crying to paramedics that her husband was not breathing. The death was labeled originally as a self-inflicted overdose. Murphy was awarded the $300K and the house that was ordered hers in his will.
One day after Binion’s death, Murphy makes a video tour of the Binion house. She points out possessions she wants from the estate and accuses members of the Binion family of taking things without her permission. When viewers watched closely, they could see Murphy slip a wine glass into her pocket. Investigators speculated if this was the glass that had been used to pour the heroine/Xanax mix into Binion’s throat.
Then, Tabish was found digging up the silver from the dessert and a love note was found in his briefcase tying his and Murphy together.
Murphy was arrested in 1999 and charged with murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, and conspiracy to commit grand larceny. An elderly man and old friend of Murphy, then bailed her out for $300K. She was put on house arrest, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, which she apparently frequently painted to match her clothes. A new benefactor, president of Eldorado Mining, Inc., Wiliam Fuller, loaned Murphy $125K for legal fees. Fuller had claimed he had met Murphy in a restaurant one night and they became friends. He just wanted to help her.
Over the following months, Murphy was jailed twice for violating her house arrest, lying about where she had been.
Binion’s sister, Bonnie, dug until Murphy and Rick were sent to prison for conspiracy to commit burglary and/or larceny, burglary, and grand larceny, including charges for the sliver dig that Binion and Murphy did in Pahrump, in which they went to acquire Binion’s buried silver, worth $7 million, two days after his death. On the counts of conspiracy to commit murder and/or robbery, murder in the first degree or second degree and robbery, they were found not guilty.
Finally, in May 2000, Murphy and Binion were convicted of Binion’s murder and sent to prison with possible parole. In 2003, both murder charges were acquitted and a new trial was set for 2004.
When it comes to what Binion left Sandi, the will was probated in 1998. Murphy claimed Binion promised to leave her $300K, his $700K+ house on Palomino Lane, and everything in it. Before the first trial, in 1999, Murphy filed a palimony case for funds she was owed for time and care of Binion during their relationship. Months later, Binion’s sister countered sued and filed a wrongful death suit, but both suits were dropped.

However, in 2007 Murphy returned to the courts to again try and collect on her inheritance, but Nevada law prohibits anyone who has been convicted of murder from collecting on any inheritance from their victim.
So, now 36 years old, she lives in Laguna Beach, California, a fine arts dealer, and co-owner of a mortgage company, Right Way Funding, with family members in Downey, California.