Unexplained

00:00 This is an iHeart Podcast. 00:02 Guaranteed human. 00:04 I'm Stephanie Young. The hit podcast Love Trapped is back with new updates in the case of Laura Owens. 00:11 This is CR 2025 State vs. Laura Owens. 00:15 I think she really believes that she still has an out. I'm quite confident that they're up to something. 00:20 We're following the case live as the criminal charges finally come to a conclusion. 00:25 Trust us when we tell you as the victims of Laura Owens, she will not stop. 00:29 Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 00:35 This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible you're the problem. 00:45 Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. 00:56 Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika starting on July 15th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 01:06 Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. 01:13 It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. 01:23 Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. 01:29 Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 01:37 Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most science-y episodes for your peer review with our new Stuff You Should Know doing science playlist. Out now. You want to know about Occam's razor? The simplest explanation is usually the right one. We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park? Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody. Turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner and slip into your most comfortable lab coat and listen to the Stuff You Should Know Doing Science playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 02:11 Hello and welcome to Unexplained with me, your host, Richard McLean-Smith, where each week we explore another true tale of high strangeness. If you're new here and you're a fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained, then you've come to the right place. And please subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so. 02:32 I mentioned last week that I'll be hosting a live stream Q&A on YouTube to discuss this case and anything else you might want to ask about me or the show after the third and final part of this episode drops next Friday. This will take place at 7 o'clock Eastern Time, or midnight in the UK, on Wednesday 22nd of July. You can find the link in the description below. 02:55 But for now, we continue our deep dive into the life and death of Ted Binion. 03:10 Part 2 of Unexplained Season 9, Episode 27. 03:15 Death in Vegas. The Ted Binion Mystery. 03:24 For all that was appealing to Sandy Murphy about life with Ted Binion, there was another side to their relationship. 03:32 One night, a frightened Sandy arrived in tears at the home of Ted's sister Becky. Her face was covered in bruises. 03:41 A call was made to 911 in which Sandy accused Ted of assaulting her, but the accusation was later retracted. 03:50 It's said that whenever Ted beat Sandy, his way of making it up to her was just to lavish her with more gifts, including at one time giving her a black Mercedes worth about $200,000 today. 04:04 Over time, Sandy began to get an understanding of what life in Ted's orbit also entailed. 04:10 She rubbed shoulders with gangsters and politicians and watched as they all circled each other, doing whatever they needed to keep their respective wheels greased. 04:20 There were all the guns, too. 04:22 At one point, there were thought to be about 300 of them that Ted kept stashed away at various properties. 04:30 After all, for anyone involved with so much money in Vegas, the high likelihood that you were always a target for somebody was an occupational hazard, and Ted knew better than most. 04:42 Back in the 1960s, when Ted was 24, a man named Bill Wade began making it known that he had some information that he wanted to get to Benny Binion. 04:53 According to Wade, an ex-con named Marvin Shoemate had concocted a plan to abduct Ted and demand ransom for his safe return. But Marvin had no intention of returning Ted at all and planned to kill him instead. believing that was the only way he could get away with the scam. 05:13 Wade knew all this because at one point he'd been in on the plan, only he got cold feet when Marvin revealed that he actually wanted to kill Ted. 05:23 It isn't clear what became of Wade exactly once Benny heard all this, but what happened to Marvin's shoemate is a little less unclear. 05:33 After speaking to Benny's people, Wade arranged a meeting with shoemate at a Vegas diner, supposedly to go over the plan once again. But when Shoemate turned up to the meeting, there was no sign of Wade. Waiting for Shoemate instead were Benny's henchmen. 05:50 They asked him to take a ride with them out to the desert. 05:53 Marvin wound up dead in a ditch just outside of Vegas after having his chest blown apart by a shotgun blast. 06:07 It wasn't just outsiders that had it in for Ted. 06:11 Behind the scenes of the Binion Horseshoe, a bitter power struggle was playing out between him, his brother Jack and his sister Becky over who could be best trusted with the casino business. 06:23 Despite regaining his gaming licence in 1992, Ted standing at the horseshoe never fully recovered. His sister Becky, who Ted seemed to have little time for and even less respect, had manoeuvred herself into an effective co-presidency alongside Jack. Ted still held his 20%, but the floor he grew up on was no longer his. Sandy, for a while, seemed to make him happy at least, but it wasn't enough to banish the wider problem. 06:53 By early 1996, state gaming regulators were back at his door. Hair sample tests returned positive results for marijuana and cocaine on three separate occasions, and his license was suspended again, pending a review the following year. 07:10 Ted's world began to contract. 07:13 He drank more. He used more. Things appeared to be souring with Sandy, too. 07:19 And though both seemed intent on sticking it out for now, things were about to get even worse. 07:26 Ted Binion's world in the mid-1990s wasn't just complicated by family politics and drug habits. It was ringed, as it had always been, by men whose names, if you wanted to keep your gambling license, you didn't want associated with yours. 07:42 One of those names for Ted was Herbert Blitzstein, or Fat Herbie as some called him. 07:49 Blitzstein had been a top lieutenant of Antony Spillotro, until Spillotro was beaten to death by his own people for skimming from his bosses in 1986. 08:00 Blitzstein had survived the cull, but without steady work, had drifted into loan sharking. Since then, Ted and Blitzstein, who moved in similar circles, had become friends. 08:12 On the 7th of January 1997, police were called to Blitzstein's home and found him slumped forward, head first in an armchair, with a bullet hole in his head. 08:24 He'd been executed on the orders of a man named Peter Caruso, whose bosses wanted in on Blitzstein's loan shark operation. 08:33 Ted's association with Blitzstein was a leading feature in the Gaming Commission's investigation into his eligibility to regain his license. But it was a whole lot more complicated than that. 08:50 So here's an interesting bit of information worth keeping in mind for later. 08:55 The FBI had known all about the planned assassination of Herbert Blitzstein thanks to an informer named John Branco. 09:03 After it was carried out, Branco had another tip-off. 09:07 When Peter Caruso had Blitzstein murdered, items were apparently stolen from his house that turned out to belong to Ted, and Caruso wanted more of them. 09:18 According to Branco, Caruso had heard that Ted was a heroin addict and so apparently hatched a plan to burgle his home after murdering him in a way that would make it look like he'd just overdosed on heroin. 09:31 In May 1997, no doubt influenced by all the messiness surrounding Herbert Blitzstein, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, suspended Ted's license again, pending a review. 09:44 It was around this time that Ted and Sandy went to dinner one night at Piero's. 09:50 Back in the 1980s, when it first opened, the Italian restaurant Piero's, with its tightly packed covers, low lights, and crisp white tablecloths, became a popular hangout for organized crime bosses, casino owners and politicians who like to treat the place as a neutral territory, the restaurant equivalent of the Continental Hotel, if you're familiar with the John Wick movies. While there, at some point, Ted went to the bathroom, whereupon he found himself standing next to a tall, dark-haired man. 10:23 The man introduced himself as Rick Tabish. 10:28 Rick had arrived in Vegas the previous year, much like Sandy, searching for something. 10:34 He grew up in Missoula in Montana, and came from what papers described as a prominent family, which I assume means fairly wealthy. 10:44 His father ran a petrol distribution business and by all accounts he and his wife provided their kids with everything they could ever need to succeed in life. 10:54 But there was something underneath all that. 10:57 Sometime in the early 1960s, before Rick was born, his parents' second son, Patrick Tabish, wandered to the back of the family home and fell into an irrigation canal and drowned. 11:10 He was only 14 months old at the time. 11:13 About a year later, under what would have been an immeasurable shadow of grief, Rick was born 11:25 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. 11:39 The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. 11:44 and the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. We'll give you our takes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments, and get into what's happening on and off the field, court, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. 12:10 So if you're already a fan or you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. Listen to everyone who watches women's sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 12:25 Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused, stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. 13:01 We Do Unhoused is a two-time Webby and Signal award-winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wichler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The In House on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 13:26 What did Black music, food, and culture teach us about who we were becoming? 13:30 2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community. 13:39 From Beyonce and Rihanna. 13:41 Everybody wanted to be Beyonce. I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna. 13:45 to soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through Black culture. 13:49 What does it mean to be Black and eat in America? So we were this group of people who knew how to work the land, who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it do. 13:59 Therapy for Black Girls is bringing together the conversation shaping Black life right now. 14:03 You will never make me feel bad for being a Black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever. 14:08 Therapy for Black Girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 14:17 Hi, my love. 14:19 Starting your day can be tough. You wake up, maybe hit snooze, and then scroll on your phone for a while, checking your emails, all before even giving yourself the chance to really open your eyes and breathe. 14:34 And I want to help you break that cycle. 14:36 My name is Ryan Weiss. And for the past 15 years, I've been an emotional intelligence coach and spiritual guide. And I'm here to share with you my new podcast, Waking Up With Ryan. 14:47 Waking Up With Ryan is a daily audio video podcast to interrupt the inertia of your fear, your ego, and judgment. Here to help you connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over. So let's start our days together with a moment of calm, a moment of reflection and meditation, a moment that's just for you. Listen to Waking Up With Ryan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 15:21 By all accounts, it seems that Rick was lavished with love and attention. Perhaps too much, some might say. 15:29 It's easy to understand why a parent might want to cling on to a child a little tighter than normal if born under such circumstances. 15:37 But perhaps to a boy like Rick, striving for an identity of his own, this intense love that had been sharpened so acutely by grief and the fear of loss felt less like warmth and more like a cage. 15:53 And perhaps that is why he started getting mixed up in crime. 15:57 Rick was smart and athletic and would go on to play football for the University of Montana. He was handsome and charming too. 16:05 the kind of person who could hold a room. 16:08 But friends noticed early that he seemed drawn to the wrong people. The guy with the nice car who turned out to be a dealer. The older kids, whose rules were different from the ones his parents espoused. Maybe it was the pull of the forbidden. Maybe it was something more specific. A need to step out of the shadow, perhaps, of a brother he'd never met, but whose absence had filled every room he'd ever lived in. Whatever the cause, a pattern slowly began to establish itself. 16:39 It started with a series of petty crimes, but quickly escalated. 16:43 In 1985, while at the home of Missoula lawyer Milton Datsopoulos, who was helping him fight a previous misdemeanour, a then 21-year-old Rick stole one of Milton's paintings. 16:56 It was a work attributed to the 17th century French master, Nicolas Poussin, believed at the time to be worth $600,000, or just under $2 million in today's money. 17:08 The collection it came from would later turn out to be the subject of its own fraud investigation, in which valuations had been significantly inflated, but Rick wasn't to know that. 17:20 Rick got a rather lenient three years probationary sentence for it, not even jail time. 17:26 Then in February 1987, at 22, he was arrested for attempting to ship a quarter pound of cocaine from Arizona to Missoula via Federal Express. 17:38 The package was worth about $40,000, roughly $110,000 today. The Missoula County attorney, a man named Robert Deschamps III, was not sympathetic. Tabish is a classic example of an arrogant rich kid, he said, who's been able to commit numerous crimes with almost complete impunity because his father has been able to buy his way out. 18:03 This time Rick was sentenced to three years in prison, but served only nine months before being paroled. 18:16 Every time Rick Tabish was arrested, thanks to his prominent family, he managed to evade the type of punishment that others might have received for similar offences. So thankfully for him, when he finally decided to turn his life around, it wasn't too late. 18:32 Perhaps scared by the prospect of endless years in and out of jail, Rick started to get steady employment, working in construction at first. 18:42 Then in the early 90s he fell in love and got married. 18:46 He and his wife Mary Jo started a trucking business together. 18:51 Rick was a hard worker when he put his mind to it and was always trying to make things happen, but nothing quite took off to the level he wanted it to. 19:00 So when, in 1996, a friend convinced him to try his luck in Las Vegas, Rick wasted little time in getting a license to operate his business in Nevada and quickly pivoted to hauling gravel and sand for the local construction industry. 19:16 Despite all that, however, it seems he still wasn't quite fulfilled, and he still had a weakness for a certain kind of man, for the gravitational pull of a world that was bigger and more dangerous than the one his parents had built for him in Missoula. Which is perhaps why, standing next to Ted Binion in that bathroom in Piero's restaurant that night, he couldn't help but be a little spellbound. And maybe the feeling was mutual. 19:45 Rick was everything that Ted wasn't at that point in his life. 19:49 Young, energetic, full of forward momentum, and hungry in a way that Ted had perhaps once been, but had mislaid somewhere along the line. 19:59 and Rick, for his part, found in Ted exactly the kind of man he'd always been drawn to. But this time, it was the real thing. 20:09 Old Vegas royalty. 20:11 A man who'd grown up in rooms where serious money changed hands and nobody blinked, who knew everyone worth knowing, and a few people it was better not to know. 20:22 But more pertinently, he was a man who could really open doors for him without having to break the law. 20:29 With his wife Mary Jo and their children back in Missoula, Rick began spending more time with Ted and Sandy. 20:36 Over dinners and late nights, he heard the full Binion saga, about Ted's problems with the gaming board and the naughty family history. 20:46 And he heard about Ted Silver. 20:56 In the summer of 1997, a car cruised past Ted and Sandy's house on Palomino Lane and opened fire. 21:04 Nobody was harmed and no culprit was ever found. 21:08 Sandy later accused Becky Binion's son Nick of being in the car. 21:13 Whether it was a warning from Becky for Ted to step away from the business once and for all, if this were true, or a genuine attempt to kill him, isn't clear. 21:24 In any case, in March 1998, Ted's license was formally revoked and Becky took over the day-to-day running of the Binion's Horseshoe Casino. 21:35 She fired staff loyal to Ted and their father and slashed betting limits, remaking the place in an image that bore almost no resemblance to what Benny had built. 21:45 The old horseshoe, the joint with the red velvet and the no-limits tables, Becky was dismantling it piece by piece, which meant that Ted could no longer keep his silver there. 21:58 So he decided to bury it instead, out on that vacant lot in Pahrump. 22:04 And who better to help him do it than Rick Tabish and his construction team? 22:10 Now this is also something worth remembering for later on. 22:14 One of Ted's lawyers would later testify that he was present when Ted told Rick Tabish that if he were to die, that Rick should retrieve the silver to keep it away from his siblings and make sure it all got to his daughter Bonnie. 22:30 Rick immediately got to work, building the vault deep underground on Ted's vacant parcel of land out in Pahrump. 22:38 Then one evening in July, Rick Tabish and his crew filed into the Horseshoe Casino and, piece by piece, carried out Ted's £48,000 hoard of silver bars and coins, placing them into the back of a large truck before driving it out to Pahrump. 22:57 Keeping an eye on the whole operation was Ted, complete with bulletproof vest and two semi-automatics holstered at his waist. 23:07 Rick would later thrillingly describe taking part in the operation as having felt like being a cowboy in the night. and by the end of that evening, Ted Silver was back in the ground. 23:19 Three days after that, Sandy was added to Ted's will, to the tune of $300,000, the Palomino Lane house, and all its contents. 23:30 Things rumbled on depressingly, Ted and Sandy now in separate bedrooms, living increasingly separate lives. 23:38 Ted growing more and more listless and drifting into more frequent heroin use. 23:44 But he hadn't completely given up hope yet. He still had friends in high places and he clearly had plans for the future. And Ted, it seemed, hadn't given up entirely on getting back into the game. 24:04 On September 15th, 1998, Ted opened a million-dollar investment account and a $100,000 checking account. We don't know why. The next morning on Wednesday the 16th, former Las Vegas mayor Jan Jones came to his house to pick up a $40,000 campaign contribution. But let's call a spade a spade. This is Vegas after all. I think it's reasonable to assume that Ted was hoping the money might persuade Jones to help him get his license back if she got elected. 24:37 Interestingly, Jones would later say that she was struck by the tidiness of the house and by the couple's ease with each other that day. 24:45 Despite what many people had said of Sandy, that she could only have been with Ted for his money, to Jones at least, they seemed like a genuine couple. 24:55 At 11am, Ted went out into the yard. His neighbour, a doctor named Enrique Lecao, was outside too, and the pair talked to each other over the fence. 25:07 Lecao would later say that Ted seemed agitated that day and angry at himself for what the heroine was doing to him. 25:15 Ted asked Lakeo to write him a prescription for 120 Xanax pills. 25:21 He apparently had a plan to use the Xanax to wean himself off the harder stuff. 25:26 Lakeo wrote it out for him, as he had done before, but never for quite that amount. 25:33 Ted would go on to collect it later that afternoon. 25:36 That same day, Ted also called a private investigator named Don Dibble and asked him to keep tabs on Sandy. 25:45 It appeared that he'd started to become suspicious that she might be having an affair with Rick Tabish. A ranch hand from Ted's Pahrump property, a man named Roy Price, was at the Palomino Lane house that day and had seen Sandy and Rick sitting together on the sofa. 26:04 At some point, he leaned into Ted as he eyed the couple and said that they seemed closer than a cheap suit. 26:11 Ted seemed to have taken note and Later, between 8 and 9 that night, a man named Pete Sheridan, Ted's dealer, arrived at the house to drop off 12 balloons of heroin, three times Ted's usual amount. 26:28 Sheridan would later testify that Ted was fairly drunk or high, or both, when he arrived. 26:35 Ted gave him some cash in return and 30 of his Xanax pills, which left 90 for Ted. 26:47 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. 27:02 The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. 27:07 and the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. We'll give you our takes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments, and get into what's happening on and off the field, court, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. 27:33 So if you're already a fan or you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. Listen to everyone who watches women's sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 27:48 Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused, stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, Immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. 28:24 We Do Unhoused is a two-time Webby and Signal award-winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wichler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The In House on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 28:49 What did Black music, food, and culture teach us about who we were becoming? 28:53 2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community. 29:02 From Beyonce and Rihanna. 29:03 Everybody wanted to be Beyonce. I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna. 29:08 to soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through Black culture. 29:12 What does it mean to be Black and eat in America? So we were this group of people who knew how to work the land, who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it do. 29:22 Therapy for Black Girls is bringing together the conversation shaping Black life right now. 29:26 You will never make me feel bad for being a Black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever. 29:31 Therapy for Black Girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 29:40 You said to me, yo, you know, keep at it, because you let me rap for you. It was magical for all of us. 29:45 We made it, we made it. 29:47 Yeah, I'm like, we? You know, I'm like, I know these guys, but who are you? 29:52 I'm MC Jin, and this is Laugh But Not Lease. I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times, like the co-founder of Rough Riders, Darren D. Dean. Talking about as a kid, do you remember that we met even way before that? 30:08 Let me think. 30:08 Did you walk up to the gate? 30:09 That was me, D. That was you? That was me. The day we found out that you and the whole crew was at Hit Factory, the mission was to get me to go to the gate, start freestyling, and see if I could get in the studio. I'm rapping, and then suddenly, I hear a voice. Hey, open the gate. Let him in. The gate slowly went. 30:27 They all, they're watching this, and they watch me walk into there, and that is a moment that I will remember for the rest of my life. 30:33 Listen to Laugh But Not Least with MC Jin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 30:44 On that night of Wednesday, September 16th, Sandy went out with friends. 30:50 According to her, when she came home late, the house was quiet and she went straight to bed. 30:56 A few hours later, she was woken by Ted. 31:00 He seemed distressed and had clearly been using. He was terrified that he might have taken too much and was worried that something might happen to him in his sleep. He wanted Sandy to keep an eye on him as he slept, to make sure he didn't vomit, or so she could call an ambulance if he stopped breathing for whatever reason. 31:19 This is now the morning of Thursday, September 17th. 31:23 Sandy apparently lay down with Ted in the den, a kind of entertainment room that Ted had kitted out for himself. Today, we might describe it as a man cave. 31:34 It was the place where Ted felt safest, where he could hunker down and watch TV, while keeping an eye on his many CCTV cameras. 31:43 Most of them, at least. 31:44 As it happened, the camera at the front of the house appeared to have been tampered with a few days previously and was still in the shop being repaired. 31:54 Sandy stayed with Ted in the den until the morning. Then, once she was satisfied he was safe in his sleep, She went out again to meet some friends and run some errands. 32:06 Sandy said that when she came back around 3pm, Ted appeared to still just be sleeping. But a short time later, she discovered that he wasn't breathing and dialed 911. 32:19 So that's Sandy's version of events. 32:22 Outside of that, this is what we know. 32:25 Early in the morning of Thursday the 17th, Ted and Sandy's housekeeper, Mary Montoya Gascoyne, receives a call from Sandy. 32:34 Sandy tells her not to come to the house because Ted is feeling unwell. 32:39 A little later, Ted and Sandy's gardener arrives and works for the next few hours. 32:45 The gardener later said that Ted and Sandy's dogs, Pig and Princess, were tethered to the back door the entire time, which was a little unusual. 32:55 It was enough to make him wonder if something was wrong inside the house. 33:00 He tried to peer through a gap in the curtains, but couldn't see anything, and left around 1pm. 33:07 Slightly earlier, around midday, real estate agent Barbara Brown made a phone call to the house to speak to Ted to confirm some lunch plans they had for the next day. 33:18 An apparently emotional Sandy answered the phone, saying that Ted was out cold, and had made a mess in the bathroom that she'd spent the whole morning cleaning up. 33:28 Brown offered to come over, but Sandy told her not to, and that Ted didn't want to see anyone for the foreseeable future. 33:43 It was 12.15 just after she'd spoken to Barbara Brown on the phone when Sandy went out to lunch at Zateus Grill. 33:52 Meeting her there was Rick Tabish and a lawyer named William Knudsen. 33:57 After lunch at 3pm she dropped a cheque for $150 at the horseshoe from Ted's nephew who was repaying a small loan. 34:07 Ted's assistant, Kathy Rose, who Sandy gave the check to, thought it unusual for Sandy to come in like that. 34:15 At 3.54pm, Sandy placed a call to 911 and tells the operator that her husband isn't breathing. I'm not breathing. 34:25 I'm not breathing. I'm not breathing. I'm not breathing. 34:30 When first responder Kenneth Dickinson arrives three minutes later, a distressed Sandy Murphy comes running out to meet him. 34:38 He's not breathing, she keeps saying between sobs. 34:42 Then she leads Dickinson through the house and down a flight of stairs to the den. 34:48 Inside, Ted Binion is lying on the floor on a futon mattress with a blanket over him and his head on a pillow. 34:57 He's in his briefs and an unbuttoned shirt. 35:00 His skin is pale. 35:03 Scattered about were some lighters and cigarettes, broken balloons and a bottle of Xanax. 35:09 Only the day before, it had 90 pills in it. Now it was empty. 35:15 It didn't take a professional to know that the man was dead. Rigor mortis had already set into his jaw. 35:22 When given the news, Sandy threw herself suddenly over Ted's body, obstructing the work of the paramedics, who in the end had to pull her away to finish their job. 35:33 In the hours that followed, news spread quickly and friends and family began turning up at the house. 35:40 Meanwhile, Sandy became more and more despondent and seemingly distraught, to the point where more paramedics were dispatched just to treat her. 35:50 When they arrived, they found her lying on her bed, seemingly in the grip of a panic attack. 35:56 She was hyperventilating and incapable of answering questions. Concerned that she might go into shock, the medics decided it would be best to get her to hospital. 36:07 Despite Sandy's protestations, she was eventually forced onto a gurney and put into the back of an ambulance. 36:14 It's said that all the way to the hospital, Sandy pleaded with the paramedics to take her back to the house, terrified that Ted's family might try to stop her from returning there later. 36:26 Back at the property, what followed was a catastrophe of police procedure. 36:31 Officers walked in and out without cordoning off the scene. Friends, neighbours, family members and lawyers milled through the driveway and eventually inside the house. 36:43 Rick Tabish arrived too and spoke to reporters outside. 36:47 He came as soon as he heard the news, he said, and what a tragedy it was. 36:53 All the while, down in the den, investigators got to work examining the scene as Ted's body lay peacefully on the floor, serenaded by one after another anxious caller, leaving messages on Ted's answer phone, desperate to know that the rumours weren't true. 37:16 All law enforcement who attended the scene of Ted Binion's death on the afternoon of the 17th came to the conclusion that there didn't seem to be anything suspicious about it, believing it was simply a case of a self-inflicted drug overdose. The homicide department actively declined the invitation to get involved with it. 37:36 Meanwhile, at Valley Hospital, Sandy's apparent howls of grief were being heard throughout the emergency room. 37:44 Hearing the commotion, a nurse of 25 years experience attempted to take control of the situation. He tried to triage her but eventually gave up, having been unable to calm her down. 37:57 The nurse would later testify that Sandy's reaction seemed theatrical and that nothing appeared to be medically wrong with her. 38:05 Although it should be said that her heart rate and breathing were twice the normal resting beat, so she was at the very least hyperventilating and possibly suffering from a panic attack. 38:17 Eventually she calmed down enough for a detective to conduct an interview, but became so worked up again that he was forced to abandon it after 13 minutes. 38:28 Sandy, can you tell me what happened this morning up until this afternoon when you found Ted? 38:35 When you say more stuff, what does he mean by more stuff? 39:04 Oh, oh, oh! 39:19 Between sobs and rapid breaths, she told him about how she'd been out late in the evening and then stayed up with Ted to help him sleep. 39:28 She also said, seemingly with great regret, that she'd brought him the Xanax and heroin when he asked for it, and if only she hadn't, then maybe Ted would still be alive. 39:40 There was one strange detail though. 39:43 When police arrived at the scene, they found that Sandy's bathroom window was open and a chair had been placed underneath it. 39:51 At some point between the afternoon of September 16th and Ted being found dead in the afternoon of the 17th, someone had clearly used it to get into the house. 40:02 Sandy claimed it was her, saying that she had put it there because when she got home late in the evening, she misplaced her keys and had to get in through the bathroom window, which she said she often left open for such circumstances, which was certainly odd given Ted's intense paranoia over people being after him and his money. 40:24 Around 7pm, Sandy's friend Janice Tanno went to visit her at the hospital. 40:31 Alarmed by the state that she was in and assuming that she wouldn't be allowed back in the house any time soon, Janice offered Sandy a place to stay for the night. 40:41 At 7.30pm, Sandy checked out of the hospital and duly went to stay with Janice. 40:53 Janice would later say that at one point, Sandy, who was barely coherent when she first saw her, said something a little odd that would stay with Janice long afterwards. 41:07 On the surface of it, it was a strange thing to say about a man who was already dead. 41:13 Perhaps she meant this with regards to a possible affair she was having, in which case it wouldn't be so strange that someone might say this out of guilt, having just received the news that their partner was dead. 41:25 But maybe she was referring to something else. 41:29 Either way, all this would be picked apart later, but not one person at that point suspected Sandy of doing anything untoward. No one, that is, except, apparently, Becky Binion. 41:43 Or at least that's what she told the police. Whether she believed this, or this was some kind of power play, we can never know for sure. 41:52 In any case, when Becky heard about Ted's death late in the afternoon on that Thursday, she immediately told the police that they shouldn't be treating his death as an accidental overdose, because according to her, Ted had quite clearly been murdered. 42:10 And that's where we'll leave it for now. 42:12 Join me next week on Friday, July 17th, for the third and final part of Season 9, Episode 27, Death in Vegas, The Ted Binion Mystery. 42:24 Until then, thanks so much again for listening and watching. 42:28 I've been Richard McLean Smith, and this is Unexplained. 42:33 Please subscribe and rate the show if you've enjoyed it, and let me know what you think about it all in the comments below. 42:45 Thank you as ever for listening. 43:08 Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at unexplainedpodcast.com and reach us online through X and Blue Sky at unexplainedpod and Facebook at facebook.com forward slash unexplainedpodcast. 43:52 I'm Stephanie Young. The hit podcast Love Trapped is back with new updates in the case of Laura Owens. 43:59 This is CR 2025 State versus Laura Owens. 44:04 I think she really believes that she still has an out. I'm quite confident that they're up to something. 44:08 We're following the case live as the criminal charges finally come to a conclusion. 44:13 Trust us when we tell you as the victims of Laura Owens, she will not stop. 44:17 Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 44:24 This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible... You're the problem. 44:33 Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika and I'm out. 44:44 Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika starting on July 15th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 44:54 Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. 45:01 It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. 45:11 Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. 45:17 Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 45:25 For years, The Unhoused has been presented as a monolith in mainstream media. 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