They called him the cowboy. For 53 years, the Binion family name was synonymous with Las Vegas gambling. But the dynasty that built the city’s reputation for high-stakes action did not fall to the mob, the law, or outside competitors. It was destroyed from within by the family itself.
By the time federal marshals walked into Binion’s Horseshoe on that cold January morning in 2004, the money was gone, the trust broken, and the legacy in ruins. To understand how it all collapsed, the story begins in North Texas. Lester Ben Binion, known as Benny, was born in 1904 in Pilot Grove, Texas. A sickly child who could not attend school, he learned a different kind of education on the road with his father, a horse trader.
Watching traders hustle farmers at county fairs, young Benny learned to read men, rig deals, and profit from others’ losses. By 18, Benny had moved from watching to doing. He ran moonshine during Prohibition, handled numbers in Dallas, and built an empire on crooked dice games. By the 1930s, he controlled gambling rackets, policy wheels, and had judges and sheriffs in his pocket.
His motto was simple: do your enemies before they do you. Rivals disappeared, and Benny kept expanding. In 1946, a new sheriff was elected in Dallas, one Benny could not control. Packing up his wife Teddy Jane, his children, and a suitcase of cash, the cowboy headed west to a place where the past did not matter: Las Vegas.
In 1951, Benny bought a rundown property on Fremont Street, the Eldorado Club and Apache Hotel, and turned it into something the city had never seen: Binion’s Horseshoe. There were no showgirls and no fancy acts. Just gambling, pure and raw. His philosophy: good food cheap, good whiskey cheap, and a good gamble.
When other casinos set table limits at $500, Benny set his at $5,000, then $10,000, before eliminating limits entirely. Benny created a spectacle by placing $1 million in cash in a horseshoe-shaped case on display. Tourists lined up for hours to photograph it. He understood that people came to Vegas to be treated like players, not marks.
The Horseshoe was not just profitable; it became legendary. His greatest creation came in 1970. Benny founded the World Series of Poker with just seven players. The idea was to invite the world’s best poker players to compete for a public championship, transforming poker from a backroom hustle into a legitimate sport.
Johnny Moss won that first tournament, with Benny beside him for the photo. By the 1980s, the World Series of Poker was the most important poker event on Earth. Benny ran the casino with an iron fist and a warm heart. He knew regulars by name, remembered their stories, and comped their meals even when they lost.
He served five years in Leavenworth in the 1950s for tax evasion, but even prison could not break him. He returned and kept building. When Benny Binion died of natural causes on Christmas Day 1989 at age 85, he left his children a kingdom. But kingdoms built by cowboys do not always last.
Benny had five children: Barbara, Jack, Brenda, Ted, and Becky. Barbara died in 1983 from a drug overdose. The remaining four were expected to carry the torch. The will split the Horseshoe four ways and instructed the siblings to run it together.
Ted Binion was considered the heir apparent. He had the name, the swagger, and ran the casino floor like his father. But Ted had two problems: the mob and heroin. His best friend was Herbert “Fat Herbie” Blitzstein, a lieutenant for Chicago mobster Tony Spilotro.
The Nevada Gaming Commission suspended Ted’s license in 1997 after failed drug tests. When he showed up to a test with every hair on his body shaved clean to beat the system, his fate was sealed. In March 1998, the commission permanently revoked his license, banning him from his own family’s casino. Falling apart, Ted increased his heroin use.
His paranoia grew, and he began hoarding his fortune in secrecy. He had six tons of silver bullion, rare coins, and cash. Instead of a bank, he buried $7 million in a 12-foot-deep concrete vault in the Nevada desert near Pahrump, 60 miles west of Las Vegas. Then Sandy Murphy walked into his life.
She was 23, a former topless dancer from California. She met Ted at Cheetahs, a strip club off the Strip, and soon moved into his mansion on Palomino Lane. Ted gave her a Mercedes, a $10,000-a-month credit card, and jewelry. But he was also a violent addict.
Friends saw her with bruises and clumps of hair missing. She told them Ted beat her, but she stayed. Ted then hired a Montana contractor named Rick Tabish to haul sand from one of his properties. Tabish was financially desperate and had a criminal record for assault and cocaine dealing.
He and Sandy began an affair. In his final weeks, Ted knew. He changed his will, cutting Sandy out. On September 16, 1998, he told his lawyer, “Take Sandy out of the will.
If she does not kill me tonight, you will know what happened. ”
The next day, September 17, 1998, Sandy called 911. “My husband has stopped breathing. ” Paramedics found Ted Binion on the floor of his den, lying on a yoga mat, an empty bottle of Xanax beside him, heroin in his system.
It looked like an overdose, but his family did not believe it, and neither did the police. Two days after Ted’s death, sheriff’s deputies in Pahrump got a call about suspicious activity. They found Rick Tabish and two other men digging up the silver vault in the middle of the night. Tabish claimed Ted had asked him to move the silver to protect it for his daughter, but the timing was too perfect.
Detectives began digging deeper into Ted’s death. The more they looked, the more suspicious it seemed. Ted had heroin in his stomach, but he never swallowed heroin—he always smoked it. His drug dealer and ex-wife confirmed it.
There were red spots on his chest, bruising on his wrists, and abrasions around his mouth. Six months after his death, the medical examiner changed the ruling. It was not an overdose. It was murder.
In June 1999, Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. The prosecution’s theory was chilling. Sandy and Rick allegedly forced Ted to drink a cocktail of heroin, Xanax, and Valium, and when that did not kill him fast enough, they suffocated him using a 19th-century technique called burking: one covering the nose and mouth while another sits on the chest. Motive: greed, lust, and $7 million buried in the desert.
The 2000 trial was a media circus, filled with testimony about sex, drugs, domestic abuse, and buried treasure. The defense claimed suicide. After eight days of deliberation, the jury convicted both. Sandy got 22 years to life; Rick got 25.
But in 2003, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the conviction on a technicality. A second trial was ordered. In November 2004, after a second jury heard the evidence, Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were acquitted of murder. The case was circumstantial.
The crime scene had been contaminated. The witnesses were unreliable. They walked free. To this day, nobody knows for sure how Ted Binion died.
Was it murder? Suicide? An accidental overdose? The mystery remains.
But one thing is certain: his death set off a chain reaction that would destroy everything Benny Binion had built. While Ted’s murder trial made headlines, a quieter family war raged inside the Horseshoe. Jack Binion had run the casino since 1964. Under his leadership, it was the most profitable casino in Las Vegas.
He expanded the brand, opening riverboat casinos in Louisiana and Mississippi. But his sister Becky saw it differently. She accused Jack of neglecting the Vegas property and using Horseshoe assets to fund his out-of-state ventures. In January 1996, Becky sued Jack for control of the Horseshoe, alleging $20 million in losses under his management.
Jack fired back, claiming the only reason for losses was Becky’s meddling. The battle raged for two years with court filings and depositions. This was blood turning on blood. Ted’s license revocation in March 1998 forced the issue.
The gaming commission ordered him to sell his 20% stake. In June 1998, a deal was struck. Jack bought out Ted and Brenda’s shares, then sold his 42% plus their shares to Becky in exchange for a promissory note for $20 million. Jack kept 1% to maintain his Nevada gaming license.
Becky became sole owner of Binion’s Horseshoe. She had won, and in winning, she set the stage for the family’s destruction. Becky took over with big plans to restore her father’s warmth and hospitality. Instead, she brought disaster.
Her husband, Nick Behnen, became the shadow operator. Nick had been denied a gaming license in 1978 for failing to disclose illegal gambling arrests. The Nevada Gaming Commission explicitly warned Becky to keep him out. But everyone knew Nick was running things, making decisions and fighting with employees.
Becky made one catastrophic mistake after another. She sold the iconic million-dollar cash display. She lowered table limits, driving away the high rollers. She closed the bingo room and shut down the restaurant where Benny used to hold court.
She cut costs everywhere, killing the soul of the place. Then came the Bob Stupak scandal. Stupak, a high-stakes gambler and longtime friend of Jack and Ted, tried to cash in $250,000 in $5,000 chips in November 1998, weeks after Ted died. Becky refused, claiming the chips were not legitimate.
She also refused to return cash from his safe deposit boxes. Stupak went public and got the Nevada Gaming Control Board involved. Gaming agents ordered Becky to cash the chips. She refused, even on camera.
Finally, agents ordered her to bring out the cash boxes. Stupak counted at least $300,000 in $100 bills, stuffed it into shopping bags, and left. The next day, Stupak returned with the entire UNLV football team as bodyguards. They marched straight to the cage.
Becky still refused. The scandal made national news. Only in July 1999, the day before a scheduled gaming commission hearing, did Becky finally cash the outstanding chips. The damage was done.
High rollers stopped coming. The casino’s reputation, built on Benny’s promise that any bet would be honored, was shattered. Behind the scenes, the Horseshoe was bleeding money. Becky defaulted on her $20 million promissory note to Jack.
She stopped paying rent to the Fremont Street Experience and contributions to downtown assessments. Bills piled up. Most critically, she was not keeping enough cash in the cage to pay winners, a basic rule in gaming. The commission warned her.
She ignored them. In November 2002, the Culinary Workers Union filed a complaint. Becky had not signed a collective bargaining agreement and had fallen behind on pension and medical insurance payments. A settlement was reached in March 2003.
Becky agreed to pay, but she did not. By June 2003, payments had stopped entirely. The union obtained judgments totaling over $1. 5 million and was granted the right to seize money from the casino.
On December 5, 2003, the union obtained a court order to seize up to $1. 9 million from the Horseshoe’s casino cage. One month later, on Friday, January 9, 2004, federal marshals walked through the front doors. They went straight to the cage, presented the court order, and took $1 million in cash.
The seizure wiped out the casino’s bankroll. Without enough money to pay gamblers, the Horseshoe was legally required to close. Roulette wheels stopped spinning mid-game. Blackjack dealers collected cards from confused tourists.
Slot machines went silent section by section. Pit bosses told gamblers to cash out immediately before the cage ran dry. Dealers and cocktail waitresses were sent home. Some cried.
Most were just tired. They had seen it coming for years. After 53 years, from 1951 to 2004, Binion’s Horseshoe shut its doors. Employees who had worked there since Benny’s time watched it happen.
One dealer remembered dealing cards for Benny, seeing him settle million-dollar bets with a handshake. He said the old man would have been heartbroken. Benny built the place on trust. His own daughter destroyed that trust.
On January 12, 2004, Becky reached a deal to sell the Horseshoe to Harrah’s Entertainment for $50 million. The casino reopened in April, but it was not the same. The soul was gone. Harrah’s kept the World Series of Poker and the Horseshoe brand.
For the first time in 53 years, Fremont Street had a Horseshoe without a Binion. The irony was crushing. At the same time Becky was selling the family’s flagship casino for $50 million, her brother Jack sold his Horseshoe Gaming Holding Corporation, the riverboat casinos he had built outside Nevada, to Harrah’s for $1. 45 billion.
Jack had taken his 1% stake and turned it into an empire. Becky took 100% and destroyed it. Jack Binion went on to serve as chairman of Wynn Resorts. He is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and never speaks publicly about the family war.
Becky Binion Behnen disappeared from public life after the sale. She never rebuilt or recovered. Sandy Murphy moved to California, married an art dealer, and runs a gallery in Laguna Beach. She maintains her innocence, saying Ted died of an overdose and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Rick Tabish served 11 years in prison, was paroled in 2010, and moved back to Montana. He claims he has turned his life around and never admits to killing Ted. Ted’s buried silver went to his daughter, Bonnie. The vault in Pahrump sits empty now.
The statue of Benny Binion, the young cowboy on horseback that once stood outside the Horseshoe, was moved to the South Point Casino, miles from Fremont Street, a relic of an era gone forever. This was the story of the Binions. A father built a casino on trust and a reputation that meant something. His children destroyed it in less than 15 years, not through bad luck or economic forces, but through greed, ego, and family warfare.
In the end, the house always wins. But this time, the house was their own family, and they gambled away everything.