LAS VEGAS - A Missoula man and former business associate of Rick Tabish testified he was asked to pay for alibi witnesses for Tabish, accused of murdering gambling heir Ted Binion, and help find witnesses to discredit a private investigator in the case.
Jason Frazier said Wednesday that following Tabish's 1999 arrest in the death of Binion, a wealthy former casino executive, Tabish repeatedly asked him to find alibi witnesses.
Frazier said Tabish hoped one potential witness, Larry Eckhart, would give information that could clear him.
"Mr. Tabish wanted him to provide a statement for an alibi, (and) he (Eckhart) did not want anything to do with it," Frazier told jurors.
Tabish, a former contractor from Missoula, and his former lover, Sandy Murphy, are being retried on charges they killed Binion in 1998. Their original convictions were overturned by the state Supreme Court last year.
Frazier also testified Tabish asked him to contact Jim Mitchell, who worked for Tabish's MRT Transport trucking company. Tabish hoped Mitchell would testify that Tabish was at a North Las Vegas business and not at Binion's house the morning Binion died.
"We really need an affidavit from him saying we were working," Frazier said, quoting Tabish.
Frazier said Tabish implied he would pay for testimony.
In addition, Frazier said Tabish asked him to find people willing to make false accusations against Las Vegas private investigator Tom Dillard. Dillard, a former Las Vegas police homicide investigator, is credited with gathering much of the evidence against Tabish and Murphy, who was Binion's live-in girlfriend at the time.
"He wanted me to contact somebody to provide testimony against Dillard, that he'd offered witnesses some money," Frazier said.
Tabish's defense lawyer, J. Tony Serra, said there were inconsistencies in Frazier's account and noted there is nothing inappropriate about a defendant in a criminal case seeking an alibi witness.
Authorities contend Murphy and Tabish killed Binion by forcing him to ingest drugs and suffocating him. They say they were motivated by greed.
Two days after Binion's death, Tabish was caught digging up a cache of silver buried by Binion in an underground vault that Tabish had built for Binion. Authorities estimate the silver was worth $7 million.
Defense lawyers say Binion, a heroin addict, died of an accidental overdose.