COUNTY CORONER STANDS BEHIND BINION AUTOPSY

Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said Wednesday he stands behind disputed
autopsy findings that Ted Binion died of fatal doses of heroin and the
prescription sedative Xanax.

The findings, presented by Chief Medical Examiner Lary Simms, were
contradicted in District Court last August by well-known New York
pathologist Michael Baden, who concluded Binion was suffocated.

Prosecutors have since incorporated Baden's theory in their criminal
case against Binion's girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her reported
lover, Rick Tabish, who are charged with killing Binion Sept. 17,
1998, and stealing his valuables. Prosecutors believe the accused
killers pumped Binion with drugs and suffocated him in a scheme to
make it look as though he had overdosed on drugs.

Flud, in his first public comments on the subject since Baden's
testimony, said his office can't rule out suffocation as the manner in
which Binion died. But he said he has confidence in the autopsy
findings advanced by Simms.

"The cause of death we used is one we can back up with scientific
facts," Flud told the Sun. "We haven't wavered from that original
stand one bit."

Flud also denied reports that Baden's testimony has caused a rift
between his office and the district attorney's office. He said it's
not unusual for pathologists to disagree.

District Attorney Stewart Bell joined Flud in saying relations between
the two offices have not been affected by the differing death theories
in the high-profile murder case.

"I see Flud all the time, and we work together regularly," Bell said
this morning. "Reasonable minds can differ. That doesn't mean
anything." Bell said he doesn't know whether Flud's remarks will have
a bearing on the murder case being put together by Chief Deputy
District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor.

"David Roger is working on being able to demonstrate to the jury the
cause of death and reconciling the theories, and I don't know how far
he's gotten on that," Bell said.

Despite their differences, both Simms and Baden concluded that Binion
was the victim of a homicide.

The two opinions, however, are expected to be exploited by defense
attorneys who contend Binion, a known heroin abuser, died of a
self-induced drug overdose.

"It just widens the gap in the state's two theories," Murphy's
attorney, John Momot said. "They should choose one theory."

In papers filed January 10 seeking to dismiss the charges against
Murphy, Momot said prosecutors presented no evidence that anyone
forced Binion to take the drugs that "he alone obtained to satisfy his
own ... cravings."

Roger declined to comment on Flud's remarks.

But at the March 13 trial, Roger is expected to steer Simms on the
witness stand to Baden's position.

Baden -- who served as a forensics expert in the death of John Belushi
and the murder trial of O.J. Simpson -- has much more experience than
Simms, conducting 20,000 autopsies over his 40-year career.

Simms, who has performed 3,000 autopsies, acknowledged under oath in
August that congestion he found under Binion's lower eyelids could be
a sign that the gambling figure was suffocated.

Earlier this month Tabish's lawyers, Louis Palazzo and Robert Murdock,
dropped a push to exhume Binion's body to test Baden's suffocation
theory.

Baden had testified that fibers from a pillow that might have been
used to smother Binion should be present in his nose and mouth.

But Palazzo and Murdock abandoned their efforts after learning the
body had been cleaned and embalmed and that it would be unlikely to
find any fibers.

Flud said Simms looked for fibers in the nose and mouth when he
conducted the autopsy.

Simms did not indicate that he had found any fibers in his autopsy
report.

Binion's body was found on the floor of his home next to an empty
bottle of Xanax. Police believe his accused killers had moved his body
and staged the death scene.