00:00
This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:02
Guaranteed human.
00:04
Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.
00:11
It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities.
00:21
Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said.
00:27
Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:35
For years, The Unhoused has been presented as a monolith in mainstream media. Weedy Unhoused is a podcast that's changing the narrative.
00:44
I'm Theo Henderson, and I created this show while I was unhoused on the streets of Los Angeles. We've grown into a two-time Webby Award-winning podcast, the only podcast that shares unhoused stories and news from the unhoused perspective.
00:59
Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:06
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.
01:41
Can superstars even exist the way they used to?
01:43
2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture, where we still consumed things in community. Everybody wanted to be Beyonce at that point. I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna.
01:56
What does it mean to be Black and eat in America? You will never make me feel bad for being a Black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever.
02:04
From music to food to the conversations shaping Black culture right now, 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.
02:16
Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being. Like the radical notion that we should get rid of small talk completely.
02:27
We talk about current events. We talk about what you do for a living. But not, do you love what you do for a living? Is this your dream job?
02:33
For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
02:46
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.
03:08
Now, as some of you might know, I was in Las Vegas recently for CrimeCon, which I can't recommend highly enough if you've ever thought about going. You can read more about my thoughts on Vegas on my Substack at RichardMcLeanSmith at Substack.com, where you can find a whole host of other writing, from fiction, to my thoughts on the Manosphere, as well as my reflections regarding a trip I took to the Auschwitz Memorial a few years ago, amongst other things. I should also say I'm hugely excited to be performing at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where I'll be giving a haunting account of the Flannan Isles mystery.
03:43
Unexplained Live will be playing at the Space's Surgeon's Hall venue at 5 past 10pm every night from August 7th to the 29th.
03:51
and follow the link there.
04:10
But now back to this week's episode. Since I was going to be telling a story at CrimeCon, I wanted to find something that was relevant to Vegas and all its wild history. And frankly, I feel like with three parts, we're barely even scratching the surface of this one. And I'm astounded that I'd never heard anything about it before, or the colourful cast of characters that it concerns. Anyway, it feels like a good excuse to try something different. So shortly after the last episode drops, I'm going to host a live Q&A on YouTube where we can all discuss the case or anything else you want to ask about me or the show.
04:43
I haven't quite figured out when the best time is to do this, so listen out for further details regarding that in the near future.
04:50
Now, finally, with all that said, this is Unexplained, Season 9, Episode 27, Death in Vegas, The Ted Binion Mystery, Part 1 of 3.
05:12
It was approaching two in the morning in Pahrump, Nevada, on Saturday, September 19th, 1998, when a tired Sergeant Ed Howard and Deputy Sheriff Dean Pennock pulled onto the 160 and made their way toward Terrible's Town Casino.
05:30
It had been a long day overseeing the Pahrump Harvest Festival, and the men were looking forward to finally getting some dinner.
05:38
The festival was a wholesome affair, a rodeo, stock car races, a large parade, a far cry from the adult gaudy glitz and glamour of the Vegas Strip, which lay only 60 miles away across the Spring Mountains.
05:53
Where Vegas is bright lights, garish spectacle and noise, Pahrump is sun-bleached, wide-open streets and desert silence. But you can never quite escape Vegas entirely.
06:05
Though Pahrump's vast desert sky is blanketed with an endless carpet of stars, alongside that... is the distant glow of Vegas on the horizon.
06:15
It bleeds into the dark like a bruise, and even out there in the basin, something of Vegas always seeps through.
06:25
So when officers Howard and Pennock spotted a cluster of bright headlights emerging out of a vacant lot, it was pure instinct that told them to turn off the highway and investigate.
06:37
Making their way down a dirt track, the officers saw three figures moving about alongside a large belly dump truck.
06:45
The officers didn't recognize any of them.
06:49
The figures froze when Howard flashed his lights and brought the cruiser to a halt.
06:55
Stepping out of the car, the officers could now also see there was a large mechanical digger there too, as well as a sizable mound of freshly turned earth and a gaping hole in the ground.
07:08
One of the men stepped forward and said they were just out there digging up old ammunition for a client, while another, a tall, dark-haired man who gave his name as Rick Tabish, quickly cut him off and said they were actually there just clearing out some old concrete.
07:26
A confused Sergeant Howard asked if he could take a look in the back of the truck and see for himself what they were doing.
07:32
The men shifted uncomfortably.
07:35
Rick gazed back toward it, then gave a slow nod of assent.
07:40
Howard jumped up the side and peered over the edge.
07:44
His eyes widened.
07:46
Okay, I lied, said Tabish.
07:50
What Howard was now staring at was roughly £48,000 of silver bars and coins worth well over $5 million, closer to ten in today's money.
08:09
Seeing the look on Sergeant Howard's face, Rick Tabish was quick to insist that it wasn't what it looked like, because what it looked like was that they were out there digging up a load of silver that didn't belong to them.
08:22
Rick didn't deny that it wasn't theirs, but he insisted they weren't trying to steal it. They were merely doing a favour for the man whose silver it was, Ted Binion.
08:34
Now that name was instantly recognisable to Sergeant Howard. There weren't many in Nevada who hadn't heard of Ted and the Binions. After all, they were one of the most powerful families in Las Vegas, and Ted was probably its most well-known living member.
08:51
The only thing was, two days before, Ted Binion was found dead in his home from a suspected and uncontroversial drug overdose.
09:02
As Rick had it, he and his two colleagues were out there, at two in the morning, to keep the silver safe for Ted's daughter, Bonnie, so the rest of the Binions couldn't get their hands on it. Just as Rick had apparently promised to do for Ted if anything ever happened to him.
09:20
He never believed the day would actually come, he told them. But now, here they were.
09:26
Understandably, the cops were sceptical, but Rick, it seemed, had a trump card.
09:32
He claimed he'd already arranged it with their boss, Sheriff Wade Liseki. If they'd just call him, he'd straighten it all out.
09:41
But when they did, Liseki claimed not to know of any such arrangement and told them to sit tight.
09:48
Thirty minutes later, he arrived at the scene.
09:52
Interestingly, Howard and Pennock would later testify that their boss didn't seem his usual self and that he was oddly agitated.
10:01
Another officer, Steve Huggins, would claim that Rick told him he'd arranged to give Liseki $100,000 for allowing him to take the silver.
10:12
Liseki denied everything and then allegedly prevaricated on what to do next, suggesting they let the men go home and simply confiscate the silver.
10:23
But Howard and Pennock insisted on making arrests and eventually the sheriff agreed.
10:30
That night, when officers searched the scene, a briefcase belonging to Rick Tabish was also confiscated.
10:38
Inside it, officers found what appeared to be love notes written to Rick by a woman named Sandy Murphy.
10:47
Sandy, it just so happened, was Ted Binion's girlfriend.
10:53
Suddenly, that supposedly unremarkable death of his was about to become a whole lot more complicated.
11:02
Hey, I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. Okay, if you know me, you know this. I'm always searching for inspiration, for support, and useful tools to help maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're going to have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming.
11:31
I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartum depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety.
11:40
Olympic champ Shawn Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast.
11:45
There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me. It's given me a belief that we all have one of those treasures inside of us. We just have to find it.
11:55
Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
12:02
Hey everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast, Hey Jonas, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah from the hit show Off Campus. Congratulations on the massive show and massive success. Got through about episode five. I left the next morning to go meet the guys. Came back, was like, cool, let's pick up where we left off. And that series had been completed without me.
12:21
Oh, no. That's like the number one rule of watching something. It's cheating, basically. It's literally cheating. That's crazy.
12:27
We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit, what's next for season two, and just how close the off-campus cast really is.
12:34
We're genuinely so close.
12:36
What's the group chat called? If you can say, if it's allowed to be said on the pod. That's a great question.
12:42
One of them is off-campus Brazil.
12:44
Okay, love it. Shout out Brazil.
12:46
Shout out Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Dean's ****.
12:53
Our conversation with Mika Abdallah is out now.
12:55
Go check it out. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
13:03
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.
13:40
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.
14:06
Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being. Like, we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong.
14:17
You can be lonely in a marriage. You can be lonely at a party. I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude. Loneliness is about something much bigger.
14:26
Or that we should get rid of small talk altogether.
14:28
We talk about current events. We talk about what you do for a living. But not, do you love what you do for a living? Is this your dream job?
14:34
Or that the mental health crisis isn't what we think it is.
14:37
And that kids today are doing better than we assume. It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. We are so scared that we are going to underreact to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact.
14:53
For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:05
Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is. Getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. Getting a new one put up in its place.
15:16
As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War.
15:22
To get to school, I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard. To get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway.
15:27
If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job.
15:32
I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space.
15:45
We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that?
15:52
They are just fueling a fire that is really catching.
15:55
You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:12
To understand the story of Ted Binion, you have to go some way back to a time that some might describe generously as the good old days.
16:23
In the early 1920s in Texas, a powerful temperance movement had swept across the United States, outlawing alcohol, sex work and gambling. But Texas has always been a fiercely independent place. And in Dallas, in the smoke-filled back rooms of the St. George Hotel on Main Street, A man named Warren Diamond had other ideas.
16:47
Diamond had established himself as the so-called Tsar of Dallas gambling.
16:52
His no-limits craps game, the only real game in town, operated with armed guards and the rumoured protection of local politicians and law enforcement.
17:03
In those rooms, the atmosphere was never less than electric, and watching it all unfold, wide-eyed and hungry, was a kid called Benny Binion, At age 15, Benny left his home in Pilot Point, just north of Dallas, having grown tired of his alcoholic father.
17:24
He drifted into the city and into Diamond's Orbit, where he became his errand boy, parking cars and slipping envelopes of cash into the right officer's hands, that kind of thing.
17:36
One night, Benny was in the room when a big-time oil man from East Texas sauntered up to the craps table and threw a large envelope down in front of Diamond.
17:47
From under his stetson, he told Diamond to look in the envelope before agreeing to the bet.
17:53
But Diamond didn't flinch.
17:55
He left the envelope exactly where it was, took another long drag on his cigarette, and told the croupier to give the man the dice.
18:05
Two rolls later and it was all over. The oil man walked away without his money and without a word.
18:13
Inside the envelope was $170,000, just over $3 million in today's money.
18:21
For Benny, it was a pivotal moment.
18:24
The world of gambling was full of hustlers and chancers, for sure. But at the heart of it, there was a strange kind of honour.
18:32
A simple code.
18:34
You honour your debt.
18:36
He had no doubt that Diamond would have paid if he'd had to.
18:40
And when you boil life down to a code that simple, it brings a certain sense of clarity.
18:47
Benny had never been to school, but he was sharp and a fast learner, and over time he began to branch out a little.
18:55
It started modestly, a numbers game here, a craps table there, a few small operations that he ran on the side.
19:04
But in the late 20s, Warren Diamond's health deteriorated, and Benny began slowly to take over the city.
19:12
Because the other thing about Benny Binion was this.
19:16
He didn't mess about.
19:18
He was willing to do whatever it took.
19:20
And in the world of Dallas gambling and racketeering, that invariably meant killing people.
19:33
By the early 1930s, Benny Binion had established himself as the gambling kingpin of Dallas and had expanded into bootlegging.
19:42
One afternoon, Benny was sitting on a crate in his backyard when he sensed a flurry of movement in the corner of his eye.
19:51
He looked up just in time to see a man charging at him with a knife. As the man drew near, Benny fell back, pulling the crate down with him. Then in one continuous motion, he grabbed the pistol from his pocket, popped back up, and fired several shots over the crate at his assailant. The man was a rival bootlegger named Frank Boulding, and he died instantly.
20:15
After that, Benny was known as the Cowboy. The name was apt, not only because of his sharp shooting, but because of what it said about his proclivity for frontier justice.
20:28
In Benny's world, there were rules, and if you broke them, there were consequences. It was as simple as that.
20:36
The first to seriously challenge Binion's ascendancy in Dallas was a rival numbers operator called Ben Frieden.
20:45
One afternoon, Frieden was sitting in the back of his chauffeur-driven car talking to an acquaintance through the window when Benny Binion drew up alongside him and shot him multiple times.
20:57
Binion claimed it was self-defense and even allegedly gave himself a flesh wound to make it look convincing.
21:04
To anyone who mattered in the city, the message was loud and clear.
21:10
It's said that when the Italian mafia discussed American cities they'd yet to make inroads into, they decided not to bother with Dallas, because muscling in on Benny Binion's territory was thought to be more trouble than it was worth.
21:24
But over the course of the 1930s and into the 40s, things in Dallas began to change.
21:31
A new breed of young, aspirational politicians were getting elected, men who were determined to drag the city out of the Wild West and clean up its image.
21:41
The cosy relationship between organised crime and law enforcement began to break apart.
21:48
Benny's world was steadily shrinking and in truth Benny was probably a little tired of living life so permanently on the edge.
21:57
He had a family now so he needed somewhere a little safer but where his particular talents would still be rewarded just in a rather more socially acceptable way.
22:09
I'll give you one guess where he decided to go.
22:13
It's said that Benny Binion arrived in Las Vegas in 1946 with his wife Teddy Jane, their five young children, Jack, Ted, Betty, Barbara and Brenda, and a suitcase containing $2 million in cash, the equivalent of something approaching $35 million today.
22:35
After a short stint co-owning a casino, Binion was granted a gambling license in 1951 and bought the El Dorado Club on Fremont Street, renaming it Binion's Horseshoe.
22:47
Meanwhile back in Texas, something major was about to go down.
22:59
At 11.30, on the morning of August 7th, 1951, a smartly dressed man appeared at the front door of a sprawling farmhouse property six miles north of Grapevine, just outside of Dallas.
23:14
He was cautious, as he always was now.
23:17
First, he checked under the bonnet of his black Ford sedan. Then he got down on one knee and checked underneath it too.
23:26
Satisfied all was well, he got in and started the engine.
23:31
He shifted the car into gear and eased it 300 yards up to the mailbox at the end of the drive. Then he wound down the window and leaned out.
23:41
The explosion was catastrophic.
23:44
It obliterated the man and the car in an instant, sending pieces of bone and metal and flesh scattering across an area 200 feet in diameter. $550 in cash rained down with the debris.
24:00
A deck of playing cards that had been in his pocket drifted to the ground too. The Joker, landing face up beside the man's straw hat, next to a smoking, four-foot-deep hole.
24:13
The man was 41-year-old Herbert Noble, a rival Dallas operator of Benny Binion's, who had, a decade earlier, made the mistake of refusing to give Benny the cut he demanded for his business.
24:27
Twelve attempts were made on Noble's life, including one that killed his wife.
24:33
This was the one that got him.
24:36
Benny Binion, as ever, claimed to know nothing about it, but few believed him, and there is little doubt that the reverberations from that explosion were felt all across Vegas.
24:48
Binion was not someone you wanted to cross.
24:53
At the time, Vegas was in the process of rapidly reinventing itself. Mob money was flowing in, and the strip further south of Fremont was steadily transforming into the neon playground that we know today.
25:07
But the horseshoe remained defiantly something else.
25:11
There were no shows and no fancy restaurants, just 80 rudimentary rooms, a casino floor, and the serious business of gambling.
25:21
It was all low ceilings, red velvet wallpaper and soft lighting.
25:26
A place where serious players came to play seriously.
25:31
No fast food restaurant lighting designed to keep you permanently alert. Just the felt, the dice and the cards, and Benny's iron rule that no bet was ever too large.
25:50
Down at the horseshoe during Benny Binion's time, you'd also find a horseshoe-shaped display case containing $1 million in $10,000 bills, about $10 million by today's standards.
26:04
Benny, it seemed, liked theatre, and he liked people to understand immediately the kind of establishment they were walking into.
26:12
Also, though you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of him, it's said that Benny was a real people person who liked people almost as much as money, and that that, beyond his various dubious dealings, was the real secret of his success.
26:28
He was funny and warm, and over time he became one of the most powerful but crucially well-liked figures in Las Vegas.
26:37
Of course, he also knew how to keep the right people on site, how the world really worked when money and politics were involved. He'd earned that knowledge the hard way.
26:50
In 1970, he launched the World Series of Poker, which would eventually become the most prestigious poker event on earth. Then, in 1988, he bought the Mint Hotel and Casino next door, adding nearly 300 hotel rooms and 600 slot machines to his empire.
27:09
By then, Benny was in his early 80s, and Las Vegas had long since turned him into a legend. He died on Christmas Day, 1989, At his funeral, it's said that 18,000 people turned out to attend, including many famous performers, singers, politicians and law enforcement.
27:31
It was a warm send-off for a man who by any measure had lived several lives.
27:37
A statue was even made for him and placed in a prominent spot at the top of Fremont Street, where his casino was located.
27:45
all of which is a rather long-winded, but I think important way of saying that Benny Binion was the real deal.
27:54
Regardless of where you stand on what he did on a moral level, whether we like it or not, the world he inhabited very much exists, and he was almost preternaturally gifted at riding it.
28:09
For his children, born into wealth and privilege, a world away from Pilot Point, Texas in the 1900s, however, it was a very tough act to follow.
28:21
he had built something quite remarkable.
28:24
The question was whether his children could keep it.
28:28
Benny's wife, Teddy Jane, had always been the quiet backbone of the operation, tasked with overseeing the books.
28:36
When she died in 1994, five years after Benny, the fragile equilibrium of the family began to shift.
28:52
Up until the time that Teddy Jane died, Benny had only involved his sons in the running of the casino. But Teddy Jane named her daughter Becky as executrix of her estate, giving Becky a larger stake in the business than many had expected.
29:09
Jack, the eldest son, received around 43%. Ted received 20%.
29:16
The daughters, Becky, Brenda and their families, held the remainder, though they had always been kept at something of an arm's length from the day-to-day running of the casino.
29:27
What followed was, by any account, a Shakespearean struggle for dominance, and at the centre of it, or rather, spiralling away from the centre of it, was Ted, The family had lived for years on West Bonanza Road, on a six-acre ranch with a sprawling 4,800 square foot home.
29:51
Later they moved to a property on nearby Rancho Drive, though Ted spent a considerable time in a suite upstairs at the casino itself.
30:00
living in a sense, inside the thing his father had built.
30:05
Ted never went to college, and went straight into the gambling business the moment he was eligible for a license, as Benny had always intended.
30:15
He was around for the early World Series of Poker tournaments, which drew celebrities and high rollers from around the world, and he took to the casino floor with a natural ease.
30:26
Ted wore custom-made cowboy boots, western shirts and the 10-gallon hat, and was very much a man made in the mould of his father, except in one crucial department.
30:38
Where Benny lived by a code, where family, above everything, had been the organising principle of his life, Ted was drawn to the glamour and the lifestyle.
30:49
He liked to drink, he liked to party, and somewhere along the line, he got into heroin.
30:57
By 1986, it had cost him his gaming licence.
31:01
The suspension would last until 1992, a period that must have felt like a kind of exile for a man who'd grown up on that casino floor.
31:12
In 1990, Ted was indicted on charges relating to the robbing, kidnapping and beating of what were described as undesirable patrons at the horseshoe.
31:24
A racist policy that often targeted black customers due to Benny Binion's belief that his regular white customers were intimidated by them.
31:34
The crackdown on this kind of behaviour spoke to everything that was changing about Las Vegas around that time.
31:41
The city was cleaning up its image.
31:44
People like Ted and Benny, with their old habits and old entitlements, were increasingly finding themselves on the wrong side of that.
31:53
Hey, I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. OK, if you know me, you know this. I'm always searching for inspiration, for support and useful tools to help maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover all of that together. We're gonna have these meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges that she never saw coming.
32:22
I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartum depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety.
32:31
Olympic champ Shawn Johnson revealed why she had no choice but to be a gymnast.
32:36
There was something about gymnastics that was intoxicating to me. It's given me a belief that we all have one of those treasures inside of us. We just have to find it.
32:46
Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
32:53
Hey everybody, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast, Hey Jonas, we're so excited to be hanging out with Mika Abdallah from the hit show Off Campus. Congratulations on the massive show and massive success. Got through about episode five. I left the next morning to go meet the guys. Came back, was like, cool, let's pick up where we left off. And that series had been completed without me.
33:13
Oh, no. That's like the number one rule of watching something. It's literally cheating. That's crazy.
33:18
We talk about what it's been like watching the show become such a massive hit, what's next for season two, and just how close the off-campus cast really is.
33:26
We're genuinely so close.
33:27
What's the group chat called?
33:29
If you can say, if it's allowed to be said on the pod. That's a great question.
33:34
One of them is off-campus Brazil.
33:36
Okay, love it. Shout out Brazil.
33:37
Shout out Brazil. And then the boys have their own group chat called Dean's ****.
33:44
Our conversation with Mika Abdallah is out now.
33:47
Go check it out. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:55
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.
34:31
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.
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Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being. Like, we've been thinking about the loneliness epidemic all wrong.
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You can be lonely in a marriage. You can be lonely at a party. I don't think loneliness is actually about solitude. Loneliness is about something much bigger.
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Or that we should get rid of small talk altogether.
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We talk about current events. We talk about what you do for a living. But not, do you love what you do for a living? Is this your dream job?
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Or that the mental health crisis isn't what we think it is.
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And that kids today are doing better than we assume. It was really disorienting for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis. We are so scared that we are going to underreact to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact.
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For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is. Getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. Getting a new one put up in its place.
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As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War.
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To get to school, I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard. To get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway.
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If you're a historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job.
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I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space.
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We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that?
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They are just fueling a fire that is really catching.
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You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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When Ted first lost his license, he hired Oscar Goodman to contest the ruling. The same Oscar Goodman who'd once represented Antony Spilotro, one of the most feared mob enforcers in Vegas history.
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You know that character in Casino played by Joe Pesci, the one who puts a man's head in a vice and pops his eye out. That was based on Antony the Ant Spilotro.
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Goodman was the best, but even the best can only do so much.
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By 1995, Ted Binion was 51 years old, on the cusp of losing his license again for drugs and his questionable relationships with a few mafia figures, and he was not in a good place.
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Several hundred miles away, in Bellflower, just north of Long Beach, California, 23-year-old Sandy Murphy was not in a good place either.
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Sandy, born Sandra, had grown up in what those who knew her described as a loving home but a fractured one.
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Her parents divorced when she was a toddler and she was estranged from her biological mother, raised instead by a loving father and stepmother.
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Even still, it is said with some truth that when parents divorce, they blow up the planet that their children live on.
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The effects can reverberate for a lifetime, expressing themselves in a search for security that never quite finds what it's looking for.
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Growing up in a beach town, Sandy loved the sea and excelled at sport. She even took time to teach swimming to children preparing to compete in the Paralympics, a generosity that tends to get overlooked in the versions of this story that are more interested in what came later.
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When Sandy was a teenager, she was raped.
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This fact tends to appear in accounts of her life in the most cursory, matter-of-fact way before the narrative moves quickly on.
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But an experience like that, at that age, doesn't just leave a mark. It reorganizes a person. It changes the way they move through the world, who they trust, and what they reach for.
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Sandy, it seems, had reached for something solid and independent.
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At 17, she met a man 10 years her senior and moved in with him in Huntingdon Beach.
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They borrowed money from Sandy's parents, and she set up a business selling aftermarket items to car dealers.
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For a while it was a life, but by 1995 that life had unravelled.
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Late one night, she was arrested for drunk driving as she drove home after a night out.
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It was clear that something needed to change.
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Sometime in March 1995, Sandy Murphy gathered all her life savings, about $13,000 in total, around $25,000 today, and headed to Vegas, along with her friend Linda Carroll, and they headed straight to Caesar's Palace.
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It isn't known if Sandy just wanted a change of scene, was hoping to make a fortune on roulette, or had genuine aspirations that she could somehow build a new life in Vegas. But by the end of that first day at Caesars, all her money was gone.
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What happened next isn't entirely clear.
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Sandy says that Linda got a job as a server at a strip club called Cheetahs, and then got Sandy a job there too, selling lingerie to the dancers.
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Other accounts suggest she was actually a dancer there herself, and apparently at another club called the Olympic Garden as well.
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Whatever the truth of it, it was at one of these venues that Sandy met Ted Binion for the first time.
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Ted and his friends were clearly high rollers of some kind.
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Sandy is said to have made thousands in one night dancing for them.
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She also claimed not to have been that taken by Ted the first time she met him, even when he apparently offered her $1,700 to help get her life straight.
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In fact, especially after that.
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She refused the offer, insisting that she didn't need the money.
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So the story goes.
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After a few weeks, she had enough money to return to California and face her DUI charge.
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A short time later, she was back in Las Vegas, and she remembered the guy from the club.
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Sure, Ted was older, but he was also clearly a somebody. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. He was gregarious, but not oafish, and was fun to be around.
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You might say that was precisely because he had money, but either way, that kind of confidence is attractive.
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So maybe it was that which had lingered on Sandy's mind.
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Or maybe it was the flippancy with which he'd waved $1,700 at her. We'll never know for sure.
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But it's worth noting that, according to Sandy, she wasn't broke when she met Ted, as many papers would later claim.
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She claimed to be working as a finance manager for Toyota and was driving a Lexus while regularly racking up $23,000 monthly bills on an Amex that she paid without issues. But we can only take her word for it.
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What we do know is not long after Sandy returned to Vegas, she and Ted began dating, I should add here that Ted had a wife, Doris, at this time, with whom he shared a daughter, Bonnie.
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I don't think there's any dispute that he loved his daughter, but it's fairly obvious that family wasn't a priority for him.
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A short time after Sandy Murphy returned to Vegas, Ted invited her to a dinner party at his grand home on the exclusive Palomino Lane, just a stone's throw from B.B. King's house.
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Stepping inside, it was hard not to be impressed by the sprawling 6,000-foot-squared single-story ranch house. There were Murano glass chandeliers, ornate bronze bathroom taps, multiple bedrooms, as well as a large pool and garden.
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But when Sandy finally located Ted, she was a little put out to find another woman on his arm, a woman he appeared to be dating.
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Later that evening, Sandy pulled Ted away from the party.
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What the hell are you doing, she said with measured directness. You're not going to see this woman if you're going to date me.
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Ted, who was very much not used to being talked to like that, didn't know what to say, but he liked it, and he liked Sandy.
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After that, he promised to let the other woman go.
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It's said that apparently the name Binion meant nothing to Sandy until Ted took her to the horseshoe one evening and it turned out everyone there knew him too.
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One night, when Sandy was out, Ted had trouble getting hold of her.
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When she finally came home, he told her in no uncertain terms that he had to know where she was at all times.
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An ominous precursor to later behaviour, perhaps. But either way, Sandy went along with what he proposed next.
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By this time, Ted had fully separated from his wife, so when he invited Sandy to move in with him permanently into his Palomino Lane property, she agreed.
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For the next year, the pair of them lived the high life of a rich, successful Vegas couple.
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Ted may have been almost 30 years older than Sandy, but unlike most men her age, he didn't need to clock in to a boss at 9am each morning, and he had the freedom to go and do anything he wanted. The couple drank, a lot. They ate out at upmarket restaurants like the Aristocrat and the Pahrump Valley Vineyards, where Ted knew all the owners.
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He lavished Sandy with jewellery and clothes, while she prettified the house and made it a home for the pair of them.
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Ted and Sandy also spent a lot of time at Ted's 60-acre Pahrump Ranch too, riding his horses under a neon haze as a golden sun dipped below the horizon.
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All in all, there was a lot to love.
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And at some point, Ted took Sandy to the basement of the horseshoe and down to its vault.
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We can only imagine what she thought when he opened it, to reveal nearly 48,000 pounds of silver coins and bars stacked 5 feet high across an area of 18 to 20 feet, that even in those days would have been worth at least $15 million.
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Even by TED standards, it was truly something to behold.
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Only a few years later, Ted would be dead and two officers would chance upon Rick Tabish and his associates as they were digging that same hoard of silver out of the ground in a vacant lot out in the desert town of Pahrump.
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Quite why exactly he was doing that and what, if anything, Sandy had to do with it would remain to be seen.
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And that's where we'll leave it for now.
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Join me next week for Part 2 of Season 9, Episode 27, Death in Vegas, The Ted Binion Mystery, where we'll dig even deeper into this wild and riveting ride.
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Until then, thanks so much again for listening and watching. I've been Richard McLean, Smith, and this is Unexplained. 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.
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Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is an AV Club production podcast created by Richard McLean Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me, Richard McLean Smith. Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. 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.
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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.
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you
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Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.
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It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities.
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Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said.
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Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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For years, The Unhoused has been presented as a monolith in mainstream media. We The Unhoused is a podcast that's changing the narrative.
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I'm Theo Henderson, and I created this show while I was unhoused on the streets of Los Angeles. We've grown into a two-time Webby Award-winning podcast, the only podcast that shares unhoused stories and news from the unhoused perspective.
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Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
49:43
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.
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Can superstars even exist the way they used to?
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2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture, where we still consumed things in community. Everybody wanted to be Beyonce at that point. I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna.
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What does it mean to be Black and eat in America? You will never make me feel bad for being a Black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever.
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From music to food to the conversations shaping Black culture right now, 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.
50:53
Here at the Happiness Lab, we're serving up some hot takes for the summer. Big ideas that just might reshape how you think about your well-being. Like the radical notion that we should get rid of small talk completely.
51:03
We talk about current events. We talk about what you do for a living. But not, do you love what you do for a living? Is this your dream job?
51:09
For more surprising ideas backed by psychological science, check out our new series, Happiness Hot Takes. Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
51:23
This is an iHeart Podcast.
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Guaranteed human.
