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Benny boasted that he offered the world’s best odds, and he never flinched from covering a bet. The doors never closed and the action never stopped. It was the cornerstone of Glitter Gulch-the noisiest, rowdiest, most wide-open casino in downtown Las Vegas. So is the family.īEFORE THERE WAS a Strip, and long before gaming mogul Steve Wynn began replicating the Seven Wonders of the World and installing slot machines in their every nook, Binion’s Horseshoe was a haven for hard-eyed, no-nonsense gamblers.
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In the wake of Ted’s death, one of Las Vegas’ last family-owned casinos is a shadow of its former self. He’d been Benny’s favorite-his carbon copy, only without the edge and tempering that made the old man a natural survivor. Ted’s demise was a final crushing blow to the Binions. At first police officers thought the 55-year-old had either killed himself or accidentally overdosed, but the evidence now suggests that he was the victim of a bizarre, almost comically inept plot by the paramour of his live-in girlfriend to murder him and steal his fortune. A month later, Ted was found dead of an overdose of heroin, a drug he had used since high school. Nearly all of it was bought by Becky, the youngest of Benny’s kids. It followed, and was no doubt hastened by, an order from the Nevada Gaming Commission that forced Ted to sell his 20 percent interest in the casino. The battle concluded, at least temporarily, in the summer of 1998, when an out-of-court settlement was reached. You don’t have to be Tony Soprano’s shrink to understand what happened here: The Binions had met the enemy, and it was them.
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The battle of the Binions was fought with court pleadings and depositions instead of machine guns, but in some respects it was dirtier and less honorable than the bloodlettings of yore. He carried a pistol, just like his daddy, only to him it was an ornament.
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Ted’s gambling license had been suspended…for hanging out with mobsters! Who was he supposed to hang with, the Moral Majority? Ted’s suspension was merely another symbol of change in the nature of families, crime and otherwise. Jack Binion squared off against his sisters, Brenda Michael and Becky Behnen, while little brother Lonnie “Ted” Binion was forced to watch from the sidelines. Following the death of Benny in 1989 and of his wife, Teddy Jane, in 1994, an all-out war erupted among the Binion siblings for control of the Horseshoe. Greed, betrayal, and cold-blooded murder are traditions in this company town, but the current generation seems to have forgotten that it’s only business. In his day mobsters didn’t use drugs they just sold them. Two of Benny’s five kids have died of a drug overdose-one an apparent suicide, the other a victim of foul play. And he couldn’t have imagined what a mess they’d make of it. When Benny, a gambler and racketeer with few peers in Texas or anyplace else, left Dallas in 1946 for the more forgiving atmosphere of Sin City, he couldn’t have envisioned the multi-million-dollar legacy he would one day leave his children. In the words of Oscar Goodman, the former mob lawyer who was elected mayor of Las Vegas earlier this year: “People don’t come here looking for Disneyland they come looking for Bugsy Siegel.” All this refinement is part of what the chamber of commerce calls the “Fremont Street Experience,” a misguided attempt to make Glitter Gulch seem hip to the times. You won’t find fountains, topless chorus girls, roller coasters, pyramids, or cheesy replicas of New York, Paris, or Venice downtown, as you do along the far more fashionable Strip-and forget about a string quartet in tuxedos playing Bach, like the one in a lobby bar at the Bellagio-but an acoustic guitar player named Buzz Evans entertains the lucky souls who venture there after dark, mostly Asian tourists with cameras and young couples who look like they’ve just jumped off a boxcar. Potted palms rigged to spray a mist on passersby have been positioned between kiosks that sell T-shirts and cheap souvenirs. A pedestrian mall stretches in front of the Horseshoe, the Golden Nugget, and the remaining gambling houses of Glitter Gulch, and a roof with laser lights blocks the sun and stars. His name still flashes in gold lights above Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, but the atmosphere at Binion’s Horseshoe Hotel and Casino is distinctly sanitized, as if someone has given a bubble bath to a wild boar.
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BENNY BINION MIGHT NOT RECOGNIZE HIS OLD JOINT.