Michael Madsen is an American actor. Alongside his frequent collaborations with Quentin Tarantino—Reservoir Dogs (1992), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)—he is known for his appearances in films, such as The Natural (1984), The Doors (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), Free Willy (1993), Species (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), Die Another Day (2002), Sin City (2005), and Scary Movie 4 (2006). He has played voice roles in various video games, including Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Narc (2005), the Dishonored series (2012–2017), and Crime Boss: Rockay City (2023). Madsen has five children, including actor Christian Madsen.
Lester Ben Binion, better known as Benny Binion, was an American casino operator who established illegal gambling operations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In 1931, Binion was convicted of shooting and killing a rum-runner, Frank Bolding. In the 1940s he relocated to Nevada, where gambling was legal, and opened the successful Binion's Horseshoe casino in downtown Las Vegas.
High Desert State Prison is a state prison in unincorporated Clark County, Nevada, near Indian Springs, northwest of Las Vegas. It is the largest institution of the Nevada Department of Corrections and the newest, having opened on September 1, 2000. It has a capacity of 4,176.
Joseph Tony Serra is an American criminal defense and civil rights attorney, political activist and tax resister from San Francisco.
Lonnie Theodore "Ted" Binion, was an American gambling executive and the son of Las Vegas casino magnate Benny Binion, owner of Binion's Horseshoe casino. Ted Binion was involved in multiple criminal cases which included associating with organised crime figures. Binion had a multi-million dollar bullion coin and silver bar collection, known as the Binion Hoard, which he hid inside the Horseshoe casino and at two properties that he owned. When Binion died in 1998, there were suspicions of foul play. Binion's girlfriend Sandra Murphy and her lover Rick Tabish became the prime suspects. After Binion's death, both Murphy and Tabish were charged and convicted of burglary, grand larceny, and murder. The two were later granted a new trial and acquitted on the murder charges.
Susan Jane Berman was an American journalist and author. The daughter of mobster David Berman, she wrote about her late-in-life realization of her father's role in organized crime.
Snapped is an American true crime television series produced by Jupiter Entertainment which depicts high profile or bizarre cases of women accused of murder. Each episode outlines the motivation for murder, whether it be revenge against a cheating husband or lover, a large insurance payoff, or the ending to years of abuse, with each murder's circumstances as unique as the women profiled.
Cathleen Scott is a Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestselling American true crime author and investigative journalist who penned the biographies and true crime books The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls, both bestsellers in the United States and United Kingdom, and was the first to report Shakur's death. She grew up in La Mesa, California, and later moved to Mission Beach, California, where she was a single parent to a son, Raymond Somers Jr. Her hip-hop books are based on the drive-by shootings that killed the rappers six months apart in the midst of what has been called the West Coast-East Coast war. Each book is dedicated to the rappers' mothers.
Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker is a memoir published in 2003 by Chicago area author James McManus set during the 2000 World Series of Poker.
Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein was an American mobster who was a loanshark, bookmaker, racketeer and lieutenant to Tony "The Ant" Spilotro and the Chicago Outfit in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Joshua Evans is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, author, and actor best known for his role in Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
David Jeanjoseph Roger is an American attorney and politician. He served as District Attorney of Clark County from January 6, 2003, to January 3, 2012. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Sex and Lies in Sin City: The Ted Binion Scandal is a 2008 Lifetime Television film starring Johnathon Schaech, Marcia Gay Harden, Matthew Modine, and Mena Suvari.
The Killing of Tupac Shakur is a biographical, true crime account by American journalist and author Cathy Scott of the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. The book made news upon its September 1997 release, on the first anniversary of Shakur's death, because of an autopsy photo included in its pages. It was the first book to be released covering the rapper's death. The book was reprinted in the UK by Plexus Publishing and in Poland by Kagra. Coverage of the autopsy photo, taken of Shakur's body on a gurney in the coroner's examining room, catapulted the book onto the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. New editions of the book were released in 2002 and 2014.
The Millionaire's Wife: The True Story of a Real Estate Tycoon, his Beautiful Young Mistress, and a Marriage that Ended in Murder, by the author and journalist Cathy Scott, is a true crime account of the 1990 contract murder of George Kogan on an Upper East Side Manhattan street in broad daylight. The book was published for mass-market release by St. Martin's Press True Crime Library in March 2012.
Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman is a nonfiction book by author and journalist Cathy Scott about the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. Murder of a Mafia Daughter was first released in hardcover in 2002 by Barricade Books. A 2nd edition in trade-size paperback was released in June 2015 following the March 2015 arrest of suspect Robert Durst in Berman's murder. After the trial and conviction of the Durst for Berman's murder, and then Durst's death, a 20th Anniversary updated edition of the book was released.
Shayla Beesley is an American actress best known for her role in the horror film Reaper.
Death in the Desert Is a 2015 American love-drama film directed and produced by Josh Evans, and starring Michael Madsen, Shayla Beesley, John Palladino, Paz de la Huerta and Roxy Saint. Principal filming completed in February 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is the second film collaboration between Madsen and Evans, who produced The Price of Air in which Madsen starred.
Jeffrey Michael German was an American investigative reporter who wrote for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun, his career spanning four decades. He was stabbed to death in 2022 by Robert Telles, an elected Clark County, Nevada Public Administrator, whom German had investigated and reported on.
The Binion Hoard was American gambling executive Ted Binion's collection of silver and silver dollars. Binion had a safe installed 12 ft (3.7 m) deep in the ground of a vacant lot that he owned in Pahrump, Nevada, United States. In the safe he stored his 46,000 pounds (21,000 kg) of silver, including 135,000 silver dollars. In 1998, Binion died of an overdose and authorities determined that he had been murdered. Two days after his death Richard Tabish and four other people were arrested for digging up the buried silver.
