The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
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.
Christopher Backus is an American actor, director and screenwriter. Backus made his television debut in NBC's Will & Grace, followed by landing roles in The O.C., Life on Mars, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,Sons of Anarchy, The Mentalist,Perception, and The Last Templar. He also appeared in films such as Redline starring Eddie Griffin and 3 Days Gone directed by Scott McCullough.
Lester Ben Binion, better known as Benny Binion, was an American career criminal 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.
Chris Goss is an American record producer and musician. Best known for producing records for Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, he is regarded as an important figure in the development of stoner rock and desert rock genres. Goss is also the lead singer and guitarist of the hard rock band Masters of Reality.
Lonnie Theodore Binion, also known as 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.
Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel, formerly Binion's Horseshoe, is a casino on Fremont Street along the Fremont Street Experience mall in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. It is owned by TLC Casino Enterprises. The casino is named for its founder, Benny Binion, whose family ran it from its founding in 1951 until 2004. The hotel, which had 366 rooms, closed in 2009. TLC reopened 81 of the rooms as a boutique hotel called Hotel Apache in July 2019.
Morris "Moe" Greene is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and the 1972 film of the same title. Both Greene's character and personality are based on Bugsy Siegel: his affiliation with the mob in Los Angeles, his involvement in the development of Las Vegas, and his flamboyant tendencies. Greene is portrayed in the movie by Alex Rocco.
María de la Paz Elizabeth Sofía Adriana de la Huerta y Bruce, known professionally as Paz de la Huerta, is an American actress. She had roles in the films The Cider House Rules (1999) and A Walk to Remember (2002), and played Lucy Danziger in the HBO drama series Boardwalk Empire.
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.
Joshua Evans is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, author and actor best known for his role in Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Pahrump is an unincorporated town located at the southernmost tip of Nye County, Nevada, United States, about 62 miles (100 km) west of Las Vegas. Pahrump lies adjacent to the Nevada–California border and the area had a population of 44,738 as of the 2020 census.
Roxanne Saint is an American singer, musician, video producer, director, and actress who started singing at age 17. She's known for her role in the film Zombie Strippers and as the lead performer in the goth band Roxy Saint and the Blackouts.
Death in the Desert: The Ted Binion Homicide Case is a 2000 biographical and crime account by the American journalist and crime author Cathy Scott, with a second edition in 2012. The book, which was the first of four released about the case, details the homicide investigation and ensuing trial and re-trial of Ted Binion’s live-in girlfriend Sandy Murphy and her lover Rick Tabish in connection with Binion's death.
Shayla Beesley is an American actress best known for her role in the horror film Reaper.
Bare is a 2015 American drama film written and directed by Natalia Leite and produced by Alexandra Roxo, Natalia Leite, and Chad Burris. It stars Dianna Agron, Paz de la Huerta, Chris Zylka, and Louisa Krause. The film follows a young woman living in a small desert town in Nevada, who becomes romantically involved with a female drifter who leads her into a life of drugs, stripping, and psychedelic spiritual experiences. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, 2015. IFC Films released it on October 30, 2015, in a limited release and through video on demand.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is an American comedy-drama television miniseries created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. It is the unofficial eighth season and a sequel to the television series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007).
The 2017 Arizona Wildcats football team represented the University of Arizona during the 2017 season. The season was the Wildcats's 118th overall, 40th as a member of the Pac-12 Conference, seventh within the Pac-12 South Division, and the sixth and final year under head coach Rich Rodriguez. The team played their home games at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, Arizona for the 89th straight year.
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.
