An altercation involving Sandy Murphy and Benny Behnen erupted at Piero's Italian Cuisine late Monday.

By the time two unidentified NBA coaches broke up the melee, Murphy had a clump of hair ripped from her scalp as she was attempting to escape her assailant.

The incident occurred about 10 p.m., hours before Murphy appeared in District Court seeking to gain possession of part of the estate of the late Ted Binion, Behnen's uncle and the man Murphy was accused of killing in 1998.

An eye witness said words were exchanged when Murphy's party and Behnen's group were seated at nearby tables in Piero's most popular bar area.

When scuffling broke out, Murphy moved away from the trouble and was near the kitchen exit when she was cornered by a young man.

"Sandy wanted to get out of there," said her attorney, Herb Sachs. "Behnen saw her, targeted her, and punched her, kicked her and grabbed her hair."

This so bizzare to me as a Las Vegas history nut. The whole story behind Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabish and Ted Binion was so crazy I kept wondering if and how it might end. Somehow, Sandy keeps herself in the news.

If you are familiar with the movie Casino, the real life version is that Benny Binion was the Texas mobster who ran the mob north of downtown. It was his nephew(or other relative) that worked at the casino and made some mistakes that caused Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal to fire him. Then Benny went to Lefty and asked him to rehire the boy. When Frank said no, that was the beginning of his end. Benny tried to warn him, but he didn't listen.

The Piero's connection is bizzare also. Pierros is on Convention Center Blvd, behind The Beach nightclub on Paradise. In REALITY, Pieros was the restaurant where Frank and Tony "the Ant" Spilotro would often meet and discuss "plans". Much of it upstairs. The place was frequented by cops and mobsters. It was such a big part of the mob scene, that they filmed some of the restaurant scenes for Casino inside of Pieros. At the time, it had a different name. I might remember later, but it was an Italian name and loosely translated meant House of the East, East moon, or something like that.