Gary Triano was a hugely successful real estate developer in Tucson, Arizona who liked to gamble. “He was on a downward spiral financially and there were people who were upset with him,” says a detective on 48 Hours. Triano owed a casino in Las Vegas several million dollars. He owed $1.8 million to an ex-wife, $91,000 to an attorney, and hundreds of thousands to Mexican investors, whom some say were involved in criminal activity. In 1996, after finishing a round of golf at a country club, Triano got in his car and it exploded. Someone had planted an extremely large pipe bomb in Triano’s car. There was no way Triano could have survived.
It was Triano’s wife, Pamela Phillips, who plotted the murder. Her motive was to collect a $2 million insurance policy. In 2014, Phillips was sentenced to spend “natural life” in prison without the possibility of parole. The man she hired to kill Triano, Ronald Young, is serving a life sentence. Phillips maintains her innocence and claims that Triano’s death was a Mexican mafia revenge killing. 48 Hours will air its investigation on July 11 at 10pm on CBS.
