Four days after the investigative journalist Jeff German was found dead outside his Las Vegas home, police have arrested a local official who had been the focus of German’s reporting, on suspicion of murder, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Robert Telles, an elected official who serves as the Clark county public administrator, was wheeled out of his home on a stretcher and put into an ambulance about 6pm, just hours after officials had searched Telles’s home, according to the Review Journal.
German, a veteran journalist who had covered Las Vegas for 40 years, was found outside his house with stab wounds on Saturday morning, according to the Review-Journal, where German worked as a reporter on the investigations team. He also contributed to the newspaper’s true crime podcast, Mobbed Up.
On Wednesday, local police were observed outside the home of Telles and a section of his residence was taped off, the newspaper and other Las Vegas news outlets reported.
Telles lost his primary re-election bid for the local position in June, after German reported a series of articles on allegations of bullying and mismanagement in Telles’s office, as well as allegations of an “inappropriate relationship” between Telles and a staffer.
Telles, 45, a career attorney who ran for office as a Democrat, had denied the accusations and repeatedly lashed out at the reporter investigating his conduct, calling German a “bully” on Twitter and writing that a request for comment was “a veiled threat”. On his campaign website, Telles had added a section he labeled “the truth”, where he denied accusations staff members had made against him and criticized German and the Review-Journal.
Hours after Las Vegas police released an image of a vehicle linked to the suspect in German’s stabbing, Las Vegas Review-Journal journalists “spotted Telles in the driveway of his home with a vehicle matching that description”, the newspaper reported. They observed the vehicle outside Telles’s house again on Wednesday morning.
The Las Vegas police department confirmed in a statement early on Wednesday that it “is currently serving search warrants” related to a homicide investigation, but said that it would not provide any further information “at this time”. The department released a photo of a suspect in the case, a person wearing a large hat and clothing covering their entire body.
Authorities did not immediately respond to messages and emails seeking comment on Telles’s arrest.
There was no immediate response to an email and a voice message to the public administrator’s office, requesting comment on the search of Telles’s home and on the broader case. A person who answered the office’s public phone line said she could only handle client calls.
The executive editor of the Review-Journal, Glenn Cook, said in a statement in the paper’s news story that German, 69, was “the gold standard” of a news reporter, and that he had never shared any concerns about his safety or any threats made against him to the paper’s leadership. Cook did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
A REPORTER’S LEGACY: Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German was one of Nevada’s most accomplished and trusted journalists.
— James Schaeffer (@jamesmschaeffer) September 6, 2022
A brief look at his legacy.#RJNow pic.twitter.com/ZBL58g6426
The paper’s editorial cartoonist published an illustrated tribute to German, calling him, “one of the finest investigative reporters in the country. His job was to shine the light on the darkness. He will be missed.”
Nevada’s governor, Steve Sisolak, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, after the initial news of his death, that “Jeff was a tough reporter but he was always fair,” and expressed his condolences to German’s family.
The Clark county public administrator is responsible for handling the property of people who die in the Las Vegas area, while searching for their relatives or legal executors, and also handling estates in court when families cannot. For decades, long before Telles’s term, the office had a “history of scandal”, including fraud, theft and various kinds of mismanagement, German had reported.
After he conceded the primary election in June, and his chief deputy won the race, Telles said that he planned to return to private law practice, but staff in his office said the atmosphere was still tense and uncomfortable as he served out the remainder of his term, which was slated to end in January, German had reported.
At least 49 journalists and media workers have been killed around the world so far in 2022, including 13 in Mexico, and a dozen in Ukraine, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Two recent deadly attacks on US journalists have involved multiple-casualty shootings, including a mass shooting targeting the staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland in 2018, which left five people dead. The man convicted in that case had developed a long-running obsession and grudge against the paper for an article it published about him pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge for harassing a former high school classmate.
Other high-profile cases of US journalists being targeted because of their investigations include Don Bolles, an Arizona Republic reporter killed in a car bombing in 1976, and the 2007 murder of Chauncey Bailey, an Oakland journalist shot to death on his way to work. Bailey’s murder prompted more than two dozen journalists to collaborate on a years-long project to make sure his reporting was continued and that his death was fully investigated and prosecuted.
The California journalists who worked to investigate Bailey’s murder released a statement in response to German’s death, writing, “if his killing is found to be related to his work as an investigative journalist, those responsible must be held to account. It must be remembered that killing a journalist never kills a story.”