A jury in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday convicted a former elected county official of murdering an investigative journalist who had written critical articles about him. The defendant, Robert Telles, a former Clark County public administrator, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years. Telles was found guilty of the 2022 murder of Las Vegas Review Journal journalist Jeff German, a case that underscored the growing dangers faced by journalists in the United States. The jury determined that the murder was "willful, deliberate, and premeditated," with Telles having "lain in wait" for German, 69, before stabbing him to death outside his home in suburban Las Vegas.
"A journalist wrote a story, or a series of stories, and lost their life over it because someone, a politician, an outgoing politician, just did not like them," stated county prosecutor Christopher Hamner. Telles' attorney, Robert Draskovich, requested that the jury show leniency and consider granting parole due to Telles' lack of a prior criminal record. As the verdict was read, Telles shook his head in denial. In the courtroom, German’s family members were seen crying and comforting each other. Employees from the Clark County public administrator's office, some of whom had requested German to investigate Telles, hugged and wiped away tears, all dressed in red shirts and pins featuring the reporter’s image.
"Jeff was killed for doing the kind of work in which he took great pride: His reporting held an elected official accountable for bad behavior and empowered voters to choose someone else for the job," said Glenn Cook, executive editor of the Las Vegas Review Journal. "In many countries, the killers of journalists go unpunished," Cook added. "Not so in Las Vegas." German had spent months investigating complaints that Telles had overseen an abusive workplace and engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. The state's case included DNA evidence found under German's fingernails, which matched Telles, and video footage of the attacker's car, which matched a vehicle registered to Telles' wife.
The former official claimed in court that he was framed for German's murder after attempting to expose an alleged kickback scheme. Las Vegas defense attorney Robert Langford, who was not involved in the case, described the DNA evidence under German's fingernails as "an insurmountable bit of evidence." Following the publication of one of German's stories about Telles in June 2022, the former official lost his re-election bid in a Democratic primary to a rival from within the public administrator's office. The day before German's murder, Telles discovered that the reporter had obtained information through a records request regarding communications between Telles and the colleague with whom he had an affair.
"The conviction sends an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated," said Katherine Jacobsen, US, Canada, and Caribbean coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a press rights group. German was renowned for his decades-long reporting on corruption and organized crime in Nevada's largest city. His book, Murder in Sin City, inspired the 2008 movie Sex and Lies in Sin City about the killing of gambling executive Ted Binion. According to CPJ data, German was the only journalist murdered in the US in 2022 among 69 media workers and journalists killed worldwide. The US fell 10 places to 55th in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, which cited declining public trust in the media and hostility from political officials as contributing factors to the decline.
