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| Photo Credit: AP. |
LAS VEGAS (AP) — In four decades of writing about the Las Vegas underworld and government corruption, investigative reporter Jeff German took on plenty of powerful and dangerous people. The hard-bitten newsman was once punched by an organized crime associate and received veiled threats from mobsters.
Nothing
seemed to faze him as he doggedly went about his work.
So German
(GEHR’-man) characteristically didn’t express concern when Clark County Public
Administrator Robert Telles, a virtually unknown politician in charge of an
obscure and small government office, took to Twitter last spring to angrily
denounce the reporter.
German, who
worked for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, had written about bullying and
favoritism in the public administrator’s office and an inappropriate
relationship by Telles with a female subordinate.
Authorities
say German’s initial investigation and follow-up stories were the motivation
for Telles to fatally stab German last week at the reporter’s home. DNA at the
scene linked Telles to the killing as did shoes and a distinctive straw hat
found at his home that matched those worn by a suspect caught on video,
investigators said Thursday.
Police
arrested Telles on Wednesday after a brief standoff at his home. Telles was
hospitalized for what Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo described as
non-life-threatening, self-inflicted wounds.
Glenn Cook,
executive editor of the Review-Journal, said there was talk within the
newspaper about Telles being “unhinged” but he never made any physical threats
against German and the reporter never said he was worried.
The thought
this was the story that would put German’s safety at risk seemed implausible,
he said, remembering how the reporter recounted once being punched by an organized
crime associate.
“He cut his
teeth covering the mob,” Cook said. “Jeff spent over 40 years covering the
worst of the worst of Las Vegas. This was a guy who ran down mobsters, wise
guys and killers.”
Killings of
journalists in the U.S. in retaliation for their work are extremely rare. Up
until German’s death, eight journalists have been killed in the U.S. since
1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The deadliest attack
came in 2018 when a shooting at the Capital Gazette in Maryland left five dead.
“Jeff’s death is a sobering reminder of the
inherent risks of investigative journalism,” said Diana Fuentes, executive
director of the organization Investigative Reporters & Editors.
“Journalists do their jobs every day, digging deep to find information the
public needs to know and has a right to see.”
German
joined the Review-Journal in 2010 after more than two decades at the Las Vegas
Sun, where he was a columnist and reporter who covered courts, politics, labor,
government and crime. He was 69, but never talked with his boss about
retirement, Cook said.
Former
co-workers along with attorneys and government officials German counted on as
sources called him a hard-nosed, tenacious journalist who could be gruff at
times, especially if someone didn’t know him or was holding back information.
“He was not someone who was easily
intimidated,” said Geoff Schumacher, who worked with German at the Sun until
the late 1990s. “Getting to the truth, that was more important to him than his
own well-being or being popular.”
The pair
recently worked together on a podcast called “Mobbed Up.”
German
talked about receiving veiled threats from mobsters in the early 1980s at a
time when people were disappearing as law enforcement cracked down on organized
crime. The warnings definitely got German’s attention, but he never went to
police, said Schumacher, who now works at at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas
Alan
Feldman, a former executive with MGM Resorts International, said getting a call
from German was like hearing from the CBS news show, “60 Minutes.” He didn’t
talk tough or threaten anyone, Feldman said, but he never backed down.
And he
always followed the story even if it didn’t go in the direction he expected, he
said.
“The last thing I would say about Jeff is that
anything scared him or that he was afraid,” Feldman said. “He was prepared to
go after anyone who was doing something not in the public interest.”
Telles, a
Democrat who apparently had never served in public office until he was elected
in 2018, oversaw less than 10 people and was paid about $120,000 a year to run
an office that deals with estates and the property of people after they die.
Before that he was a lawyer practicing probate and estate law.
In the weeks
before the June primary, German bylined reports about an office “mired in
turmoil and internal dissension” between longtime employees and new hires under
Telles’ leadership. Following the stories, county officials hired a consultant
to help oversee the office.
Telles
blamed “old-timers” for exaggerating the extent of his relationship with a
female staffer and falsely claiming that he mistreated them. He posted
complaints on Twitter about German, saying he was a bully who was “obsessed” with
him.
Telles ended
up finishing last in the three-way primary and was serving out the remainder of
his term at the time of the killing.
The articles
“ruined his political career, likely his marriage, and this was him lashing out
at the cause,” Chief Deputy Clark County District Attorney Richard Scow said
Thursday.
German’s
family called him “a loving and loyal brother, uncle and friend who devoted his
life to his work exposing wrongdoing in Las Vegas and beyond.”
“We’re
shocked, saddened and angry about his death,” they said in a statement. “Jeff
was committed to seeking justice for others and would appreciate the hard work
by local police and journalists in pursuing his killer. We look forward to seeing
justice done in this case.”
Seewer
reported from Toledo, Ohio.