Jeff German: The slain journalist, the cheating official, and the murder that shocked Sin City

Jeff German chronicled Sin City’s grimiest corners for more than two decades as an investigative journalist, podcaster and author.

From organised crime to government corruption, Mr German was described by colleagues as a fearless, old-fashioned reporter whose contacts and sources in Las Vegas saw him break many major exclusives over his career.

Mr German, 69, had spent the last few months of his life investigating allegations of bullying and workplace hostility in the office of Rob Telles, the Clark County Public Administrator. Mr Telles, a married father of three, had also been having an affair with a married female staffer, with secretly filmed video published by the Review-Journal appearing to show the pair having sex in a parked car.

On 22 June, Mr Telles narrowly lost a primary for re-election, finishing just 122 votes behind one of his deputies Rita Reid.

Whether it was Mr German’s reports that cost him the election is uncertain, but Mr Telles, a Democrat, left no doubt who he felt was to blame.

“*Wife hears rustling in the trash* Her: ‘Honey, is there a wild animal in the trash?’ Me: ‘No, dear. Looks like it's @JGermanRJ going through our trash for his 4th story on me.’ Oh, Jeff,” he tweeted on 18 June, days before the election, with a laughing- crying emoji. “Oh shoot. I left a pizza box and sushi containers in the trash. In the next article, I’m going to have mob and yakuza ties.”

The tweet storm continued as Mr Telles accused Mr German of being a “typical bully” who couldn’t take his own medicine.

“Looking forward to lying smear piece #4 by @JGermanRJ. #onetrickpony I think he's mad that I haven't crawled into a hole and died,” he tweeted days later.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where Mr German had worked since 2010, the reporter continued to make public records requests of the administrator’s office for emails and text messages over July and August.

Even after his loss, Mr Telles continued to rail against the Review-Journal and Mr German in angry messages posted on his campaign website.

On 2 September, a maroon-coloured GMC Yukon Denali was spotted driving suspiciously in the Bronze Circle area of northwest Las Vegas near Mr German’s home.

Surveillance footage would later pick up a violent scuffle near the back door of his home.

Mr German’s body would only be found the next day by a neighbour, with a medical examiner later determining he died of multiple stab wounds.

Las Vegas police quickly prioritised the investigation, giving it “major designation status”.

They released images showing a suspect wearing a straw hat, a bright-orange, long-sleeved shirt with silver reflective strips and sneakers walking away from the scene and driving away in the GMC Denali.

Journalists working on the story at the Review-Journal noticed a similar vehicle parked outside Mr Telles home on Google Maps, and passed the information to police, reporter Arthur Kane told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

At 6.30am on Wednesday, police arrived at Mr Telles’ home and blocked off neighbouring streets, the Review-Journal reported.

They later removed his GMC Denali that matched the suspicious vehicle, and a BMW.

Mr Telles was taken in for questioning and released a few hours later. As he returned to his home early afternoon in a white jumpsuit, reporters from Mr German’s publication peppered him with questions asking “did you do this?”

Police in tactical gear returned to Mr Telles home on Spanish Steps Lane at around 6pm on Wednesday evening.

When Mr Telles failed to answer the door, a SWAT team gained entry and found him inside suffering from self-inflicted injuries. He was wheeled out on a stretcher about 30 minutes later and treated in a hospital. Later that night he was booked into the Clark County Detention Centre and charged with Mr German’s murder.

At a press conference on Thursday, Captain Dori Koren said that DNA recovered from the murder scene had been matched to Mr Telles.

Mr Koren added that a pair of bloodied sneakers and a distinctive straw hat that matched those of the suspect captured on video were found at Mr Telles’ home.

The shoes and the hat had been cut up in an attempt to destroy evidence, he added.

Mr Koren also said reporters from the Review-Journal had provided valuable assistance to authorities during the investigation.

“We knew that as an investigative reporter he had written several articles and there were different allegations and statements about potential people that would be upset about it,” he told the press conference.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo told reporters on Thursday that this “is a terrible and jarring homicide.”

“Every murder is a tragic, but the killing of a journalist is particularly troublesome,” he added. “We expect journalism to be open and transparent and watchdog for government. And when people take it upon themselves to create harm associated with that profession, I think it’s very important that we put all eyes on it and address the case appropriately.”

The murder has sparked a mixture of fear and outrage among Mr German’s family, friends and colleagues.

In a statement shared by Mr German’s family with the Review-Journal, they said: “We’re shocked, saddened and angry about his death. Jeff was committed to seeking justice for others and would appreciate the hard work by local police and journalists in pursuing his killer.”

The Review-Journal’s executive editor Glenn Cook said the arrest brought both “enormous relief and outrage” to the newsroom.

“Journalists can’t do the important work our communities require if they are afraid a presentation of facts could lead to violent retribution,” said Mr Cook.

Mr German was born in Las Vegas and worked as a journalist and opinion writer for the Las Vegas Sun for two decades, before joining Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2010.

He hosted the podcast Mobbed Up: The Fight for Las Vegas, and wrote a book about the mysterious death of casino magnate Ted Binion, Murder in Sin City: The Death of a Las Vegas Casino Boss, that was later turned into a movie.

An eye for the types of bizarre tales that can only be found in a city like Las Vegas, whose origins are synonymous with vice, racketeering, bribery and bloodshed, Mr German penned a column for the Las Vegas Sun in 1997 where he wrote about a taxicab worker that had been accused of practicing voodoo on fellow workers.

He broke the news of the death of a mafia bookmaker, and failures in the Nevada city’s inspection department that led to the deaths of six people in a fire in 2019. He also covered courts, politics, labour, and earned a Master’s degree from Marquette University.

In the city’s darkest hour in 2017, when a gunman killed 60 people while firing from a window in the Mandalay Bay Hotel, Mr German broke news that the perpetrator had first fired at two jet fuel tanks.

His final story for the Review-Journal, published on 4 August, was about high-powered travel firms being sued for illegally avoiding paying tax on hotel rooms.

In recent years, as threats to journalists have exploded and Donald Trump branded reporters the “enemy of the state”, industry associations have warned of the possibility of violence. Even still murders of journalists in the US are rare, and especially so for those killed in the course of their reporting, according to the  Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Just 16 journalists have been murdered in the US since 1992, including four killed in a mass shooting at the Capital-Gazette’s newsroom in Maryland in 2018, according to CPJ figures.

“Authorities should ensure that all those involved in this terrible crime are identified and held to account, and should make clear that those who target journalists will face justice,” CPJ programme director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement on Thursday.

In a statement, the Society of Professional Journalist’s national president Rebecca Aguilar said Mr German’s killing was a “reminder that everyday journalists around the world put their lives on the line to uncover the truth.”

“The murder of Jeff German is a reminder that everyday journalists around the world put their lives on the line to uncover the truth,” she said. “As the Review-Journal reported, many described Jeff as a fearless reporter, the embodiment of the First Amendment, who stood up for society’s underdogs and had a strong sense of right and wrong,”