Las Vegas politician formally charged in journalist’s murder

Las Vegas-area local politician Robert Telles, in custody since last week in the stabbing death of investigative journalist Jeff German, has been formally charged with murder.

Telles, 45, is charged with murder with a deadly weapon where the victim is 60 years of age or older. The fact that he was waiting for German to appear made the murder “willful, deliberate and premediated,” the complaint said.

The disgraced official was “lying in wait” outside German’s house on Sept. 2, a complaint obtained by CNN alleged. He confronted him and stabbed the reporter multiple times “willfully, unlawfully, with malice aforethought.”

Authorities were led to Telles by surveillance video and DNA, including blood on Telles’ shoes and DNA underneath German’s fingernails. The shoes, and a straw hat matching the killer’s disguise, were later found chopped up at Telles’ home. The vehicle that showed up in security footage matched one in his driveway, registered to his wife.

German had been reporting on alleged malfeasance in Telles’ office that included bullying and an improper relationship with a subordinate. Telles, the Clark County Public Administrator, had lost his primary bid and blamed German’s coverage. German was working on more stories about Telles’ office the week he was killed.

Telles sported self-inflicted wounds when he was arrested last week and held without bail. He is due in court Tuesday.

Although Telles had denounced German publicly, the Las Vegas Journal-Review reporter had never expressed concern for his safety, the newspaper’s executive editor, Glen Cook, told The Associated Press. The official was seen as “unhinged” but not violent.

German, after all, had “cut his teeth covering the mob,” Cook told AP. “Jeff spent over 40 years covering the worst of the worst of Las Vegas. This was a guy who ran down mobsters, wiseguys and killers.”

Yet this was not Telles’ first brush with the law, as it turns out. The year after he took office, he was charged in March 2020 with battery domestic violence, first offense and resisting a public officer, KTNV-TV reported Monday. He pleaded not-guilty on the domestic violence charge, and it was dismissed in September of that year after negotiations, the outlet said.

The other charge netted hm a suspended jail sentence in lieu of taking a behavior modification class called “Corrective Thinking” and paying $418 bail, KTNV reported. That charge was cleared and dismissed once he had completed those court orders, KTNV learned.