A former Las Vegas official was sentenced to serve nearly three decades in Nevada state prison for killing an investigative journalist who wrote articles critical of his conduct in office two years ago and exposed an intimate relationship with a female co-worker.
Judge Michelle Leavitt of the Clark county district court on Wednesday sentenced Robert Telles to serve at least 28 years for the September 2022 murder of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German.
A jury had found Telles guilty of murder in August and sentenced the former official to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 20 years.
The judge on Wednesday invoked sentencing enhancements for elements including use of a deadly weapon, lying in wait and the age of the reporter to add eight years to the minimum 20-year sentence that the jury had set.
At the trial, Telles, 47, denied stabbing German to death. But evidence against him was strong – including his DNA beneath German’s fingernails.
At the time, Telles was the elected administrator of a county office that handles unclaimed estate and probate property cases. He has been jailed without bail since his arrest several days after the attack.
Telles’s defense attorney, Robert Draskovich, has said Telles intends to appeal his conviction.
German was 69. He was a respected reporter who spent 44 years covering crime, courts and corruption in Las Vegas.
Telles lost his primary for a second term in office after German’s stories in May and June 2022 described turmoil and bullying at the office Telles led, as well as a romantic relationship between Telles and a female employee. Telles’s law license was suspended following his arrest.
German was murdered on 2 September 2022 outside his home in Las Vegas. Police sought public help to identify a person captured on neighborhood security video driving a maroon SUV and walking while wearing a broad straw hat that hid his face and an oversized orange long-sleeve shirt.
Telles was arrested a few days after. At the trial, prosecutor Pamela Weckerly showed footage of the person wearing orange slipping into the side yard where German was stabbed, slashed and left dead.
Prosecutors detailed how police found a maroon SUV and cut-up pieces of a straw hat and a gray athletic shoe which looked like those worn by the person seen on neighborhood video at Telles’s house. Authorities did not find the orange long-sleeve shirt or a murder weapon.
Telles testified for several rambling hours at his trial, admitting for the first time that reports of the office romance were true. He denied killing German and said he was “framed” by a broad conspiracy involving a real estate company, police, DNA analysts, former co-workers and others. He told the jury he was victimized for crusading to root out corruption.
“I am not the kind of person who would stab someone. I didn’t kill Mr German,” Telles said. “And that’s my testimony.”
But prosecutors had other evidence incriminating Telles – including his DNA under German’s fingernails.
Telles told the jury he took a walk and went to a gym at the time German was killed. But evidence showed Telles’s wife sent text messages to him about the same time German was killed asking, “Where are you?” Prosecutors said Telles left his cellphone at home so he couldn’t be tracked.
The jury deliberated nearly 12 hours over three days before finding Telles guilty. The panel heard pained sentencing hearing testimony from German’s brother and two sisters, along with emotional pleas for leniency from Telles’s wife, ex-wife and mother, before deciding that Telles could be eligible for parole.
German was the only journalist killed in the US in 2022, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The non-profit has records of 17 media workers killed in the US since 1992.
Katherine Jacobsen, the US, Canada and Caribbean program coordinator at the committee, said in August that Telles’s conviction sent “an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated”.
Glenn Cook, the executive editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said in a statement shortly after Telles’s guilty verdict in August that Telles “could have joined the long line of publicly shamed Nevada politicians who’ve gone on with their lives, out of the spotlight or back in it. Instead, he carried out a premeditated revenge killing with terrifying savagery.
“Today also brought a measure of justice for slain journalists all over the world,” Cook added. “Our jobs are increasingly risky and sometimes dangerous. In many countries, the killers of journalists go unpunished. Not so in Las Vegas.”
