{"id":329084,"date":"2024-08-28T19:01:59","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T00:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=329084"},"modified":"2024-08-29T10:23:21","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T15:23:21","slug":"former-las-vegas-official-found-guilty-of-murdering-journalist-who-investigated-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/former-las-vegas-official-found-guilty-of-murdering-journalist-who-investigated-him\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE: Former Las Vegas Official Sentenced for Murdering Journalist Who Investigated Him"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>UPDATE:<\/em><\/strong> Former Las Vegas elected official Robert Telles was sentenced on Wednesday evening to life in a Nevada Department of Corrections facility with eligibility for parole after 20 years.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong><em>EARLIER:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Robert Telles, the former Clark County Public Administrator, was found guilty Wednesday of murdering investigative reporter Jeff German. Telles, 47, had pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon against a victim 60 or older in German&#8217;s 2022 stabbing death. German was a veteran Las Vegas journalist who wrote articles critical of Telles\u2019 professional conduct.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_329085\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-329085\" data-style=\"width: 1093px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-329085\" src=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/telles-main-858x605.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1093\" height=\"771\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/telles-main-858x605.jpg 858w, https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/telles-main-430x303.jpg 430w, https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/telles-main.jpg 1111w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1093px) 100vw, 1093px\" \/><figcaption  id=\"caption-attachment-329085\"class=\"text-description\">Former elected Las Vegas official Robert Telles hangs his head while listening to jurors announce his fate on Wednesday. (Image: <em>CourtTV<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 12 hours before delivering the verdict at noon. This followed eight days of damning testimony from the prosecution, and an almost never-seen defense tactic undertaken by Telles.<\/p>\n<p>Ignoring the advice of his counsel, Telles &#8212; a former attorney, though not a criminal one &#8212; took the stand in his own defense for three days. Even more unusually, instead of having his attorneys question him, Telles testified by narrative &#8212; something that can happen if defense attorneys believe the testimony their client is presenting is false.<\/p>\n<div class=\"callout\">\n<p>Telles claimed he was framed. He claimed that a Las Vegas company called Compass Reality, whom Telles said he battled in the course of his job duties to expose corruption, arranged for German\u2019s murder just to get Telles to stop investigating the company even though German was murdered after Telles was voted out of office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Other than skin with Telles&#8217; DNA found underneath German&#8217;s fingernails, the most damning evidence was a photo of a text sent to Telles from his wife from her Apple Watch.<\/p>\n<p>It read, \u201cWhere are you?\u201d It was sent at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>This is almost the exact time that security footage presented earlier in the trial showed a maroon SUV resembling Telles\u2019 being driven near German\u2019s house by a man, wearing an orange outfit and a straw hat, whom even Telles referred to several times as German\u2019s killer.<\/p>\n<p>Telles conceded that as the owner of the phone, he could have deleted the text, though he didn&#8217;t admit to doing so.<\/p>\n<h2>German&#8217;s Newspaper Speaks<\/h2>\n<p>Glenn Cook, executive editor of the <em>Las Vegas Review-Journal,<\/em> for which German worked at the time of his murder, released the following statement after the verdict was read \u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"main-blockquote\"><p>Today a Clark County jury delivered a measure of justice for Jeff German, and we hope it brings some solace to his family, friends, and colleagues. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cRobert Telles could have joined the long line of publicly shamed Nevada politicians who\u2019ve gone on with their lives, out of the spotlight or back in it. Instead, he carried out a premeditated revenge killing with terrifying savagery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday also brought a measure of justice for slain journalists all over the world. Our jobs are increasingly risky and sometimes dangerous. In many countries, the killers of journalists go unpunished. Not so in Las Vegas. Our thanks to police and prosecutors, whose diligent work won this conviction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s also remember that this community has lost much more than a trusted journalist. Jeff was a good man who left behind a family who loved him and friends who cherished him. His murder remains an outrage. He is missed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE: Former Las Vegas elected official Robert Telles was sentenced on Wednesday evening to life in a Nevada Department of Corrections facility with eligibility for parole after 20 years. EARLIER:\u00a0Robert Telles, the former Clark County Public Administrator, was found guilty Wednesday of murdering investigative reporter Jeff German. Telles, 47, had pleaded not guilty to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":329085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,81886],"tags":[82727,23,82729,82002,82726,13692],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>UPDATE: Former Las Vegas Official Sentenced for Murdering Journalist Who Investigated Him - Casino.org<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UPDATE: Former Las Vegas elected official Robert Telles was sentenced on Wednesday evening to life in a Nevada Department of Corrections facility with\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/former-las-vegas-official-found-guilty-of-murdering-journalist-who-investigated-him\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"UPDATE: Former Las Vegas Official Sentenced for Murdering Journalist Who Investigated Him - 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