Former public official Robert Telles sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of the 2022 murder of Jeff German.

A Las Vegas politician has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of an investigative journalist who wrote articles critical of misconduct within the department he led.

Robert Telles, a former Democratic public official, lay in wait outside the suburban home of 69-year-old reporter Jeff German and then stabbed him to death on September 2, 2022.

“Justice has been served,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told reporters.

“Today’s verdict must send a message, and that message is a clear message that any attempt to silence the media or to silence or intimidate a journalist will not be tolerated.”

Telles, 47, bowed his head as a clerk read the verdict of first-degree murder, which carried a possible sentence of life in prison without parole. He was later sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 20 years.

In the public gallery, German’s family members cried and hugged each other. Employees from the Clark County Public Administrator’s office, some of whom German had asked to investigate Telles, hugged each other and wiped away tears, all wearing red shirts and badges bearing the reporter’s face.

“Jeff was killed because he did the kind of work he was proud of: His reporting held an elected official accountable for bad behavior and gave voters the power to choose someone else for the job,” Glenn Cook, editor in chief of Germany’s newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said in a statement.

“In many countries, murderers of journalists go unpunished,” Cook added. “That is not the case in Las Vegas.”

DNA evidence ‘insurmountable’

The two-week trial argued how the veteran Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter spent months investigating allegations that Telles oversaw an abusive workplace and had an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.

The article was published in June 2022, a month before the elections in which Telles was running for a new term. He denied the allegations, but lost his re-election bid in the primaries.

The jury of seven women and five men heard how Telles drove angrily to German’s home, where he hid in the bushes before carrying out a savage and fatal knife attack.

Telles’ DNA was found under German’s fingernails and video footage of the attacker’s car matched a vehicle registered to Telles’ wife.

He denied committing the murder, saying that police had ignored evidence suggesting other people could have been responsible and that he had been framed.

Las Vegas defense attorney Robert Langford, who was not involved in the case, said the DNA evidence found under German’s fingernails was “an insurmountable piece of evidence.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 15 media workers have been killed in the United States in connection with their work since 1992.

According to data from the press group, German was the only journalist murdered in the US in 2022. A total of 69 media workers and journalists were murdered worldwide.

“The conviction sends an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s US, Canada and Caribbean coordinator.