Robert Telles (center) listens in court with his attorneys Robert Draskovich (right) and Michael Horvath prior to jury selection on the second day of his murder trial at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. Telles, a former Clark County public official, is charged with the murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German.

KM Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool

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KM Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool

Two years ago, Las Vegas was shocked by the brutal stabbing of one of the city’s best-known journalists, Jeff German. That shock was compounded when police arrested an elected county official. Now, a jury has found that former official, Robert Telles, guilty of first-degree murder.

Telles was then the Clark County Public Administrator, whose office oversees the disposition and transfer of the assets of deceased persons in the absence of a surviving relative or valid executor. But he lost his bid for re-election in the June 2022 Democratic primary after the Las Vegas Review-Journal published articles critical of him. The articles alleged that he had had a romantic relationship with a subordinate and had created a “hostile” work environment.

German, the veteran investigative journalist behind these stories, continued to request public documents from Telles’ office even after his primary defeat, which prosecutors say was when Telles decided to kill German.

“He killed him because Jeff’s writing was destroying his career, destroying his reputation, probably threatening his marriage and exposing things that he himself admitted he didn’t want the public to know,” Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner said in court. “And he did it because Jeff wasn’t done writing.”

German was stabbed to death outside his Las Vegas home on September 2, 2022. Shortly before that, surveillance footage captured a person wearing an orange work shirt or vest and a large straw hat walking toward German’s home, and police later found a cut-up straw hat in Telles’ home. They also found evidence that Telles had “checked” the address with online map searches, and that he had turned his phone off and was unreachable at the time of the murder.

Perhaps the most incriminating evidence was the discovery of Telles’ DNA under the murdered journalist’s fingernails.

During the two-week trial, Telles’ defense team raised doubts about the reliability of the evidence. Telles himself spoke out, saying he had been to the gym that day and that he believed the evidence against him was planted by police.

His lawyer, Robert Draskovich, suggested a less sinister theory.

“Oftentimes we — particularly law enforcement — suffer from what’s called confirmation bias,” he said during closing statements. “You reach a judgment, sometimes early in a case, and you work backwards to confirm what the judgment you reached at the beginning should be at the end.”

The defense also raised doubts about a video of a maroon SUV driving near the murder scene, which prosecutors say was identical to an SUV driven by Telles. In his closing argument, Draskovich froze the video and zoomed in on the shadowy, indistinct profile of the driver.

“What does that look like on the top of the head? I submit to you it looks like hair,” he told the jury. Telles is completely bald.

During the 12-hour deliberation, the jury asked the judge for technical assistance to zoom in on the computer footage they had been given, which contained video evidence.

When German stood up to hear the verdict, he shook his head. The jury also found the killing to be “willful, deliberate and premeditated,” “elderly abuse” and “by lying in wait,” which are special sentences under Nevada law.

German was known in Las Vegas as a sometimes “gruff” and stubborn reporter who investigated government corruption and organized crime.

“Ninety percent of his life he was a reporter,” Kane says. “Whenever I asked him, ‘When are you going to retire?’ he would say, ‘I’m not,'” Kane says. “And he didn’t.”

As for the verdict, Kane said: “The best we can hope for is that it serves as a warning to other people who decide to target journalists because of their work.”

Telles’ sentence will be determined by the jury. He faces a potential maximum sentence of life in prison.