Subscribe to HuffPost’s true crime newsletter, Suspicious Circumstances, to get captivating cases, unsolved mysteries and courtroom drama delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here . The peculiar circumstances surrounding the killing of a tenacious Las Vegas investigative reporter culminated in an even more bizarre trial this month for the disgruntled county official charged with his murder.
Former Clark County public administrator Robert Telles, 47, was accused of fatally stabbing Jeff German, 69, outside his home on Sept. 2, 2022, after the journalist wrote a series of articles for the Las Vegas Review-Journal about alleged misconduct in Telles’ office. After its publication, Telles lost his reelection bid and feared that the release of his emails and text messages with several officials, which German was about to receive via a public records request, would further damage his career and reputation.
The killing sent shockwaves among journalists nationwide, which Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo acknowledged at a news conference following Telles’ arrest six days later. “This is a terrible and jarring homicide, one that has deeply impacted Las Vegas. Every murder is tragic, but the killing of a journalist is particularly troublesome,” Lombardo said.
Telles pleaded not guilty and claimed he was framed for the murder. Against the advice of his attorney, he took the stand in his defense last week and spun a tale of a hired killer wearing an improbable disguise and driving a car exactly like his. He did not offer an explanation for how investigators found his DNA under the fingernails of the victim.
The Alleged Motive On May 16, 2022, German published an article headlined “County Office in Turmoil With Secret Video and Claims of Bullying, Hostility,” detailing staff members’ complaints of a hostile work environment under Telles during his time as the public administrator. Telles, an attorney who had previously focused on civil litigation, was elected to the position in 2018, overseeing an office that handled unclaimed estates and other probate cases in the county. German’s investigation also exposed what current and former staff members described as an “inappropriate relationship” Telles had with his subordinate, Roberta Lee-Kennett.
Telles’ employees also provided German with a video they had secretly filmed of the two, both married, in the backseat of her car in a parking garage. German’s story included a video clip of the woman straightening her dress as the two emerge separately from the car, as well as an interview German conducted with Telles at his office. Following German’s exposé, Telles, a Democrat, lost the primary election in June 2022, which meant he would lose his job at the end of that year.
German continued to write about Telles, noting his combative behavior toward staff members after he lost the election. Telles railed against German’s reporting and attacked him personally on social media and in a letter he posted on his campaign website titled, “ Addressing the False Claims Against Me .” He described the article as “intentionally gut-wrenching” and “ugly.
” He accused his employees of lying but said their claims were probably persuasive because of “the writer’s skill at pushing buttons.” At 5:45 p.m.
on Sept. 1, 2022, Telles was notified that German would soon receive the results of a public records request for all communications between Telles and Lee-Kennett, including messages on their cellphones. German was killed the next morning.
The Killing German, whose journalism career in Las Vegas spanned four decades, was killed in broad daylight outside his one-story house on a quiet cul-de-sac 10 miles northwest of the Las Vegas Strip. Footage from a neighbor’s doorbell camera across the street, later obtained by investigators and played for jurors, captured the attack, which occurred at around 11:20 a.m.
on Sept. 2, 2022. In the video, a man, whom prosecutors identified as Telles, is seen in an unmissable orange long-sleeve construction shirt with reflective stripes and a giant sun hat strolling up German’s driveway to the side of the house and disappearing behind the bushes.
At about 11:21 a.m., German’s garage opens, and he walks outside, heading toward the spot where prosecutors said the man in the orange shirt was “lying in wait.
” The blurry video shows German approach the side gate when it opens and the man comes out. There appears to be a tussle, lasting less than two minutes before the man in orange emerges from the other side of the bushes and walks casually back to the sidewalk and past German’s open garage. German was not seen again on the video.
Neighbors discovered his body in the side yard around 10:30 a.m. the following day.
The Clark County coroner ruled his death a homicide , saying he had died from multiple sharp-force injuries. The medical examiner who performed German’s autopsy testified that he had been stabbed 13 times in his neck and torso. German also had cuts on his hands and arm consistent with defensive wounds, she said.
The Peculiar Suspect In addition to the neighbor’s doorbell camera, investigators obtained video footage from dozens of cameras throughout the area that captured the man in the orange shirt and a maroon GMC Yukon Denali on the morning of Sept. 2. The Yukon, noticeable because all its windows were tinted except in the front, left Telles’ home, less than six miles from German’s house, at around 9:12 a.
m. The Yukon was captured at 10:26 a.m.
, a few blocks from German’s house. Between 10:48 a.m.
and 10:54 a.m., it was seen driving around a nearby street.
By 11:01 a.m., it was parked about a block away from German’s house.
After the man in orange’s encounter with German around 11:20 a.m., cameras captured him returning to the SUV.
Inexplicably, the Yukon returned to German’s house, parked in front, and the man in orange walked over to the side of the house where German’s body lay. He disappeared for about 30 seconds behind the bushes before he emerged and returned to the car. The Yukon is then seen returning to Telles’ neighborhood at about 11:51 a.
m. On Sept. 5, three days after the killing, Las Vegas police shared two surveillance photos of the suspect.
Although temperatures were approaching 110 degrees that day, he was largely covered with black gloves, black pants and gray Nike sneakers in addition to the long-sleeve orange work shirt. A large blueish-gray bag with dark straps on its side was slung over his right shoulder. The brim of his straw hat was so wide that it grazed his shoulders and concealed his face.
Even so, his gait was so distinctive that two former colleagues of Telles recognized it as him. They contacted police the next day after authorities released photos of the Yukon, which the coworkers were sure was the same color, make and model of an SUV they’d seen Telles drive. A jury is now deliberating in the case.
If convicted, he faces a sentence of life in prison. Evidence Collection After learning about his vocal criticism of German and receiving the tips, police zeroed in on Telles as a suspect. Investigators obtained warrants for his home, phone and person, photographing a nasty cut on his left fingertip.
They also obtained his DNA, which police said matched DNA obtained from German’s fingernail clippings. Underneath a couch at Telles’ home, investigators said they found a gray Nike shoe that resembled those worn by the assailant and its companion shoe — which had been cut in half. A Ziploc baggie next to it contained bits and pieces of the remaining shoe.
In a bin in the garage, prosecutors said, investigators found a gray commuter-style bag that looked identical to the one the suspect was carrying. At the bottom of a tool cabinet, they said they found a plastic grocery bag containing what was left of a straw hat matching the one worn by the attacker. It had been cut into five large pieces.
The orange shirt and other clothes seen in the surveillance footage of the suspect were never found — nor was the murder weapon. When investigators analyzed Telles’ phone, they said they found that he had searched Google Maps for German’s address, and a phone extraction showed pictures of German’s house. Telles claimed that on the morning of the killing, he went for a walk and to the gym and simply ignored several texts and calls.
Prosecutors alleged that he actually left his phone at home to prevent police from later tracking his location. A text from his wife at 10:30 a.m.
asking, “Where are you?” had been deleted from both his phone and his wife’s, but police said they later recovered it from his wife’s iPhone. Telles offered no explanation for the discrepancy. A digital forensics laboratory supervisor for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department testified that on Aug.
12, 2022, just weeks before German was killed, more than 130 images were downloaded on Telles’ phone from Google Maps showing the reporter’s house, including the side yard where his body was found, and the cul-de-sac where he lived. Telles’ phone also contained more than 100 downloaded images of German, prosecutors said. When police arrived to arrest him on Sept.
7, 2022 , Telles refused to leave his home. A SWAT team moved in after authorities said he was threatening to harm himself. He was transported to the hospital after authorities said he was suffering from non-life-threatening self-inflicted wounds.
He has been in jail for the past two years since his arrest. Telles’ Bizarre Testimony Against the advice of his attorney, Telles took the stand in his own defense. Instead of a typical question-and-answer format, the judge allowed Telles to testify in a narrative style — so he shared his story with the jury uninterrupted.
Over three days of bizarre, rambling testimony, Telles was preternaturally calm as he claimed that he had been framed for the murder by a real estate company he had accused of wrongdoing. He insisted that a hired assassin was responsible for German’s killing and that evidence against him had been planted — by his enemies or “overzealous” police officers. The killer had even driven a car exactly like his, he claimed, to further incriminate him.
Telles acknowledged he had been having an affair, and he said that German’s articles and his reelection loss were a “bummer.” But, he said, he would never kill the journalist. Although he was innocent, he said he had tried to kill himself for his family to collect on his life insurance policy and spare them from the “circus” surrounding his arrest.
At one point, he inexplicably took off his shoe to show jurors that he wore custom lifts to make himself appear taller. That proved, he said obliquely, that he would never wear shoes like the attacker’s Nikes, which couldn’t accommodate the lifts — even though police found the shoes hidden at his home. During cross-examination, Telles struggled to explain how his DNA had been found beneath German’s fingernails — which he did not address during his narrative testimony.
The prosecutor also grilled him about why, if he was being framed, the murder weapon was not found in his home and why a hired assassin would parade around the neighborhood in broad daylight in a clownish disguise that only drew attention to himself and was easy for investigators to spot when reviewing surveillance cameras in the area. “How Mr. German was murdered .
.. speaks to, I think, something or someone who knows what they’re doing,” Telles insisted on the stand.
But he acknowledged that the man in orange captured in the surveillance footage must have been the killer. The jury has been scheduled to continue deliberations on Wednesday. If convicted, he faces a sentence of life in prison.
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