In the terrible wake of the journalist’s murder in Las Vegas, his coworkers have disclosed how they assisted in finding the alleged perpetrator.
On Saturday morning, the body of Jeff German, 69, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was discovered outside his house.
Robert Telles, the 45-year-old public administrator for Clark County, was arrested on Wednesday night.
A red automobile that matched the police description was parked in the suspect’s driveway, according to journalists who worked with German. They discovered this after stalking the suspect’s residence on Google Maps.
The five-person crew at the newspaper immediately acted “because that’s what Jeff would have wanted us to do,” using German skills they had picked up on the job.
Later, after obtaining a search warrant, police entered the house; by Wednesday noon, his automobile had been towed.
Following a series of articles by German that revealed the commotion in his office and suggested he had an affair with a staff member, suspect Telles, a Democrat, lost his bid for reelection.
German uploaded a video of him getting out of a car with his girlfriend, and this was one of the most devastating revelations that followed.
The 45-year-old staff member Roberta Lee-Kennett can be seen lifting her skirt down as she exits the vehicle beside the official. The late investigative journalist released the tape in May.
At the scene of the deadly stabbing of a Las Vegas investigative reporter, the DNA of the now-arrested public official was discovered.
German’s coworkers said that they were just following the narrative and ‘aggressively’ trying to figure out what transpired as he had instructed them to do.
After remembering Telles’ scathing tweets directed at their deceased colleague, the reporters looked up his address online. They eventually came to the red GMC Yukon Denali that was sitting in his driveway.
They were able to take images of the suspect washing the red automobile from this location.
The Daily Beast quoted 28-year-old Briana Erickson as saying: “We’re just responding instinctively right now, aggressively trying to figure out what occurred.”
We are now able to breathe again.
By six o’clock that evening, police had returned to Telles’s house and were encircling it while he was still inside.
He was taken from the house on a stretcher and placed into an ambulance about 30 minutes later, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
She asked: “Is this person going to hurt themselves, and are we not going to get justice for Jeff?” while reporting from the scene as police apprehended Telles.
Naturally, he is presumed innocent unless proved guilty. However, the conduct is really rather frightening.
She added that “any one of us would have covered this story” in reference to the alleged affair that German allegedly disclosed while he was employed with the newspaper.
Every one of us may have, which means that every story you investigate could perhaps result in events that you weren’t expecting when you were covering it.
Since this is a possibility that, to be honest, has never really entered my thoughts before, I think it just sort of puts myself and everyone else here on alert.
The famed journalist’s colleague Michael Scott Davidson, 31, added: “We’re here to break news, get it right, because that’s what Jeff would want us to do.”
For months, Telles had been complaining about German, notably in a furious series of social media posts where he claimed that German had rummaged through his garbage and written “false smear articles” about him.
Additionally, he had a section on his campaign website titled “Truth” that specifically mentioned German by name and accused him of working with Rita Reid, another candidate for the position of Clark County Public Administrator in the Democratic primary, to fabricate negative reports about him.
One of the people who complained to German about Telles’s conduct at work and about his suspected romance with staff member Roberta Lee-Kennett was Reid, who won the election on June 16.
In addition, he said that the two were working together with John Cahill, his immediate predecessor, in an effort to “drag me through the dirt” for personal advantage.
Three days after his primary loss, on June 19, Telles sent an angry message in which he stated: “If Rita does not win, then her job will not be abandoned.”
The employee who desired her job won’t obtain it then. This individual intended to stay in that employment for three years in order to retire with a significantly greater monthly income.
Because of this, Jeff German and John Cahill may still be dragging me through the muck.
The majority of Democratic voters would have to turn against me even now, when I ought to be irrelevant, in order for Democrats to coalesce around Rita. Don’t be shocked if more articles continue to appear.
“My family and friends have been really supportive of me throughout all of these publications.”
Despite the personal attacks Jeff German and John Cahill have made against me, I have received love and support that have enabled me to continue running for re-election. I still have that love and support even if I lost.
In the affluent Peccole Ranch neighbourhood of Las Vegas, Telles lives in a $660,000 four-bedroom house with his wife Mae Ishmael, 45, and their three young children.
Police first posted photos of a guy they were looking for, who was seen with an orange high-visibility jacket and a big hat.
“The arrest of Robert Telles is at once a huge relief and an outrage for the Review-Journal journalism,” Executive Editor Glenn Cook remarked after the arrest.
“We are happy that Telles is in prison and appalled that it seems a colleague was slain for writing against an elected person.”
If journalists are worried that presenting the truth would result in violent retaliation, they won’t do the vital job that our communities need from them.