The trial of a Las Vegas-area politician accused of killing an investigative reporter who wrote articles critical of him will take center stage in Nevada on Monday, with jury selection scheduled to start in a case that stunned the city and the world of journalism. “It turned everything upside down,” Tom Pitaro, a veteran Las Vegas defense attorney, said of the death of reporter Jeff German, who for 44 years developed deep confidential sources in the city, its government and its courthouses. Pitaro also taught Robert Telles, the public official accused of killing German, in law school about a decade ago at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Associated Press reports. “When you have an office-holder, a respected journalist, and the kind of killing it was, I think people are in shock about how this could come about,” Pitaro said. The killing on Labor Day weekend 2022 drew widespread attention. German, 69, became the only journalist killed in the U.S. among at least 67 news media workers slain worldwide that year, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Originally from Milwaukee, German was widely respected for reporting about courts, organized crime, government corruption, political scandals and mass shootings, first at the Las Vegas Sun and then at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Prosecutors say articles that he wrote in early 2022 about Telles and a county office in turmoil were a motive for the killing. German was found slashed and stabbed to death in a side yard outside his home where Telles is accused in a criminal complaint of “lying in wait” for German to come outside. Telles, 47, was arrested days later, after police circulated video of a person wearing an orange work shirt and a wide-brim, straw hat toting a shoulder bag and walking toward German’s home. Police also released images of a distinctive maroon SUV like one that a Review-Journal photographer saw Telles washing outside his home several days after the killing. Telles grew up in El Paso, Texas, and lived in Colorado before moving to Las Vegas. He became a lawyer in 2015 and ran as a Democrat in 2018 to become Clark County administrator of estates. He lost his elected position after his arrest and his law license was suspended. He has pleaded not guilty to open murder and could face life in prison if convicted. He has remained jailed while preparing to face a jury.
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