A Las Vegas politician has been jailed for life for killing an investigative journalist who wrote critical articles detailing wrongdoing in the department he headed.

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

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

“Today’s verdict should send a message, and that message is a clear message that any attempts 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 life sentence without parole. He was later sentenced to life with a minimum term of 20 years.

In the public gallery, German’s family members wept and hugged one another. Employees from the Clark County public administrator’s office, some of whom had asked German to investigate Telles, embraced and wiped away tears, all wearing red shirts and badges showing the reporter’s face.

“Jeff was killed for doing the kind of work in which he took great pride: His reporting held an elected official accountable for bad behaviour and empowered voters to choose someone else for the job,” Glenn Cook, executive editor of German’s newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said in a statement.

“In many countries, the killers of journalists go unpunished,” Cook added. “Not so in Las Vegas.”

Telles was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 20 years [KM Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP Photo]

DNA evidence ‘insurmountable’

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

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

The jury of seven women and five men heard how an irate Telles had driven to German’s home where he hid in some bushes before launching a frenzied and fatal knife attack.

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

He denied carrying out the murder, arguing that the police had ignored evidence that other people could have been responsible and that he had been framed.

Las Vegas defence lawyer Robert Langford, who was not involved in the case, said the DNA evidence under German’s fingernails was “an insurmountable bit of evidence”.

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

German was the only journalist murdered in the US in 2022, among 69 media workers and journalists killed worldwide, according to the press group’s data.

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