Las Vegas police searched the home of a local Democrat official in connection to the stabbing murder of widely respected investigative reporter Jeff German.
On Wednesday, police executed a search warrant at the home of Robert Telles, the public administrator of Clark County, Nevada. Telles lost his primary election in June after reporting by German cast a negative light on the county’s management.
Law enforcement searched the property around 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning and cordoned off a portion of Telles’s residence, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A vehicle that police believe is connected to the killing was seen at Telles’ home by Review-Journal reporters.
Authorities have said that they believe the killing to be connected to an altercation between German and an unknown person on Friday. The suspected killer, who was wearing an orange construction vest and wide-brim straw hat, may have been casing the neighborhood for future crimes, according to police.
Earlier this year, German reported on several scandals impacting the city under Telles’s management. German broke a story in May revealing that several current and former employees alleged Telles had created a “hostile work environment.”
The report also said city workers claimed that Telles had an “inappropriate” relationship with staffer Roberta Lee-Kennet. Footage given to German and published by the Journal-Review showed the two, both married, meeting in the backseat of a vehicle.
Though he said he was friends with the Lee-Kennet, Telles dismissed the accusations as coming from disgruntled “old-timers.”
“They are unhappy with the way the office has been taken out of their control,” he said at the time. “All my new employees are super-happy and everyone’s productive and doing well. We’ve almost doubled the productivity in the office.”
Telles partly blamed the report for his third-place finish in the Democratic primary election. During German’s reporting on the alleged scandals surrounding Telles, the incumbent public administrator accused the veteran reporter of smearing him.
German, 69 at the time of his death, had a 40-year-career in journalism. He broke major stories about the mafia and political corruption while reporting for multiple Las Vegas outlets.
In recent years, he wrote several exclusive stories about the October 2017 country music festival shooting that left 60 people dead and more than 400 injured, including reports about the failure of officials to maintain safety protocols for casinos and details about the gunman shooting at two jet fuel tanks in the festival area.