Ex-politician tells a Nevada jury he didn’t kill a Las Vegas investigative reporter
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A former Las Vegas-area politician standing trial for the killing of an investigative reporter who wrote articles critical of him spent a rambling final hour speaking for himself on the witness stand Thursday before abruptly ending his testimony with a declaration that he never killed anyone.
“I am not the kind of person who would stab someone. I would never beat anybody up,” Robert Telles told the jury on his second day of testimony in his trial in the death of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German. He said he went for a walk and to a membership gym during the time on Sept. 2, 2022, that trial evidence and testimony has shown that German was killed.
“I didn’t kill Mr. German,” Telles said. “And that’s my testimony.”
Telles, a former Democratic administrator of a Clark County office that handles unclaimed estates, has spent almost two years in jail since his arrest in German’s killing. He faces the possibility of life in prison if he is convicted of murder with a deadly weapon.
Prosecutors allege Telles killed German because German had authored articles for the Review-Journal about a county office in turmoil under Telles’ leadership, including allegations that Telles had an inappropriate relationship with a female coworker.
Prosecutors Pamela Weckerly and Christopher Hamner asked for a break in proceedings Thursday to prepare for a cross-examination that could prove crucial to the case. Defense attorney Robert Draskovich said that he did not plan to call any additional witnesses.
Telles told the jury on Wednesday he had been framed by a political and social “old guard” real estate network for trying to fight corruption in his office.
“All I knew was that something funny was going on,” Telles said after being allowed by the judge to testify by “narration” instead of the usual question-and-answer format led by his defense attorney. Telles described his elected office role as “trying to stop someone from stealing equity” by preventing “unscrupulous real estate agents from trying to work the system.”
“Somebody framed me for this,” he declared, without saying who that was. “How Mr. German was murdered … speaks to, I think, something or someone who knows what they’re doing. You know, the idea that Mr. German’s throat was slashed and his heart was stabbed … that’s some kind of expertise. I mean, and I’m not, I’m personally not combat trained.”
Weckerly and Hamner rested the prosecution’s case Monday after four days, 28 witnesses and hundreds of pages of photos, police reports and video evidence.
Telles, 47, was an attorney who practiced civil law before he was elected in 2018. His law license was suspended following his arrest several days after German was slashed and stabbed to death outside his home. No family members have been called as character witnesses on Telles’ behalf.
German, 69, was a respected journalist who spent 44 years covering crime, courts and corruption for the Las Vegas Sun and the Review-Journal. About 10 of his family members and friends have attended the trial. They declined again Thursday to speak to the media.
On Wednesday, an athletic club manager testified that records showed Telles’ membership was used to check in at a Las Vegas location just after noon the day German was killed. But he also said video of guests arriving and departing at that time was no longer available.
Earlier, a cellphone data expert testifying in Telles’ defense conceded during questioning by a prosecutor that Telles’ phone showed no outgoing activity from 8:48 a.m. to 2:05 p.m. that day — the period in which evidence has shown German was killed.
Police and prosecutors have said they think Telles left his phone at home.
Telles told jurors Thursday he had the phone “all day,” and didn’t feel the need to respond to every text, voice or data message.
Evidence has shown that Telles’ DNA was found beneath German’s fingernails and that Telles had family ties to a maroon SUV seen in German’s neighborhood about the time German was killed.
Police found on Telles’ cellphone and computer hundreds of photos of German’s home and several pages of German’s identity records, including time stamps showing they’d been collected just weeks before the killing.
At Telles’ house, police found cut-up pieces of a broad straw hat and a gray athletic shoe that looked like those worn by a person captured on neighborhood security video wearing an oversized orange long-sleeve shirt, carrying a big cloth satchel and slipping into a side yard of German’s home before the reporter was ambushed and left dead in a pool of blood.
“I did not cut up shoes. I did not cut up a hat,” Telles said on the witness stand Thursday. “I did not kill Mr. German.”