Editor’s note: Due to broad public interest in this subject, this story has been made available outside the newspaper’s paywall as a public service by Cascadia Daily News.
Slain investigative reporter Jeff German was tough.
He encountered angry phone calls, deflated tires and a busted windshield — even getting sucker punched in the face. All because of the watchdog stories he pursued over decades in Las Vegas.
The dogged reporter considered the punch and resulting stitches a “badge of honor.” For more than 40 years, he produced stories on organized crime, local government corruption, 2017’s mass shooting at Mandalay Bay, school whistleblowers, lax enforcement leading to a fatal fire and FBI investigations.
As Assistant Managing Editor/Investigations at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, I was lucky enough to be Jeff’s editor for three years.
He had a knack for developing close, trusted relationships with sources and never revealed their identities unless they agreed. It’s the heart of investigative reporting.
No one ever envisioned Jeff’s life being taken by an obscure elected county official. Police and a jury found former Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles stabbed Jeff to death months after a series of stories were published exposing allegations of Telles’ toxic behavior and a county office in turmoil with employees complaining of bullying and retaliation. He also was having an affair with a subordinate, caught on a secret video. Telles lost the primary as a result.
Jeff, 69, was ambushed and brutally murdered outside his home on Sept. 2, 2022. His body was found the next day.
Jeff was the senior reporter on my investigative team and in the two years since his death, his colleagues, and the sources for those stories, still deal with the associated trauma. It resonates across an industry that increasingly faces threats for seeking the truth and exposing wrongdoing. Daily, we are aware many members of the public don’t understand our role in society. We face hostility, refusals to provide essential records and interviews, and a lack of trust in our core mission.
I was in the Las Vegas courtroom last Monday for closing arguments in Telles’ murder trial. I felt compelled to be there to represent Jeff in a small way. Twelve members of Jeff’s family were in attendance, the first time they appeared in public. The setting was tense and seats for observers were limited in the small courtroom.
After waiting, I got the last chair and talked to strangers beside me during a break. A young Wynn Las Vegas resort personal shopper told me it was his day off and he had been fascinated by the case. A woman to my right was a retired public official who came from California to watch.
“I had to see it in person,” she said, adding she was appalled at Jeff’s death. A jury found Telles, 47, guilty Wednesday, Aug. 28, and sentenced him to 20 years to life in prison.
I take threats more seriously since Jeff’s death. I am more aware of safety precautions for our Bellingham newsroom staff, too. We are careful when making assignments, our building has safety options, and we are aware of who is physically around us. But the fear is never completely gone.
When Telles posted angry social media posts and a detailed complaint letter on his campaign website about the reporting, I was concerned, but Jeff told me, “Don’t worry about it, I’ve had much worse than that.”
I was worried about a legal threat, not a death threat.
The murder of a journalist is incredibly rare in the United States, but unfortunately more common in countries where protections don’t exist for truth-seekers. Other newsrooms have experienced the tragic loss of colleagues: in 2018, five journalists were killed in a mass shooting inside the Capital Gazette newsroom in Maryland by a man enraged about the reporting in an article.
Jeff’s murder led to our RJ team doubling down on investigating Telles and his background. We resolved to continue his work, even though we all felt fear in the first days after his death until an arrest was made. We changed our routes to work and started carrying personal protection devices. Sources were afraid to meet us at the newspaper’s office, thinking they were being watched or someone would shoot them if they came to meet us.
The women in the county office had turned to Jeff — a trusted journalist — thinking they could finally get the help they sought for two years. The employees said Jeff was their last hope: the county indicated nothing could be done because Telles was an elected official.
Aleisha Goodwin, Jeff’s main source on the county investigation, said when she first reached out to Jeff, she couldn’t believe such a well-known journalist would even listen to their story.
“Jeff not only listened, he jumped into an investigation with both feet and exposed the evil person that had abused and degraded a group of women in our office for the previous two-plus years,” Goodwin said to me in a text message Thursday. “Jeff spent countless hours speaking to us, checking in on us, giving us hope for the first time after years of living hell.”
Another source, Noraine Pagdanganan, told me, “[Jeff] believed in me and most importantly, he respected my wish to remain anonymous until I was ready. For me, Jeff was hope personified.”
The investigative team’s determination to honor Jeff by carrying on his reporting provided us with a purpose. That singular focus helped us deal with our grief and anger. For months, our priority was investigating Jeff’s death, and finishing the stories he had started. We published more than a dozen stories, including a detailed look at Telles’ brazen pattern of toxic and bizarre behavior going back a decade.
Many women told us they still were afraid of Telles years later. It took weeks to gain the trust of some sources and I’m deeply proud of the work produced under the most difficult circumstances.
Jeff’s work lives on and that’s what should be remembered from the tragedy — not the obscure county manager who killed him out of anger. His sources told me Jeff will always be remembered as a hero and friend. “We miss his calls and words of caution and encouragement every day,” one said.
I was honored and inspired to work alongside Jeff and I can say with assurance he never thought about retiring. His work fueled him and it changed lives. The loss of his reporting is immeasurable, but to others, it’s the greater loss of him as a friend, brother and uncle.
I’d give anything to again see or hear Jeff’s words, “Call me.” That was a message he had something big brewing.
My former RJ colleague, Steve Sebelius, said it best: Jeff will never be replaced but the work he did must go on. It will take all of us to do that.
Rhonda Prast has served as managing editor at Cascadia Daily News since August 2023; reach her at rhondaprast@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 112.
Editor’s note: To support investigative journalism, the nonprofit Investigative Editors and Reporters (IRE) established a scholarship in Jeff German’s name to help train young journalists. You can donate here at www.ire.org/donate.
