When Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German was murdered in September 2022, he became the ninth U.S. journalist to be murdered in connection with their work in 30 years.
German is much more than a statistic, though.
In “The Last Story: The Murder of an Investigative Journalist In Las Vegas (WildBlue Press), German’s colleague Arthur Kane delves into the reporter’s professional life, the police investigation into his death, and the evolution of Las Vegas and news media over recent decades.
“It was important to me to get the story out there,” said Kane, an award-winning investigative journalist who worked at The Denver Post for seven years. “As far as we can tell, the last time a public government official was accused or convicted of killing a journalist was in the ’40s in Texas when a [deputy] sheriff killed a radio reporter who was digging into some of his properties he was running brothels out of.”
“We talk about threats all over the world to journalists, but a lot of times people don’t realize it happens here.”
German was 69 when he was fatally stabbed outside his Las Vegas home. He spent four decades working as a reporter there, covering everything from the mob to corrupt politicians. Police allege former Clark County public administrator Robert Telles killed German as retribution for an article he wrote, based on staff interviews, about the “hostile work environment” Telles’ created and an inappropriate relationship he had with a coworker.
A month after the story published, Telles lost a primary for re-election.
His arrest soon after the murder shocked many of German’s colleagues since the articles weren’t among the journalist’s most forceful or impactful. They didn’t expect any serious fallout from what he wrote about Telles, a low-level government official. (After all, German had once been sucker-punched by a mobster.)
“We didn’t think anything of it,” said Kane, who joined the Review-Journal in 2016 and is currently the investigations editor. “There was nothing to indicate that this would be anything different than a politician trying to cover up for things he did wrong in office and blaming the messenger for it.”
“The Last Story” is not just about German’s tragic death, though. It covers much of the newspaperman’s life, homing in on his career, from covering organized crime in Sin City at the Las Vegas Sun — which led him to host the second season of the “Mobbed Up” podcast — to major court trials to questionable actions by government personnel.
Kane doesn’t gloss over the negative moments of German’s career, either; he describes some questionable ethical decisions and calls out some of his colleague’s more arrogant moments. “I [set out to] try and paint the most accurate picture of his life, what happened and what kind of city Las Vegas is away from the Strip, this level of conflict that [German] lived through for 40 years of his life here,” said Kane. “Jeff’s life mirrored a lot of really interesting times in Vegas.”
Kane sometimes gets a little lost in the details of those times, inundating the reader with names and meticulous narrations. But “The Last Story” also paints a larger picture through its exploration of Las Vegas’ underbelly, its exploration of the state of contemporary journalism and the struggle to continue doing the kind of hard-hitting investigating work to which German and Kane devoted their careers.
German’s killing has also raised intriguing questions about a free press — chiefly, whether a journalist’s sources remain protected after death. Information gleaned from German’s personal devices (the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department seized his cellphone, four personal computers and a hard drive after the murder) are an ongoing question despite the Nevada Supreme Court ruling in October that the state’s shield law that protects journalists from being forced to disclose sources remains intact in death. More than 40 news organizations filed a brief asking the judge not to allow police to access German’s electronic devices.
Review-Journal employees recently finished reviewing those gadgets and logging what they consider to be privileged information not relevant to the case; they’re expected to turn over more than 1,000 items to prosecutors.
Telles’ murder trial has been postponed until early August. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in jail without bail. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Kane said he and German used to joke to one another about watching their backs after sensitive stories were published. They’d ask the other journalist to investigate and write about it if a source did come after them. It was, Kane said, “gallows humor.” But it took on a more serious bent after German’s death: Kane had last seen him in person a week earlier, after Telles had lost his re-election and the two journalists recited the same old shtick.
“In a way, I’m keeping a promise to Jeff,” Kane said of the book. “I feel obligated to do what we talked about even if it was joking.”
“The Last Story”
Author: Arthur Kane
Pages: 286
Publisher: WildBlue Press
Daliah Singer is a freelance writer.
