Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German was a man who lived for his job. And as it turns out, may have died for it. In September 2022, he was stabbed to death by an assailant outside his home.
German was a local legend – renowned for his reporting on infamous mobsters, crooked politicians and murderers.
“How big a list of people might have wanted Jeff dead?” “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant asked Glenn Cook, the Review-Journal’s executive editor. “That’s a line of people that runs from here to Los Angeles,” Cook replied. “This guy’s written about terrible people, who’ve done awful things for over 40 years. The worst kinds of people.”
They came up with a short list of people who may have threatened him. One of those was Clark County public administrator Robert Telles. German had written four articles about Telles’ alleged hostile behavior at the office.
German first learned about the accusations of a toxic workplace from four female Clark County employees. “[Telles] was a horrible, a horrible human being,” one of the women, Rita Reid, told Van Sant. “Monster is the right word.”
“Jeff German was guided by an innate sense of right and wrong,” said Cook. “If he knew someone was engaging in criminal activity, unethical activity, inappropriate behavior … he wanted to do that story, he wanted to bring it to light.”
After German spoke with the four women, they were relieved to find out that German would take on their story. “He did something, and he fought for us,” Goodwin said. “And he is 100 percent our hero.”
They could have never imagined that just five months after meeting him, their hero would be dead.
THE ASSASSINATION OF JEFF GERMAN
Briana Erickson: On September 2nd, 2022, it was a boiling hot late summer day in Las Vegas. And people were getting ready for the Labor Day weekend. … It was late morning when in broad daylight, something terrible happened.
As investigative journalists for the Las Vegas Review-Journal Briana Erickson and Rhonda Prast had seen a lot of bad people do a lot of bad things. But nothing came close to the Machiavellian plot to murder their friend and colleague, Jeff German.
Rhonda Prast: Jeff German was at his house, on vacation. He’d gone out to get something to eat. He came back, shut his garage door.
Rhonda Prast: You could see in the surveillance video from across the street that … Someone, an assailant, came into his yard, went to the left side of his house, went inside the gate, shut the gate.
Briana Erickson: And then we see Jeff, moments later, opening his garage door and he was instantly ambushed when he turned the corner to where that person was lying in wait. … In the video, you can kind of see a struggle, but German ultimately falls to the ground, and he never gets up.
Peter Van Sant: What happened to him in that attack?
Rhonda Prast: Jeff was stabbed … He was stabbed seven times, four times in the neck, three in the torso.
Peter Van Sant: Seven stab wounds … did that suggest what kind of a killing this was?
Rhonda Prast: To me, this was a very personal attack. To stab someone in such a short time viciously seven times, with no warning.
A concerned neighbor found German’s body hidden behind some bushes 24 hours later.
911 OPERATOR: 911 emergency … Do you need police, fire, medical?
NEIGHBOR: I have a neighbor across the street from me. He’s laying in the side yard, um, I believe he’s dead. He’s got blood over him.
Rhonda Prast: It was just a terrible thing to know that he was lying there, and we wondered whether he could have been saved. But medical experts told us later … that he likely died within a minute or two.
It was a small mercy for a man who had spent his life fighting for the underdog.
Rhonda…
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