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[00:02]
Narrator/Host
Isn't that where Mr. German was found by the police is inside your phone?
[00:08]
Robert Tellis
That is very strange.
[00:09]
Narrator/Host
So you would agree with me that if you were planning to kill someone at their house, it might be a good idea to get a lay of the land, right?
[00:18]
Robert Tellis
I've never plotted to kill anyone.
[00:33]
Scott Weinberger
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
[00:38]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
I'm Anna Sega Nicolasi, former New York
[00:40]
Scott Weinberger
City Homicide prosecutor And this is Homicide360.
[00:49]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The saying don't kill the messenger goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. The idea is simple enough. The the messenger delivering bad news isn't responsible for the bad news itself. But throughout history, people have treated them as if they were.
[01:05]
Scott Weinberger
For 69 year old Jeff German, this wasn't an abstract idea. As an investigative reporter in Las Vegas, Jeff spent decades exposing organized crime and corrupt officials. The kinds of people who didn't want their bad behavior made public and who
[01:21]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
were willing to do just about anything to keep it out of the papers. More than once in his career, Jeff had faced down intimidating characters and some very real threats to his life and livelihood. But Jeff's fearlessness in the face of that danger was exactly what made him such a great reporter.
[01:39]
Narrator/Host
So I would say Jeff German really becomes, I guess famous or more well known in Las Vegas for when he first comes here in the 70s, he does a lot of investigative pieces on the mob, like the Las Vegas mob, and it's not flattering. And people, when people read these articles, one might think, you know, you might make yourself a target for the mob based on the things that you wrote.
[02:07]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
That's Chris Hamner, a chief deputy DA at the Clark County District Attorney's office in Las Vegas. He knew Jeff Gehrman for his work at the state's largest daily newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, known as the rj.
[02:21]
Scott Weinberger
Friends of Jeff said he was offered jobs at bigger papers, but he demurred. This was quote sin City after all. This is where I need to be, said Jeff, who saw his job as a real calling to root out corruption, speak truth to power and ask the questions that powerful people didn't want asked. I could tell you from personal experience I understand that instincts, when you do this work long enough, you learn that most people say they want the truth until the truth is is about them. Investigative reporting isn't about being loud or provocative. It's about staying with the facts, asking the next question and being willing to make powerful people uncomfortable. Jeff German did that for decades.
[03:06]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But Jeff wasn't just known for his byline or his inside take on the Vegas mob, which he shared on popular podcast. The 69 year old was also a friendly face around the neighborhood and a respected and valued member of his community.
[03:20]
Scott Weinberger
Jeff lived alone on a quiet cul de sac in northwest Las Vegas, about a 25 minute drive from the famed Vegas strip. His single story home had an attached two car garage and tidy landscaping in the front yard. Jeff's neighbors described him as friendly, responsible, and a man who kept to his routines.
[03:42]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Which is why on the evening of September 2, 2022, when neighbors noticed that Jeff had left his garage door open overnight, they took notice on the second
[03:53]
Narrator/Host
when they see a garage door open and his car is in the garage and it's open for hour after hour after hour, they're very concerned. In fact, they go over and they close Jeff's garage for him and they're leaving him voicemail messages saying, hey Jeff, you know, we just noticed your garage door is open, so we closed it for you, give us a call. We're just worried.
[04:12]
Scott Weinberger
Not that they suspected that Jeff was in any danger, but he was 69 years old and he lived alone. And this is what neighbors are supposed to do. They look out for one another.
[04:23]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The next morning, when they still hadn't heard from Jeff, they decided to check on him. Pam Weckerly, a prosecutor who works alongside Chris at the DA's office, explains what happened next.
[04:35]
Pam Weckerly
So what happens is German Gearman's neighbors across the street, the house across the street, they did a welfare check on him because they had noticed that his big bay garage door was open. So they walk over there and actually eventually come upon him on the side of his house, and they're the ones that call the police.
[05:00]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff's body was lying in the dirt under some bushes just off the garage. And even from a distance, you could see that there was a lot of blood.
[05:09]
Scott Weinberger
First responders were quick to the scene, but it was too late. Police quickly determined that Jeff had been stabbed to death, identifying multiple deep wounds in his chest, neck and back.
[05:21]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The autopsy would later confirm that his carotid artery had been nearly severed and he had bled to death from his stab wounds.
[05:29]
Pam Weckerly
He's face up, he has blood on him, there are sharp force injuries to him. But what the police are noticing is his keys are still in his pocket, his wallet is in his pocket, his cell phone is in his pocket, no money is taken, and the house around it has no sign of forced entry.
[05:50]
Scott Weinberger
You know, when you look at this as a crime scene, you have to ask the question, is this the usual markers you would see in a burglary or a street robbery. So investigators have to start asking a different set of important questions.
[06:03]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Most likely right, because even if he had surprised a burglar, which, as we know, is often the trigger for a violent confrontation, why wouldn't the assailant at least grab his wallet or maybe his car keys before he left?
[06:14]
Scott Weinberger
And the answer just may be that he panicked. But if that was the case, why stab him so many times? Something about the scene does not feel like the work of a random stranger. It feels. Feels targeted. And obviously, if it feels targeted, it feels personal.
[06:30]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Police also didn't think that this was a robbery. They didn't know what it was. So they started with the timeline. When had Jeff last been seen alive? Answering that question could help them determine when he was killed and more importantly, who killed him.
[06:46]
Scott Weinberger
Unfortunately, a canvas of the neighborhood did not turn up any witnesses to the crime, but they did find something just as good.
[06:54]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Video footage Footage from a neighbor's ring camera captured Jeff arriving home a little before 10am on Sept. 2. He parked in his garage and closed the garage door behind him. All part of his typical routine.
[07:08]
Scott Weinberger
But minutes later, the video captured something far from typical. A person in a straw hat and an orange shirt sneaking into Jeff's side yard and. And hiding in the shadows behind the back gate. The person was wearing gray Nike running shoes and carrying a gray bag.
[07:27]
Narrator/Host
So the home directly across the street had a camera looking straight at Jeff's house. The quality of the video is not the greatest, but what you do see is when you roll the footage back prior to the killing, you see the man in the orange with the floppy hat going to the side of the house and essentially lying in wait.
[07:47]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Detectives made special note of the clothing. The bright orange shirt looked like something that might have been worn by a construction worker or a local landscaper. Someone who wouldn't usually raise suspicion in that suburban neighborhood. But unfortunately, the wide brim hat hid the man's face.
[08:04]
Narrator/Host
A minute or two after that, Jeff's garage opens. Jeff comes out. He exits, walks towards the side house, almost as if he heard some sort of commotion or noise. And that's when the man in the disguise attacks him and kills him. And that is all captured on the footage.
[08:21]
Scott Weinberger
The footage showed Jeff fighting for his life. Police would eventually find foreign DNA under Jeff's fingernails, proof that he resisted as best he could. But the ambush was sudden, and the attack was violent. It was over in a minute or two, and Jeff was left bleeding on the ground while the person in orange was just walked away.
[08:45]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The surveillance footage also revealed another important detail. The exact time of the murder.
[08:51]
Narrator/Host
Daylight. It's middle of the day, which I
[08:54]
Scott Weinberger
want to say is a critical detail in completing the timeline, but it's also a revealing detail about the killer. A murder in broad daylight suggests someone acting brazenly. To me, both hallmarks of a crime of passion or even rage.
[09:10]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
In those first hours of the investigation, police did not have any leads on a suspect, but they did quickly discover that that very disguise that may have helped the attacker go unnoticed could make him easier to track through surveillance footage.
[09:25]
Scott Weinberger
Assembling footage from a string of neighborhood cameras, they were able to track the person in the orange shirt as they got into a maroon Yukon Denali that was parked a block away from Jeff's house. The same truck had been recorded circling the neighborhood before the attack. Its rear license plate had been removed.
[09:45]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But the surveillance footage showed something else disturbing. After the attack, the killer didn't just flee the neighborhood. He actually returned to the scene of
[09:55]
Narrator/Host
the crime of parking on a completely different street, commits the murder, gets back to his car, drives out of the community, and then probably realizes, oh, there's something I left behind or something I need to check. So he drives all the way back and now just pulls right in front of Garamond's driveway and gets out of the car and goes straight to the body. And you see that all from the grainy footage. You see all of that, and you watch him kind of fiddling, looking down at Garamond's body, and then he hurriedly gets back in his car and drives away.
[10:26]
Scott Weinberger
Were they removing evidence from the crime scene, checking that Jeff was dead? Detectives didn't know, but their movements did suggest that the killer knew where they were going and what they were doing. They had removed the SUV's license plate. They had worn a disguise, and they had laid in wait for Jeff to
[10:45]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
come home, which sounds to me like someone with a plan, maybe even someone with experience and maybe a personal reason to want Jeff dead.
[10:55]
Scott Weinberger
The truth was that in a career spent writing about organized crime, public corruption, and murder, Jeff had made a long list of very powerful enemies. If revenge was the motive, there was no shortage of possible suspects.
[11:11]
Narrator/Host
So when he's killed, people kind of naturally thought, well, maybe someone is kind of finally tired of maybe we're so offended by something that he wrote that, you know, someone actually, you know, took out Jeff, right, for something that he wrote.
[11:28]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Had Jeff German fallen victim to a mob assassination, or was there a deeper conspiracy at play? One that threatened to expose someone or something right there in their own community. And was this an attempt to silence the very people tasked with holding them accountable?
[12:02]
Scott Weinberger
Think about the last time you called a business and nobody picked up. You didn't leave a voicemail and wait around. You hung up and called the next place. Your customers do the same thing. Maybe they're trying to book an appointment. Maybe they want a quote. Maybe they just have a question. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. And here's what sold me on it. Every call, every text, every voicemail lives in one place. So anybody on your team can jump in, see the whole history and pick the conversation right back up and nothing falls through the cracks. It's got a built in AI agent that, that handles your after hours calls, answers questions, books, appointments. So even when your team's gone home for the night, you're still not losing that lead. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.comh360 that's quo.comh360. On the morning of September 3, 2022, investigative journalist Jeff German was found stabbed to death on the side of his Las Vegas home. But incredibly, neighborhood security cameras had captured his unknown attacker sneaking into Jeff's yard before ambushing him in broad daylight and and fleeing the scene in a maroon
[13:38]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
suv, finding no signs of a robbery. Detectives wonder if it was Jeff's work as a reporter covering crime and corruption that might have had something to do with his murder.
[13:48]
Pam Weckerly
There was speculation that certainly because he was an investigative reporter that, you know, maybe it was someone who was mad at him for a particular article or for a story he did, which, if
[14:00]
Scott Weinberger
true, raised the possibility of something even more terrifying than a violent crime. And that is a violent retribution against a public servant and the very institution of a free press.
[14:14]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff's friends and colleagues at the newspaper were some of the first people to hear about the attack. Their shock over his death was amplified by what it could mean and by the thought of who might be behind it.
[14:25]
Pam Weckerly
It's the media with a murder of one of their own. And it's not like no one knew who he was. Like he was well known in Las Vegas. So it was on the news all the time.
[14:39]
Narrator/Host
I mean, look, in the United States, we don't have reporters who are murdered. You know, I think it's very shocking to hear about a reporter killed at his home. But once you know the suspect is developed, then it takes on a whole life of its own, because now you have someone being murdered for their work.
[14:58]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Still, detectives didn't want to rush to conclusions. Hours into the investigation, There was a detailed suspect description, hours of surveillance video to sort through, and a maroon Yukon denali to find. And despite their theories about who might have targeted Jeff German, they knew their best bet was to follow the evidence.
[15:18]
Scott Weinberger
Considering the high profile nature of the case, police decided to enlist the help of the media and the public by releasing video of both the suspect and his car. Car with its identifiable custom rims on the front and back tires.
[15:32]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
And while the video didn't show a clear picture of the suspect's face, officials asked the public to make note of the way he walked. And if you watch the video, which, by the way, you can go to the Homicide360 Patreon page and we'll post it there. And if you watch that video, you can definitely see why the person had a distinctive gait, almost like a limp that police hoped to someone might recognize.
[15:55]
Scott Weinberger
I just want to take a side step for a second and talk about, you know, the noise and the theories that surround, you know, well publicized cases. You know, when a victim is a high profile person, especially an investigative reporter, the case can get loud very fast. Everyone has a theory, everyone has an old story, even an old enemy. You know, every public conflict that that person may have suddenly could feel relevant. Right. But investigators still have to do the basic work, Build a timeline, follow the car, study the video, and let the evidence narrow the field. And I think, ana Seega, I know you've handled a lot of high profile cases. I know I've covered at least one of your high profile cases in the past. Does that noise leak into the courtroom? Is that something you need to deal with?
[16:42]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
I mean, yes, you have to deal with it, but it's usually not in the courtroom, at least you hope not, because it's not supposed to have any place there. Like, sometimes we choose to put things out to the public because we need to enlist their help. Right. Time is of the essence. But also, once things are out there and you have these high profile cases and theories swirling around, like, I cannot even tell you the number of additional paths and trails and tips that investigators then need to go down. Obviously, you know that, Scott. Right. So it has its pluses and its minuses, but the pluses have to outweigh the minuses when you need that help. But then when it comes to the courtroom. Well, then we have to make sure that if the jury has heard any of this or has formed any opinions, that they can release that from their minds and basically tell the court, like, okay, yes, we've heard it. Yes, we remembered that thing. But we will only use what's presented here in the courtroom when it comes to trying to come to a verdict. And that's just really the most important place that we need to make sure that it doesn't enter in.
[17:37]
Scott Weinberger
So back in Las Vegas, while police methodically went through the dozens of tips that came in, Jeff's fellow reporters got to what they did best investigating. And they started by digging into a story that Jeff had been working on when he was killed.
[17:55]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
In the months leading up to the murder, Jeff had been reporting on allegations of misconduct by a Clark county public administrator by the name of Robert Tellis.
[18:04]
Pam Weckerly
Robert Tellis is the public administrator, which is basically an office that deals with the effects and property of people that. That die without a will. As the public administrator, he was the supervisor of a relatively small office in Clark County. I think there were like eight employees total in the office. And over the time he was there, Gehrman had written articles about mismanagement of the office by Tellus and that he was involved in an extramarital affair with one of his subordinates. So they were unflattering articles. And those articles ran in the Review Journal, the newspaper prior to Robert Tellis election, where he was seeking re election.
[18:52]
Scott Weinberger
Tellis denied the accusations, but the damage to his reputation and to his political career were already done. He had made his anger known both in the press and online. What is your reaction to the allegations
[19:07]
Robert Tellis
from these employees that you have created
[19:10]
Scott Weinberger
a hostile environment in this office?
[19:13]
Robert Tellis
I've done my best to try to make everyone happy, but again, it's got to be within a certain framework. People just cannot get to do whatever they want, you know, and it's unfortunate that, you know, we've got some people who were here from before who were basically trying to railroad me.
[19:36]
Narrator/Host
These articles are coming out in May and June of this year. You know, Garman is killed in September. You have. You have your primary election in June. And I can remember, you know, Telus is on his website and on Twitter making videos, trying to address, you know, the affair rumors and address how he handles his office. And then he has the tweets. And so he really is out in the kind of, you know, the Twittersphere or whatever we want to call it. He's out there trying to do Damage control to save his race. And then he narrowly loses and he's knocked out of the primary. He finishes third in a three person primary race as an incumbent.
[20:16]
Pam Weckerly
And they're able to see on social media that there's kind of a back and forth between where Teles is saying, you know, Gehrman's a terrible reporter, he's lied about everything. And so you can see it's certainly not a, like a threat, like a homicide. But you can see that he is irritated with the coverage he got from German.
[20:38]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But Jeff had stuck to his guns and to his colleagues at the rj, that was enough motive to make Tellus a prime suspect in Jeff's murder. And you know, I have to say here, Scott, like, right, in some ways he is not the usual suspect because it would almost be ridiculously obvious, right, that someone who had just been the focus of these unflattering reports that he's now going to quickly exact revenge by murder. Right. So it's a very public back and forth. So, you know, I don't know, I guess right now it's like, well, what about all the other people that Jeff had written these unflattering articles over the years, right. Those are definite lanes to follow. But there's nothing glaring, at least to me, like just by those facts alone.
[21:19]
Scott Weinberger
I agree. I mean, tunnel vision is not your friend in a situation like that. But from a detective's perspective, tell us what absolutely get your attention. But you can't let motive do as much work as it may happen here, right? He was angry. Absolutely. Just reporting had damaged him publicly and politically. But a lot of people have grievances and most of them don't kill. The real question is, what changed and why now, after the stories had already run and the election was already lost? And then you have to test the theory against the evidence, you know, the vehicle, the timeline, the gate, the disguise, the route. And eventually and a Seag, as you know, the forensics. And until those pieces start lining up, Telus isn't the answer. He's a possibility that you have to rule in or rule out.
[22:06]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
So police are also convinced that it wouldn't probably be just those articles that had already kind of been done, he'd already lost the election, that there just might be something else going on. And Jeff's colleagues at the papers, they thought the same thing. And as it turned out, they were both right because Telus's misconduct was not just old news. Jeff had been working on a follow up that was focused on Telus's inappropriate romantic relationship with one of his staffers.
[22:32]
Scott Weinberger
Now, Telus had denied the rumors, but thanks to some of the other women in the office, Jeff had the receipts.
[22:39]
Narrator/Host
The other women that worked in the public administrator's office, that felt like he was a terrible manager. What these women do one day is they follow Robert Tellis, wait for it in the maroon Denali. He goes to a Cheesecake Factory. He goes to a parking garage with the woman he's having an affair with, and they park, and the ladies from the PA's office literally hide, and they film them having a makeout session in the back of the truck. And so they film it, and then you watch them get out, and they're kind of straightening their clothing as they get out to go off to their lunch, and they send that video to Jeff German.
[23:18]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Telus was eventually notified that the county was cooperating with the RJ's investigation.
[23:24]
Narrator/Host
The county sends Robert Tellis an email saying, we are going to be releasing, pursuant to this records request, your emails with the woman that you've alleged to have an affair with. So he's already, like, he's already a lame duck. He's going to be out in January, and now he's finding out Jeff wants to write another article. But the communications are only now focused not on management, but just between him and this woman.
[23:50]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
That alert was delivered to TELUS on September 1st. By September 2nd, Jeff was dead. And those facts are definitely making me more interested, and I'm sure detectives as well.
[24:02]
Scott Weinberger
So clearly, Telus seemed to have a reason to dislike Jeff. Maybe he even had a motive to kill him. So what I'd want to know would be this. Where was Tellus on the day Jeff was murdered? And what kind of car did he drive?
[24:18]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Well, it turned out he was seen by detectives the next afternoon and at home in his driveway, casually washing his wife's maroon Denali suv.
[24:30]
Narrator/Host
They noticed that the day after the killing, he is actually out washing his Denali and he's washing his other cars, but he's washing the car, Right? So that's something that's, you know, you can add that to the list.
[24:43]
Scott Weinberger
Another piece of evidence to add to the list came courtesy of Jeff Gehrman himself, or more specifically, an interview he had conducted with Telus several months before.
[24:54]
Narrator/Host
As in one of Jeff Gehrman's articles, Garamond gives Telus an opportunity to kind of tell his side of the story. So he goes to the PA's office to interview Robert Tellis, and as you probably know now, a lot, with a lot of media these days, even newspapers will have, you know, video components to their articles. So Gamron brings the camera crew down there, and at some point, they take a shot of Robert Ellis walking with Jeff German. And the killer has this little hitch in his get up as he walks. And when you watch the video of Telus walking with Gehrman side by side in this piece that Garamond's doing, that same little hitch is there.
[25:39]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Detectives put the footage of Tellis walking and the footage of Jeff's killer side by side. It was a match.
[25:46]
Scott Weinberger
As they say, if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, well, let's just say the evidence was really starting to line up.
[25:53]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
It was enough for prosecutors to get a warrant to search Tellis property and to collect a sample of his DNA, which they could then compare to the DNA recovered from under Jeff's fingernails. And once they got inside his house, investigators found what they believed was more evidence of a cover story falling apart. Piece by piece, items they'd seen on that video of Jeff's house started to reappear.
[26:17]
Scott Weinberger
They found remnants of a straw hat cut in pieces and stuffed into a bag in the garage. Under a couch, they found gray Nike sneakers, one of which had a piece of cloth cut out of it. There were scissors in the utility drawer with a bloody handle. And Telus had a bloody wound on one of his fingers.
[26:39]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The last piece of the puzzle was the DNA. The test was expedited, the results, another match.
[26:46]
Narrator/Host
And it's like, all right, we're rolling, let's go. Once we get the confirmatory hit, that basically what we learn is that Telus's DNA is underneath Gehrman's fingernails. An arrest warrant is issued out.
[27:01]
Scott Weinberger
The walls were closing in on Robert Telles. Desperate, he eyed what he thought was his only way out.
[27:09]
Narrator/Host
Now, at the residence, he barricades himself in. He ends up hauling himself up in his master bedroom bathroom. He has slit his wrists. He is in a bathtub, and Tino SWAT is there. They send drones in to try to talk him out, and he's found kind of bleeding in his bathroom. And ultimately the SWAT team rescues him out of the bathroom and saves his life.
[27:31]
Pam Weckerly
It was a real serious attempt with
[27:36]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
deep wounds on his arms and wrists. Tellis was taken away by ambulance, and soon after that, he was arrested for first degree murder.
[27:45]
Scott Weinberger
He had tried to take his own life, but now his fate would be in the hands of the Nevada justice system and a jury of his peers.
[27:54]
Pam Weckerly
What were his feelings about Mr. Gehrman?
[27:58]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
He did not like Mr. German.
[28:00]
Pam Weckerly
Hated him.
[28:01]
Narrator/Host
Assume he hated him.
[28:02]
Pam Weckerly
Assume that was after the story was written.
[28:04]
Jill Zerg
Yes.
[28:17]
Scott Weinberger
Over the spring of 2022, Jeff did his job exposing workplace misconduct by a Clark county public official named Robert Telles.
[28:28]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Tellis made no secret about how he felt about the expose, which ultimately cost him his job. But prosecutors believed it was new revelations about his relationship with a subordinate that may have driven him to murder.
[28:41]
Narrator/Host
I feel like that's the straw that breaks the camel's back, because if you're Telus, you're like, I don't understand. You've written that I'm a terrible boss. You've ruined my marriage, exposing my affair. You've now caused me to lose my election. I don't have this job anymore. What more do you want from me? What's the purpose now of doing yet another article after I've lost and I'm out? And I think for him, that's the thing. It's like, you know what? I'm done. I'm not going to allow this to happen any further. To me, that's what pushes him over the edge, knowing that yet another one's coming.
[29:19]
Scott Weinberger
DNA, security footage, and a matching getaway car all put Telus at the scene. But prosecutors were also determined to show a jury that the killing was not just an act of rage, but a carefully planned, premeditated attack with a specific purpose to kill an upcoming story and the man behind it.
[29:41]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
To do that, investigators did a deep dive on Telus's phone and computer. Unsurprisingly, they found links to all the articles Jeff had written about the toxic office environment.
[29:53]
Scott Weinberger
They also found a series of heated text messages in which Telus blamed his predecessor for conspiring with disgruntled employees to feed this damaging information to the press.
[30:05]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But investigators also found something else on the devices. Signs that tell us had been watching Jeff and studying where he lived. There were searches for Jeff's home address and his car. They found multiple photos of Jeff's cul de sac, including shots of the surrounding houses and what appeared to be the location of the security cameras.
[30:25]
Narrator/Host
Another thing that he had in his phone is he had almost. What he had done was we started noticing in the phone there were little tiled squares, what looked like a puzzle piece. If you took Google Maps Street View, and you broke it up into, let's say, 80 little squares from what your screen is, when you started looking at all the squares, what we realized, and our detective and we noticed was he had gone on Google Street View and he had gone in and looked at the cul de sac. So we saw Garand's house. Like literally there is a tile of the very spot where German's body would be found.
[31:00]
Scott Weinberger
In a recording from the trial, you could hear the prosecutor asking Tellus directly strictly about the fact that he had these photos of Jeff's house on his phone.
[31:12]
Narrator/Host
Isn't that where Mr. German was found by the police is inside your phone?
[31:18]
Robert Tellis
That is very strange.
[31:20]
Narrator/Host
So you would agree with me that if you were planning to kill someone at their house, it might be a good idea to get a lay of the land, right?
[31:28]
Robert Tellis
I've never slotted to kill anyone.
[31:31]
Scott Weinberger
Investigators also believe that Telus had taken steps to avoid leaving a digital trail. They showed that Telus phone had been left off and at home at the time of the murder, Something they argued was an attempt to avoid being tracked.
[31:48]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Meanwhile, investigators put their own map together. The focus, the maroon Yukon Denali.
[31:54]
Scott Weinberger
The truck became a critical piece of circumstantial evidence. And for the jury, investigators pulled the video from business after business, house after house, following the Yukon camera by camera as it moved through Las Vegas on the day of the murder, from Telus home to the crime scene and back to his house.
[32:14]
Pam Weckerly
But this was like painstaking because it is really the best video I've had in a case.
[32:20]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The trial itself was unusual. For starters, Telus ran through several defenses. Defense attorneys at one point opting to represent himself.
[32:28]
Narrator/Host
It's like three different attorneys within, I don't know, three months. Then he represents himself for about a full year. And so we actually have to deal with Mr. Tellis for an entire year.
[32:40]
Pam Weckerly
Much more tedious. I mean, his personality in general is that he's kind of the smartest guy in any room.
[32:46]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Telus testified in his own defense, and you actually heard a piece of that in an earlier exchange and it was was memorable.
[32:53]
Scott Weinberger
It was more of a speech because his defense attorney had refused to be part of it.
[32:59]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
So let me just explain that piece for a moment because it's really interesting. At least I think so. Lawyers usually question the witnesses, right? Defense attorneys usually question their client if the defendant chooses to take the stand. There is a but to that. If they believe they'd be suborning perjury by participating in that questioning. So if they think it's clear that the client defendant's lying, they're ethically obligated not to take part. And that's when you have this scenario like here, where the lawyer basically asks the defendant their name on the stand and then just lets them Talk. Now, of course, the jury's never told that the lawyer won't question them because they think they're clearly lying. But to me, it's this really interesting scenario because it doesn't often happen. I think in my own cases, I've only seen that once. So here, when Tellis took the stand, prosecutors said they saw the same thing that they believed had been building for months before the murder. A man who felt victimized by Jeff's reporting and obsessed with defending his public image.
[33:54]
Robert Tellis
Excuse me, I'm obviously a little nervous. This is, it's a day I've been waiting for for nearly two years. This thing's been kind of a nightmare, frankly. And right now I want to say unequivocally, I'm innocent, I didn't kill Mr. Gurman, and I've got a lot to share with you all. There's been a lot of testimony and my concern is making sure that, that you hear what I think about all these things and the concerns that I have.
[34:27]
Narrator/Host
To me, that direct was Robert Tellis was the hero of his own story. So he spends the entire direct talking about his career in the PA's office and rooting out corruption and then how he was wrongfully kind of exposed and,
[34:44]
Pam Weckerly
you know, all the things he, he did on behalf of the taxpayers of Clark county. And, you know, we all should be essentially thanking him.
[34:53]
Narrator/Host
Right.
[34:54]
Scott Weinberger
Instead, tell us spun a tale of conspiracy in which he was the real victim.
[35:01]
Pam Weckerly
Basically, Telus says it's all a conspiracy to get me because I was the one who ended fraud in the public administrator's office.
[35:11]
Scott Weinberger
It was confusing and did little to explain away the DNA evidence, the clothing and the surveillance footage that put him at the scene of the crime.
[35:20]
Pam Weckerly
Eleven jurors saw that testimony and thought, you know, they were just done. Like it was just too, too ridiculous.
[35:30]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
After two weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated and at some point they came back with a note that they were deadlocked. But the judge sent them back with an instruction and asking them to try and work through the evidence. And apparently they did because they later returned with a verdict and found Robert tellis guilty of first degree murder. In Nevada, that carries a 20 year sentence with eight years added on because Telus used a deadly weapon and the victim was over the age of 60.
[35:56]
Scott Weinberger
At the trial, Jeff's sister, Jill Zerg, herself a Las Vegas journalist, testified about the lasting impact Jeff had on, on his family, on his community, and the world of journalism.
[36:09]
Jill Zerg
He belonged to a class of journalists that are in a league of their own. Not many reporters out there will ever match his caliber and investigative journalism and storytelling. Not only did my family lose a wonderful loving brother and uncle, but the Las Vegas community and the world of journalism lost an amazing investigative reporter and a relentless crusader for for justice.
[36:31]
Scott Weinberger
Investigative reporters make enemies. It's part of the job. Few, fortunately, are killed for their work.
[36:39]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff German spent a career exposing powerful people. Prosecutors said one of them decided the messenger deserved to die.
[36:49]
Scott Weinberger
Jeff spent his career doing the kind of work that makes some people very uncomfortable. He pulled back legs players. He asked hard questions and followed the facts into places where powerful people didn't want him to go. Now, I understand that work because I've spent my career chasing the truth, first in law enforcement and for the last two decades as a journalist and storyteller. And what you learn is that the truth doesn't usually come easy. It takes patience, pressure, and the willingness to sit with the facts that make people angry. And in this case, prosecutors proved, and a jury agreed, that a man chose murder to stop a bad story, to protect his own image and to hold on to whatever power he thought he had left. But the damage didn't end with Jeff. It landed on his friends, his family, his colleagues and everyone left behind to make sense of a life taken because so someone could not face the truth.
[37:51]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff German was a dogged reporter, and that didn't always make him popular. But freedom of the press and the right to report is a fundamental right protected by our constitution. Rather than look within about his own conduct, Tellis decided to lash out and channeled his rage about being exposed and took another man's life. Jeff German had the right to report. He had the right to live. But that was taken from him by the hands of violence. Tune in next week for another new episode of Homicide360.
[38:28]
Scott Weinberger
Homicide360 is created and produced by Forsetti Media and Weinberger Media.
[38:34]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Supervising producer is Walker Lamond. Managing editor. Editor is Kate Mack. Sabrina Sarai is production manager. This episode was written and produced by Gary Scott, edited by Ali Sierra and Phil Jean Grande. Original theme music by Trey Anderson.

Summary6 min read

Homicide 360 | Episode: The Reporter (Jeff German)

Hosts: Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi & Scott Weinberger
Date: August 4, 2026

Overview

This episode of Homicide 360 delves into the shocking 2022 murder of veteran Las Vegas investigative reporter Jeff German. Known for his relentless pursuit of truth and exposure of corruption and organized crime, German was ambushed and killed outside his home amid a backdrop of stories about alleged misconduct by a local public official, Robert Tellis. The hosts examine the investigation step by step, piecing together how relentless reporting and the pursuit of accountability can provoke deadly rage.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Life and Work of Jeff German

Jeff’s Background & Reputation
- Jeff German became renowned in Las Vegas for his investigative work since the 1970s, particularly his fearless exposure of mob activities and government corruption.
- Friends described him as “a friendly face around the neighborhood and a respected and valued member of his community.” (Anna Sega Nicolasi, 03:05)
Host Insights
- Scott reflects: "When you do this work long enough, you learn that most people say they want the truth until the truth is about them." (Scott Weinberger, 02:21)

2. Discovery of the Crime

Jeff’s Neighbors Intervene
- On September 2, 2022, neighbors notice Jeff’s garage door left open unusually long (03:41).
- On September 3, neighbors find Jeff’s body hidden under bushes by his home, blood visible even from a distance (04:59).
Details of the Crime Scene
- Jeff was stabbed multiple times, his wallet and keys untouched—no sign of robbery (05:29).
- Anna comments: “Even if he had surprised a burglar…why wouldn't the assailant at least grab his wallet or maybe his car keys?” (Anna Sega Nicolasi, 06:02)

3. The Investigation: Video Evidence & Breakthroughs

Surveillance Footage Emerges
- Ring cameras capture a suspicious figure in an orange shirt and straw hat lurking and then ambushing Jeff in broad daylight (07:08).
- The suspect’s actions—lying in wait, attacking, and returning to the scene—showed planning and a lack of fear about being seen (09:45).
Vehicle Clue
- The suspect fled in a maroon Yukon Denali with no license plate and later returned after the murder, raising further suspicion (09:25, 09:55).
- Scott: “They had removed the SUV’s license plate. They had worn a disguise, and they had laid in wait…” (Scott Weinberger, 10:25)

4. Considering Motive: Was Jeff Targeted for His Reporting?

Speculation About the Motive
- Police and the public considered if this was revenge for Jeff’s reporting, raising chilling questions about press freedom (13:48–14:00).
- Pam: “There was speculation that certainly because he was an investigative reporter that, you know, maybe it was someone who was mad at him for a particular article…” (Pam Weckerly, 13:48)

5. Focusing the Investigation: Robert Tellis Emerges as Suspect

Tellis’s Background
- Robert Tellis, a Clark County public administrator, was the subject of Jeff’s damning articles exposing workplace misconduct and an extramarital affair (18:04).
- Tellis publicly denied allegations, attempted reputational damage control, but lost his re-election bid after Jeff's reports (19:36–20:16).
The Breaking Point
- Colleagues revealed Jeff had received footage of Tellis's affair, and the county informed Tellis of an impending new article just a day before the murder (22:32–23:50).
- Anna speculates: “That alert was delivered to TELUS on September 1st. By September 2nd, Jeff was dead.” (Anna Sega Nicolasi, 23:50)

6. Building the Case: Evidence Stacks Up

Physical Evidence and Forensics
- Tellis was observed washing the maroon Denali the day after the murder (24:17).
- Video footage showed a unique gait; Tellis’s own previous interviews with Jeff captured the same walking pattern (25:38).
- A search of Tellis’s home found the remnants of the disguise: cut-up straw hat, gray Nike sneakers with cloth missing, scissors with blood, and a wound on Tellis’s finger (26:17).
- DNA under Jeff’s fingernails matched Tellis (26:39–27:00).
Digital Evidence
- Tellis's phone contained images and Google Street View “tiles” of Jeff’s home and surrounding area—demonstrating premeditation (30:04–31:00).
- At trial:
  - Prosecutor: “‘Isn't that where Mr. German was found by the police is inside your phone?’” (Narrator/Host, 31:11)
  - Tellis: “‘That is very strange.’” (Robert Tellis, 31:18)
Circumstantial and Behavioral Evidence
- Tellis left his phone off at home during the time of the murder, trying to avoid being tracked (31:31).

7. Tellis’s Arrest & Trial

Attempted Suicide and Arrest
- As a warrant was issued, Tellis barricaded himself, attempted suicide, and required SWAT intervention before he could be arrested (27:08–27:35).
Trial Dynamics
- Tellis cycled through multiple defense attorneys, eventually representing himself, and gave a lengthy, conspiracy-focused testimony (32:20–35:01).
- Anna explains the rare situation: “If [defense attorneys] believe they'd be suborning perjury by participating…they're ethically obligated not to take part.” (Anna Sega Nicolasi, 32:59)
- The defense was unconvincing in light of overwhelming forensic and circumstantial evidence (35:11–35:20).
Verdict and Sentencing
- After deliberation, the jury found Tellis guilty of first-degree murder, with an enhanced sentence due to use of a deadly weapon and the victim’s age (35:29).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Reporting and Danger
“Most people say they want the truth until the truth is about them.”
— Scott Weinberger (02:21)
On the Targeted Attack
“Something about the scene does not feel like the work of a random stranger. It feels…feels targeted.”
— Scott Weinberger (06:14)
On High-Profile Murders
“In the United States, we don't have reporters who are murdered…it's very shocking to hear about a reporter killed at his home.”
— Narrator/Host (14:39)
On the Final Straw for Tellis
“To me, that's the straw that breaks the camel's back…knowing that yet another one's coming.”
— Narrator/Host (28:41)
On Jeff’s Legacy
“Not only did my family lose a wonderful loving brother and uncle, but the Las Vegas community and the world of journalism lost an amazing investigative reporter and a relentless crusader for justice.”
— Jill Zerg, Jeff’s sister (36:09)
On Freedom of the Press
“Freedom of the press and the right to report is a fundamental right protected by our Constitution. Rather than look within about his own conduct, Tellis…channeled his rage about being exposed and took another man's life. Jeff German had the right to report. He had the right to live.”
— Anna Sega Nicolasi (37:50)

Timestamps for Important Segments

Jeff’s Career & Reputation: 01:04–03:20
Discovery of Crime Scene: 03:41–05:09
Crime Scene Analysis: 05:09–06:30
First Breakthrough (Surveillance): 06:46–08:45
Suspect’s Actions Post-Crime: 09:45–10:25
Investigative Theories & Public Response: 14:00–15:54
Robert Tellis Identified as Suspect: 18:04–21:18
Affair Evidence & Motive Deepens: 22:32–23:50
Physical & Digital Evidence Builds: 24:17–31:00
Trial Testimonies & Tellis’s Defense: 32:20–35:11
Verdict and Legacy: 35:29–37:50

Tone & Final Reflections

The episode maintains a respectful, measured tone, emphasizing both the gravity of the crime and the critical importance of investigative journalism. The hosts and contributors highlight the complexities when high-profile individuals are involved and underscore the chilling implications for press freedom.

Closing Statement

The murder of Jeff German is shown not just as a singular, shocking crime, but as a somber warning about the dangers faced by those who relentlessly seek and report the truth. Homicide 360’s thoughtful approach brings listeners inside the investigation, paying tribute to German’s legacy and the enduring necessity—and risk—of fearless journalism.

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Transcript138 lines

[00:02]
Narrator/Host
Isn't that where Mr. German was found by the police is inside your phone?
[00:08]
Robert Tellis
That is very strange.
[00:09]
Narrator/Host
So you would agree with me that if you were planning to kill someone at their house, it might be a good idea to get a lay of the land, right?
[00:18]
Robert Tellis
I've never plotted to kill anyone.
[00:33]
Scott Weinberger
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
[00:38]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
I'm Anna Sega Nicolasi, former New York
[00:40]
Scott Weinberger
City Homicide prosecutor And this is Homicide360.
[00:49]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The saying don't kill the messenger goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. The idea is simple enough. The the messenger delivering bad news isn't responsible for the bad news itself. But throughout history, people have treated them as if they were.
[01:05]
Scott Weinberger
For 69 year old Jeff German, this wasn't an abstract idea. As an investigative reporter in Las Vegas, Jeff spent decades exposing organized crime and corrupt officials. The kinds of people who didn't want their bad behavior made public and who
[01:21]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
were willing to do just about anything to keep it out of the papers. More than once in his career, Jeff had faced down intimidating characters and some very real threats to his life and livelihood. But Jeff's fearlessness in the face of that danger was exactly what made him such a great reporter.
[01:39]
Narrator/Host
So I would say Jeff German really becomes, I guess famous or more well known in Las Vegas for when he first comes here in the 70s, he does a lot of investigative pieces on the mob, like the Las Vegas mob, and it's not flattering. And people, when people read these articles, one might think, you know, you might make yourself a target for the mob based on the things that you wrote.
[02:07]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
That's Chris Hamner, a chief deputy DA at the Clark County District Attorney's office in Las Vegas. He knew Jeff Gehrman for his work at the state's largest daily newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, known as the rj.
[02:21]
Scott Weinberger
Friends of Jeff said he was offered jobs at bigger papers, but he demurred. This was quote sin City after all. This is where I need to be, said Jeff, who saw his job as a real calling to root out corruption, speak truth to power and ask the questions that powerful people didn't want asked. I could tell you from personal experience I understand that instincts, when you do this work long enough, you learn that most people say they want the truth until the truth is is about them. Investigative reporting isn't about being loud or provocative. It's about staying with the facts, asking the next question and being willing to make powerful people uncomfortable. Jeff German did that for decades.
[03:06]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But Jeff wasn't just known for his byline or his inside take on the Vegas mob, which he shared on popular podcast. The 69 year old was also a friendly face around the neighborhood and a respected and valued member of his community.
[03:20]
Scott Weinberger
Jeff lived alone on a quiet cul de sac in northwest Las Vegas, about a 25 minute drive from the famed Vegas strip. His single story home had an attached two car garage and tidy landscaping in the front yard. Jeff's neighbors described him as friendly, responsible, and a man who kept to his routines.
[03:42]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Which is why on the evening of September 2, 2022, when neighbors noticed that Jeff had left his garage door open overnight, they took notice on the second
[03:53]
Narrator/Host
when they see a garage door open and his car is in the garage and it's open for hour after hour after hour, they're very concerned. In fact, they go over and they close Jeff's garage for him and they're leaving him voicemail messages saying, hey Jeff, you know, we just noticed your garage door is open, so we closed it for you, give us a call. We're just worried.
[04:12]
Scott Weinberger
Not that they suspected that Jeff was in any danger, but he was 69 years old and he lived alone. And this is what neighbors are supposed to do. They look out for one another.
[04:23]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The next morning, when they still hadn't heard from Jeff, they decided to check on him. Pam Weckerly, a prosecutor who works alongside Chris at the DA's office, explains what happened next.
[04:35]
Pam Weckerly
So what happens is German Gearman's neighbors across the street, the house across the street, they did a welfare check on him because they had noticed that his big bay garage door was open. So they walk over there and actually eventually come upon him on the side of his house, and they're the ones that call the police.
[05:00]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff's body was lying in the dirt under some bushes just off the garage. And even from a distance, you could see that there was a lot of blood.
[05:09]
Scott Weinberger
First responders were quick to the scene, but it was too late. Police quickly determined that Jeff had been stabbed to death, identifying multiple deep wounds in his chest, neck and back.
[05:21]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The autopsy would later confirm that his carotid artery had been nearly severed and he had bled to death from his stab wounds.
[05:29]
Pam Weckerly
He's face up, he has blood on him, there are sharp force injuries to him. But what the police are noticing is his keys are still in his pocket, his wallet is in his pocket, his cell phone is in his pocket, no money is taken, and the house around it has no sign of forced entry.
[05:50]
Scott Weinberger
You know, when you look at this as a crime scene, you have to ask the question, is this the usual markers you would see in a burglary or a street robbery. So investigators have to start asking a different set of important questions.
[06:03]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Most likely right, because even if he had surprised a burglar, which, as we know, is often the trigger for a violent confrontation, why wouldn't the assailant at least grab his wallet or maybe his car keys before he left?
[06:14]
Scott Weinberger
And the answer just may be that he panicked. But if that was the case, why stab him so many times? Something about the scene does not feel like the work of a random stranger. It feels. Feels targeted. And obviously, if it feels targeted, it feels personal.
[06:30]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Police also didn't think that this was a robbery. They didn't know what it was. So they started with the timeline. When had Jeff last been seen alive? Answering that question could help them determine when he was killed and more importantly, who killed him.
[06:46]
Scott Weinberger
Unfortunately, a canvas of the neighborhood did not turn up any witnesses to the crime, but they did find something just as good.
[06:54]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Video footage Footage from a neighbor's ring camera captured Jeff arriving home a little before 10am on Sept. 2. He parked in his garage and closed the garage door behind him. All part of his typical routine.
[07:08]
Scott Weinberger
But minutes later, the video captured something far from typical. A person in a straw hat and an orange shirt sneaking into Jeff's side yard and. And hiding in the shadows behind the back gate. The person was wearing gray Nike running shoes and carrying a gray bag.
[07:27]
Narrator/Host
So the home directly across the street had a camera looking straight at Jeff's house. The quality of the video is not the greatest, but what you do see is when you roll the footage back prior to the killing, you see the man in the orange with the floppy hat going to the side of the house and essentially lying in wait.
[07:47]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Detectives made special note of the clothing. The bright orange shirt looked like something that might have been worn by a construction worker or a local landscaper. Someone who wouldn't usually raise suspicion in that suburban neighborhood. But unfortunately, the wide brim hat hid the man's face.
[08:04]
Narrator/Host
A minute or two after that, Jeff's garage opens. Jeff comes out. He exits, walks towards the side house, almost as if he heard some sort of commotion or noise. And that's when the man in the disguise attacks him and kills him. And that is all captured on the footage.
[08:21]
Scott Weinberger
The footage showed Jeff fighting for his life. Police would eventually find foreign DNA under Jeff's fingernails, proof that he resisted as best he could. But the ambush was sudden, and the attack was violent. It was over in a minute or two, and Jeff was left bleeding on the ground while the person in orange was just walked away.
[08:45]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The surveillance footage also revealed another important detail. The exact time of the murder.
[08:51]
Narrator/Host
Daylight. It's middle of the day, which I
[08:54]
Scott Weinberger
want to say is a critical detail in completing the timeline, but it's also a revealing detail about the killer. A murder in broad daylight suggests someone acting brazenly. To me, both hallmarks of a crime of passion or even rage.
[09:10]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
In those first hours of the investigation, police did not have any leads on a suspect, but they did quickly discover that that very disguise that may have helped the attacker go unnoticed could make him easier to track through surveillance footage.
[09:25]
Scott Weinberger
Assembling footage from a string of neighborhood cameras, they were able to track the person in the orange shirt as they got into a maroon Yukon Denali that was parked a block away from Jeff's house. The same truck had been recorded circling the neighborhood before the attack. Its rear license plate had been removed.
[09:45]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But the surveillance footage showed something else disturbing. After the attack, the killer didn't just flee the neighborhood. He actually returned to the scene of
[09:55]
Narrator/Host
the crime of parking on a completely different street, commits the murder, gets back to his car, drives out of the community, and then probably realizes, oh, there's something I left behind or something I need to check. So he drives all the way back and now just pulls right in front of Garamond's driveway and gets out of the car and goes straight to the body. And you see that all from the grainy footage. You see all of that, and you watch him kind of fiddling, looking down at Garamond's body, and then he hurriedly gets back in his car and drives away.
[10:26]
Scott Weinberger
Were they removing evidence from the crime scene, checking that Jeff was dead? Detectives didn't know, but their movements did suggest that the killer knew where they were going and what they were doing. They had removed the SUV's license plate. They had worn a disguise, and they had laid in wait for Jeff to
[10:45]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
come home, which sounds to me like someone with a plan, maybe even someone with experience and maybe a personal reason to want Jeff dead.
[10:55]
Scott Weinberger
The truth was that in a career spent writing about organized crime, public corruption, and murder, Jeff had made a long list of very powerful enemies. If revenge was the motive, there was no shortage of possible suspects.
[11:11]
Narrator/Host
So when he's killed, people kind of naturally thought, well, maybe someone is kind of finally tired of maybe we're so offended by something that he wrote that, you know, someone actually, you know, took out Jeff, right, for something that he wrote.
[11:28]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Had Jeff German fallen victim to a mob assassination, or was there a deeper conspiracy at play? One that threatened to expose someone or something right there in their own community. And was this an attempt to silence the very people tasked with holding them accountable?
[12:02]
Scott Weinberger
Think about the last time you called a business and nobody picked up. You didn't leave a voicemail and wait around. You hung up and called the next place. Your customers do the same thing. Maybe they're trying to book an appointment. Maybe they want a quote. Maybe they just have a question. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. And here's what sold me on it. Every call, every text, every voicemail lives in one place. So anybody on your team can jump in, see the whole history and pick the conversation right back up and nothing falls through the cracks. It's got a built in AI agent that, that handles your after hours calls, answers questions, books, appointments. So even when your team's gone home for the night, you're still not losing that lead. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.comh360 that's quo.comh360. On the morning of September 3, 2022, investigative journalist Jeff German was found stabbed to death on the side of his Las Vegas home. But incredibly, neighborhood security cameras had captured his unknown attacker sneaking into Jeff's yard before ambushing him in broad daylight and and fleeing the scene in a maroon
[13:38]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
suv, finding no signs of a robbery. Detectives wonder if it was Jeff's work as a reporter covering crime and corruption that might have had something to do with his murder.
[13:48]
Pam Weckerly
There was speculation that certainly because he was an investigative reporter that, you know, maybe it was someone who was mad at him for a particular article or for a story he did, which, if
[14:00]
Scott Weinberger
true, raised the possibility of something even more terrifying than a violent crime. And that is a violent retribution against a public servant and the very institution of a free press.
[14:14]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff's friends and colleagues at the newspaper were some of the first people to hear about the attack. Their shock over his death was amplified by what it could mean and by the thought of who might be behind it.
[14:25]
Pam Weckerly
It's the media with a murder of one of their own. And it's not like no one knew who he was. Like he was well known in Las Vegas. So it was on the news all the time.
[14:39]
Narrator/Host
I mean, look, in the United States, we don't have reporters who are murdered. You know, I think it's very shocking to hear about a reporter killed at his home. But once you know the suspect is developed, then it takes on a whole life of its own, because now you have someone being murdered for their work.
[14:58]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Still, detectives didn't want to rush to conclusions. Hours into the investigation, There was a detailed suspect description, hours of surveillance video to sort through, and a maroon Yukon denali to find. And despite their theories about who might have targeted Jeff German, they knew their best bet was to follow the evidence.
[15:18]
Scott Weinberger
Considering the high profile nature of the case, police decided to enlist the help of the media and the public by releasing video of both the suspect and his car. Car with its identifiable custom rims on the front and back tires.
[15:32]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
And while the video didn't show a clear picture of the suspect's face, officials asked the public to make note of the way he walked. And if you watch the video, which, by the way, you can go to the Homicide360 Patreon page and we'll post it there. And if you watch that video, you can definitely see why the person had a distinctive gait, almost like a limp that police hoped to someone might recognize.
[15:55]
Scott Weinberger
I just want to take a side step for a second and talk about, you know, the noise and the theories that surround, you know, well publicized cases. You know, when a victim is a high profile person, especially an investigative reporter, the case can get loud very fast. Everyone has a theory, everyone has an old story, even an old enemy. You know, every public conflict that that person may have suddenly could feel relevant. Right. But investigators still have to do the basic work, Build a timeline, follow the car, study the video, and let the evidence narrow the field. And I think, ana Seega, I know you've handled a lot of high profile cases. I know I've covered at least one of your high profile cases in the past. Does that noise leak into the courtroom? Is that something you need to deal with?
[16:42]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
I mean, yes, you have to deal with it, but it's usually not in the courtroom, at least you hope not, because it's not supposed to have any place there. Like, sometimes we choose to put things out to the public because we need to enlist their help. Right. Time is of the essence. But also, once things are out there and you have these high profile cases and theories swirling around, like, I cannot even tell you the number of additional paths and trails and tips that investigators then need to go down. Obviously, you know that, Scott. Right. So it has its pluses and its minuses, but the pluses have to outweigh the minuses when you need that help. But then when it comes to the courtroom. Well, then we have to make sure that if the jury has heard any of this or has formed any opinions, that they can release that from their minds and basically tell the court, like, okay, yes, we've heard it. Yes, we remembered that thing. But we will only use what's presented here in the courtroom when it comes to trying to come to a verdict. And that's just really the most important place that we need to make sure that it doesn't enter in.
[17:37]
Scott Weinberger
So back in Las Vegas, while police methodically went through the dozens of tips that came in, Jeff's fellow reporters got to what they did best investigating. And they started by digging into a story that Jeff had been working on when he was killed.
[17:55]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
In the months leading up to the murder, Jeff had been reporting on allegations of misconduct by a Clark county public administrator by the name of Robert Tellis.
[18:04]
Pam Weckerly
Robert Tellis is the public administrator, which is basically an office that deals with the effects and property of people that. That die without a will. As the public administrator, he was the supervisor of a relatively small office in Clark County. I think there were like eight employees total in the office. And over the time he was there, Gehrman had written articles about mismanagement of the office by Tellus and that he was involved in an extramarital affair with one of his subordinates. So they were unflattering articles. And those articles ran in the Review Journal, the newspaper prior to Robert Tellis election, where he was seeking re election.
[18:52]
Scott Weinberger
Tellis denied the accusations, but the damage to his reputation and to his political career were already done. He had made his anger known both in the press and online. What is your reaction to the allegations
[19:07]
Robert Tellis
from these employees that you have created
[19:10]
Scott Weinberger
a hostile environment in this office?
[19:13]
Robert Tellis
I've done my best to try to make everyone happy, but again, it's got to be within a certain framework. People just cannot get to do whatever they want, you know, and it's unfortunate that, you know, we've got some people who were here from before who were basically trying to railroad me.
[19:36]
Narrator/Host
These articles are coming out in May and June of this year. You know, Garman is killed in September. You have. You have your primary election in June. And I can remember, you know, Telus is on his website and on Twitter making videos, trying to address, you know, the affair rumors and address how he handles his office. And then he has the tweets. And so he really is out in the kind of, you know, the Twittersphere or whatever we want to call it. He's out there trying to do Damage control to save his race. And then he narrowly loses and he's knocked out of the primary. He finishes third in a three person primary race as an incumbent.
[20:16]
Pam Weckerly
And they're able to see on social media that there's kind of a back and forth between where Teles is saying, you know, Gehrman's a terrible reporter, he's lied about everything. And so you can see it's certainly not a, like a threat, like a homicide. But you can see that he is irritated with the coverage he got from German.
[20:38]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But Jeff had stuck to his guns and to his colleagues at the rj, that was enough motive to make Tellus a prime suspect in Jeff's murder. And you know, I have to say here, Scott, like, right, in some ways he is not the usual suspect because it would almost be ridiculously obvious, right, that someone who had just been the focus of these unflattering reports that he's now going to quickly exact revenge by murder. Right. So it's a very public back and forth. So, you know, I don't know, I guess right now it's like, well, what about all the other people that Jeff had written these unflattering articles over the years, right. Those are definite lanes to follow. But there's nothing glaring, at least to me, like just by those facts alone.
[21:19]
Scott Weinberger
I agree. I mean, tunnel vision is not your friend in a situation like that. But from a detective's perspective, tell us what absolutely get your attention. But you can't let motive do as much work as it may happen here, right? He was angry. Absolutely. Just reporting had damaged him publicly and politically. But a lot of people have grievances and most of them don't kill. The real question is, what changed and why now, after the stories had already run and the election was already lost? And then you have to test the theory against the evidence, you know, the vehicle, the timeline, the gate, the disguise, the route. And eventually and a Seag, as you know, the forensics. And until those pieces start lining up, Telus isn't the answer. He's a possibility that you have to rule in or rule out.
[22:06]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
So police are also convinced that it wouldn't probably be just those articles that had already kind of been done, he'd already lost the election, that there just might be something else going on. And Jeff's colleagues at the papers, they thought the same thing. And as it turned out, they were both right because Telus's misconduct was not just old news. Jeff had been working on a follow up that was focused on Telus's inappropriate romantic relationship with one of his staffers.
[22:32]
Scott Weinberger
Now, Telus had denied the rumors, but thanks to some of the other women in the office, Jeff had the receipts.
[22:39]
Narrator/Host
The other women that worked in the public administrator's office, that felt like he was a terrible manager. What these women do one day is they follow Robert Tellis, wait for it in the maroon Denali. He goes to a Cheesecake Factory. He goes to a parking garage with the woman he's having an affair with, and they park, and the ladies from the PA's office literally hide, and they film them having a makeout session in the back of the truck. And so they film it, and then you watch them get out, and they're kind of straightening their clothing as they get out to go off to their lunch, and they send that video to Jeff German.
[23:18]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Telus was eventually notified that the county was cooperating with the RJ's investigation.
[23:24]
Narrator/Host
The county sends Robert Tellis an email saying, we are going to be releasing, pursuant to this records request, your emails with the woman that you've alleged to have an affair with. So he's already, like, he's already a lame duck. He's going to be out in January, and now he's finding out Jeff wants to write another article. But the communications are only now focused not on management, but just between him and this woman.
[23:50]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
That alert was delivered to TELUS on September 1st. By September 2nd, Jeff was dead. And those facts are definitely making me more interested, and I'm sure detectives as well.
[24:02]
Scott Weinberger
So clearly, Telus seemed to have a reason to dislike Jeff. Maybe he even had a motive to kill him. So what I'd want to know would be this. Where was Tellus on the day Jeff was murdered? And what kind of car did he drive?
[24:18]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Well, it turned out he was seen by detectives the next afternoon and at home in his driveway, casually washing his wife's maroon Denali suv.
[24:30]
Narrator/Host
They noticed that the day after the killing, he is actually out washing his Denali and he's washing his other cars, but he's washing the car, Right? So that's something that's, you know, you can add that to the list.
[24:43]
Scott Weinberger
Another piece of evidence to add to the list came courtesy of Jeff Gehrman himself, or more specifically, an interview he had conducted with Telus several months before.
[24:54]
Narrator/Host
As in one of Jeff Gehrman's articles, Garamond gives Telus an opportunity to kind of tell his side of the story. So he goes to the PA's office to interview Robert Tellis, and as you probably know now, a lot, with a lot of media these days, even newspapers will have, you know, video components to their articles. So Gamron brings the camera crew down there, and at some point, they take a shot of Robert Ellis walking with Jeff German. And the killer has this little hitch in his get up as he walks. And when you watch the video of Telus walking with Gehrman side by side in this piece that Garamond's doing, that same little hitch is there.
[25:39]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Detectives put the footage of Tellis walking and the footage of Jeff's killer side by side. It was a match.
[25:46]
Scott Weinberger
As they say, if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, well, let's just say the evidence was really starting to line up.
[25:53]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
It was enough for prosecutors to get a warrant to search Tellis property and to collect a sample of his DNA, which they could then compare to the DNA recovered from under Jeff's fingernails. And once they got inside his house, investigators found what they believed was more evidence of a cover story falling apart. Piece by piece, items they'd seen on that video of Jeff's house started to reappear.
[26:17]
Scott Weinberger
They found remnants of a straw hat cut in pieces and stuffed into a bag in the garage. Under a couch, they found gray Nike sneakers, one of which had a piece of cloth cut out of it. There were scissors in the utility drawer with a bloody handle. And Telus had a bloody wound on one of his fingers.
[26:39]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The last piece of the puzzle was the DNA. The test was expedited, the results, another match.
[26:46]
Narrator/Host
And it's like, all right, we're rolling, let's go. Once we get the confirmatory hit, that basically what we learn is that Telus's DNA is underneath Gehrman's fingernails. An arrest warrant is issued out.
[27:01]
Scott Weinberger
The walls were closing in on Robert Telles. Desperate, he eyed what he thought was his only way out.
[27:09]
Narrator/Host
Now, at the residence, he barricades himself in. He ends up hauling himself up in his master bedroom bathroom. He has slit his wrists. He is in a bathtub, and Tino SWAT is there. They send drones in to try to talk him out, and he's found kind of bleeding in his bathroom. And ultimately the SWAT team rescues him out of the bathroom and saves his life.
[27:31]
Pam Weckerly
It was a real serious attempt with
[27:36]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
deep wounds on his arms and wrists. Tellis was taken away by ambulance, and soon after that, he was arrested for first degree murder.
[27:45]
Scott Weinberger
He had tried to take his own life, but now his fate would be in the hands of the Nevada justice system and a jury of his peers.
[27:54]
Pam Weckerly
What were his feelings about Mr. Gehrman?
[27:58]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
He did not like Mr. German.
[28:00]
Pam Weckerly
Hated him.
[28:01]
Narrator/Host
Assume he hated him.
[28:02]
Pam Weckerly
Assume that was after the story was written.
[28:04]
Jill Zerg
Yes.
[28:17]
Scott Weinberger
Over the spring of 2022, Jeff did his job exposing workplace misconduct by a Clark county public official named Robert Telles.
[28:28]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Tellis made no secret about how he felt about the expose, which ultimately cost him his job. But prosecutors believed it was new revelations about his relationship with a subordinate that may have driven him to murder.
[28:41]
Narrator/Host
I feel like that's the straw that breaks the camel's back, because if you're Telus, you're like, I don't understand. You've written that I'm a terrible boss. You've ruined my marriage, exposing my affair. You've now caused me to lose my election. I don't have this job anymore. What more do you want from me? What's the purpose now of doing yet another article after I've lost and I'm out? And I think for him, that's the thing. It's like, you know what? I'm done. I'm not going to allow this to happen any further. To me, that's what pushes him over the edge, knowing that yet another one's coming.
[29:19]
Scott Weinberger
DNA, security footage, and a matching getaway car all put Telus at the scene. But prosecutors were also determined to show a jury that the killing was not just an act of rage, but a carefully planned, premeditated attack with a specific purpose to kill an upcoming story and the man behind it.
[29:41]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
To do that, investigators did a deep dive on Telus's phone and computer. Unsurprisingly, they found links to all the articles Jeff had written about the toxic office environment.
[29:53]
Scott Weinberger
They also found a series of heated text messages in which Telus blamed his predecessor for conspiring with disgruntled employees to feed this damaging information to the press.
[30:05]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
But investigators also found something else on the devices. Signs that tell us had been watching Jeff and studying where he lived. There were searches for Jeff's home address and his car. They found multiple photos of Jeff's cul de sac, including shots of the surrounding houses and what appeared to be the location of the security cameras.
[30:25]
Narrator/Host
Another thing that he had in his phone is he had almost. What he had done was we started noticing in the phone there were little tiled squares, what looked like a puzzle piece. If you took Google Maps Street View, and you broke it up into, let's say, 80 little squares from what your screen is, when you started looking at all the squares, what we realized, and our detective and we noticed was he had gone on Google Street View and he had gone in and looked at the cul de sac. So we saw Garand's house. Like literally there is a tile of the very spot where German's body would be found.
[31:00]
Scott Weinberger
In a recording from the trial, you could hear the prosecutor asking Tellus directly strictly about the fact that he had these photos of Jeff's house on his phone.
[31:12]
Narrator/Host
Isn't that where Mr. German was found by the police is inside your phone?
[31:18]
Robert Tellis
That is very strange.
[31:20]
Narrator/Host
So you would agree with me that if you were planning to kill someone at their house, it might be a good idea to get a lay of the land, right?
[31:28]
Robert Tellis
I've never slotted to kill anyone.
[31:31]
Scott Weinberger
Investigators also believe that Telus had taken steps to avoid leaving a digital trail. They showed that Telus phone had been left off and at home at the time of the murder, Something they argued was an attempt to avoid being tracked.
[31:48]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Meanwhile, investigators put their own map together. The focus, the maroon Yukon Denali.
[31:54]
Scott Weinberger
The truck became a critical piece of circumstantial evidence. And for the jury, investigators pulled the video from business after business, house after house, following the Yukon camera by camera as it moved through Las Vegas on the day of the murder, from Telus home to the crime scene and back to his house.
[32:14]
Pam Weckerly
But this was like painstaking because it is really the best video I've had in a case.
[32:20]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
The trial itself was unusual. For starters, Telus ran through several defenses. Defense attorneys at one point opting to represent himself.
[32:28]
Narrator/Host
It's like three different attorneys within, I don't know, three months. Then he represents himself for about a full year. And so we actually have to deal with Mr. Tellis for an entire year.
[32:40]
Pam Weckerly
Much more tedious. I mean, his personality in general is that he's kind of the smartest guy in any room.
[32:46]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Telus testified in his own defense, and you actually heard a piece of that in an earlier exchange and it was was memorable.
[32:53]
Scott Weinberger
It was more of a speech because his defense attorney had refused to be part of it.
[32:59]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
So let me just explain that piece for a moment because it's really interesting. At least I think so. Lawyers usually question the witnesses, right? Defense attorneys usually question their client if the defendant chooses to take the stand. There is a but to that. If they believe they'd be suborning perjury by participating in that questioning. So if they think it's clear that the client defendant's lying, they're ethically obligated not to take part. And that's when you have this scenario like here, where the lawyer basically asks the defendant their name on the stand and then just lets them Talk. Now, of course, the jury's never told that the lawyer won't question them because they think they're clearly lying. But to me, it's this really interesting scenario because it doesn't often happen. I think in my own cases, I've only seen that once. So here, when Tellis took the stand, prosecutors said they saw the same thing that they believed had been building for months before the murder. A man who felt victimized by Jeff's reporting and obsessed with defending his public image.
[33:54]
Robert Tellis
Excuse me, I'm obviously a little nervous. This is, it's a day I've been waiting for for nearly two years. This thing's been kind of a nightmare, frankly. And right now I want to say unequivocally, I'm innocent, I didn't kill Mr. Gurman, and I've got a lot to share with you all. There's been a lot of testimony and my concern is making sure that, that you hear what I think about all these things and the concerns that I have.
[34:27]
Narrator/Host
To me, that direct was Robert Tellis was the hero of his own story. So he spends the entire direct talking about his career in the PA's office and rooting out corruption and then how he was wrongfully kind of exposed and,
[34:44]
Pam Weckerly
you know, all the things he, he did on behalf of the taxpayers of Clark county. And, you know, we all should be essentially thanking him.
[34:53]
Narrator/Host
Right.
[34:54]
Scott Weinberger
Instead, tell us spun a tale of conspiracy in which he was the real victim.
[35:01]
Pam Weckerly
Basically, Telus says it's all a conspiracy to get me because I was the one who ended fraud in the public administrator's office.
[35:11]
Scott Weinberger
It was confusing and did little to explain away the DNA evidence, the clothing and the surveillance footage that put him at the scene of the crime.
[35:20]
Pam Weckerly
Eleven jurors saw that testimony and thought, you know, they were just done. Like it was just too, too ridiculous.
[35:30]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
After two weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated and at some point they came back with a note that they were deadlocked. But the judge sent them back with an instruction and asking them to try and work through the evidence. And apparently they did because they later returned with a verdict and found Robert tellis guilty of first degree murder. In Nevada, that carries a 20 year sentence with eight years added on because Telus used a deadly weapon and the victim was over the age of 60.
[35:56]
Scott Weinberger
At the trial, Jeff's sister, Jill Zerg, herself a Las Vegas journalist, testified about the lasting impact Jeff had on, on his family, on his community, and the world of journalism.
[36:09]
Jill Zerg
He belonged to a class of journalists that are in a league of their own. Not many reporters out there will ever match his caliber and investigative journalism and storytelling. Not only did my family lose a wonderful loving brother and uncle, but the Las Vegas community and the world of journalism lost an amazing investigative reporter and a relentless crusader for for justice.
[36:31]
Scott Weinberger
Investigative reporters make enemies. It's part of the job. Few, fortunately, are killed for their work.
[36:39]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff German spent a career exposing powerful people. Prosecutors said one of them decided the messenger deserved to die.
[36:49]
Scott Weinberger
Jeff spent his career doing the kind of work that makes some people very uncomfortable. He pulled back legs players. He asked hard questions and followed the facts into places where powerful people didn't want him to go. Now, I understand that work because I've spent my career chasing the truth, first in law enforcement and for the last two decades as a journalist and storyteller. And what you learn is that the truth doesn't usually come easy. It takes patience, pressure, and the willingness to sit with the facts that make people angry. And in this case, prosecutors proved, and a jury agreed, that a man chose murder to stop a bad story, to protect his own image and to hold on to whatever power he thought he had left. But the damage didn't end with Jeff. It landed on his friends, his family, his colleagues and everyone left behind to make sense of a life taken because so someone could not face the truth.
[37:51]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Jeff German was a dogged reporter, and that didn't always make him popular. But freedom of the press and the right to report is a fundamental right protected by our constitution. Rather than look within about his own conduct, Tellis decided to lash out and channeled his rage about being exposed and took another man's life. Jeff German had the right to report. He had the right to live. But that was taken from him by the hands of violence. Tune in next week for another new episode of Homicide360.
[38:28]
Scott Weinberger
Homicide360 is created and produced by Forsetti Media and Weinberger Media.
[38:34]
Anna Sega Nicolasi
Supervising producer is Walker Lamond. Managing editor. Editor is Kate Mack. Sabrina Sarai is production manager. This episode was written and produced by Gary Scott, edited by Ali Sierra and Phil Jean Grande. Original theme music by Trey Anderson.