The whereabouts of a former Las Vegas Democratic politician around the time a veteran investigative journalist was brutally stabbed to death remains a key question in the ex-official’s murder trial – and a newly unearthed text message shrouds mystery to the defendants alibi as he continues to plead his innocence and contest DNA evidence linking him to the crime.
Robert Telles, 47, is on trial for killing journalist Jeff German, who had penned critical stories about the official, and the defendant faced tough questioning during cross-examination on Thursday where the prosecutor presented him with a surprise text message sent from his wife that had vanished from his phone.
Telles, a former Democratic Clark County administrator of estates, read out a text message from his wife, showing that she had wondered where he was around the time German was ambushed and killed outside his home nearly two years ago.
DEM VEGAS POLITICIAN ACCUSED OF JOURNALIST MURDER TESTIFIES: ‘UNEQUIVOCALLY I’M INNOCENT’
A surprise text message presented at the murder trial of former Las Vegas Democratic politician Robert Telles appears to shroud the mystery about his whereabouts on the day of the slaying.(K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool)
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“It says, ‘Where are you?’” Telles said, in response to prosecutor Christopher Hamner.
Telles testified earlier that he had ignored several text, email and voice messages while he was at home, and gone for a walk and then to a gym the day German was killed. Prosecutors have suggested that he had left the phone at home as he executed a meticulously planned fatal attack on the journalist.
Hamner zeroed in on cellphone records presented Wednesday by a defense witness that included no listing of the text from Telles’ wife. The prosecutor said it was found on her Apple Watch device, and that the message had been deleted from Telles’ phone.
Telles said he had been in possession of the phone all day and that he had had the ability to save and delete messages. He did not admit that he had deleted the message.
Hamner noted the time — 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2022 — was the time security video presented earlier to the jury showed a maroon SUV that Telles had agreed looked just like his, was in German’s neighborhood. It was driven by a person wearing an orange outfit and a big straw hat. Telles himself referred several times Thursday to that person as German’s killer.
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Telles said on the stand that a professional assassin stabbed German to death. He has accused a real estate firm of being behind the murder in order to frame him for trying to fight corruption that he saw in his office.
German was found slashed and stabbed to death in a side yard outside his home, where Telles is accused in a criminal complaint of “lying in wait” for German to come outside.
FILE – Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles, right, talks to Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German in his Las Vegas office on May 11, 2022. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, File)
Telles was arrested days later after police circulated video of a person wearing an orange work shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat toting a shoulder bag and walking toward German’s home.
Prosecutors say they have strong evidence, including DNA believed to be from Telles found beneath German’s fingernails and cut-up pieces of a straw hat and shoes found at Telles’ house that resembled those worn by the person seen on video outside German’s home.
DEM VEGAS POLITICIAN ACCUSED OF MURDER HAD HUNDREDS OF PHOTOS OF REPORTER’S HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD: TESTIMONY
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Telles did not dispute that his DNA had been found beneath German’s fingernails but suggested that it may have been planted there. Autopsy photos show knife or slash marks on German’s arms that police said stemmed from German’s fight for his life. Telles said he did not know how the cut-up pieces of a straw hat and shoes had turned up in his home.
“So you hold the DNA labs in on it, too?” Hamner said.
Cut up pieces of a shoe are shown in an evidence photo during the murder trial of Robert Telles for the death of investigative journalist Jeff German.(K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool)
“I don’t know. I don’t know at what point. I don’t know what point the sample was collected,” Telles responded.
“Sir, please tell us, jury. How in the world does your DNA get underneath Mr. German’s fingernails?” Hamner replied.
“I don’t know, because I did not kill Mr. German,” Telles said.
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Hamner acknowledged that two key pieces of evidence were never found: The orange work shirt and the knife used to attack German. He wondered why people who had been out to frame Telles would have left them out of the evidence inventory.
“Why wouldn’t they put the murder weapon in your house?” Hamner asked. “Does that make any sense?”
“I don’t know,” Telles responded.
On Monday the jury heard that Telles had hundreds of photos of German’s home and neighborhood on his cell phone and computer.
Other photos taken from Telles’ devices included an image of a single gray athletic shoe with a distinctive black pattern and a shot of Telles’ work computer at the Clark County Public Administrator and Guardian office with results of internet searches through a password-protected site that retrieved German’s name, home address, vehicle registration and date of birth.
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Outgoing Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles washes his car outside his home, Sept. 6, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, File)
Hamner noted previously to jurors that the photo had been taken Aug. 23, 2022 — less than two weeks before he was found dead in a pool of blood.
Police also released images of a distinctive maroon SUV like one that a Review-Journal photographer had seen Telles washing outside his home several days after the killing. It had been driven by a person wearing an orange outfit and a big straw hat.
Both sides said they expect closing arguments to come Monday, two weeks after jury selection began.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
MEGADETH performed the song “Washington Is Next!” live for the first time since 2009 during the band’s August 24 concert at iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida. Fan-filmed video of the performance can be seen below.
According to Setlist.fm, the setlist for the concert was as follows:
01. The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! 02. Dread And The Fugitive Mind 03. Angry Again 04. Hangar 18 05. She-Wolf 06. Washington Is Next! (first time since 2009) 07. Skin O’ My Teeth 08. Liar 09. Sweating Bullets 10. Countdown To Extinction 11. Trust 12. Tornado Of Souls 13. We’ll Be Back 14. Symphony Of Destruction 15. Mechanix 16. Peace Sells
Encore:
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17. Holy Wars… The Punishment Due
“Washington Is Next!” originally appeared on MEGADETH‘s eleventh studio album, “United Abominations”, which was released in May 2007 via Roadrunner Records.
MEGADETH kicked off the “Destroy All Enemies” summer 2024 U.S. tour on August 2 at Walmart AMP, Rogers, Arkansas. Produced by Live Nation, the trek, which features MUDVAYNE and ALL THAT REMAINS as support, is hitting 33 cities, including Las Vegas, Boston and St. Louis, before wrapping up on September 28 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Finnish guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari joined MEGADETH last September after the band’s longtime axeman Kiko Loureiro, announced earlier that month that he would sit out the next leg of MEGADETH‘s “Crush The World” tour in order to stay home with his children back in Finland. It was later revealed that Mäntysaari would continue to play guitar for MEGADETH for the foreseeable future, with Loureiro seemingly having no plans to return.
The 37-year-old Mäntysaari was born in Tampere, Finland and began playing guitar at the age of 12. In 2004, he joined the band WINTERSUN. He has also been a member of SMACKBOUND since 2015.
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MEGADETH played its first concert with Mäntysaari on September 6, 2023 at Revel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Loureiro officially joined MEGADETH in April 2015, about five months after Chris Broderick‘s exit from the group.
Since its inception in 1983, MEGADETH has ascended from its raw thrash metal roots to become an unstoppable force in the heavy metal world. With founder Dave Mustaine at the helm, MEGADETH‘s journey has been marked by a penchant for pushing the boundaries of speed, technicality, and complexity in their music. Their groundbreaking album “Rust In Peace”, released in 1990, is frequently cited as a seminal work in the thrash metal genre. Along with the critically acclaimed “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”, it cemented MEGADETH‘s place in the annals of metal history.
Over four decades, the band’s discography has earned numerous certifications, including platinum and multi-platinum awards, with albums like “Countdown To Extinction” and “Youthanasia” achieving widespread critical acclaim. 2016’s “Dystopia” not only marked a high point with their first Grammy Award for “Best Metal Performance” after twelve nominations but also set the stage for their latest triumph, “The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!” in 2022. MEGADETH‘s status as part of the “Big Four” of thrash metal underscores their trailblazing role in the genre, laying the groundwork for countless bands and musicians who have followed in their wake.
I have read, with great interest, the Tribune series on the religious divide in Utah. I too have my perspective about this issue.
Roughly 45 years ago, I was an exuberant LDS convert, returned missionary, elders quorum president, and then counselor in a bishopric in Van Nuys, California. My wife, one of 10 children in a devout LDS family, was also a returned missionary, and we had married in the temple. I vividly recall, during a casual conversation with my mother-in-law, telling her that I could not imagine having a relationship with a non-Mormon, because “we would have nothing in common.” I think I was a little surprised at myself for uttering those words, which even shocked me at the time. Nevertheless, it was true that I had no significant relationships with anyone who was not LDS. I was just too busy with work, school, family and my LDS community.
In 1990, my family moved to Utah; in 2001, I resigned my LDS Church membership. Three LDS friends in California continued their relationships with me; not a single Utah Mormon did. In the 34 years I’ve lived in Utah, I’ve managed to develop friendships with three individuals who identify as LDS. To be fair, they’re all a bit unorthodox.
If one were to ask me how much I have in common with the devout Utah LDS folks I’ve met — and I’ve met hundreds over the years — I would answer, “Not much.” Perhaps they would say the same about me.
A century ago, the racist reach of the Ku Klux Klan was aggressive in spreading across the United States, rooting itself from the South to North and East to West. The organization even openly advertised in newspapers across the nation to build membership, including in Wyoming.
Protestant whites were welcome. Blacks, Jews and Catholics were not, and were targets for the Klan.
In the 1870s, the first phase of the KKK went underground and was weakened following federal action against it after its initial birth in the reconstruction period after the Civil War. The Klan crawled back into the light helped along by the new movie medium and D.W. Griffith’s silent film drama “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915. The movie, which originally was a 1905 novel and then a play titled “The Clansman,” portrayed the Klan as heroes.
In the movie and the group’s new push for members, the Klan wore white robes and hoods and preached American patriotism. They also burned crosses.
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University of Wyoming American Heritage Center archivist Leslie Waggener, who has written two articles on the Klan in the history journal Annals of Wyoming, said she believes the KKK’s infiltration of the Cowboy State mirrored others in the West.
“Wyoming was more of an average state. It was a lot stronger in Colorado, Oregon, Illinois, even more so than the South,” she said. “I would say that in Wyoming it was strongest in Casper … (but) there are hints of it being more powerful in Cheyenne.”
Waggener agrees that the film “Birth of Nation” prepared the soil for the seeds of hate to be sown.
An advertisement for “The Birth of a Nation” appeared in the June 22, 1917, issue of the Powell Tribune. The movie was going to be shown on the Fourth of July at the Alpha Theater, and the ad promised the film would feature the “thrilling rides of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Klan Organizes In Wyoming
The Klan’s reach into the Cowboy State arrived with headlines in 1921.
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The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 28 used a double-deck large font type to proclaim: “Ku Klux Klan To Operate In Casper” with a sub-headline that read, “Flourishing Chapter of National Order Said to Number 150 and Include Prominent Resident Formed to Carry On General Program; First in Wyoming.”
A few months earlier, the Douglas Budget reported the Klan was in its community as well.
“According to information received from Colonel William J. Simmons of Atlanta, Ga., Imperial Wizard of the Knights of Ku Klux Klan, the work of organizing the Klan in this state has been put under way and representatives of the organization are in Douglas now,” the newspaper reported on June 9, 1921. “The work of organizing the Klan in this territory will be conducted from the central office, or headquarters, which has been established in Denver, the territory to be known as the Northwestern Domain.”
Similar articles ran in The Powell Tribune on June 10, 1921, and the Riverton Review on June 15, 1921.
For Bob David, a Casper historian, businessman and World War I veteran, the Klan represented poison in the community. In his unpublished memoirs at Casper College’s Western History Center, he penned a few pages about his encounters with the organization.
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“The Ku Klux Klan became more and more powerful in Casper under the leadership of Dr. Johnson, whom everyone knew to be an abortionist and seller of dope. He was a big, gray-haired man with a gray Van Dyke beard,” David wrote. “The State Kleagle, or head man, was a tall, angular old George Dickson of Douglas, who used to be in the Florence Hardware with dad (his father, Edward David) years before. Now, he ran a hardware store there.”
The Ku Klux Klan opening a chapter in Casper was front-page news in the Casper Daily Tribune. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
An advertisement in the University of Wyoming’s Branding Iron newspaper on June 23, 1925 advertised a Klan film. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
“The Birth of a Nation” was the spark the Ku Klux Klan needed for expansion in the American West in the early 1920s, including all around Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Left: An ad on July 25, 1924, in the Casper Herald promoted a meeting with an anti-Klan speaker. Right: An ad in the Cody Enterprise on Dec. 24, 1925, promoted the local Cody Klan group and its beliefs. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Recruiting Target
David did not date when he started to notice the Klan in Casper, but he wrote that when the organization’s recruiting efforts picked up, he was a target.
“Because I had a lot of influence in the Veterans of Foreign Wars, was a Mason of sorts, and a Protestant, the Ku Klux Klan tried every means they could muster to get me to join them,” he wrote. “Daily, when I got off the bus after work in the evening, one or a half dozen of them met me, to escort me home, to argue and plead with me. Across the street, in a white house next to the apartment house, lived one of their leaders.
“One day, I was standing on his porch when he took a little silver whistle out of his breast pocket and said, ‘Look at this Bob. If I was to blow this whistle once right now, I would have 50 members of the Klan here within two minutes.’”
“I believed him. Klansmen were everywhere,” David wrote.
In Sheridan, the Sheridan Post on Jan. 13, 1922, printed an article from the local Klan chapter explaining that ladies were not allowed in the group. A woman identified as “An American Girl” had written about how she had been thrown out of her home in Colorado by a “fiendish Hun” during World War I.
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The Klan explained in its published article to the woman that it existed to protect “our pure womanhood.”
“We assure you that though you may not be a member of the Klan, you are, nevertheless, dwelling within the Realm of the Invisible Empire and safeguarded by its regulations and edicts and protected by its strength,” the Sheridan Knights of the Ku Klux Klan wrote. “We welcome your continued moral assistance as we carry on.”
‘Benefactors’ Go To Church
In the Greybull Tribune on Jan. 5, 1923, there was a story how the Klan interrupted a Sunday night church service in town. Two robed and masked “benefactors” walked to the pulpit and handed the Rev. W. J. Lloyd a “purse with $25” during his farewell service. The pair walked out and sped away in a “high-powered automobile” which had waited outside.
In addition to the money, there was a letter that was quoted in the newspaper in which the Klan applauded the pastor’s work, character, and ministry helping the community. The letter told the pastor the Klan was a law-abiding group who assisted and upheld the law.
“We solicit your acceptance of this little evidence of our respect and acknowledgement of your goodness of deed and character and wish that you might become associated actively with us in our works, at all events we would like your membership,” the newspaper quoted the words of the letter.
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It was signed by the “Exalted Cyclops, Greybull Klan No. 8 Realm of Wyoming.”
In Riverton, a citizen named O. N. Gibson wrote in opposition to the Klan and the next week, on Jan. 3, 1923, there was a response in the paper refuting his arguments. The newspaper gave an individual identified as “A Klansman” two columns of type to refute Gibson’s arguments against the organization’s secrecy, methods, and “Americanism.” Gibson had written about the Klan’s mask and robes as tools that would hide identities during lawlessness.
“The Klan is not as strong here as we confidently predict it will be, but it is strong enough today to justify the statement that no masked man in the robe of the Klan could appear in the business section of Riverton without being observed by several men who would know whether or not he was legitimate business,” War Veteran wrote. “The Klan is dedicated to ideals which ever right-thinking citizen of Riverton can endorse. Membership in the Klan is an honor, and the time, please God, is not far distant when a town possessing the Klan will recognize that it has a real power for good — not evil.”
Casper’s Bob David wrote about his encounters with the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s as they tried to take over the local VFW Post. (Caper College Wester History Center)
‘Law And Order Theme’
Waggener said the interesting fact about the Klan in Wyoming is that while the national organization railed against Blacks and Catholics, Wyoming did not have many Blacks. So, the organization tried to take a more “law-and-order” approach to gain acceptance.
In her article “KKK Country: How Wyoming Embraced the Ku Klux Klan,” Waggener writes that Casper may have embraced the Klan due to the bars, prostitutes, bootlegging and other illegal activities surrounding the Sandbar District. Two roadhouses were burned down and the Klan was suspected.
But as the decade moved forward, people took public stands against the KKK’s reach.
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In the Casper Herald on July 25, 1924, a full-page ad invited the public to come and hear an Edgar I. Fuller, expose the Klan. The ad said Fuller was a former executive secretary to the “Imperial Wizard Emeritus.”
“What do you think of your public servants — sworn to recognize and uphold your rights — but who can find it possible to be a member of an organization where it is thought either necessary or proper to actively conceal that membership from the public … America cannot afford to tolerate any influence which emulates the methods of the Spanish Inquisition or set at naught its own institutions,” the ad stated.
People were invited to go to the Arkeon Dancing Academy in Casper to learn more about why they should oppose the Klan.
Whether Casper’s David went there is not known. But he did go to a Klan meeting and then let his views be expressed. His butcher, a Klan member kept trying to recruit him and one day told David that a national speaker from the Klan would be in Casper. He gave David two tickets to the event.
David and a friend, Dick Copsey, went to the Odd Fellows Hall and were met at the door by a man David knew to be a Natrona County deputy sheriff. The door into the hall was locked, the deputy turned the key to unlock it and they were escorted down to the front.
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Barred From Leaving
There at the meeting, the national speaker went on to make statements against Blacks, calling them the “N” word and stating they were without souls.
David wrote that he and his friend got up and tried to leave the meeting but were blocked by the deputy who told them to return to their seats. They did, not wanting to start a fight. The local leader spoke next.
“Then Dr. Johnson got to his feet up on the platform, came forward, and began to orate, looking most of the time at me. He extolled the virtues of the great organization, and all that sort of bunk until again Dick and I had had enough,” David wrote. “With a burst of final determination, we rose together, and strode up the aisle again.”
The deputy barred their way.
David wrote that he drove his shoulder into deputy’s chest sending him back into his chair while his friend turned the key to unlock the door and they both made their exit. The next day David went to the butcher to challenge him for the way they were treated as guests and being forbidden to leave.
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The butcher told him it was for his own protection.
“Don’t you know the Catholics had rented a space across from the street from the Odd Fellows, and they were sitting there taking down the names of everyone who came and went from that meeting,” David quoted the butcher. “We had the police chief clear the streets for two blocks before we disbanded last night to protect everyone.”
David wrote that he responded: “The Catholics aren’t half as afraid of you as you are of them.”
Waggener said the Catholics in Casper helped lead the Klan opposition with a priest of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church on one occasion pulling off a Klansman’s hood during a march when Klan paraded outside.
The Chicago-based American Unity League was encouraged by Casper Catholics to come to Casper and infiltrate the Klan chapter. A member did come to the city, infiltrate the Klan and the American Unity League’s publication “Tolerance” printed names of Klan members in the city, she said.
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Groups of Ku Klux Klansmen operated in Wyoming and around the region. It was active in the Black Hills of South Dakota as well. (University of Wyoming American Heritage Center)
Plan To Stop VFW Takeover
David wrote that the KKK continued to infiltrate the VFW Post despite his best efforts. He eventually called the Catholic VFW members to his house to “try and make plans which would successfully keep them (KKK) out.”
On the following day after the VFW meeting at his home, David wrote he drove down to Douglas to enter the KKK state leader Dickson’s hardware store. He found him alone.
“I went around behind the counter, took him by the front of his shirt and shook him like the big, cowardly washrag he was,” David wrote. He ordered Dickson to keep the Klan out of the VFW.
“You don’t scare anyone with your bedsheets and pillowcases,” David wrote he told the man. “When I fight, I don’t have to hide behind anything. The next time that I have to come down here to see you, I’ll do worse.”
The impact of David’s words is not known, because he stopped writing about the KKK in Casper at that point. But the initial fervor the Klan generated in Wyoming earlier in the decade seemed to lose its luster, at least publicly the last half of the decade.
Waggener said a series of Klan scandals in the nation seemed to significantly damage the Klan in other parts of the country in the mid-1920s. The worst involved the Klan’s Grand Dragon David C. Stephenson, who made national headlines for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a woman in 1925.
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Still, Klan activities occurred in the state for the next few years.
“It just seemed like (the Klan) lasted in Wyoming longer, it lasted until the late 1920s and possibly the early 1930s and some of the scandals of the national organizations weren’t making it to Wyoming,” Waggener said.
From Praise To Scandal
In the 1930s, as the KKK fell out of the Wyoming news and the Depression kicked in, accusations that one was a member of Klan became politically charged for any candidate.
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black of Alabama was appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to U.S. Supreme Court in 1937 a controversy arose about his being lifetime Klan member. Some called for him to be removed. Black admitted he had been a member in the early 1920s, resigned from the Klan, and never rejoined.
Wyoming’s U.S. Senator Harry H. Schwartz of Casper, a Democrat, was among those who came to Black’s defense as reported in the Casper Tribune-Herald on Sept. 19, 1937.
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“The renewed attack on Black was inspired by confirmed enemies of the present Democratic administration,” Schwartz said. “Justice Black’s real offense is great ability plus uncompromising determination that the predatory powerful shall not oppress the weak and helpless. None who congratulated him will ever have cause to regret so doing.”
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Prohibition was a common political theme for the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s, especially in areas where race wasn’t much of an issue, like Wyoming. (Bettmann Archive via Getty Images)
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.