A group of journalists who worked together to find the suspect in the murder of their co-worker Jeff German, an acclaimed investigative journalist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who was stabbed to death outside his home on Saturday, did so primarily using social media and Google Maps.
The five colleagues of German also took information they had gathered from police to find the suspected killer and found that Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles had a car in his driveway that matched the description that police had, according to the Daily Beast. Telles was arrested by police Wednesday night.
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“We’re just acting on instinct right now, aggressively trying to find out what happened,” said Briana Erickson, a colleague of German. “We’ve finally been able to breathe.”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal cited German’s death over an unspecified “altercation,” Erickson said. Shortly after, however, her editor saw a press release regarding a homicide at the same address as German’s home.
As the outlet began to search for who could be a suspect, they found angry social media messages directed at German from Telles, who had recently lost reelection for his position as public administrator. Telles’s loss came after German had written several investigative articles on him before the election, including one in which German accused the public administrator, who is married and a father to three, of having an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.
The police’s description of the suspect in German’s death described a man dressed in a straw hat, gloves, and an orange shirt, along with a 2007 to 2017 red or maroon GMC Yukon Denali with chrome handles and a sunroof. German’s co-workers then used Google Maps to search Telles’s address and found a photo of the vehicle that matched the police description in his driveway.
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“We’re here to break news, get it right, because that’s what Jeff would want us to do,” said Michael Scott Davidson, another member of the team.
Telles’s vehicle was towed by noon on Wednesday, with Telles arrested by police in the evening. He has been ordered to be held without bail on a murder count and is barred from Clark County facilities, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
