(CN) — The man accused of killing an investigative reporter who published a series of critical articles about him took the stand in his criminal trial on Wednesday, telling the court he was framed for the crime.
Robert Telles took the stand Wednesday afternoon as the defense’s final witness. Telles is accused of killing Jeff German, a Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter, over Labor Day weekend in 2022. He entered a not-guilty plea and took the opportunity to address the jury directly in a narrative testimony to convince the factfinders that he was set up.
“Unequivocally, I’m innocent,” Telles said on the stand. “I didn’t kill Mr. German.”
He told the jury that he had been waiting for this opportunity for two years and that “this thing has been kind of a nightmare.” Telles also told the court he felt that the way German was murdered spoke to an experienced killer and he doubted someone could do it “without some sort of training.”
Telles explained his work history and what his former elected position as Clark County Public Administrator entailed before narrowing his focus on a local real estate company’s alleged corruption and how he believes it relates to his case.
“Somebody framed me for this, and I believe that it’s Compass Realty,” Telles told the jury. “And I believe that it’s for the work that I’ve done against them.”
He explained to the jury the process by which the public administrator’s office handles home sales, taxes and mortgages. Telles explained how he had seen a home sold twice in one day, with the latter bringing in $50,000 more.
“It’s just not right,” Telles said. He said administrators have a duty to get the maximum value for real estate so it can be distributed to heirs.
Telles told the court he took his concerns about the real estate company to Derek Jappe, a detective in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s corruption department.
Judge Michelle Leavitt requested Telles move on in his testimony when the defendant spent a while discussing his emails with Jappe. The judge asked him to stick to facts and observations. The prosecution interrupted Telles’ testimony with multiple hearsay objections.
Telles told the court that he doubted it was just chance that the investigation Telles had spurred ended shortly after German was murdered.
“I believe that this was, it would be quite a coincidence if that the fact that Mr. German was killed, and it was put on me, and they just had a serendipitous benefit from that,” Telles said. “All these things that were coming to a head for them just, done. No repercussions, no nothing.”
German was found stabbed to death outside his home on Sept. 2, 2022. Telles said he was shocked when he heard about the death, and even more so when he saw the suspect’s vehicle was the same make and model as his.
“Later I thought, my gosh, it still can’t be a coincidence that the killer is driving a vehicle that is like mine,” Telles said. “So I started to get really scared. It couldn’t seem to be any kind of coincidence that this person was driving a vehicle that was just like mine. “
Telles also addressed some of the evidence levied against him. He told the court he had “inadvertently” cut his finger while preparing dinner for his daughter the night he learned German was killed and forgot to clean his blood off a pair of scissors he used to open a bottle of superglue he used to plug his wound.
His testimony ran until the end of the day and will pick up on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, Telles’ defense attorney Robert Draskovitch called Robert Aguero, a cellphone forensic specialist, to the stand to ask about location data on Telles’ phone.
Upon cross-examination, prosecutor Chris Hamner questioned Aguero about why Telles’ phone didn’t report its location in the period of time before German was killed.
“You can literally just turn off the phone and then it goes dark, right?” Hamner asked.
Aguero conceded that a phone will not record location services when it is turned off. He also confirmed to the prosecutor that there was a five-hour window on the day German was killed in which Telles’ phone only had records of incoming calls and messages but no outgoing messages.
A juror submitted a written question asking if there are any methods of taking photos with a cellphone that would not show up on a media location map. Aguero told the court that a cellphone with location services turned off would not record that information.
The defense also called an employee of the public administrator’s office to the stand. Nichole Lofton testified that she felt a divide in the office when she started working there and felt she had to choose sides between Telles and other staff members.
A Planet Fitness manager, Terrence Jamison, also took the stand and showed the court a check-in log that showed Telles’ account entering the gym just after noon on the day of the murder.