In 2018, after serving 12 years as Clark County’s public trustee, a low-key elected position responsible for safeguarding the estates of recently deceased Las Vegans, Cahill anointed a fellow Democrat as his potential successor. His choice? A 45-year-old Mississippi-born HVAC technician turned attorney named Robert Telles. Cahill told The Daily Beast that at the time, no one had pointed out any problems with Telles. And finally, his advocacy for the married father of three who had been named the Nevada Legal Service’s 2014 Pro Bono Attorney of the Year paid off when Telles won the Democratic nomination and then the general election. “Any contact I had [with Telles] it was positive,” Cahill said. “His classmates in law school, some of them were lawyers who said he would do a great job.” Once Telles took over, Cahill began to run into problems – including whispers from staff that Telles was “quite hostile if he thought people were pushing him away”. Then investigative reporter Jeff German’s articles in the Las Vegas Review-Journal began circulating in May about Telles allegedly presiding over an atmosphere of intimidation and favoritism at Cahill’s old workplace. (Tells has denied the allegations.) But even after the two old allies traded a mini war of words on Facebook, Cahill stressed he would not describe Telles – who lost his re-election bid in the wake of the German’s report – as a violent man. Which made what followed all the more impressive. On Wednesday night, Telles was arrested after he allegedly disguised himself and fatally stabbed the German seven times during a fight next to the reporter’s garage the previous Friday morning. “How could he be so dumb? How could he think he could get away with it?’ Cahill asked. “None of this makes sense.” “It’s so shocking,” she added. “[Telles] pursued him. He chased after him. He got a disguise. He put a lot of thought into it. It’s still hard to believe.” The grisly murder—and Telles’ subsequent arrest after authorities found his DNA under the German’s fingernails—has stunned reporters, inflamed the right wing of the media and shocked the entire Las Vegas community. But for some of the people who knew or worked close to the man, wrapping their heads around how an accountant of death could have transformed into a cold-blooded killer was its own odyssey. “I’m going to see him tomorrow and find out what’s going on,” criminal defense attorney Ozzie Fumo, who says he was friends with both German and Telles, told the Daily Beast, referring to an upcoming prison visit. “There are so many questions.” Telles has yet to enter a plea and was scheduled to make his first court appearance on Tuesday. Neither his family nor a lawyer could be reached for comment. The disgraced politician is being held without bond at the Clark County Detention Center after being briefly treated for “self-inflicted wounds” following his arrest Wednesday. Cops arrested Telles after a dramatic hour-long standoff in which he barricaded himself in his home and police called Fumo to get their man to surrender. “I don’t know why they called me, but I didn’t think twice about it. I was like, “Of course,” I wanted to help them. I wanted to help Rob,” Fumo said, recalling the odd 22-minute drive. “They took him out of the house before I got there, though. I’m just glad everyone is okay.” Fumo said he has been in contact with Telles’ family and that his wife had not yet spoken to her husband as of Friday afternoon, but was “devastated and focused only on their children.” Authorities have not provided a clear motive for the Sept. 2 stabbing. However, Las Vegas Metro Police Chief Dory Coren said Thursday that “Tells was upset about the articles being written by German as an investigative reporter uncovering possible wrongdoing, and Tells had publicly expressed his issues with that the report”. “And, ultimately, Tells was also upset—as we later learned—that there were additional reports pending,” Koren added. The German’s earlier reporting may have doomed Telles’ re-election campaign in June, prompting the public administrator to publicly attack the journalist online. “I can’t wait to lay smear #4 off [Jeff German],” Teles tweeted on June 18, just one week before conceding defeat. “One trick pony I think he’s crazy I didn’t go in a hole and die.” Despite Telles’ online fervor, Fumo insisted Friday that his longtime friend was more “saddened” by the German’s report than angry. Fumo said Tells contacted him after German’s first story in May accusing him of fostering a toxic workplace and said he was “upset and saddened by it … but he didn’t say anything specifically about Jeff.” “It boggles my mind that he would be so angry over a story to do something,” he told The Daily Beast. Cahill, however, said the rumors about Telles’ behavior were so troubling that he actually offered to speak to his successor last year. The idea was dropped, he said, at the behest of some current employees, who feared Telles would retaliate for talking to their old boss. “I go back and forth about whether there was any indication that I lost? Any signal?’ Cahill said. “It wasn’t a matter of temperament. It’s not like she walked up to him in a bar and punched him in the face.” Indeed, Koren on Thursday explained how surveillance footage captured the suspect wearing a large straw hat and construction-style shirt, apparently to help conceal his identity. But investigators were quickly able to identify the suspect’s vehicle — a GMC Yukon Denali — which Koren said had been spotted several times in German’s neighborhood. A neighbor, Jay Sabs, told The Daily Beast that his security camera captured the man police identified as Telles pacing outside his home at about 11 a.m. last Friday at the northwest corner of Bronze Circle and Wintergreen Drive. Sabs, 30, described the video as showing the maroon Yukon driving past his home and then the man pacing for about 10 to 15 minutes. Sabs said he did not see the Yukon himself and turned the video over to police. (Vegas police did not respond to a request for comment.) Reporters at the Review-Journal eventually found Telles’ car through Google Maps after police put out a call for information, the reporters told The Daily Beast. Authorities were able to match the SUV to Telles’ car and eventually execute a search warrant at his home on Wednesday. Although no murder weapon was found in the house, police found cut shoes and a similar, but damaged, straw hat, as well as bloody shoes. They returned to arrest him hours later. For Patsy Brown, the Republican candidate running for the seat Telles was vacating in December, the nature of the concert made the assassination allegation all the more terrifying. “This is usually like a position at the bottom of the ballots that happens to be about death,” he pointed out. “I spend most of my time explaining the position to people because they don’t even know what it is.” Brown also raised a troubling possibility: that German’s family might have to work with Telles’ old office to manage the beloved reporter’s estate. After all, in addition to securing the property of the recently deceased while their family members are identified and located, the public administrator’s office can also act as an estate administrator in extreme circumstances. “It’s like a funeral parlor going on like this,” he said. “This office is supposed to help grieving families figure out how to handle the estate of their lost loved ones. Now someone in that office is accused of causing this loss. It’s surreal.”
