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.
''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.
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.
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