"Fearless" Las Vegas investigative journalist stabbed to death outside his home
A Las Vegas investigative reporter was stabbed to death outside his home and police are looking for a suspect, authorities said.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers found journalist Jeff German, 69, dead with stab wounds around 10:30 a.m. Saturday after authorities received a 911 call, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
German died of "multiple sharp force injuries" in a homicide, the Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner said Sunday.
It appears German was in an altercation with another person that led to the stabbing, which is believed to be an isolated incident, police said.
"We believe the altercation took place outside of the home," Capt. Dori Koren, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman, said at a news conference. "We do have some leads. We are pursuing a suspect but the suspect is outstanding."
Glenn Cook, the Review-Journal's executive editor, said German hadn't communicated any concerns about his personal safety or any threats made against him to anyone in the newspaper's leadership.
"The Review-Journal family is devastated to lose Jeff," Cook said in a statement. "He was the gold standard of the news business. It's hard to imagine what Las Vegas would be like today without his many years of shining a bright light on dark places."
German's Twitter page says, "I'm a member of the Las Vegas Review-Journal's investigative team, and I love digging up stories."
German joined the Review-Journal in 2010 after more than two decades at the Las Vegas Sun, where he was a columnist and reporter who covered courts, politics, labor, government and organized crime.
He was known for his stories about government malfeasance and political scandals and coverage of the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival that killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 others.
According to the Review-Journal, German held a master's degree from Marquette University and was the author of the 2001 true-crime book "Murder in Sin City: The Death of a Las Vegas Casino Boss," the story of the death of Ted Binion, heir to the Horseshoe Club fortune.
Ron Futrell, of CBS Las Vegas affiliate KLAS-TV, said, "There's so many questions right now and answers we don't know to stuff, but I'll tell you he was fearless. That's one thing he was, and you can't do some of the stories he did without being fearless and that's what he was in that sense. You can see it in his writing."
Futrell, who knew German well also said, "I get that not everybody is going to like what an investigative journalist does. We have them in our newsroom and not everyone is going to be happy, and he was like that, but he didn't care, he wanted to get things right and he put it in the right context."
