Jeff German excelled as an investigative reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Since landing there in 2010, the veteran journalist had covered courts, politics, government, organized crime and more. Las Vegas Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook said German, 69, had no plans to retire.
“I would make the argument that he was as productive and impactful in his last 10 years, 12 years with us than he was at any other point in his career,” Cook said. “This was a 69-year-old man who really was a model reporter in our newsroom, in terms of his productivity and the impact of his work.”
Then, in early September 2022, German was found dead outside his home. The accomplished journalist’s death by stabbing shook the Las Vegas and greater journalism communities.
The Review-Journal covered his murder relentlessly. Then-Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles was arrested and charged in German’s death.
Like other mainstream outlets, The Washington Post covered the story. Conversations sprung up between a few editors about offering assistance to the Review-Journal. Craig Timberg, senior editor for collaborative investigations at the Post, was tapped to reach out to Cook. Timberg emailed on Sept. 8, offering condolences and help on behalf of the national newspaper.
“We’ve been discussing internally whether we can support you and your staff in some useful way, aside from covering the events as they happen,” read Timberg’s email, which he shared with Poynter. “The most obvious idea — to us anyway — would be to lend reporting resources to the story or stories German was pursuing, in collaboration with The Review-Journal.”
Timberg’s email landed in Cook’s inbox the day after Telles was arrested on suspicion of German’s murder. At the time, Cook said his staff was covering this “warp speed breaking news story” while grieving the murder of their colleague.
“My initial reaction to Craig’s email was just overwhelming gratitude. I never expected to see anything like that,” Cook said. “We felt and we were lifted by the messages of support that we had received from colleagues all over the world — and we will always treasure those messages of support that we received. But Craig’s offer was unique.”
Cook responded to Timberg the next day and said he’d be in touch. A few weeks later, he emailed Timberg links to four stories the Review-Journal had published on an alleged Ponzi scheme that preyed on the Mormon community there. Cook told Poynter that the newspaper had covered only its initial developments.
“Jeff German knew that this story was very important to me, that I had flagged it for leaders in our organization and said, ‘Hey, this is one of the biggest and most important stories we can share with our readership, and we need to prioritize this,’” Cook said. “Jeff was on it at the time that he was murdered.”
Cook and Timberg later hopped on the phone to discuss the story. With German gone, the remaining Review-Journal staff couldn’t get to it. He hadn’t gotten very far, but the newspaper would appreciate help in picking it up.
“We essentially said, ‘Sure, we’d love to,’” Timberg said.
Timberg, whose job it is to set up partnerships between The Washington Post and other outlets and then oversee them, ran into his colleague, local enterprise and projects editor Lynda Robinson, in the hallway.
“I said, ‘Lynda, I’ve got this amazing story, and we’re considering doing it because we want to pay homage to Jeff German in Las Vegas,’” he said.
Washington Post enterprise reporter Lizzie Johnson was finishing another story when she received a call from Robinson, her editor. She was told the newspaper had been talking with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Then came a question for Johnson: Would she want to take on a project German had started before he was killed?
“I was kind of overwhelmed by the idea at first because, I mean, it’s so meaningful, right? Is there anything more meaningful than honoring someone’s legacy and carrying the torch for them?” Johnson said. “But I knew it was really important, and so I was like, I have to say yes to this. There’s no other answer. And that is what kicked this whole thing off.”
When she landed in Nevada on her first trip, Johnson remembers leaving the airport and stopping somewhere for a coffee. She changed in the bathroom and headed straight to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newsroom to meet German’s editor, Rhonda Prast, and his colleagues.
She saw German’s desk and picked up some folders containing source material for the investigation into the alleged Ponzi scheme with hundreds of victims.
“Mostly I just wanted to get a sense of who he (German) was and what it was like there,” she said.
Johnson said it was difficult meeting the Review-Journal staff. “He had just died and it was really sudden, it was really violent,” she said. “And I think they were still reeling from the fact that he wasn’t there anymore.”
Johnson said they told him stories about German; how much he loved his job and colleagues, how he was a great mentor to young reporters. They also told her about a true-crime podcast German hosted called “Mobbed Up: The Fight for Las Vegas.”
“And so after I left the newsroom, I put it on my car speaker and was listening to it as I was driving all around Las Vegas,” she said. “And it felt like I sort of got to know him through that podcast, too.”
Johnson said German set her up really well with the Ponzi story. He had given his editor a brief memo in which he talked in broad sweeps about what he wanted to do. He was going to begin chipping away at court filings. So that’s where Johnson began, too.
“There were so many points along the way where — after a hard interview or after reading 100 pages of court filings in a morning — I would take a second to breathe and my mind would just wander back to him and wonder, ‘Well, how would Jeff do this? What would Jeff be thinking about this?’” Johnson said. “He was always on my mind as I was doing this, and I think that made it all the more meaningful, right?”
Johnson was paired with Review-Journal photographer/videographer Rachel Aston. “Rachel was incredible,” Johnson said. “She and I talked all the time, went back and forth as the story developed. When you’re reporting something like this, you’re looking backwards trying to understand what happened, but you’re also looking forward, watching as things unravel.”
What resulted was a thorough and richly detailed breakdown of the alleged scheme, published last week by both the Las Vegas Review-Journal and The Washington Post. The narrative’s lede brings readers into the tense moment the FBI knocked on the doors of Las Vegas attorney Matthew Beasley’s home. According to the report, officials had long suspected him and his business partner, Jeffrey Judd, of running a scheme that mainly targeted Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
Ann Mabeus, one of hundreds of victims of a Ponzi scheme, stands in front of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel she regularly attends in Henderson. Rachel Aston/(©) 2023 Las Vegas Review-Journal Inc., used with permission.
“The investment was pitched as a nearly risk-free opportunity to earn annual returns of 50 percent by lending money to slip-and-fall victims awaiting checks after the settlement of their lawsuits,” Johnson wrote in the story. “There was just one problem, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a civil complaint. None of it was real.”
Readers learn about how the alleged scheme came to be, according to court filings, and meet some of the victims — particularly Ann Mabeus, a divorcee and single mom of four who was facing eviction and struggling to get by.
Aston, who wasn’t close to German but described him as invaluable to the community, said she really enjoyed working with Johnson. “I’m proud of what it came to be in the end,” Aston said.
“I was blown away by the work that she had done,” Review-Journal executive editor Cook said of Johnson’s reporting. “And it was so bittersweet for me, personally, because it exceeded all my expectations for what I thought we could produce from this story. Obviously, I would do anything to have Jeff’s byline on that instead of Lizzie’s, but Jeff’s gone and Lizzie’s willingness and passion for finishing Jeff’s last story was deeply moving.”
Cook said it brought him another piece of closure. “I really got the sense from our newsroom that they felt the same,” he added.
After the story ran simultaneously on both newspapers’ sites, Aston said she heard from some of her Review-Journal colleagues who thought it was great work. “Everyone was just very like, ‘Yes. Jeff started this story and we are finishing it, because he’d be like, Damn straight, you better finish it.’ You know what I mean? So I think it’s an honor that we can continue the things that he started.”
On the day the story was published, Cook tweeted the link with this accompanying note: “Hard to express appropriate gratitude to @washingtonpost for their offer of help after the murder of Jeff German. He had just started working on this story when he was killed.” The Review-Journal also published an editorial publicly thanking The Washington Post.
Johnson said she didn’t hesitate when she was first asked to take on German’s investigation.
“I think that anytime someone dies — whether it’s someone in our family, or a friend, or a colleague — you always worry that they’re going to be forgotten. And so the best thing you can do is keep their memory alive,” she said. “There’s nothing more meaningful for a journalist than to keep their work going, and to keep people remembering why it was they loved this career field, and why it mattered, and shining light in dark places. So I knew I had to do that for Jeff.”
Cook said the Las Vegas Review-Journal staff didn’t have the opportunity to properly grieve the loss of their colleague. He described a channeling of anger and grief into reporting the details of his murder and what followed. The organization, he feels, is in a good place now.
“The loss of a colleague and the murder of a journalist is an unbelievably awful thing. It has been noticeable (in) the last five months since he’s been gone,” Cook said. “Just not seeing Jeff German bylines in the Review-Journal anymore is a terrible consequence of his killing. And so Lizzie made sure that the last story that he was working on didn’t die with him.”
