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(LAS VEGAS) — A former Nevada politician was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty on Wednesday of killing journalist Jeff German in September 2022.

As the jury’s foreperson read out the guilty verdict, former Clark County public administrator Robert Telles looked down and shook his head.

Telles was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after a minimum of 20 years served.

In a press conference after the verdict was announced, Clark County District Attorney Steven Wolfson thanked the jury for their work on the case.

“Today’s verdict should send a message, and that message is a clear message that any attempts to silence the media, or to silence or intimidate a journalist, will not be tolerated,” Wolfson said.

Prosecutors said former Clark County public administrator Robert Telles, 47, stabbed the Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter to death after German exposed corruption in his office, destroying both his political career and his marriage. German’s story detailed an allegedly hostile work environment in Telles’ office — including bullying, retaliation and an “inappropriate relationship” between Telles and a staffer — all of which Telles denied.

Telles was arrested days after German was found dead outside his Las Vegas home. Police said DNA evidence found in Telles’ home tied him to the crime scene, and a straw hat and sneakers — which the suspect was seen wearing in surveillance footage — were found cut up in his home. His DNA was also found on German’s hands and fingernails, police said.

He had pleaded not guilty to murder.

In her opening statement, Chief Deputy District Attorney Pamela Weckerly walked through the timeline of the murder and how Telles came to be pinpointed as the suspect.

“In the end, this case isn’t about politics,” Weckerly said. “It’s not about alleged inappropriate relationships. It’s not about who’s a good boss or who’s a good supervisor or favoritism at work — it’s just about murder.”

Telles took the stand in his own trial on Aug. 21, “unequivocally” maintaining his innocence and insisting he was “framed” in a sweeping conspiracy by a real estate company that he said he was investigating for alleged bribery.

“Somebody framed me for this, and I believe that it is Compass Realty, and I believe it’s for the work that I’ve done against them,” Telles told the court.

In a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal in January, Compass Realty owner Takumba Britt denied Telles’ conspiracy claims, calling him a “desperate man who has been charged with violently murdering a beloved local journalist” who would “do and say anything to escape answering for this charge.”

Wolfson also hit back against Telles’ conspiracy claims after the jury announced its verdict.

“There was no conspiracy,” Wolfson said. “The only conspiracy was between him and his evil mind.”

When police took Telles into custody, he had what they said were non-life-threatening, self-inflicted stab wounds. His defense attorney, Robert Draskovich, said the suicide attempt was not out of guilt, but because Telles’ “life was coming apart.”

Draskovich echoed Telles’ claims of a conspiracy against him, saying in his opening statement the “old guard” in the public administrator’s office had been upset by Telles’ efforts to root out internal corruption. He also claimed that, because of German’s track record of investigating corrupt figures, there were other people who may have wanted him dead.

“There were others that had far more motive to make it look like [Telles] was the killer, and to conduct this killing because Jeff German was a good reporter — he would ultimately get to what the truth was,” Draskovich said.

Ahead of sentencing on Wednesday, German’s three siblings addressed the court, speaking about what their oldest brother meant to them.

“Jeff was our leader — he was the older brother we all leaned on,” his brother, Jay German, said.

The siblings remembered him as a “wonderful” uncle, a “fearless” journalist and a lover of football and sitcoms.

His sister, Jill Zwerg, who said German was “like a second father,” recalled how he bought a whole round of champagne for the bar when she told me she’d gotten engaged.

“He’s so deeply missed every day,” Zwerg said through tears.

Telles’ wife and ex-wife also spoke, tearfully asking the jury not to sentence him to life in prison without parole.

“I would love at some point to give my children the chance to have their father back,” his wife, Mary Ann Ismael, said.

Telles wept as his mother, Rosalinda Anaya, took the stand.

“I accept the verdict, but if you could — please — give my son the chance of parole,” Anaya said. “His family is still very young and I would like for him to someday be back with them again.”

Before sending the jury off to deliberate on sentencing, Draskovich urged jurors not to hand down a life sentence.

“Give him the opportunity — give his children the opportunity — decades from now, to have their father back,” Draskovich said.

But prosecutors argued a life sentence — either with or without parole — was necessary in such a case. Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Hamner said Telles “decided to be judge, jury, and literally executioner” of German “because he simply wasn’t happy about what was being written about him.”

“When you think about the situation he was in, the world wasn’t going to end. He simply lost an election,” Hamner said. “The way Robert Telles chose to handle this was devastating, and it was his choice and his choice alone.”

German was the only journalist killed in the United States in 2022, with a total of at least 67 journalists killed worldwide that year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo previously described the case against Telles as “unusual,” and said that “the killing of a journalist is particularly troublesome.”

“It is troublesome because it is a journalist. And we expect journalism to be open and transparent and the watchdog for government,” Lombardo said. “And when people take it upon themselves to create harm associated with that profession, I think it’s very important we put all eyes on and address the case appropriately such as we did in this case.”

In a statement published by the paper, Las Vegas Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook praised the verdict “as a measure of justice” for German, as well as for “slain journalists all over the world.”

“Jeff was killed for doing the kind of work in which he took great pride: His reporting held an elected official accountable for bad behavior and empowered voters to choose someone else for the job,” Cook wrote. “Robert Telles could have joined the long line of publicly shamed Nevada politicians who’ve gone on with their lives, out of the spotlight or back in it. Instead, he carried out a premeditated revenge killing with terrifying savagery.”

“Let’s also remember that this community has lost much more than a trusted journalist,” Cook added. “Jeff was a good man who left behind a family who loved him and friends who cherished him. His murder remains an outrage. He is missed.”

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(CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.) — More than two dozen people were injured in a tractor accident at an apple orchard in Wisconsin, authorities said.

The incident was reported Wednesday morning at Bushel and a Peck Apple Orchard in Chippewa Falls.

Emergency personnel were dispatched for a “tractor accident involving two hay wagons with kids and adults,” Chippewa Fire District Deputy Chief Cory Jeffers told reporters.

The fire department activated its mass casualty protocol so that outside agencies could help respond to the incident, Jeffers said. One helicopter from the Mayo Clinic was called in, he said.

Twenty-five individuals were transported from the scene to various agencies, Jeffers said.

Details on the ages of the victims, including how many were children, were not immediately available.

Marshfield Medical Center-Eau Claire received seven patients from the incident who are being treated for minor to serious injuries, a spokesperson confirmed to ABC News.

The scene has since been cleared, Jeffers said.

All of the children who were still at the scene have been reunited with their families, he added.

ABC News left a message with the orchard seeking comment.

Chippewa Falls is located about 12 miles northeast of Eau Claire.

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(SEATTLE) — Boeing machinists on Wednesday rejected a new contract proposal that would’ve ended a weekslong work stoppage against the embattled aerospace company — and the union said the strike will go on.

Sixty-four percent of workers voted to reject the new contract, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon and California.

Representatives for Boeing said Wednesday night the company did not have a comment on the vote.

The proposed contract would have delivered a 35% raise over the four-year duration of the contract, upping the 25% cumulative raise provided in a previous offer overwhelmingly rejected by workers in a vote last month. Workers had initially sought a 40% cumulative pay increase.

The proposal also called for hiking Boeing’s contribution to a 401(k) plan, but it declined to fulfill workers’ call for a reinstatement of the company’s defined pension. The contract would have included a $7,000 ratification bonus for each worker, as well as a performance bonus that Boeing had sought to jettison.

But union leaders said the concessions offered in the proposal were not enough to meet the demands of rank-and-file union members.

“This contract struggle began over ten years ago when the company overreached and created a wound that may never heal for many members,” said Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751 in Seattle, in a statement after the vote. “I don’t have to tell you all how challenging it has been for our membership through the pandemic, the crashes, massive inflation, and the need to address the losses stemming from the 2014 contract.”

The union said the strike will continue as they return to the bargaining table with the company.

Hours before workers cast ballots on Wednesday, Boeing released an earnings report showing the company had lost a staggering $6.1 billion over the most recent quarter due primarily to costs associated with the strike.

“We have some really big rocks that we need to get behind us to move the company forward,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a letter to investors on Wednesday.

Ortberg singled out the strike as an issue that must be addressed “first and foremost.”

“We have been feverishly working to find a solution that works for the company and meets our employees’ needs,” Ortberg said.

The company and its workers have faced significant financial losses during the nearly six-week strike.

Union members have received $250 per week from a strike fund, beginning in the third week of the work stoppage. That compensation marks a major pay cut for many of the employees.

Mid-ranking workers involved in the strike typically make $20 per hour, which totals $800 per 40-hour work week, while higher-paid members earn salaries upward of $100,000 per year, or nearly $2,000 per week.

“The question is whether the employees and their union determine that they have the power to get more from Boeing,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News. “It’s whether they think they can extract more from Boeing, or Boeing says, ‘You know what, this is it.'”

The strike was set to cost Boeing $108 million per day in lost revenue, amounting to as much as $5.5 billion in losses should the work stoppage last 50 days, investment bank TD Cowen said in a report reviewed by ABC News at the outset of the dispute. So far, the strike has lasted 40 days.

In September, Boeing announced furloughs and pay cuts for some white-collar employees in response to the strike. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs, which amounts to about 10% of its global workforce.

“This is really painful for Boeing,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told ABC News.

The most recent IAM strike against Boeing in the Pacific Northwest, in 2008, lasted 57 days. Work stoppages undertaken by unionized Boeing employees in the same region have historically lasted an average of 60 days, a Bank of America Global Research analysis found after examining seven previous strikes, the earliest in 1948.

In the days leading up to Wednesday’s vote, the outcome remained unclear, Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies labor, told ABC News.

“What are the workers going to do?” Rosenfeld said. “That’s a really tough question.”

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