Friday, September 09, 2022

Investigative reporter Jeff German, a Marquette grad and former Journal intern, killed outside his Las Vegas home


Ricardo Torres, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Mon, September 5, 2022 

Jeff German, host of Mobbed Up, with Planet Hollywood
, formerly the Aladdin, on the Strip in Las Vegas, Wednesday, June 2, 2021.

LAS VEGAS – 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 dead with stab wounds around 10:30 a.m. Saturday after authorities received a 911 call, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

German was a grad student at Marquette University and interned at the Milwaukee Journal in the late 1970s.

It appears the 69-year-old 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 had not 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 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.

Jim Romenesko was a police reporter for the Milwaukee Journal in the late 1970s when German was an intern at the newspaper.

“He was interested in the police beat and he had an interest in crime, that’s where we bonded,” Romenesko told the Journal Sentinel. “He was a very passionate and intense reporter. You can tell he was a guy who wanted to make his mark on the profession.”

German used to wear a “gold chain,” Romenesko remembered.

“People laughed because it was very un-Milwaukee,” Romenesko said. “It was more of a Las Vegas chain than a Milwaukee chain. He had designer jeans. He was a sharp looking guy who looked like he wanted to fit into Las Vegas more than Milwaukee.”

Romenesko remembers one night when a boat capsized on Lake Michigan and although they were off the clock, German convinced Romenesko to go to the scene.

“We went out there and I was ready to leave at midnight and he wanted to stay until 2 a.m., and I think we left at 3 a.m.,” Romenesko said. “He was just that passionate and that interested. I knew he would go places.”

Romenesko recalls the then-young intern having an interest in organized crime.

“He was fresh out of Marquette but he had ambitions to go to Las Vegas,” Romenesko said. “He left, I believe, right after the Journal internship to go out to Las Vegas.”

Shortly after German left Milwaukee, Romenesko took a trip out to Los Angeles and stopped in Las Vegas to have dinner with him.

“He was pretty fresh at the Las Vegas paper but he was so excited about working out there and talked about what an exciting news town it was, and he was brimming with excitement about covering news in Las Vegas,” Romenesko said. “He got to where he wanted to be... and he never left.”

Romenesko followed German’s byline over the years and called his death “a tragic ending.”

“It looked like he was able to do what he loved to do for many decades, and I’m happy to see that,” Romenesko said. “He stuck with the (journalism) business and judging by the comments I’m reading on Twitter from his current colleagues, he had not lost any of that ambition and intensity and love for the news.”

According to the Review-Journal, German 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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