A local official who had been investigated for months by a reporter in Las Vegas has been arrested on suspicion of his murder.
Robert Telles, the public administrator for Clark County in Nevada, was arrested on Wednesday after Jeff German was stabbed to death outside his home on Friday after what police described as an altercation.
The body of the 69-year-old Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter was found the next morning.
He died of “multiple stab wounds,” the Clark County Coroner and Medical Examiner’s Office said.
The arrest of Telles, 45, was confirmed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which said Mr. German wrote stories about him.
Steven Wolfson, the county attorney, told The New York Times that Telles was taken into custody.
Telles, whose office oversees the estates of people who died without a will or family contact, was arrested on suspicion of murder, according to Clark County Detention Center records.
Mr. German was well known for his decades of reporting on political wrongdoing and organized crime in Nevada’s largest city.
He had spent months reporting complaints that Telles had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate and was overseeing an abusive workplace, which the county official denied.
In June, a few weeks after the publication of Mr. German’s investigation, Telles failed in his bid for re-election. He was due to leave office in January.
Las Vegas police confirmed in a Twitter post that a suspect in Mr German’s murder had been arrested but did not identify him.
Glenn Cook, editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said Mr German’s colleagues were devastated by his murder.
“He was the gold standard of the news industry,” he said.
“It’s hard to imagine what Las Vegas would look like today without its many years of lighting up dark places.”