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1:04

If you've ever read a news story about the mafia

1:07

in Las Vegas, you were probably

1:09

reading something Jeff Gareman wrote.

1:13

Jeff Gareman grew up in Milwaukee and

1:16

moved to Las Vegas around 1980. One

1:19

of his early stories was about the death of

1:21

an FBI witness testifying against

1:24

organized crime members across the

1:26

Midwest.

1:28

In 1997, Jeff covered

1:30

the murder of Herbert Blitstein, a

1:33

man who once worked for the Chicago mob

1:35

in Las Vegas.

1:38

Jeff and reporter Kathy Scott broke

1:40

the story that mobs in Buffalo

1:42

and Los Angeles had put a hit

1:45

on Blitstein to take over his racketeering

1:47

business.

1:49

Herbert Blitstein's death was one

1:52

of the last mob hits in Las Vegas.

1:55

For a while, Jeff Gareman

1:58

also covered the federal courts. in Nevada.

2:01

He worked out of a closet-sized office with

2:03

other reporters. For several

2:06

years, you know, we spent pretty

2:08

much every weekday

2:11

together, you know, at work. This

2:14

is David Ferrara, one of Jeff's

2:16

colleagues at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the

2:19

newspaper where Jeff worked. Jeff

2:22

Garman was a reporter for over 40 years. When

2:26

he was a young reporter, Jeff ran

2:28

into a high-ranking Chicago mobster

2:30

named Tony Spilato at a bar. He

2:33

asked a waitress if he could send Tony Spilato

2:36

a drink. The waitress came back

2:38

and told him, you don't send Mr.

2:40

Spilato drinks. He buys

2:42

you drinks first. Jeff

2:45

was once asked if he was scared to report on the

2:47

mafia.

2:49

He said, no,

2:50

it was something we just did. He had

2:53

a reputation. For not letting things drop.

2:57

As a reporter, you know, the things that

2:59

stand out to me are

3:02

any time that I would

3:04

be, say, in a courtroom

3:07

during the day and I'd

3:09

come back to that office, he'd

3:12

be on the phone or

3:15

on his computer searching

3:17

for records on something,

3:20

trying to get documents

3:22

before they were sealed or,

3:24

you know, calling sources to talk

3:26

to them about stories he was working on or what

3:28

stories he had done, trying to get

3:30

more about the stories he

3:32

had already reported

3:35

on. You know, he

3:37

was dedicated to journalism

3:40

and, you know, holding public

3:42

officials and, you know, people

3:45

of power accountable for the things

3:47

that they'd done.

3:51

Around this time last year on Labor

3:53

Day weekend, Jeff Garman's colleague,

3:56

David Ferrara, was looking at Twitter

3:58

in the middle of the night. And he

4:00

saw a tweet from his and Jeff's boss

4:03

that read, there are no words

4:06

for a loss like this.

4:08

And just kind of sat there reading

4:10

the story stunned, not

4:14

really knowing what to do because it was like

4:16

the middle of the night. Jeff

4:18

German had been found dead.

4:20

He was 69 years old. David

4:23

read that Jeff had been found outside

4:25

his home and had been stabbed

4:28

several times.

4:30

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said

4:32

they believed Jeff had been killed

4:34

late Friday morning. His body

4:36

wasn't discovered until the next day when

4:38

a neighbor saw him and

4:40

called 911. The

4:43

caller told 911 that Jeff was,

4:45

quote, beyond resuscitation.

4:49

My first thoughts

4:52

were just disbelief and

4:55

then I started to wonder

4:58

who could have done it and

5:00

why.

5:01

Jeff German had spent his life

5:04

investigating corruption, fraud,

5:06

and murder. Now it was

5:09

up to his colleagues to try to figure out why

5:11

he had died. I'm

5:13

Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. David

5:26

Ferrara realized that he and Jeff

5:28

knew a lot of people in common.

5:31

He started to reach out to them. As

5:33

I was calling sources,

5:35

attorneys, and people Jeff

5:37

knew and people that Jeff had worked with in

5:39

the past, I

5:41

just kind

5:43

of naturally started

5:46

developing that into a story about

5:49

Jeff and his life's work and

5:52

about what his reporting

5:55

meant to Las Vegas and what

5:58

sort of impact his reporting had. and

6:02

what kind of reporter he was.

6:05

David wrote that Jeff's reputation

6:07

helped his sources trust him. He

6:10

was also protective. He promised

6:12

anonymity and wouldn't even disclose

6:14

that information to his editors.

6:17

A defense lawyer Jeff had known for decades

6:20

called him, quote, a fearless reporter.

6:24

A friend said, if he thought someone

6:26

was wrong or wronging the little guy, it

6:28

was part of his DNA to go after it, guns

6:31

blazing. David's

6:34

article on Jeff came out that Sunday.

6:37

Was it odd to be, I mean, you covered

6:40

crime before, and obviously that's

6:42

what you do as a journalist, cover

6:44

stories, cover crimes, but was

6:47

it odd to be covering the story

6:50

of someone you knew

6:52

so well?

6:54

It was not only odd to be covering

6:56

somebody I knew pretty well,

7:04

but it was also sort of the

7:08

first time I had any

7:10

experience with knowing

7:14

somebody who had been murdered. I've

7:17

covered dozens, hundreds probably

7:20

of murder cases in

7:23

my career, but never knew

7:25

anyone who had been killed

7:28

by someone else. So

7:34

that was a whole new experience

7:36

and feeling in and of itself.

7:40

But I think that my experience

7:42

in reporting and having

7:45

covered these sort of things helped

7:49

me keep focus. And

7:54

in a strange way, having

7:57

worked with Jeff, Also

8:00

helped me focus

8:03

on what we needed to do as a newspaper. It

8:08

sounds cliche, but I didn't want to let him down.

8:11

I know that if this had happened

8:13

to someone else at the newspaper,

8:16

Jeff would have been the first one on this story

8:19

and he would have done everything

8:22

he could to find out through

8:25

his reporting what had happened and

8:28

why. And

8:30

to tell the story

8:33

of who Jeff was. So

8:36

that's

8:39

kind of where my head was at the time.

8:41

Jeff Gareman had reported on a lot

8:44

of dangerous situations. He

8:46

was well known around Las Vegas. Once

8:49

while he was investigating a court bailiff with mob

8:51

connections, the man confronted

8:53

Jeff at a party and punched him in the

8:55

face. Later

8:58

at the hospital, the police officer

9:00

investigating the assault turned out

9:02

to be someone Jeff had also reported

9:04

on. In 2003,

9:08

Jeff reported on an FBI raid on a strip

9:10

club called Jaguars. The

9:13

FBI was looking for evidence that the club

9:15

owner had bribed four Clark County

9:17

commissioners to delay permits for

9:20

rival clubs. According

9:22

to the federal indictment, they found

9:25

that he wanted commissioners to vote against a

9:27

proposed no touch rule for

9:29

strip clubs and that he helped

9:31

pay for election campaigns offered

9:33

to buy cars and even paid for

9:36

one commissioner's child to attend

9:38

Olympic skiing school. The

9:40

investigation was later dubbed Operation

9:43

G-string. Some

9:46

of Jeff's colleagues wondered if his

9:48

murder was related to his mob

9:50

reporting.

9:52

And because

9:54

it was a stabbing, it seemed

9:56

like something that had to be personal, that...

10:00

If it was just some sort of random thing,

10:02

it might have been shot.

10:06

And so, you know, I guess the next

10:09

obvious step was could it have been

10:11

somebody that he had

10:14

been reporting on that was angry

10:18

with him?

10:20

But Glenn Cook, Jeff's boss

10:23

at the Review Journal, told The Washington

10:25

Post that that wouldn't make sense.

10:28

He said if someone were to put

10:30

a hit on Jeff over a story he did, would

10:33

you really stab someone to death in broad daylight

10:35

on a Friday? Initially,

10:39

police said they thought Jeff's murder was an isolated

10:42

incident, and they didn't see

10:44

any immediate connections to Jeff's work.

10:47

They said there was no threat to

10:49

the public, and then they started saying, well, they think

10:51

it might have been a burglar who was casing the neighborhood

10:54

and just happened upon him. That didn't

10:56

really make a whole lot of sense to me.

10:58

David was also talking with his boss, Glenn

11:01

Cook, about sending the papers crime

11:03

reporters to cover the investigation

11:05

of their colleague's death.

11:07

And get the police

11:10

side and go to Jeff's neighborhood,

11:13

try to talk to neighbors to see

11:17

if anyone had seen anything.

11:19

Two of the Review

11:20

Journal's crime reporters, Sabrina

11:22

Schnurr and Glenn Piewett, started

11:25

interviewing Jeff's neighbors. It

11:27

was one Piewett's last week with the Review Journal.

11:30

He was leaving to start a new job. He

11:33

remembers that he and Jeff both covered the

11:35

Ted Binion murder, and that Jeff

11:38

had something new on the story every day. When

11:41

he headed out to Jeff's neighborhood, he says

11:43

he thought, I'm doing this for

11:45

Jeff. A

11:47

few hours later, the police announced

11:50

they had a photo of someone they believed to be a

11:52

suspect.

11:53

And it was a man walking

11:56

on his feet. sidewalk

12:01

wearing a Straw

12:04

hat big round straw

12:06

hat That had

12:09

been kind of pulled down and you

12:11

could not see the person's face and

12:14

they were wearing This

12:17

blaze orange Not

12:20

a vest like a construction vest but a an actual

12:22

shirt with these reflective

12:25

strips on it dark jeans

12:28

gloves which very

12:32

Unusual for early September

12:34

in Las Vegas when the temperature is still in the hundreds

12:38

gray gym shoes and carrying

12:41

this dark satchel

12:45

bag sort of thing Walking

12:49

next to a dark

12:53

Sedan on the sidewalk park

12:56

next to a sidewalk.

12:57

Did anything stick out to you about

13:00

the photo right away?

13:02

Yes,

13:05

one of the first things that stuck out to me was

13:08

the height of the suspect that

13:12

even in this kind of big straw

13:15

hat the suspect was About

13:19

the same height as the car which

13:22

looked like a sedan So he couldn't have

13:24

been that tall. I Noticed

13:27

he had a seemingly narrow

13:30

stance narrow gate David

13:33

started getting texts from other reporters

13:35

who were

13:36

friends of his and Jeff They'd

13:38

all seen the photo and we're trying to figure

13:40

out if they recognized the man Jeff's

13:44

editor Rhonda prast had

13:46

put together a list of people Jeff had reported

13:49

on over the years and

13:51

There was one

13:52

name that kept coming up

13:57

We'll be right back

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15:50

In the United States, it's rare for

15:52

a journalist to be killed. The

15:55

Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that

15:57

since 1992, fewer than 20 reporters

16:00

have been killed in the country. Last

16:03

year, an estimated 41 journalists

16:05

worldwide were killed in retaliation

16:08

for their work.

16:11

One of the deadliest attacks on reporters in the

16:13

U.S. happened in 2018 when a man attacked the

16:17

Capitol Gazette newsroom in Maryland,

16:20

killing five reporters. He

16:22

had tried to sue the Gazette for defamation

16:25

for reporting on his criminal harassment case.

16:30

In 2007, a reporter named Chauncey

16:32

Bailey was shot and killed in Oakland,

16:34

California for his reporting on

16:37

a local bakery chain's ties to

16:39

fraud and murder. In

16:42

the days after his death, a group

16:44

of three dozen local journalists created

16:46

the Chauncey Bailey Project to

16:49

finish his reporting and investigate

16:51

his death.

16:52

They eventually found that the

16:54

bakery owner had put a hit out on him.

16:59

Jeff German's colleagues continued

17:02

to think that whoever killed him was

17:04

joining us out of retaliation. And

17:08

after they saw the photo, they

17:10

focused on one name. In

17:14

May of 2022, Jeff had published

17:17

a story about the Clark County Public

17:19

Administrator, Robert Tillis.

17:23

Employees at the office told Jeff

17:25

that Robert Tillis had created a hostile

17:28

environment, verbally abusing

17:30

longtime employees and showing

17:32

favoritism to others he had personally hired.

17:36

One longtime staffer took a medical leave

17:38

to deal with migraines from the stress. In

17:42

Jeff's piece, he wrote, some

17:44

staffers interviewed by the review journal, cried

17:47

while sharing details of their troubled work environment.

17:52

The employees showed Jeff a video they

17:54

had made secretly of Robert Tillis

17:56

having a meeting in the back seat of an employee's

17:58

car. Robert Tellis

18:01

said that there was nothing inappropriate about

18:03

his relationship with this employee. Jeff

18:07

wrote two more articles about Robert Tellis.

18:12

Shortly after, Robert Tellis wrote on

18:14

Twitter, Looking forward

18:16

to Lying Smearpiece No. 4 by

18:18

Jeff Gairman. Robert

18:21

Tellis was also running for re-election

18:23

that summer. On his campaign

18:26

website, he had a section called Addressing

18:29

the False Claims Against Me. He

18:31

said he had looked into suing the Review Journal for

18:33

Jeff's reporting. On

18:36

June 14, Robert Tellis

18:39

lost his primary.

18:40

He was no longer

18:41

a candidate for public administrator.

18:45

A few days later, he wrote on his campaign

18:47

website that he thought Jeff Gairman

18:49

was still trying to drag him through

18:52

the mud.

18:53

I could see in that post

18:55

he made on his campaign website that

18:57

he was really frustrated and he

18:59

didn't know what

19:02

to do and that he didn't

19:04

know how to stop these stories

19:07

from coming out. It

19:11

wasn't like Jeff was

19:14

going after Tellis or anything. That was

19:16

just how Jeff did his job.

19:20

If there was something more on a

19:23

story that he was covering, he was going

19:25

to do everything he could to find out

19:28

what it was and he was

19:30

never going to let up until

19:32

he got it. Even

19:35

after that, he might not let up.

19:37

David and Review Journal editor, Kerry

19:40

Gair, started looking at Robert

19:42

Tellis' social media accounts, comparing

19:45

photos he had posted of himself to

19:47

the police photos of the suspect. The

19:49

way he stood in

19:52

some of the photos on social media

19:55

and the narrow gate of this suspect,

19:58

to me, just looked. very

20:00

similar he looked like he was a little bit shorter

20:03

and The things

20:05

he had tweeted the things he had written

20:07

a lot of this stuff started to

20:11

start make making sense and Well,

20:17

it just kind of went back and forth on

20:21

my computer Looking at

20:23

these photos and then looking

20:25

at photos that we had taken

20:27

of tell us First

20:29

stories that we had done about him and

20:32

comparing the height the size Looked

20:36

pretty similar And

20:39

that day I actually went out to

20:43

Jeff's neighborhood and there was there

20:46

was a bunch of construction

20:48

going on road construction going on around

20:51

Jeff's neighborhood and started

20:54

to put these pieces together

20:56

and

20:58

and

21:00

as a reporter, I just covered a lot of Court

21:04

I just started thinking sort of like a detective

21:07

or like a prosecutor who might try and put this

21:09

story together To

21:12

a jury or to a judge

21:14

about like what was going on

21:17

David thought that whoever had killed Jeff

21:20

had likely driven around Jeff's neighborhood and

21:22

noticed

21:23

the construction and So this

21:25

would have been a Friday before a holiday

21:29

and He

21:32

could have seen the construction

21:35

and thought he wanted to blend in So

21:38

he puts this big sun hat

21:40

on puts this construction

21:43

looking type shirt on and

21:45

you can just walk around the neighborhood and make it

21:47

look like he was Somebody

21:51

who was a worker just out there either

21:55

knocking off for lunch or just you

21:58

know leaving for the day early because was a

22:00

holiday weekend and no one really

22:03

suspect anything. And he could

22:05

be home within 15, 20 minutes or so pretty

22:09

easily. And the neighborhood

22:12

where Jeff lived seemed like it was pretty quiet.

22:14

There wasn't a lot of people out and about. So

22:18

it seemed like you could get

22:20

in and out pretty easily

22:22

without anybody really noticing

22:25

anything or much.

22:27

The next day, the Las Vegas

22:29

police held a news conference.

22:32

They announced they'd found a video

22:33

of the suspect.

22:35

We sent reporters,

22:38

photographers, videographers to the

22:40

news conference to cover it, obviously

22:42

because this was our number one priority

22:45

from the start. And

22:47

we had a bunch of people in the newsroom.

22:51

And all day long, this

22:53

is all you're thinking about, all

22:55

you're talking about, all you're texting

22:59

with people you know about.

23:01

Word about the new video spread quickly.

23:04

And we

23:07

were sort of gathered

23:09

around different computers watching

23:12

the news conference on live

23:14

stream. And they

23:16

showed a screenshot of this

23:20

maroon, Yukon Denali.

23:24

And within 20 minutes,

23:28

a former reporter for the paper

23:31

sent me a screenshot from

23:33

Facebook that

23:36

showed that from Telus's Facebook

23:38

page that showed his wife and

23:40

kids standing next to

23:43

the same vehicle.

23:47

All that day, I'd been telling people that I

23:50

thought that could be this guy. And

23:53

a lot of people in

23:55

the newsroom, maybe a little

23:57

bit more level-headed than me, thought we need

23:59

to keep going. all the, you know, everything,

24:01

all the possibilities. We

24:03

can't just think, you know, can't just

24:07

focus on one thing. But when

24:09

we saw that image

24:13

of the vehicle and

24:15

his wife and kids standing next to

24:17

the vehicle, and

24:19

I think a lot of people were just

24:21

kind of shocked and

24:24

that it was right there,

24:27

out there in the open.

24:29

They typed Robert Teles' address into

24:31

Google Maps. On

24:33

Street View, they could see a photo

24:35

that had been taken just a few months earlier. The

24:39

same car was in the driveway.

24:42

As soon as we saw the Google Street View

24:45

image, I sent it to one source and

24:49

called him right away and I

24:52

said, did

24:54

you get the text I just sent you? And he said,

24:56

no, I just had to send you a photo. And

24:59

he said, hang on, let me check. And

25:01

he kind of gets told that he looks down

25:04

and he just says, holy shit.

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25:58

is not a religion. to

26:00

be a fool to worship it. I am so

26:02

sick of living in a capitalist society. And

26:04

through

26:04

a stinky little dust, he

26:07

is a evil

26:09

thing like better man. Say

26:13

that the hate is mistaken, test

26:16

and make me all

26:18

a grievous man.

26:22

Every Friday for

26:22

the next four weeks, a new Today

26:25

Explained series,

26:25

Blame Capitalism. On

26:27

today's explaining, we

26:31

found this new back

26:33

of place to find out what

26:36

is going on. Everything

26:38

comes to the price, even peace of

26:40

mind. Blame Capitalism,

26:43

a four-part series, and today Explained every

26:46

Friday in September. On

26:48

today's explaining.

26:57

After the Review Journal reporters matched

26:59

the Maroon Denali with Robert Tellis'

27:01

car,

27:02

they shared what they found with the police.

27:06

Reporters Caitlin Newberg and Brett

27:08

Clarkson and photographer Ben

27:10

Hager went to Robert Tellis'

27:12

home. When they got

27:15

there, they parked down the street. Brett

27:18

Clarkson called David and

27:20

said they could see Robert Tellis in the driveway, washing

27:23

a Maroon Yukon Denali. This is 5.30, 6 o'clock

27:26

on a Tuesday

27:28

afternoon in

27:34

early September in Las Vegas. It

27:37

was one of the hottest days of the year, one of the hottest times

27:39

of the year, and he had a bottle of Windex and

27:43

he was spraying down the windshield of one of his

27:45

vehicles with the windshield wipers up, which makes

27:47

no sense. The reporter is telling me that he's standing here,

27:50

he's looking around, he looks like maybe he's

27:52

nervous or something. We

27:55

just told him,

27:58

don't get too close. Just keep

28:00

your distance Keep an eye on

28:03

it photographer and reporters

28:05

kind of stayed back and just observed

28:08

Ben Hager the photographer noticed

28:11

several unmarked police vehicles parked

28:13

on the street and Then

28:15

reporter Caitlin Newberg got a phone

28:17

call from her editor The

28:20

police wanted them to pull back They

28:23

moved to a new spot further away and

28:25

stayed until midnight They

28:28

came back at 6 the next morning Brett

28:31

Clarkson called David

28:34

He called me and said the

28:36

cops are here. They're setting up

28:39

the police tape around the house and That's

28:43

when they started Getting

28:47

working on a story about

28:49

the fact that Police

28:51

were serving a search warrant on The

28:54

home of the select official who Jeff had

28:56

just reported on

28:58

When the review journal published their story

29:00

about the police searching Robert Teles's home

29:03

as part of their murder investigation More

29:06

and more reporters from other outlets started

29:08

to show up at the house For

29:11

a few hours the police took Robert

29:13

Teles for questioning Then

29:16

that afternoon he was escorted

29:18

back home

29:19

Maybe an hour or two passes

29:21

by again And reporters

29:23

are still outside the home But

29:27

waiting for something to happen

29:29

In the review journal newsroom

29:31

reporters were listening in on a police scanner

29:35

The police had put up tape to keep the media

29:37

back from the house But

29:40

one of the newspaper photographers Kevin

29:42

Cannon Ash one of Robert Teles

29:44

his neighbors if he could watch from their yard

29:48

letting him get closer than anyone else He

29:50

said it was like being in a foxhole He

29:53

said he could hear everything but kept his head

29:55

down because he didn't want the police to see him

32:04

Does it make you feel scared to

32:06

be a reporter after seeing what happened

32:08

to Jess?

32:10

No, it doesn't make me feel scared

32:12

because this sort of thing is so rare and

32:14

I think there's just this is

32:16

such a unique situation but

32:19

it does make me more

32:22

care want to be more careful about just

32:26

everything really you know be more aware

32:30

of what's going on and more aware

32:32

that you never

32:34

know what other people could be

32:36

thinking. I would

32:38

say that I was more a

32:42

little bit more nervous and more scared or

32:44

more uneasy when I had

32:48

no idea what had happened or why it had happened

32:52

or who had done it or anything like that because

32:56

Jeff and I had worked on a couple you know a few stories

32:58

together I mean there could have been somebody

33:01

who was angry at him for a

33:03

story that we had worked on together at the time and they

33:05

come after me I mean because like

33:08

Jeff he had covered mob

33:10

figures, killers, judges

33:13

who committed crimes and gone to prison for their

33:15

own crimes and

33:18

people you know a lot more serious stuff

33:20

and I've covered a lot of that stuff too I've covered

33:23

a lot of bad people

33:25

and I've never felt like my

33:27

life was in danger.

33:30

In the days after Jeff's death his

33:32

desk filled up with flowers someone

33:35

left a tiny football. Jeff had

33:37

played at an office fantasy football league

33:39

for years someone

33:41

else left a framed copy of one of his

33:43

stories. During

33:46

the police investigation into his depth police

33:48

took Jeff's computer and phone. The

33:52

review journal filed a motion to keep

33:54

the police from looking through them. The

33:56

paper wanted to protect Jeff's sources

33:59

under his first amendment write as a journalist.

34:03

Jeff's boss at the Review Journal told

34:05

the Washington Post, I

34:07

have a hard time believing there's anybody

34:09

in Nevada more deeply sourced than

34:12

James.

34:14

Other newspapers,

34:15

including the Associated Press, the Los

34:17

Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, signed

34:20

onto an amicus brief in support. A

34:23

judge is still making a decision on how

34:25

much access to give the police to Jeff's

34:27

devices.

34:30

I think about Jeff every day and

34:33

what happened to him, but the

34:37

fact that I got

34:39

to work alongside him and learn

34:42

a little bit about being a journalist

34:45

from him, also

34:48

almost everyone at the paper, we just

34:52

wanted to do our best on this

34:54

story for Jeff. Because

34:56

that's what he would have done. And it's

35:00

not just because he was a colleague, but it was

35:02

because this

35:05

was about... I don't

35:07

know

35:10

how to say this, but he was

35:13

just

35:15

doing his job.

35:25

I first met Jeff back in 1999

35:28

when I came to the Review Journal, and

35:31

I was so happy when he joined the

35:34

staff at the RJ so I could work alongside

35:36

him. From the moment he got to the

35:38

RJ, he was just a tenacious

35:41

uncover of corruption.

35:44

My memory of Jeff is basically he's

35:47

kind of the quintessential Las

35:49

Vegas journalist.

35:51

Something that Jeff

35:53

would always say about a big story, he

35:55

would call it wild and crazy. It's wild and

35:58

crazy. And I just... caught

36:00

myself saying that yesterday and thinking

36:03

about him.

36:04

He would come into my office

36:06

and talk to me and say, this

36:09

one's going to be really good, or this is

36:11

a big one. And

36:14

the enthusiasm that he would have as he was

36:16

getting closer and closer to publication,

36:19

it was contagious.

36:21

If Jeff got on a story, there was going to be a

36:24

hundred stories that he was going to write about it. And

36:26

so that's what he was kind of known for, is blanket

36:28

coverage, always working hard, and always

36:31

trying to beat everybody else.

36:33

He didn't want to be in the spotlight. He was

36:36

working to do a picture for promotional

36:38

purposes. He said that, I'll do

36:40

it if Kevin takes the picture. And not that I'm

36:42

the best photographer on staff, it's just that he's

36:44

known me the longest, 25 years. And

36:48

he called me multiple

36:50

times trying to figure out what to wear for this

36:53

photo shoot. And it's funny because

36:55

he's a gruff, tough journalist.

36:58

And you just don't think of a guy

37:00

like that worrying about what he's going to wear.

37:03

I feel like his presence is still

37:07

always there. I mean, a lot of

37:10

people have his picture

37:13

on their desk, a wall

37:16

in the newsroom that's dedicated to him

37:18

with his awards. His

37:20

desk is still there. We obviously

37:23

have to go on with our jobs, but I

37:26

think he's always going to be part

37:28

of that newsroom.

37:47

Our

37:52

producers are...

37:59

Sam Kim, and Megan Kinane.

38:02

Our technical director is Rob Byers,

38:05

engineering by Russ Henry. This

38:07

episode was mixed by Veronica Simonetti,

38:10

fact-checking by Julia Harrison. Special

38:13

thanks to Jeff Gehrman's colleagues, whose

38:15

voices we heard at the end of the episode, Glenn

38:18

Cook, Arthur Kane, and Kevin

38:20

Cannon.

38:22

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations

38:24

for each episode of Criminal. You can see

38:27

them at thisiscriminal.com. And

38:30

sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com

38:33

slash newsletter. We

38:36

hope you'll join our new membership

38:37

program, Criminal Plus. Once

38:40

you sign up,

38:40

you can listen to Criminal episodes without

38:42

any ads, and get a bonus episode

38:45

each

38:45

month. To learn more,

38:47

go to thisiscriminal.com slash

38:49

plus. We're on Facebook

38:52

and Twitter at Criminal Show, and Instagram

38:54

at criminal underscore podcast. We're

38:57

also on YouTube at youtube.com

38:59

slash criminal podcast. Criminal

39:02

is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public

39:05

Radio,

39:05

WUNC. We're

39:07

part

39:08

of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

39:11

Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

39:16

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is

39:18

Criminal. I

39:21

love you. I

39:24

love you.