Robert Telles messages show evidence of affair, released Clark County records show

Convicted murderer Robert Telles wrote his subordinate hundreds of romantic emails on Clark County time and devices, telling Roberta Lee-Kennett “I love you so, so much,” “I wish we could just run away together” and “I love you, my distraction.”

But after complaints from other staff at the county public administrator’s office, which Telles then headed, the county failed to take the basic investigatory step of reviewing Telles and Lee-Kennett’s internal messages.

Michael Gebhart, a UNLV professor who teaches employment law in the university’s hospitality school, said the county would have been able to view Telles and Lee-Kennett’s messages because neither would have an expectation of privacy on their work computers owned by the county.

If he was doing his own investigation, looking at the messages would be “towards the top of my list,” he said.

“If they’re investigating alleged wrongdoing, they can look all they want on county-issued property,” Gebhart said.

Telles murdered Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German for reporting on his misconduct, violently stabbing the 69-year-old reporter outside his Las Vegas home in September 2022. The trial ended in August with a jury finding Telles guilty of first-degree murder.

German requested these records before his murder, but county officials told Telles and Lee-Kennett that any personal messages contained in the records would not be released, according to testimony from Telles’ trial.

The newspaper’s staff and Review-Journal Chief Legal Officer Ben Lipman fought to get the records, and the county recently released about 10,000 messages Telles sent to Lee-Kennett through Microsoft Teams from 2020 through 2022. Hundreds of messages contain evidence the two were carrying out an affair behind the backs of their spouses.

An employee lodged two complaints against Telles, one in August 2020 and another around May 2022, alleging workplace harassment and referencing the relationship with Lee-Kennett. But county investigators never viewed Telles’ workplace messages to confirm the affair.

“Each investigation is unique to its circumstances, but the County did not search electronic communications in this case,” spokeswoman Jennifer Cooper told the Review-Journal in an emailed statement last week. “The process of investigating HR complaints does not always involve going through the electronic communications of employees.”

Work conflicts in messages

Aleisha Goodwin, an office estate coordinator with the public administrator’s office, filed the complaints against Telles with the blessing of other employees who were too fearful of losing their jobs to come forward with their own allegations. She told the Review-Journal that as Lee-Kennett carried out the affair with Telles, she appeared to obtain more power in the office and contributed to an environment of harassment and bullying.

Telles’ messages show that he urged Lee-Kennett to keep working for him and to take on more responsibility in the office, such as training other employees.

“I will be miserable and you may hate your next job more,” Telles told her in August 2020.

A few months later, Telles told Lee-Kennett that she had “totally earned equal office resident status,” and that it was “you and me against the world.”

Telles complained about the work of other staff, like Goodwin and Rita Reid, who beat Telles in the 2022 primary election and now heads the office.

“There are far worse people to be stuck with, such as Rita,” Telles said in an August 2020 message.

A day later, he messaged Lee-Kennett about Goodwin: “From here forward, I won’t give Aleisha any wiggle room,” he said. “I’m going to hold her accountable.”

Goodwin questioned what would have happened if county investigators had thought to search through Telles’ work messages, and if doing so could have then led to any real change in how the office was managed. Maybe German would still be alive, she said.

“It could have all been avoided,” Goodwin said. “If someone in the county would have just listened to us. If someone in the county would have just done something to look into what we were alleging.”

In a text message sent to a Review-Journal reporter, Lee-Kennett acknowledged that the messages showed evidence of the relationship. She said they also provided evidence of turmoil in the office.

“I am tired of being a target!” Lee-Kennett said in the text message. “I was another victim of that office, and you continue to villainize me instead.”

Lee-Kennett continues to work for the county as a family services specialist for Clark County Social Services, a spokesperson said.

The county refused to provide any messages sent by Lee-Kennett. County attorney Lisa Logsdon said the county agreed to provide Telles’ messages because he was an elected official.

Reid told the Review-Journal that the messages being made public will now validate German’s reporting on the strife within the office.

“The truth is, the evidence is there,” she said. “It vindicates our story but it really strengthens Jeff German one more time, that he knew what he was talking about.”

After German’s first story on Telles, the county hired a company run by former Coroner Michael Murphy to mitigate the problems in the office.

Declarations of love

The messages show that Telles and Lee-Kennett would frequently contact each other through Microsoft Teams, sometimes dozens of times a day. In between talking about their jobs, Telles wished her good morning and said good night outside of work hours. He planned to eat lunch with her or meet up at “our spot.” He sometimes discussed meeting up outside of work, in parking lots or in each other’s vehicles.

He frequently said “I love you.” Telles called her beautiful, and said in a message from November 2020 that there were “cosmic forces pulling us both together.”

They also fought with each other, and Telles occasionally referenced breaks in their relationship. At one point, he called the relationship “toxic.”

“Our relationship was clearly more toxic than we had hoped,” Telles said in a message from October 2021. “While I love you, I think it’s just best for both of us that we be done.”

A month later, he continued sending Lee-Kennett declarations of love.

“I love you so much,” Telles messaged. “I can’t imagine us not being together.”

Telles also acknowledged attempting to prevent others in the office from knowing about their relationship. In November 2020, the two appeared to discuss rumors of two other county employees engaged in an “inappropriate relationship.”

“For us, I am very careful no one can claim disparate treatment in discipline or in other matters,” Telles messaged Lee-Kennett.

Two minutes later, he follows up with another message: “I don’t know if there is a real rule against that. I know there is the one about dating.”

There is no explicit Clark County policy prohibiting relationships between supervisors and subordinates, Cooper said Monday in an emailed statement.

But Cooper said it is “implied” that such relationships can violate county rules, according to policies that state employees are prohibited from activities that “deliberately inhibit or cause difficulties for a team member or supervisor,” or would influence an employee’s ability to act in the “best interest” of the county or the public.

County policy also states that employees are prevented from activities that are a conflict of interest at their job, and policy requires employees to disclosure conflicts of interests that could arise from personal relationships.

Denying the affair

The records also show that Telles frequently discussed the conflicts in the office with Lee-Kennett, sometimes appearing to console her and also venting himself.

“Every day for me feels horrible right now,” he said in a message from October 2020, two months after Goodwin filed her first complaint. “I’m just trying to get everything in order without opening things up for them to attack me again.”

He messaged Lee-Kennett again, stating that if she submitted her own grievance, maybe that would prompt “another discussion about how things really are in the office.”

In German’s original article on Telles from May 2022, he reported that employees alleged Telles was showing favoritism to Lee-Kennett, who was sometimes acting as an office supervisor beyond her assigned duties, they claimed. Telles and Lee-Kennett denied the affair to German at the time, but Telles would go on to acknowledge the relationship while testifying in his murder trial, when he admitted to lying in his interview with German.

“We had a romantic affair with each other,” Telles testified.

Telles, who has two children and was a stepfather to his then-wife’s child, divorced after the conviction.

Telles lost re-election after German’s article ran, and he murdered German three months later.

Goodwin told the Review-Journal that her two complaints against Telles led to investigations from the county’s human resources department and diversity office. But she said Telles’ treatment of her and the other employees only got worse after that.

In May, Goodwin and several other current and former employees from the public administrator’s office filed a federal lawsuit against Telles and the county. They alleged Telles created a hostile and discriminatory work environment that included retaliation against employees who filed complaints or failed to reciprocate alleged sexual advances. The lawsuit alleged that Telles would stand inappropriately close and make unwanted comments toward Goodwin and another employee, Jessica Coleman.

Clark County’s response to the lawsuit, which is still pending litigation, alleges that the employees’ claims don’t fall within the statute of limitations, and that they failed to “timely notify” the county of Telles’ alleged misconduct.

The county also claimed that it “exercised reasonable care to properly correct and prevent harassing, discriminating or retaliatory actions.”

Meanwhile, Telles denied the employees’ claims and alleged in court documents that the lawsuit was filed in an effort to prejudice jurors in his murder trial.

Goodwin said she remembers a few interviews with county investigators, but that no one ever visited the office to conduct an investigation or witness evidence of the affair.

She now questions whether investigators did enough, because tens of thousands of Telles’ Microsoft Teams messages were not immediately reviewed.

“I think they should have been able to find them,” Goodwin said. “I think they should have done much more investigating than what they did. We gave them plenty of reason to look.”

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.