Milwaukee native investigates Las Vegas crime

Casinos, crime, and new stories — these sound like the makings of a suspenseful movie. But they are just part of regular day’s work for Milwaukee’s Jeff German.

German, 50, is a columnist and past senior investigative reporter at the Las Vegas Sun, where he has been working for almost 26 years.

The son of Max and the late June German, he grew up in Milwaukee and attended John Marshall High School before beginning his college education at UW-Milwaukee.
Though German earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations, he realized he “didn’t know where he was going” with that field.

German said in a recent telephone interview that he “always liked to write,” and considered himself a good writer. His interest in journalism motivated him to take a few courses after he graduated. As German said, he “decided to take a stab at it and liked it.”

Around this time, German began writing for several papers, including the UWM Post, the then-Milwaukee Journal, and even The Chronicle. He decided to go back to school, and earned his master’s degree from Marquette in 1978.

Soon after graduation, German moved to Las Vegas to become a writer for the Las Vegas Sun, who hired him over the phone. He has remained there for the past 25 years, and aside from his father, who has moved near him, most of his family and his brother still live in Milwaukee.

Working in Las Vegas, German has had many strange experiences. He told The Chronicle of one instance where he was “punched out” by a man he had previously interviewed, and required four stitches in his lip.

But the highlight of his career, he said, has been his investigative work on the Ted Binion murder case, which German began to cover on the day the wealthy Las Vegas casino figure died in 1998.

At first, police believed that the death was a suicide or a drug overdose. Binion was known to have a drug problem, and had large amounts of heroin in his system when he died.

However, it was later determined, with assistance from evidence collected by German’s early reports, that Binion’s death was a homicide, and that his girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, and her other boyfriend, Rick Tabish, were his killers.

Considered an expert on the Binion murder, German has discussed the murder on Court TV, and most recently appeared on “Entertainment Tonight” on May 8, where he was called to comment on the case. He told The Chronicle that he has appeared on “all of the magazine shows,” including “Dateline,” “20/20,” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”

German also published a book about the murder, titled “Murder in Sin City: The Death of a Las Vegas Casino Boss,” which was published by Avon in 2001.

Although German’s career began in Milwaukee, it doesn’t look like he will be returning any time soon; German is still covering the case as it continues to unfold. The convictions of Murphy and Tabish were overturned in 2000 and they are scheduled for retrial in October 2004.

In the meantime, German’s regular column is published by the Sun four times a week.