Numerous human remains that were uncovered at Lake Mead could be linked to gangsters, a mob expert has said.
In case you missed the news, at the start of this month a barrel containing a dead body was found at Nevada's Lake Mead, with investigators later ruling the death to be a homicide resulting from a gunshot wound.
Just days after, the National Park Service rangers received a witness report of another set of human skeletal remains.
The grisly discoveries arrive as the lake's water levels have reached historic lows in recent months amid what’s described as a mega-drought in America’s west.
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Police believe the initial victim was killed sometime in the mid-70s to early-80s due to the clothing and footwear they were wearing, with some speculating whether the death is linked to the mafia as it unfolded at a time when mob-connected casinos were rife in Las Vegas.
And now a man named Geoffrey Schumacher – vice president of exhibits and programs at Las Vegas’ Mob Museum – has spoken out to say he and a number of fellow gangster historians agree that the first killing has all of the traits of a mob hit.
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“There’s a couple of reasons for that," he told The Independent. "One, this is Las Vegas – and when you normally think about mob murder at the time period police determined this was, the 70s, early 80s, this was a very violent era in Las Vegas, when it comes to the mob. And there were a lot of murders, a lot of people who went missing – and there were bodies found in the desert."
Schumacher continued: “This was unusual for Las Vegas, to pull a murder victim out of Lake Mead, but then the other piece of it is the body was buried in the lake in a barrel. And for whatever reason, there’s a long history of the mob using this technique to get rid of bodies.
“They dump them, they put them in barrels and put them underground, put them in barrels and dumped them in the ocean or a river or a lake. This goes back to the late 1800s. It’s just something that has been a thing.”
As to whether further bodies will be uncovered at Lake Mead, Schumacher reckons it's unlikely given that those in the world of organised crime wouldn't want to stick to the same place too often.
“If you watch the movies or television shows about the mob in New York, they’re always dumping bodies in the East River,” he said. “My thought is that you would not want to create any kind of a routine. You don’t want to be predictable.”
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The investigation into the deaths is ongoing and while police are scanning missing persons cases in the area, Lt. Ray Spencer previously said it could take years before the mystery is solved, telling The New York Times: “In the 1980s, we did not have any of the DNA databases, so there was no DNA collection.”
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Daisy Phillipson