LAS VEGAS (AP) – Las Vegas is flooded with knowledge of organized crime after a second group of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of a drought-damaged Colorado reservoir, just a 30-minute drive from the infamous from the Lenta mafia.
“It is impossible to say what we will find in Lake Mead,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday. “It’s not a bad place to dump a corpse.”
Goodman, as a lawyer, represented mafia figures, including the ill-fated Anthony “Ant Tony” Spilotro, before serving three terms as mayor with martinis, making public appearances with one dancer on each hand.
He declined to name who could appear in the huge reservoir formed by Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona.
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Jimmy Hoff,” he laughed. But he added that many of his former clients seem to be interested in “climate control” – the mobsters are talking about keeping the level of the lake up and the bodies down in their water graves.
Instead, the world is now experiencing climate change, and the surface of Lake Mead has fallen by more than 170 feet (52 meters) since 1983.
The lake, which quenches the thirst of 40 million people in cities, farms and tribes in seven southwestern states, is reducing to about 30% of its capacity.
“If the lake goes much lower, it’s very possible that some very interesting things will come out,” said Michael Green, a University of Nevada professor of history in Las Vegas whose father has been involved in blackjack at casinos for decades, including Stardust and The Showbot. .
“I wouldn’t bet on the mortgage we’ll settle who killed Bugsy Siegel,” Green said, referring to the infamous gangster who opened the flamingo in 1944 about what would become a Strip. Siegel was shot dead in 1947 in Beverly Hills, California. His killer has never been identified.
“But I’d be willing to bet there will be a few more bodies,” Green said.
First, the declining lake level exposed the highest drinking water intake in Las Vegas on April 25, forcing the regional water authority to move to a deep lake that ended in 2020 to continue supplying casinos, suburbs and 2.4 million inhabitants and 40 million tourists a year.
The next weekend, boatmen spotted the decomposed body of a man in a rusty barrel stuck in the mud of the newly discovered coastline.
The body has not been identified, but Las Vegas police say he was shot, probably between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, according to shoes found. Death is being investigated as murder.
A few days later, a second barrel was discovered by a KLAS-TV news team, not far from the first. It was empty.
On Saturday, two sisters from the suburbs of Henderson, who were paddling on a lake near a former marina, noticed bones on the newly covered sand bar.
Lindsay Melvin, who took photos of the find, said they initially thought it was a skeleton of a horned sheep from the region. A closer look revealed a human jaw with teeth. They called park rangers and the National Park Service confirmed in a statement that the bones were human.
There is no immediate evidence of unfair play, Las Vegas police said Monday, and they are not investigating. A murder investigation will be launched if the Clark County Coroner finds the death suspicious, the department said in a statement.
More bodies will be found, predicts Jeff Schumacher, vice president of the Mafia Museum, a renovated historic post office in downtown Las Vegas and a federal building that opened in 2012 as the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.
“I think a lot of these people were probably victims of drowning,” Schumacher said, referring to boatmen and swimmers who were never found. “But one barrel has a signature from a blow from the crowd. Filling the body in a barrel. Sometimes they threw him in the water. “
He and Green cite the death of John “Beautiful Johnny” Roselli, a Las Vegas mobster in the mid-1950s who disappeared in 1976 a few days before his body was found in a 55-gallon (208-liter) steel drum. floating along the shore. from Miami.
David Colmayer, a former police officer who now co-hosts a podcast in Las Vegas and a nascent television show called The Problem Solving Show, said Monday that after offering a $ 5,000 prize last week for skilled divers find barrels in the lake, he heard from people in San Diego and Florida wanting to try.
But national park officials said it was not allowed and that there were hundreds of barrels in the depths – some dating back to the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s.
Colmayer also said he had heard from families of missing people about cases such as a man suspected of killing his mother and brother in 1987, a hotel employee who went missing in 1992, and a Utah father who went missing. in the 1980s.
“You’ll probably find remains everywhere in Lake Mead,” said Colmayer, including the Indians, who were the earliest inhabitants of the area.
Green said the findings make people talk not only about mafia strikes, but also about relieving and closing grieving families. Not to mention the ever-increasing white mineral markings on the steep lake walls, showing where the water was.
“People will talk about it for the right reasons and for the wrong reasons,” the professor said. “They will think that we will solve every murder of the crowd. In fact, we can see some.
“But it’s also worth remembering that the mob didn’t like the killings in the Las Vegas area because they didn’t like the bad publicity that came out under the Las Vegas date.
The right reason, Green said, is visible evidence that the West has a serious water problem. “The bath ring around the lake is big and getting bigger,” he said.
Whatever the story of the body in the barrel, Goodman predicts that it will contribute to the history of a city that sprang from lake water from a creosote-covered desert to become a gambling mecca.
“When I was mayor, every time I went to the ground, I began to tremble for fear that someone I might have encountered over the years would be discovered,” he said.
“We have a very interesting experience,” Goodman added. “It certainly contributes to the mystique of Las Vegas.”
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