In May, the first corpse was found. On the muddy bank of Lake Mead, the skeletal remains of a man were discovered packed inside a rusted metal barrel.
According to the police, he was shot in the head by the mob sometime in the 1970s or 1980s.
Since then, bodies have continued to emerge from America’s largest reservoir, which is now divulging its long-kept secrets.
A further set of human remains was recently discovered, making four total.
The 112-mile-long lake on the Nevada-Arizona border is losing water as a result of the drought, which was made worse by excessive water usage by neighbouring states.
According to accounts, the region may include many ghost towns, a prehistoric Native American “lost city,” a wrecked World War II B-29 Superfortress aircraft, and the hidden wealth of an infamous criminal.
The lake is noteworthy since its closest point is about 20 miles from Las Vegas. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the reservoir closest to Sin City is revealing more nasty shocks, while other draining reservoirs in America’s arid Southwest have uncovered treasures like a fossilised mastodon head and old Native American houses.
The Chicago Mafia, or the “Outfit,” and other Midwest clans had such tight control over the casino town in its early years that it was stated that everyone there claimed to be affiliated with the Mob.
There were unavoidably many fatalities since there was so much money to be earned by the dishonest, not to mention so much opportunity for them to take advantage of one another.
Local Mafia experts have long believed that mobsters preferred to bury dead in the Nevada desert since they were afraid that floating corpses in the reservoir would worry visitors and make them avoid visiting Vegas, despite Lake Mead having apparent appeal as a site to dispose of such deaths.
Recent findings, notably the one involving the poor guy in the barrel, imply that conclusion may not have been accurate.
According to Travis Heggie, a former employee of the National Park Service who has examined fatalities in the Lake Mead Recreation Area, “this is only the tip of the iceberg.” “I anticipate all kinds of illegal stuff to pop up,” she said.
He anticipates that they will discover an armoury of firearms, knives, and whatever else the gangster killers used to murder one other and had to dispose of afterwards. Even if there aren’t any more corpses in barrels.
The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River created the 86-year-old reservoir, which supplies drinking water to California, Arizona, Nevada, and sections of Mexico. Less than 30% of its capacity is presently occupied.
Even though the lake is nominally part of a national park in the United States, two retired police officers have given a $5,000 prize to anybody who finds additional sunken barrels.
Some of them are said to hold the lost treasure of Bugsy Siegel, who amassed wealth as one of the first criminal lords of Sin City. Before being assassinated in 1947, there are rumours that he stashed his loot in numerous barrels that were dropped into Lake Mead.
But before they uncover Bugsy’s wealth, they could unearth a few more bones since thieves have been hiding victims in barrels since the middle of the 19th century.
The victim’s shoes helped officials roughly date the killing after the corpse in the barrel was discovered on May 1 close to Swim Beach. Two sisters discovered the partially buried bones of a person between the ages of 23 and 37 while paddleboarding one week later.
At first, they believed they were sheep bones. One of the girls said, “I didn’t start freaking out until I saw the jawbone with a silver filling that I was like, “Whoa, this is human!”
The second set of remains, according to the local coroner, were more skeletal than the previous set, which had organ tissue. The reason of death is still a mystery.
On July 25, a third set of bones that had been buried in dirt at the water’s edge were found at Swim Beach. Two weeks ago, a fourth pair was discovered on Swim Beach.
The identities and causes of death of the latter discovery cannot yet be determined, according to experts, but the crew at Las Vegas’s “Mob Museum” has a good notion of who ended up in the barrel.
They think he is Johnny Pappas, a man with “connections” to the Mafia who worked in the gambling sector. He was employed by the Argent Corporation, a cover organisation for organised crime figures that ran four sizable casinos in Las Vegas and “skimmed” their earnings (under-reporting takings to the government and pocketing the remainder).
Greek-American boat owner Pappas vanished one night in 1976 after informing his wife he was going to a restaurant to see two individuals interested in purchasing the boat. Pappas owned a boat on Lake Mead. His automobile was found in a casino parking lot three days later with the keys in the ignition.
Tony Spilotro, a Chicago “enforcer” and Mafia captain in Las Vegas, is thought to have killed him. From 1975 through 1977, the prolific hitman was suspected in over 20 deaths and disappearances involving the gang.
His preferred method of death, according to the Mob Museum, included shooting himself in the head with a silencer-equipped.22 revolver.
Spilotro served as the model for Joe Pesci’s portrayal of Mafia sociopath Nicky Santoro in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film Casino, which is regarded as the best account of Las Vegas’s Mafia history in Hollywood.
There are many more potential options for the guy in the barrel given that Sin City in the 1970s has been referred to as “a slaughter” – it is estimated that there were more gangland homicides in Las Vegas between 1971 and 1974 than there were in the preceding 25 years combined. One explanation holds that the murder was committed by a motorcycle gang that was attempting to encroach on the Mob’s territory.
Another theory is that the victim may be George Vandermark, a Mob casino manager who vanished after reportedly stealing up to $15 million in coins from the lucrative slot machines at the casinos run by the Argent Corporation.
Vandermark, who is accused of defrauding both the American taxman and his Mafia superiors, was last seen at a motel in Arizona in 1976. The next year, his son, who had supposedly kept in contact with him after he vanished, was discovered dead.
Although a Mob source swore that Vandermark had been shot dead and buried in the Arizona desert, the authorities reported that he had escaped to Costa Rica. His remains were never discovered.
Another hypothesis is that the victim of the barrel is William Crespo, a cocaine dealer who “flipped” and testified for the government before going missing in 1983 just before he was scheduled to testify against an Argent executive and six of his colleagues.
The Mob Museum hasn’t even heard of some of the contenders, such the gangster Bobbi Eugene Shaw, who vanished in 1977. His sister, Barbara Brock, said that in May, police had been in touch with her and her nephew about gathering DNA samples from the family to look for a match. I know he’s gone, but I’d feel better if I knew for sure, she said.
In addition, historians claim that while some might believe it to be simple to bury a body in the endless desert that surrounds Las Vegas, mobster sometimes preferred a barrel as a more dramatic gesture. In 1976, a mobster from Las Vegas was discovered dead in a floating barrel in Biscayne Bay, Florida.
Whoever the newest barrel inhabitant turns out to be, it almost probably won’t be the final grim discovery from Lake Mead.