LAS VEGAS — Police in Las Vegas are poised to settle a mystery Thursday by publicly revealing the identity of a man whose body was found in a barrel at a newly exposed shoreline at Lake Mead.
The discovery by boaters in 2022 sparked memories of the city's mob era, which ended in the mid-1980s. Organized crime helped build up the city, and a body stuffed in a barrel was known to signify a mob killing.
Las Vegas police have scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon. Authorities have already said the man was shot, and they estimate he was killed between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, based on the type of shoes found with him.
The man had been wearing a button-down short-sleeve shirt, light blue jeans, a silver wristwatch and blue-and-white tennis shoes.
The Mob Museum in Las Vegas has suggested the victim could be connected to the mob, speculating it could be: George “Jay” Vandermark, a gambling machine cheater trusted by the mob to oversee slot machine operations at the Stardust casino; William Crespo, a drug-runner who became a federal informant; or Johnny Pappas, who owned a boat at Lake Mead and worked in the casino industry.
All three disappeared and their bodies were never found.
Lake Mead is at a historic low due to years of overuse, longstanding drought and increasing temperatures. The water level of the 90-year-old reservoir has dropped, exposing areas that were previously underwater. Historians predict more bodies could be found.
Several other sets of remains were found at Lake Mead in 2022. That May, another set of skeletal remains was discovered, and they were identified as a drowning victim from 2002. Skeletal remains found in August were identified as a 52-year-old Las Vegas resident who disappeared in 1998. A set of remains found in October 2022 were determined to be an accidental drowning from 1974, according to Clark County.
In August 2026, more human remains were discovered.
Lake Mead and the upstream Lake Powell are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides Colorado River water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.
In 2022, the dropping lake level exposed Las Vegas' uppermost drinking water intake, forcing the regional water authority to switch to a deep-lake intake it completed in 2020 to keep serving the city's 2.4 million residents and visitors, casinos and suburbs. Las Vegas attracts around 40 million tourists per year.
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