By Emily Caulkett-
A drought in Nevada has led to the discovery of a barrel containing human remains which may date back to the 1980s.
The barrel was spotted by boaters on Sunday (1 May) as water levels continued to drop in Lake Mead, one of the largest reservoirs in the US, as a result of the dry spell.
Las Vegas Metro Police fear they will find more bodies, officials told a local news station.
The receding waters at Lake Mead, the country’s largest artificial reservoir, have dropped to historic lows. The levels are so shallow that a barrel containing skeletal remains was found Sunday immersed in mud, reports KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.
Lt. Ray Spencer with the Las Vegas Metro Police told the news station the person was probably killed four decades ago and was found around 3 p.m. Sunday by boaters. He did not give further details about the person’s identity or how the remains ended up in a barrel at the bottom of Lake Mead.
“It’s going to take an extensive amount of work,” Spencer said of trying to identify the person. “I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains.”
The container was embedded in mud, and when the boaters took a closer look they discovered a skeleton inside.
Speaking to KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, witness Shawna Hollister said: “We were docking our boat to go home and heard a woman scream. My husband walked over and found the body. His shirt and belt were the only thing we could see over his decomposing bones.”
Rangers from the National Park Service confirmed the barrel contained the remains of a human, while investigators also found personal items which helped them estimate how long the body had been hidden.
Lieutenant Ray Spencer, of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, declined to reveal exactly what the items were in an interview with The New York Times, but said they led investigators to believe the victim was killed in the 1980s.
“It’s really odd in the sense that had the lake never receded, we would never have discovered the body,” he told the publication.
The police department has not yet released details about the victim such as a possible age, sex or specific cause of death, though Spencer said it’s clear they ‘died as a result of a homicide’.
The body in the barrel may not be the last human remains found in the wake of the drop in water levels. Spencer explained rangers with the National Park Service find one or two bodies at Lake Mead every year, “so it’s not uncommon to work a homicide out at the lake.”
.Police plan to work with experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to help them identify the remains and determine the age of the barrel’s metal. As the victim appears to have been killed in the 1980s near Las Vegas, where mob-connected casinos were located, Spencer said investigators will ‘definitely not rule out’ the idea that the killing may have been Mafia-related.
Investigators plan to research missing persons cases from the 1980s in relation to the discovery, though Spencer said the investigation could take years because police are starting ‘at square one’.
The lake — a lifeline for 25 million people and millions of acres of farmland in California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico — has been tipping toward crisis amid record temperatures and lower snowpack melt. The lake’s growing “bathtub ring,” formed by mineral deposits, marks the rocky desert slopes more than 150 feet above the retreating shoreline.
“I think anybody can understand there are probably more bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead, it’s just a matter of, are we able to recover those?” Spencer said.
The water level has receded hundreds of feet over the years, Spencer told The Times; 40 years ago, the current shoreline would have been under 100 feet of water.
“Most of the body was fully intact, and we have recovered the entire body,” Spencer said. “We’re going to reach out to some experts regarding the corrosion on the barrel and the rate of growth of aquatic life on the surface of the barrel to narrow down a timeline.”