“Where are the bodies buried? Climate change is showing us.”
If there was ever a headline that grabbed you, that would be it. bodies? Climate change? This is how the two are connected.
In the western United States, the second-largest man-made reservoir has fallen to record lows due to drought. Water flowing down the Colorado River fills Lake Mead, which is now drying up.
As the water recedes, dark secrets float to the surface after two sets of human remains were recently discovered.
Two sisters who were paddling in Lake Mead National Recreation Area stopped to explore a nearby sandbar when they spotted what they thought was an animal.
“We discovered more and more bones,” Lindsey Melvin told a local news outlet, “and we found a jawbone and we realized that it is definitely human.”
Other human remains were found just six days earlier. Boaters enjoying a day on the lake made another grisly discovery, a decomposed body inside a rusty metal barrel.
Called in to investigate, Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told CNN, “We believe this is a homicide resulting from a gunshot wound.”
The man had been shot in the back of the head, he said. As they try to identify the victim, another clue was the man’s clothing and shoes. They appear to be from the 1970s or early 1980s and from a brand sold at K-mart.
Finding these bodies has reignited interest in Las Vegas and its sin city past, when mobsters ruled the strip.
If anyone is an expert on all of that, it’s Oscar Goodman. The former Las Vegas mayor was also a lawyer who once defended mob figures like Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro.
A Chicago mob enforcer, Spilotro was assigned to Las Vegas in the 1970s. Described as defiant and angry, actor Joe Pesci modeled his mobster persona in the movie “Casino” on “Tony the Ant.”
Goodman did not speculate on who might be in the Lake Mead barrel, but said, “I’m relatively sure it wasn’t Jimmy Hoffa,” referring to the former labor boss who disappeared in 1975.
“They keep calling me and asking, Oscar, who did it?” Goodman told The Associated Press. “And I said how am I supposed to know who did it? I didn’t order it; I’ll tell you that,” he also told NBC.
All of this has tongues wagging. Two former police officers who are now co-hosts of a Las Vegas podcast are offering a $5,000 reward to qualified divers for finding more barrels and possibly more bodies in Lake Mead. David Kohlmeier told CTV News that his “Problem Solving Show” has received several tips from the public, including two related to ‘mob’ connections. He has also heard from families of missing persons, including a father from Utah who disappeared in the 1980s.
“We just don’t really know, there are a lot of crazy people doing crazy things, whether it’s in Vegas or anywhere in the world.”
Kohlmeier hopes the mystery surrounding the bodies will be resolved soon to help bring these cold cases to a close. “So I definitely want to close any kind of case. People need justice, right? …or at least get some kind of closure.”
As water levels continue to drop during this megadrought, many suspect that what lies beneath Lake Mead won’t stay hidden for long.
Says Kohlmeier, “My gut says there are probably more bodies.”
Reference-www.ctvnews.ca