This past Monday, yet another set of human remains was unveiled in an area of Lake Mead that was previously underwater as the overall water level continues to rapidly drop as a result of the severe drought conditions in the area. This most recent discovery marks the fifth set of recovered remains since May of this year.
As reported on Tuesday by the National Park Service, Rangers responded to another report of the resurfacing of some human skeletal remains in the Swim Beach area of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
Local authorities created a perimeter for the area in order to recover the remains via cooperation with a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department dive team and later with the Clark County medical examiner.
This new investigation is still ongoing.
This recent announcement comes after four other human remains have been discovered over the past few months.
Officials with park services have stated that a group of boaters were the ones to find the first body that ended up having a gunshot wound before being stuck inside of a metal barrel that had been sunk into the mud near the area of Hemenway Harbor on the 1st of May.
“We were docking our boat to go home and heard a woman scream,” expressed Shawna Hollister, who was at the lake at that time. “My husband walked over and found the body. His shirt and belt were the only things we could see over his decomposing bones.”
Labeled the Hemenway Harbor Doe by the coroner’s office, the man had received a gunshot wound to the head. “Anytime you have a body in a barrel — clearly there was somebody else involved,” explained Lieutenant Jason Johannson of the homicide division to CNN.
Detectives assigned to this case think that the victim could have been murdered at some point between the mid-1970s to the early 1980s due to the style of the clothing and footwear discovered alongside the body, as reported by a local affiliate of NBC.
Authorities discovered yet another set of remains that resurfaced in Callville Bay just a bit over a week later.
Todd Kolod, who is a resident of Spain, stated that he thinks that this particular set of remains is none other than his father who died of drowning at 22 in Callville Bay back in 1958, as reported by The Daily Mail.
Kolod claimed that his father was riding in a speed boat with a friend when it hit a wake and threw both men into the water. The friend was able to survive while Kolod’s father was never found or discovered.
The Clark County Coroner, Melanie Rouse, thinks that the remains belong to someone who is roughly between the ages of 23 and 38 years old, although the actual cause of death is still unclear.
After an almost two-month silence, the authorities of the National Park Service released that the rangers had responded to another report on the 25th of July of a then third set of remains discovered at the Swim Beach area out in Boulder City, Nevada.
It was reported by CNN that Rouse claimed that these remains happen to only be partial and were still in the very primary stages of examination.
Ray Spencer, a Las Vegas Metro police homicide Lt., stated to the 8 News Now team that he thinks that as the water continues to drop, more bodies will be found.
“I think anybody can understand there are probably more bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead,” expressed Spencer. “It’s just a matter of, are we able to recover those?”
It has been reported by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that the water levels have dropped to 1,041.30 feet, which has prompted officials to choose to refill to just 27% of capacity as of the 18th of July.