The extreme drought conditions that are forcing the waters of Lake Mead on the Nevada-Arizona border to rapidly recede have once again exposed another set of skeletal human remains as of this past Saturday, which brings the total number of found bodies to reach four since the start of the drought back in May.
The National Park Service officially announced that its rangers got an emergency call on Saturday morning with a report that a set of skeletal remains had been found at Swim Beach in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
NPS authorities reported that rangers created a perimeter around the area at the beach in order to recover the remains with some assistance from divers borrowed out of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and further made sure to contact the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office in an effort to discover the cause of death.
The announcement takes place in the wake of three other sets of human remains being discovered over the past few months.
Officials with park services have announced that a group of boaters discovered the first body sporting a gunshot wound and stuffed inside of a metal barrel sunk into the mud out in the Hemenway Harbor of the lake back on May 1st.
“We were docking our boat to go home and heard a woman scream,” explained Shawna Hollister, who was in person at the lake. “My husband walked over and found the body. His shirt and belt were the only things we could see over his decomposing bones.”
The man, who authorities have labeled by the coroner’s office as the Hemenway Harbor Doe, had been shot in the head and had a metal overcoat in the shape of a barrel as it had reportedly been in the lake for quite some time.
The homicide division for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police immediately kicked off another investigation about the discovery.
“Anytime you have a body in a barrel — clearly there was somebody else involved,” explained Lieutenant Jason Johannson of the homicide division during an interview with CNN.
Detectives looking into the case think that the victim may have been murdered at some point between the mid-1970s to the early 1980s which they have deduced based upon the clothing and footwear found attached to the body, read a report from a local NBC affiliate.
Authorities discovered another set of reamins that were exposed out at Callville Bay just a week later.
Todd Kolod stated that he thinks the remained belonged to his father, who died via drowning in the Callville Bay area back in 1958, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Kolod stated that his father was riding on a speed boat with a buddy when it went over a wake and kicked them both out into the water. The first survived while Kolod’s father’s body was never found.
However, the Clark County Coroner, Melanie Rouse, thinks that the remains belong to someone who is between 23-38 years old, but the actual cause of death is still unclear.
The NPS also announced just two months later that rangers had responded to the third set of human remains discovered on the 25th of July that was found in the Swim Beach area in Boulder City, Nevada.
A report from CNN claimed that Rouse stated that the remains are only partial and still need to be further examined.
Ray Spencer, a Las Vegas Metro police homicide Lt., stated via an interview with 8 News Now that he thinks that as water levels continue to drop, more bodies are going to 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?”