LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas officials identified a homicide victim Thursday whose remains were found in a rusted barrel on a Lake Mead shore after the lake’s level was depleted amid drought.
Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse identified the victim as Edward Lelburian Jackson, who was from Arkansas and in his mid to late 50s when he died.
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.
But while Jackson had a brief criminal history in the early 1980s in Salt Lake City, Utah, which included one charge of aggravated arson and conspiracy of fraud, investigators said Thursday they do not have information to support theories that the man's death was mob-related.
Jackson's family told investigators that he liked to travel, but it is unclear why he was in Las Vegas.
Authorities had 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 had 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.
