Missing Persons Website Posts Pics of Clothes Worn by Still-Unidentified Body in Lake Mead Barrel

Posted on: June 19, 2024, 10:14h. 

Last updated on: June 22, 2024, 10:02h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas.

A half a century submerged in Lake Mead was too much of a licking even for a Timex.

The murder victim’s silver Timex digital watch, manufactured in South Korea, was popular in the late 1970s. Note its ironic “water resistant” etching. (Images: NAMUS.gov)

NAMUS.gov, the website of the US government’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, has posted photographs and descriptions of the clothing, shoes, and watch worn by the only person whose Lake Mead remains have yet to be identified.

The murder victim wore a button-down Idletime short-sleeve shirt, Size 2X, manufactured in South Korea; 46″ x 30″ blue jeans with a Sasson-style pocket design; and Size 11 Trax tennis shoes. (Images: NAMUS.gov)

Between May and October 2022, four sets of remains were found when the receding Lake Mead gave up its darkest secrets due to an historic two-decade megadrought.

Three of the four sets of remains were positively identified, but not the first and most famous one — the only one investigated by Las Vegas police as a homicide.

Staring Down the Barrel

On May 1, 2022, boaters spotted a corroded metal barrel in a muddy spot once located 100 feet under Lake Mead’s Hemenway Harbor. Inside the barrel, police said, were stuffed the remains of an adult male who died from a gunshot wound to the head.

The infamous “body in a barrel” was discovered by boaters in May 2022 at Hemenway Harbor, about 30 miles away from Las Vegas. (Image: Shawna Elizabeth Hollister)

Police believe the barrel was dumped sometime between the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This places the murder squarely within the vicious reign of Las Vegas mafia boss Anthony Spilotro. Tony the Ant, as he was known, was the inspiration for Joe Pesci’s character in the 1995 Martin Scorsese film, “Casino.”

Spilotro was murdered himself, along with his brother Michael, on June 14, 1986.

According to the NAMUS.gov posts, the victim was between 27 and 61 years old, and stood between 5′6″ and 6′1.″

This face was created by the FBI based on skeletal remains recovered by Clark County Coroner’s Office investigators from a barrel in Lake Mead in May 2022. (Clark County)

Last-Stitch Effort

Two years of investigating by the Clark County Coroner’s Office, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and finally, the FBI, produced no credible leads, even after the FBI released a digital reconstruction of the victim’s face last year.

So the NAMUS.gov posting, though standard procedure, can also be seen as the Hail Mary pass in a case that most experts expected would be long-solved by now.

All Other Remains IDed

The first set of remains discovered at Lake Mead, on May 7, 2022, belonged to Thomas Erndt, a 42-year-old Las Vegas resident who drowned.

Remains found on July 25, 2022, were identified in April 2023 as those of Las Vegas resident Claude Pensinger, 52, who went missing on July 14, 1998.

Remains found on Oct. 17, 2022, belonged to Donald P. Smith, 39, of North Las Vegas, a drowning victim missing since April 1974.