When Lake Mead hits new lows, its waters unveil mysteries. Last time, it revealed a murder case that is still unsolved

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

(CNN) — When Lake Mead last plunged to record-low water levels in 2022, its dramatically receding shoreline revealed all manner of curiosities.

For the first time in years, the sun shone on the gutted frame of a World War II-era vessel. Water retracted from the abandoned wreck of a houseboat. Dozens of sunken skiffs and speedboats, long written off by their owners, sat dry on the sand.

But in time, much graver secrets also emerged.

On a bright May morning that year, a scream rang out along the reservoir’s popular beach spot, Hemenway Harbor. A visitor had stumbled across a metal barrel so corroded by time that she could see the decomposed remains of a man who had been sealed inside, his bones still wrapped in battered jeans, Velcro sneakers and a silver Timex watch.

The man was a homicide victim from the 1970s or 80s, detectives quickly determined. But uncovering the identity of the decades-old body would not be quick work.

The discovery of the body, known as the Hemenway Harbor Doe, kicked off a frenzy of public speculation – which only grew in the following months as three more sets of remains were found.

Now, persistent drought has again driven Lake Mead’s water levels to a new historic low this month, drawing back hundreds of miles of shoreline along the Nevada-Arizona border — and more mysteries have already started to surface.

Just days after the reservoir reported a record low of 1,040.5 feet, a man sifting through rocks at the water’s edge on August 16 pulled out a jagged jawbone studded with yellowed teeth, local outlet KLAS reported.

Several other curved, slender bones were soon found nearby, according to pictures shared with the station.

The handful of remains have been collected by the Clark County Coroner’s Office, which has said it will work to identify the person and their cause of death. Park officials are investigating the case but do not believe the person was the victim of a crime.

While investigators have been able to use DNA analysis and traditional investigative work to identify three of the other sets of remains found in 2022, the identity of the Hemenway Harbor homicide victim has proven far more elusive.

For years, investigators have gone to great forensic lengths to solve the case, while locals and true crime enthusiasts foster theories about the fate of the man who died when the mob had its grasp on Las Vegas and Sin City was feeding its reputation as a glittering destination for human desire.

Searching for Hemenway Harbor Doe

When police officers trekked down to a steel drum at Lake Mead’s lapping waterline on May 1, 2022, a gaping hole in the deteriorated metal revealed heavily decomposed human remains. They didn’t need to wait for a coroner to confirm the obvious: They had a homicide investigation on their hands.

If the circumstances were not already suspicious enough, the victim had clearly suffered a gunshot wound, Lt. Jason Johansson of the Las Vegas police homicide unit told CNN at the time.

After the remains and their crusted metal encasement were sent off for testing, detectives only grew more confident in their assessment.

“The person (who disposed of the body) took a lot of steps to make sure that the victim had not been recovered,” former Las Vegas homicide lieutenant Ray Spencer told CNN that year.

The barrel had been punctured several times and dumped far offshore, Spencer said, but whoever discarded the remains likely never imagined the reservoir’s shoreline would one day retract hundreds of feet.

Around the time the body was disposed of, Lake Mead was nearing its zenith. At its height in 1983, Lake Mead was 1,225 feet above sea level. Since then, the waters have plunged nearly 200 feet. The dropping waters are the result of a climate crisis-fueled “mega-drought” and persistent water overuse that has sent the Colorado River system – and the massive reservoirs it supplies – into crisis.

“If you were to go back 40 years ago, where the victim was found was probably about half a mile to a mile offshore,” said Spencer, who oversaw the homicide unit when the body was found.

When Hemenway Harbor Doe was placed in the barrel, he was still dressed in a 2X-sized striped short-sleeved button down shirt, jeans and Trax Velcro sneakers. His clothing had been so well preserved by the cool freshwater environment that investigators were able to determine he had died sometime in the mid-’70s to early ‘80s.

But identifying remains that had been soaking in water for decades presents a long list of challenges. And without the identity of the victim, investigators are extremely limited in their ability to solve the crime.

“If you think about what the age of who your witnesses or anybody related to this case would be, many of them are getting older every day. And they’re at an age where you have to worry, are they even alive?” Johansson said at the time. He has since retired.

Over the last four years, the Clark County Coroner’s Office, with the assistance of police and the FBI, has leveraged several types of technology trying to crack the cold case.

Genetic genealogy may be critical, Spencer said in 2022. At the time the victim died, law enforcement did not collect DNA.

“There’s no chance that this victim is going to be in any current database. So we have to hope that there’s a relative or family member that we can make that link through genealogy work,” Spencer said.

The coroner’s office was also able to conduct forensic dentistry on the remains, Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse said, but it is also unclear if the victim’s dental records would be in any database.

Experts at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Virginia, created visual approximations of what the man may have looked like: a strong brow, hooded eyes and a wide nose.

More than a year after the body was found, Nevada authorities released the images, saying they “hope the release of the images to the public will help investigators identify the victim.” The images were also shared with NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, which is a centralized repository and resource center for missing and unidentified person cases in the United States.

Spencer responded to hundreds of homicide cases in his tenure with Metro police, including ones at Lake Mead, but the Hemenway Harbor Doe attracted far more public interest than he expected.

“There is no case that has gathered more attention in my career than this case,” he said.

Vegas’ mob ties loom large

The details of Hemenway Harbor Doe’s killing fueled immediate speculation that the murder had been the work of the mob, which had been running casinos — and skimming their profits — for decades in nearby Las Vegas.

Investigators have repeatedly dismissed the theories, saying there is no solid evidence to support the claims.

The Mob Museum in Las Vegas has been fielding questions and debunking misinformation surrounding the case for years, said Geoff Schumacher, the museum’s vice president of research, collections and programs. While the evidence has not supported the theories, he said he understands why public imagination, especially in Nevada, turned to organized crime.

“When you look at the era and the method of homicide, it leads you toward that conclusion,” he said.

The man had been shot during a volatile time in the city, and the disposal of his body appears to have been planned. “The hallmarks of a mob hit were all there,” Schumacher said.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, when the killing is believed to have taken place, the mob had held Las Vegas in its grasp for decades, Schumacher said. Organized crime operations from several cities, including Chicago, New York and Detroit, had established control of casinos up and down the Vegas Strip and devised schemes to skim percentages of the cash under the noses of state regulators.

The era also marked a turning point for the mob in Las Vegas, as the FBI turned a more critical eye on organized crime in the city and a new state gaming agency began investigating casinos more aggressively.

But the method of body disposal is not an established hallmark of the mob, Schumacher said. There is not much evidence to support claims that the reservoir was a dumping ground for mob hits.

“The truth of the matter is it might not have been the mob,” he said. “It could have just been drug issue, or it could have been an individual who didn’t pay their debts. There’s all kinds of reasons why people were killed.”

Some things are still submerged

If water levels continue to drop, it’s likely the lake will reveal more mementos of its past. Since it was designated the first national recreation area in 1964, hordes of visitors have cut Lake Mead’s glassy surface with jet skis and boats, carelessly dropping belongings that may now wash up on shore.

The lake has also been the site of several tragic drownings in which victims’ remains were never recovered – and may now be coming nearer to the surface. Two of the remains found in 2022 belonged to drowning victims.

But some of the reservoir’s underwater history is well known and will remain submerged for some time yet.

In the reservoir’s northern Overton Arm, the heavy frame of a bomber plane has rested on the lake’s floor for more than 70 years after a critical miscalculation of the plane’s altitude sent the B-29 Superfortress crashing into the mirror-like water below.

Once more than 200 feet underwater, the spot has been an extraordinary excursion for divers. But after water levels at the site fell around 100 feet a few years ago, the park temporarily restricted diving there while it determined how to preserve the historic relic in increasingly shallow waters.

In years past, only a handful of divers have been permitted by the park to descend to the site where the plane’s aluminum body lays upholstered with colonies of invasive mussels. Inside the dented cockpit, divers have previously observed a parachute stretched between the seats, left behind by the crew members who safely evacuated.

Last year, the park said the plane now rests at shallower depths that do not require technical dive expertise. The site is currently open to recreational divers.

The future of the B-29 and the crucial waters that surround it remain unknown. But for now — and with each passing month — Lake Mead’s underwater world reaches closer to the surface.

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