Body found in barrel at Lake Mead identified as Arkansas murder victim: ‘signs of mob attack’

The remains of a man who was bullet in the head and stuffed in a rusty barrel found on the shore of Lake Mead after the water level dropped were identified Thursday as an Arkansas man whose decades-old murder remains unsolved.

Edward Lelburian Jackson was between 50 and 50 years old when he died, Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse said. Authorities are looking for people who may come forward to help solve Jackson’s murder.

There was no evidence directly linking the killing to organized crime in nearby Las Vegas, despite long-standing speculation, although a link has not been ruled out, police said. An expert on mob activity in the city said the case bore the “marks” of a major mob hit and questions remained.

This discovery brought back memories of the mafia days in Las Vegas.

Jackson was identified using a bone sample sent for genealogical profiling, as well as three angles of a composite face and the clothing Jackson was wearing when he died, Rouse said.

“We were able to confirm that it was indeed Edward Jackson,” she said.

The discovery of the barrel by boaters in May 2022 triggered memories of the city’s mafia dayswhich lasted from the 1940s to the mid-1980s. Organized crime helped build Las Vegas, and a body stuffed in a barrel was known to mean a massacre.

Jackson, believed to be from Hot Springs, Arkansas, had a brief criminal history in the early 1980s in Salt Lake City, Utah, that included a charge of aggravated arson and conspiracy to commit fraud, said Robert Price, homicide lieutenant for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Police said Jackson was married a short time with no known children, CBS affiliate KLAS-TV reported.

It’s unclear why Jackson was in Las Vegas

Price said there was no evidence to link the killing to organized crime. However, he added that this hypothesis was not excluded.

Jackson’s family told investigators he liked to travel, and detectives found traces of him in California, where he lived with his wife in the early 1970s. His family said they last saw him in Arkansas in the early 1980s, and it is unclear why he was in Las Vegas. Homicide detectives will continue to work to figure out what happened to him, Price said.

“This is a cold case. It will never be closed until we solve it,” Price said Thursday. “I would say it’s one piece of the puzzle and as we get more and more pieces, we can continue to dig deeper.”

Authorities previously said the man was shot and believe he was killed in the early 1980s.

Jackson was not reported missing

The man wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt, light blue jeans, a silver wristwatch and blue and white tennis shoes.

Price said the family did not report her missing.

“They knew he had traveled the country and would show up when he arrived, just to say hello. But they didn’t think about anything else. They just thought he was on the move,” he said.

Researcher says case has all the ‘characteristics of a mob attack’

Geoff Schumacher, vice president of research, collections and programs at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, said there are still many questions about who Jackson was and what he was involved in, which “earned him a trip in a barrel in the lake.”

Members of organized crime were involved in the Las Vegas casino industry from the 1940s to the mid-1980s, both behind the scenes and through ghost casino properties, Schumacher said.

He said the case had all the “hallmarks of a mob attack,” mirroring another case from 1976, when Italian gangster John Roselli was killed and put in a barrel and thrown into a bay outside Miami Beach.

Schumacher said he and the Mob Museum staff will review their cases to try to help solve the case.

“I think this story is not over,” he said.

More bodies discovered as Lake Mead recedes

Las Vegas historian Michael Green said whoever committed the crime probably thought the body “would never come to the surface.” In the early 1980s, lake levels were so high that spillways flooded Hoover Dam, he said.

Today, Lake Mead is at a all-time low due to years of overexploitation, long-term drought and increasing temperatures. The water level in the 90-year-old reservoir has dropped, exposing areas that were previously underwater. In August, the water level dropped to 1,039.77 feet above sea level, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, well below the previous record set in July 2022.

Several other leftover sets were found at Lake Mead in 2022. Another set of skeletal remains was discovered in May and they were identified as a drowning victim from 2002. found in August have been identified as a 52-year-old Las Vegas resident who disappeared in 1998. The remains of another drowning victim, Donald Smith, who was he is believed to have drowned in 1974were found in October 2022.

Its receding waters leave behind the usual wrecks of a lake popular with weekend boaters – and even expose a ship dating from the Second World War.

Lake Mead and upstream Lake Powell are the largest man-made reservoirs in the United States, part of a system that provides water from the Colorado River to populations in the southwestern United States and Mexico.

In 2022, falling levels of Lake Mead exposed the highest drinking water intake in Las Vegas. This forced authorities to opt for a deeper reception system to continue serving the city’s 2.4 million residents.