Body in a Barrel: Lake Mead’s Receding Waters Reveal a Grisly Tomb

On Sunday afternoon, Shawna Hollister was docking her boat in Lake Mead, Nevada, when she said she heard a woman scream. Along the receding shoreline, a rusty barrel could be seen lodged in the mud. Inside, was a rotting corpse.

“My husband walked over and found the body,” Hollister said, 8 News Now reported. “His shirt and belt were the only thing we could see over his decomposing bones.”

The ghastly discovery became even more startling when the Las Vegas Metro police announced Monday that evidence indicated the body may have been submerged in the desert waters for nearly four decades.

Lake Mead, the country’s most capacious manmade reservoir, is formed by the waters stymied by the Hoover Dam. The lake straddles the state line between Arizona and Nevada and is about 30 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip. But in recent years, a drought across the southwest has plagued the famous body of water. According to the Daily Mail, the waters have reached their lowest levels since 1971. An original valve built before the region was ever flooded has even surfaced recently as the waters continue to recede.

Investigators believe this is why submerged artifacts from bygone decades are now peeking through the mud—artifacts such as the rusty tomb. After evaluating the personal effects with the human remains in the barrel, police determined the person likely died in the 1980s.

Lt. Ray Spencer from the Las Vegas Metro police told 8 News Now that it would require “an extensive amount of work” to confirm the identity of the deceased. He said investigators are hoping to enlist researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to determine a timeline for when the barrel began to decompose. The National Park Services is also helping to investigate.

As the lake continues to dry up, Spencer claims such discoveries could continue to occur: “I think anybody can understand there are probably more bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead, it’s just a matter of, are we able to recover those?”