Lake Mead's Watery Graves

Above, the section of Lake Mead nearest to the Hoover Dam in 2018. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It looks like some people got the "Luca Brasi treatment" in the Las Vegas area as bodies are starting to be revealed by the dwindling water level of Lake Mead. Luca Brasi, is a fictional mafia character from The Godfather (1972) who ended up "sleeping with the fishes" thanks to a rival mafia family.

One was found in an oil drum, which appears to have been in the lake since the 1970s or 1980s. Another was just found in a newly exposed sandbar.

Back in the early days of Las Vegas, the gambling was controlled by the mob until it started being heavily regulated by the state government and corporations replaced the mob. Las Vegas was actually more fun during the mob days as hotel and food prices were much more reasonable and one could get better odds in machine gaming. The appearance of bodies in Lake Mead harkens back to those days.

The Navajo-Hopi Observer has an interesting article on the recent finds.

They start with:

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Stories about long-departed Las Vegas organized crime figures are surfacing after a second set of unidentified human remains were revealed as the water level falls on drought-stricken Lake Mead.

The reservoir on the Colorado River is about a 30-minute drive from the mob-founded Las Vegas Strip.

"There's no telling what we'll find in Lake Mead," former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday. "It's not a bad place to dump a body."

Goodman was a defense attorney who represented Mafia figures including ill-fated Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro before serving three terms as a martini-toting mayor who made public appearances with a showgirl on each arm.

He declined to speculate about who might turn up in the vast reservoir formed by Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona.

It looks like some were made offers they couldn't refuse.

To read more, go here.