Police reveal identity of man found in barrel in drought-stricken Lake Mead | Las Vegas

After four years, part of the haunting mystery discovered in the receding waters of drought-stricken Lake Mead has been solved.

Since the remains of an unknown homicide victim were discovered in a barrel in 2022, Las Vegas investigators have been searching not for her killer, but for her identity. During a news conference Thursday, Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse publicly shared his name for the first time: Edward Lelburian Jackson.

“He was also called ‘Buddy,'” Rouse said, as a grainy photo of a smiling, bearded man holding a baby appeared on a screen behind her. They think he was between 50 and 50 years old.

The decades-old murder gained national attention after the remains were discovered in shallow waters by boaters in 2022 near Hemenway Harbor in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. An initial autopsy revealed that the man had been killed by a single gunshot to the head. Investigators determined he was likely killed between the mid-1970s and early 1980s — a time when organized crime was rampant in Las Vegas — because of the style of his clothing.

In the years since his discovery, authorities revealed that he wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt, light blue jeans, a silver wristwatch and blue and white tennis shoes. They also released composite renderings of what it might have looked like, in the hopes that someone can provide some information.

However, behind the scenes, they searched his DNA in criminal databases, uploaded his description to a national missing persons database and sent bone samples to a lab to obtain a genealogical profile.

The case didn’t see a major breakthrough until this year, when a forensic team from Oklahoma State University, which had partnered with investigators, received a strong lead. Using a DNA sample from Jackson and a suspected family member, “we were able to confirm that the remains were indeed those of Mr. Jackson,” Rouse said.

Jackson was from Arkansas, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Lt. Robert Price said, adding that detectives had not yet found anything to tie him to the Las Vegas area. His family last saw him in the early 1980s, and there are records of him in California, where he lived briefly with his wife, and in Utah, where he was charged with aggravated arson and a fraud conspiracy case.

“There has been speculation in the past that the homicide had ties to an organized crime group,” Price said. “At this point in our investigation, we have no information to support these theories.”

Now that he has been identified, Price added, the investigation into what happened — and who was responsible — for Jackson’s murder can continue.

Jackson’s remains weren’t the only ones discovered in Lake Mead in recent years, as its water levels have reached a historic low due to years of overexploitation, a long-lasting drought and rising temperatures. The water level in the 90-year-old reservoir has continued to fall, exposing areas that were previously underwater and leading historians to predict more bodies will be discovered.

A few days after the barrel was discovered, a KLAS-TV news crew discovered a second barrel, not far from the first. It was empty. Shortly afterward, paddleboarders discovered human remains on a newly resurfaced sandbar, but authorities found no evidence of foul play.

In August, more human remains were discovered and police again determined there was no evidence of foul play.

Lake Mead and upstream Lake Powell are the largest man-made reservoirs in the United States, part of a system that provides Colorado River water to more than 40 million people, tribes, farmers and industries in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.

Associated Press and Uwa Ede-Osifo contributed to this report