Secrets of the Lake (Rebroadcast)

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Yeah, you're fine. Dr. Wilson's angle. I did she just say that because I was dying. She said that. You don't think it's inappropriate to tell a patient that you're single.

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Sorry, Dr. Aldman. Can't do this today. What are we supposed to do now? Run back or have it.

A mystery when this glitz and glamour playground is the likely first stop.

Before a watery grave. Lake Me was famous for wanting to give rid of bodies or guns. You just go out in the middle of the lake and toss it. The Las Vegas of Ol' and the Dead bodies being revealed now. The authorities are trying to identify a fifth set of skeletal remains.

Where was the body in the barrel firm? I thought maybe it's my uncle. That sounds like a mob hit. Friends of mine actually called Lake Me Lake Mafia. Body was found in a corroded barrel.

The people are just all talking about this. It's all over TikTok. We believe it's a murder investigation at this point in time. People started realizing, "Oh, they're going to start finding more stuff in the lake as it gets lower and lower."

What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.

“Stay secret, but nobody counted on the lake.”

Giving up those secrets. The bodies haven't come to the surface. The surface has come to the bodies. Maybe giving answers. With young girl who saw her father disappear. We could hear him say, "Help, you better hurry."

That was it. Somebody out there sweating because they know that we've got the body. We've got the evidence. It's only a matter of time before we find out who it is. Beautiful, isn't it?

Welcome to one of the deadliest lakes in America. Lake Me, the vast reservoir and national recreation area. Created not by nature, but by engineers. The driver in Colorado River is Manhattan. All the remains are, the addition of finishing touches.

Who decades ago, tame the Colorado River and built the Hoover Dam.

“It's just a ricochet from the Las Vegas strip.”

From our camel in 1978's Corvette Summer, it was a cautionary tale. You ought to be careful. You ought to forget the car, thief, be alive, or the wind up at the bottom of Lake Me.

The infamous Tommy Leane Pananders and videos were shot on those looked like they did. For Pamela Anderson and Tommy Leane, they're 90s videos stolen honeymoon. It was a watery playground. That's where they were carrying on.

There must be a million stories about Lake Me.

This one begins with a screen. It was a screen from the shoreline. Overhered by a couple tying up their boat. May 1st, 2022. They raised to the site of discovery of 55 gallon of oil drop.

It was eroded by the elements. But inside, they found the body, the dead body. Well, a shocking discovery at Lake Me. A barrel on shore containing a body. Since the 1930s, according to Park Service officials,

more than 300 people have drowned in Lake Me. In fact, it is consistently the deadliest recreation area in the whole national park system. But the body in the barrel did not drown. Perhaps the bullet in the front of his skull was a giveaway.

That deceitant was determined to be a male who died from a gunshot wound and his manner of death was determined to be homicide. If only there was a bullet in that barrel. There's no pull-down in the barrel. There is items with evidence that we collected for the barrel, but not specifically a bullet.

He's the head of Las Vegas Metro's homicide division. Leading the investigation.

“The barrel would have been located right in this general area right over this way.”

Between where we are and where the appears. This would have been the middle of the water. And from Johansson's cold case unit, Detective Phil Ramos is among those investigating the body in the barrel. When we have a murder victim left in the Lake Meat National Recreation area,

usually in a gully or a ravine. It's not very often that you find a murder victim actually in the lake itself. That's just it. See, the victim hadn't been found in the lake. And that barrel hadn't washed up on shore either.

Because the hundred feet of water that once covered it, go on. So right there, there is an oil drum that was all of a sudden revealed just because the water had gone down. Right.

And all this was underwater. Not anymore.

“As water levels at Lake Meat have plummeted,”

more than an astonishing 150 feet since the year 2000. Large parts of the southwest have been getting warmer for quite a long time and over the last couple of decades have also had a number of years with lower than normal rain and snow. And so as a result, those reservoir levels have been dropping slowly over time.

So here, dry empty shells. Now, litter the average shore where creatures once thrived beneath the depths. Marina's have pulled up stakes to chase the ever lowering lake from. We have to adjust our thinking. You know, when we talk about the body and the barrel,

it didn't wash up on shore. No, it stayed where it had been for years and years, just the water receded and reveal some of the secrets of the lake. The bathtub ring around the lake's walls tells the story, but there are other tales too.

Breaking news is second set of skeletal remains have been found.

This is the third body uncovered. The fourth set of human remains. Now, with the lake receding, other bodies have been appearing. Each with its own untold store. Now, one of the aspects of this water disappearing

is that mysteries that this lake held for many decades revealed to the world for the first time. Well, the bodies haven't come to the surface. The surface has come to the bodies. It was about that time that people started realizing,

"Oh, they're going to start finding more stuff in the lake as it gets lower and lower." Some families, hoping for the answers they've waited decades for. And then they find a body in a barrel. With the whole in this head, I thought maybe it's my uncle.

One day in 1976, he disappeared, and it became a mystery.

His car was found on the strip, but he was never found.

And I made a promise that I would do whatever I could do. And I would find him. You know, it's pretty unusual for law enforcement to talk about active investigations. But Las Vegas police, they have a 90% solverate on cold cases.

In this case, they gave us access. They wanted to talk about the priority they placed on cold cases. And honestly, with the case this old, they wanted the public's home. And when it comes to the case of the body in the barrel,

it isn't just a who-done-it. But equally important, who isn't. The coroner's office, along with Metro, have been searching for answers through the use of DNA.

“How much organic material do you need to be able to perform”

some sort of DNA assessment? In the different remains, obviously, blood would be the most ideal specimen. But in most of these cases, we may not have that. So then we're looking at doing other specimens, which is as bone and teeth.

When we're looking at bone for DNA preservation compared to soft tissue, you can look at bone as a little package. So when you're doing DNA extraction, you want to get once living cells. And that's where the DNA is in case.

One of the things that we noticed right away at autopsy was the body was slightly preserved because of the wet conditions that it was in, and what we call addifice here, and it's actually tissue that occurs during the breakdown

of the body and during decomposition. Which can also be a source for DNA. But in this case, it might answer who killed this man. While they put him, it was pretty deep. It was a good 120 feet under the water level,

so they thought, man, this will never be found.

And yet he was.

if somebody out there is sweating,

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“A long hidden secret emerging from the lake.”

A body in a barrel. And immediately everyone wants to know who is this person. When we're looking at a skeletal model of a male, we're going to look for the different indicators that are secondary sex characteristics.

The pelvis is the most reliable indicator for determining a sign sex at birth. So with DNA still pending, Las Vegas Metro is able to clean a little more about that mysterious body discovered at Lake Mead. The clothing is able to give you a size.

There's a belt, there's pants and shirts. So you can tell the person was not a small person. Inside that rusty barrel, there's a forensic time capsule of well-preserved clues. There's a watch, camera, clothes, and sneakers.

You know, it turns out you can learn a lot from an old parakex. We can determine that this person likely became a victim somewhere in the area between 1975 and 1985. [music] Mysteries abound here and so do theories.

That guy in the oil drum, who was he?

“How did he wind up 100 feet below the water here at Lake Mead?”

And who wanted him dead decades ago? An enemy, a gang, or the mob? [music] When I first heard that the body in the barrel had been found, my first thought was that sounds like a mob hit.

When you're investigating cold cases, especially the really old cases, it's almost like going back in time. [music] Las Vegas, 1970, with a simple excuse me while I disappear. Frank Sinatra begins the decade in retirement.

So now Elvis is on top instead of the rat pack. But with the mafia on the big screen and in the back room, why is guys on the wrong side of the law? Didn't just go to the tables to get even.

Just like it had always been in Las Vegas.

[music]

They were sort of the quiet operators and owners of the casinos.

“They're considered the founding fathers of Las Vegas.”

They'd be popularized in films like The Godfuck. It's fictional character Mo Green inspired by the Vegas pioneer, Bugsie Siegel. Do you know who I am? I'm Mo Green. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders. I was in May of for 12 years, and I would go to every ground breakage.

And I started sweating. I was going to be an arm coming out of the desert. And so if a leaky pipe needed to be tightened permanently, just 30 miles away was like me, which could make things disappear even more efficiently than David Copperfield. Some friends of mine actually call like me like mafia.

[music] The 22 shot in the back of the head and placed into an oil drum is definitely all signatures of Jamab. So who was the Vic?

Well, mob savvy citizens of speculation, have their own ideas.

Could it be the long gone J. Vandermark, alleged to have skimmed from the Stardust casino slots, or Vegas businessman Frank Rosanna, who mysteriously vanished in 1988? Or was it?

“This step are Jim, standing next to Liberace.”

The most likely person is a man in Johnny Pappas. What did you know about Joe? He was bigger than life. He did a lot of working with stars, and he was one of those people that everybody just loved.

Patricia Haas grew up hearing that her charming Uncle Johnny, her mother's brother from Youngstano-Hio, had moved to Nevada and was rubbing elbows with the Vegas Showbiz Elite. Oh, that's the Notre-Indeed murder, and that's Sammy Davis Jr.

But Patricia didn't know what a big shot Johnny Pappas really was until she visited Vegas in the mid-70s. Like the Copacabana scene in Martin Scorsese's Good Fellows, we're Ray Leotas Henry Hill gets respect from all who encounter him. Patricia saw that everyone was eager to treat Johnny just right.

He was just that kind of uncle. You know, he'd take you around, show you things. Everybody was, you know, hi Johnny, hi Johnny. You could just feel that everybody, you know, really respected him. By 1976, he was working out at Echo Bay, Marina,

and Pappas was in charge of that operation. It was known that organized crime people would associate they would put that Marina. Before the retreating water is forced, it's closure. Echo Bay was the gem of Lake Mead,

and Margaret was said to have been a regular there. After finding the Marina during the filming of Viva Las Vegas. And during the ballot of cable hope, it has stars Jason Robards and Stella Stevens, who in the film would be called upon to portray

a very different body in a very different bearer. Patricia says her entire family was actually planning to move to Vegas and work for Johnny at the Echo Bay. But it was not to be. So what happened then?

We got a phone call on my birthday that he was missing. His wife Cheryl told you that they tried to force him off the road as he drove back from Lake Mead. Yeah, and they didn't have him again. And all they knew was that there was a boat involved,

which had turned out to be my uncle's boat. At the time of his disappearance, he was contemplating becoming a government witness. And that was just you don't do that. That's like signing a death warrant in 1970's Las Vegas.

When I heard about a body in a bearer, I'll be in fun and Lake Mead.

My first thought was that it more likely

was done by Tony Spulattro. The reputed hot-headed hitman, Tony Spulattro, along with his luck, Kosa, Nostra, connected friend of me, Frank Rosenthal, where the ever-so-slightly fictionalized lead characters

in the square says he's Vegas epic, Casino. And the film's mercurial Nikki Santoro was inspired by Spulattro. You only exist out here because of me. Tony Spulattro was an enforcer and a murderer.

And if they wanted somebody killed or murdered, he was a guide. He was a part of everything at that time that my uncle was a part of. And his job was to eliminate. Everybody says Tony did it.

He referring to Mr. Spulattro.

“I think we're trying a case in Milwaukee or something”

that's not a good place. In 1986, Anthony Spulattro met his demise, buried in an Indiana cornfield. Tony Spulattro, as you know, wound up in a ditch. Yes, he did.

You seem pretty busted up, but-- You know why I'm just heartbroken over here over that. Organized crime in the mob are so much in the folklore of Vegas. The minute you hear by in barrel, your mind instantly goes to,

"Wow, I wonder if this is connected

The fact of the matter is we're not going to know

until the day that the remains are identified. And in recent days, new clues have emerged from like me that could alter the course of the case. Suddenly in the sand we saw this gun was this, in fact, the murder weapon

could dissolve this crime. This is where I'll sink the boat. Now search and search for months to be identified. Val Kilmer's character, in the 1989 film noir Kill Me Again,

figured that Lake Meads then unfathomable depth would just the thing for a cover-up. I think people have this illusion that when things sink into a lake, it evaporates into the universe,

and it's just gone forever. Whoever dropped that body in the barrel into Lake Mead must have thought exactly that.

“The subject with discovery of a nearby gun on the shore?”

That guy pulse is racing. Metro police saying tonight, the journalist found the gun. You know, the area where a body inside a barrel was found. But cops don't believe the two are connected.

Right now, the gun doesn't appear to be from the proper time period. Investigators were also able to rule out rumors that a 22 caliber handgun had been used in the homicide. That rumor had been fueling speculation

that this was a mob hit. But officials familiar with the case tell ABC News that a 22 was not used. Yet all the talk of murder and mobsters has fueled the fervor of others.

After the body of the barrels recover, it immediately prompted many people to go out to the lake because they all wanted to see if there's other human remains they could find. One of my subscribers messaged me on social media and said, "You gotta go to Lake Mead."

We could find some pretty crazy stuff. You know what we're going to find, but it's going to be an adventure. Some people even have the belief that there may be money buried in some of these barrels. It looks like it's an empty barrel, thankfully.

Body was found in a corroded barrel. The people had just all talked about this. It's all over TikTok. Today, we want to talk about what's going on in Lake Mead

and they find the second barrel.

It was stuck in a mud. The barrel looked the same as the other barrel. Retired cops turned podcasters David Colmeyer and Danny Miner are even offering a reward for the discovery of new remains at Lake Mead.

Specifically, if we can get some closure for people and get some justice. We're not telling people to touch anything. It's a identify the location, notify the police. Or you could tell this guy.

A vacus attorney soliciting business by asking

“injured while searching for dead bodies at Lake Mead?”

Also making no bones about it, this local shop owner. Something a semi-macob Chacha spoofing the body parts tourist market. I thought that with the lake, having corpses in it, that it might be some dark humor to make Lake Mead corpse water.

I developed a little mixture that looked great in the bottle. I developed the label, which has two skeletons dancing around a barrel. It was just a dark joke that is now gone viral. My hope is that it garners attention, so more people will know about what's going on with our lake.

Apart from the human remains of the day, drought and climate change have left much of this oasis with an unmade lake bed, revealing long lost artifacts, attracting treasure hunters and social media stars. We get to do things that a lot of people lie there watching the movies

or they can only dream about, and we get to do that right here in Lake Mead. What is that piece of? That is a perfect anchor. I spent two full days out on Lake Mead. We've found a lot of stuff.

Lots and lots of boat wrecks. Oh, it's a boat! Just everywhere. It was like a post-apocalyptic scene from some sci-fi movie. In the buttons to push us, look at this.

You've already seen the craziest boats in all day. Man, it's a cigarette boat. I think it can go so fast. It was eerie. It's a very eerie to look around and see that.

These days, no one knows this lake. Like DJ Jenner, a boat captain and pro-diver. My personal lake tour features a relic newly unveiled by receding water.

First place we're going to stop is the house boat

that everybody's talking about. This stuff is extraordinary. Like, what is this over here? In just a sense of huge devastation emitted all too. Total ruin.

“Because this was underwater for decades probably, right?”

Yeah, this was somebody's boat. They probably loved at one point and just sank.

it wouldn't surprise me.

Relics like this ruin to house boat.

Draw treasure hunters from far and near. But the National Parks Rules and Regulations will tell you, you can look, but you better not take. Let's see what else we can find up here, guys. Just to make sure that we're not going to be taking anything away

from their opportunities to close cases and find important artifacts. One of these artifacts isn't resting on Lake Mead's dry shore. It's still submerged and frozen in time. The one that I find the most fascinating is that there's a 1948 bomber a military plane that sunk in the lake.

They carry more bombs, farther and faster than any other plane in the world.

“How did it be between a bomber wind up in Lake Mead?”

They just got too low and then hit the water, skipped across. There was five guys in it, everybody got out. What's it like to see a bomber underwater?

It's amazing, it's so big, it's really super cool.

It's a bucket list dive for a lot of people that love diving. What other kinds of things have you discovered or that you were aware of underwater that might attract our interests? There's a big historical site. It's just relics from the Hoover Dam Build, construction materials and such.

If the water level keeps going down, or barrels are going to just start popping up. You expect that we're going to find a guy with a bullet hole somewhere in one of those drugs? They found one already, so who knows? But at the lake these days, inside a barrel isn't the only place you can find a body. The first thing that caught my eye was a very stark white rock that looks abnormal from the other rocks

that we typically find up here.

“A big part of me did think what if this is a human?”

How a shocking fine brings a stunning revelation. In the early '70s and early '80s, the docks for the marinas were actually anchored using barrels. Similar to what would be the barrel that the human remains were found in it. Johnny Reselli, the guy that Chicago's representative in Las Vegas before Spilatra was killed, put into a barrel, and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean.

And in his case, the barrel bobbed back to the surface outside of Miami. And this was a memo that was used. It stands for reason that maybe this was catching on. And let's do the same thing here in Las Vegas. Here, the barrel didn't bob up because the water it had been under

wasn't there anymore. Environmental crises like drought, the warming temperatures, and pressure on water supplies because of population growth. They've all shrunk a man-made lake so mighty. It once made an entire town vanish.

I knew, as a little kid, there was an old town that kind of got covered up by the lake.

And so growing up, you were always interested in, like, with that town ever kind of come back up.

The town of St. Thomas, Nevada. Wept from the map in the 1930s by the very creation of the lake. And now taking a kind of revenge, reemerging as "mead" receives. Well, these shells indicate that there used to be a lot of water here. A lot of water to life.

Throughout the frolic, some fun taking place across it's 2300 square miles. Lake Mead was designed to be a crucial water source for citizens of the soon-to-boom Las Vegas, and the surrounding Mojave Desert areas. So, when St. Thomas was officially established in 1865, there's no lake at all.

It was just a few dozen families. Right over there was the school, and it doesn't look like it now, of course, but it used to be a thriving community. The hotel gentry was a pretty stately building. It held some pretty interesting guests, including President Calvin Coolidge.

Right now, we're at the Hanukkah Ice Cream Parlor in St. Thomas. Built by my great grandfather, Rhine Holdanig. This is a town with no electricity, with no running water,

“and so you need to find your good, clean family fun,”

and you did that in the Ice Cream Parlor. Ice Cream was a real luxury. For any city, but to make it out here in the desert, would be especially wonderful in ice. But the towns in its existence would not last much longer.

In 1928, the federal government signs the Boulder Canyon Project Act. President Calvin Coolidge is the man who signed the act, so that then seals the fate for what later happens. I'm sure the residents afterwards were like,

The dam was built, and the waters were rising.

“It wasn't negotiable. There was no work around.”

People are leaving, but then this man Hugh Lord. One morning in 1938 wakes up, there's water at his front door, there's water underneath his bed, and so he gets in his robot. He sets fire to his house, and he literally rolls off into the sunset in this blaze of glory.

But the ghosts of St. Thomas are not the only ones coming back.

Breaking news, a second set of skeletal remains have been found at Lake Mead.

Listen a week after the body and the barrels of appearance in May 2022, sisters Lynette and Lindsay Melvin went out to the lake to paddle board, and they stumbled on something in the sand. So right over here, just probably right there next to the water, we stumbled upon the white rock that appeared to be like bone.

I actually think that's a scapula. I just can't believe that there are. And after kind of investigating a little further, moving the sand around to see what it was, we could tell that this was absolutely remains.

Another body being found at Lake Mead, this one at Boulder Beach. In July, another discovery. This time made by a man swimming with his 11-year-old dog. She came to me and said, Dad, there's something in the water floating. It looks like a body.

“When I went, I saw that, yes, it was a torso.”

It was a body that was floating. I called 911 and the Rangers came. The fourth set of human remains have been found at Lake Mead today.

A little over a week after Hasew's colonel on his first discovery,

he says he felt the lake calling him back. So right back to Boulder Beach, it's where he went. Metropia, so good. When I'm going to take a video of what I found, I crouched down. It was a femur.

It was such a huge bone, isn't it? Oh, my goodness. They go, wow. Finding and discovering remains that have been there for several years is not an uncommon situation for us.

As the climate changes and areas become more active with human population responding to those areas, you're going to cram across remains that haven't been seen or recovered in many years. We're talking about the 1970s and on.

This is the third time in just two months that remains had been found here at Lake Mead.

Discoveries like these becoming more and more common.

By October 19th, 2022, the tally of human remains found at Lake Mead has risen to seven sets in just six months. No one expected that Lake Mead would receive the way it has. Almost as revealing ghosts of the past,

not all of them victims of foul play. As a kid, Tina Bushman spent a day on the water here on the family boat with her beloved father, Tom Ernt, before tragedy struck.

For a long time I was just angry. I was like, why am I dad? Like how can we confine him? How big a role did Lake Mead play in your life when you were growing up like that with your dad

and your brother?

“I think we spent every weekend that we could there.”

So as my dad's favorite place ever. What do you remember about that day in 2002? We called it a midnight jump, even though it wasn't really midnight. But it was really dark at the lake.

And so we used to take our boat kind of in that middle of all ville bay and we used to jump off of it. Because it's really cool to jump into water that's totally dark. You know, and my dad just thought it was fun and silly. That's what we did this night.

For some reason, the waves were a little bit choppier and they usually were. And so my dad was saying, you know, nobody, nobody jumped in. The next thing we know, he jumps in the water. And we're like, what the heck?

And he's messing around, like splashing, you know? He's like joking around just kind of laughing. And as he was trying to swim back to the boat, he was like, hey, the boats move into fast. You could see his hand on the ladder.

I remember his hand hitting it. Like barely hitting the ladder. That was like one of my biggest memories that I was so sad about for a long time. Was that, like, he barely, barely made it.

Just circles. Yeah. Yeah. We could hear him say help. We could hear him say help.

And then we heard him say help. You better hurry. That was it. It was, that was it. Until years after her father's disappearance,

when Tina got a phone call, what emotions come over you as you deal with news like this? We were all in shock. And it've been 20 years. [music playing] I have great news.

Welcome in the middle is back. My life is fantastic now. In a four-part event. All I had to do is stay completely away from my family. Your biggest problem is that we exist.

We needed a year.

This family's behavior is toxic to me.

You'll just take turns fighting and creating disasters. That's what families do. Welcome in the middle. Life's still unfair. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+

for "Buddle Subscribers" terms apply for the TV 14L. Sunday nights on ABC. What happens when the person you love the most? Turns out, not to be, who you think they are.

Everything he told me was alive. I was betrayed from the number one true crime podcast The Trail. He's been living a secret double-life. My marriage ended with a 911 file. The tape is blood curdling.

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What's the new Hulu original series The Testaments? Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for "Buddle Subscribers" terms apply. I'm called Johnny Pappas. One of those people that everybody

just loved. My mom spent the rest of her life wondering what happened to him.

She would never even change her phone number

so that just in case he could ever call. He would have the number. And then they find a body in a barrel. Oh my gosh. Talk about hitting somebody across the head.

You know, there's such a shock. So Patricia even reached out to the Clark County coroner's office. You're to provide her own DNA to see if it might help to ID that mysterious body in the barrel. You were ready to give your DNA to see if there was anything I could do.

“What did they tell you when you offered to give your DNA?”

Oh, they said they put it, you know, put the notes down and that was it. So because we have to always be mindful of the fact that our budget does come from our taxpayers. If we have a good solid link between the remains that we've recovered to the missing persons reported information at that time

then we would certainly ask for a submission. And they certainly know how to ask. Last year near Waco, Texas, in the house where she lives with her three lively daughters and her attorney husband Drew, Tina Bushman got a phone call that instantly took her back more than 20 years

to a previous life. And the coroner called me and was like, "Are you Tina?" and I was like, "I'm going to hurt that name in a really long time." After their father disappeared into the waters here on that tragic night in 2002, his body unrecovered.

Tina and her brothers' lives were turned upside down, sent to live with relatives in another state, but they still imagine that someday their father would come home again. I really did think like maybe he hit his head and doesn't remember who we are and that's why he hasn't come.

I knew that was crazy, but I guess it was like hopeful. For years, the scars of that night, the uncertainty surrounding their father's final resting place, it not a Tina, and her younger brother Tom, who has a passion for mechanics just like his dad.

You never got to the point where he felt like he got an enclosure.

I looked at one of his Facebook postings and he said, "I just wish a new where you were."

“I think maybe he just always had hoped maybe that he was still out there.”

Then that phone call, asking for a sample of their DNA. Oh, so weird. She was like, two ladies there on the beach and stumbled upon some remains, we think that this could be your father. We were able to narrow down to an individual that we suspected would be a good

fit. From that, we were able to collect a DNA specimen from the remains that we had, as well as a person that was a direct lead relative to the dissident. What happened next? She calls me, and she's like Tina, it's a match.

We were all in shock. What emotions come over you as you deal with news like this? I'm sad for me, you know, that like man, this really happened. Like he's really gone. And that's really hard.

But just to know that he was there, like gives me so much peace. If he could have died anywhere, he would have chosen that. Because I mean that, that was his happy place.

my relative in the 70s, what happened to this guy I knew in the 80s.

“So they reaching out to you and saying, can't you take another look?”

Right. Yeah, they absolutely do. Just because a case is 30 years old. And there's little evidence. Because I mean, we're not going to be able to solve it.

That's not what you're on. It was probably the last time that we got to see him. It's been nearly half a century since alleged mob whistleblower Johnny Papas vanished. And his niece Patricia is still troubled by her uncle's unresolved case.

You don't want to actually find out that your uncle is dead. But just to know that maybe there's a chance, just a chance that I could get his remains and be able to have him pre-made and put next to my mother. At least I fulfill the promise that I made to her before she died, that I would continue to try to find out whatever happened.

One of the most important things to me ultimately is that we solve our investigations.

If there's a way for us to forensically solve that investigation using the DNA lab, we will do it. If the 90% solved right for a reason. So far investigators have been able to determine that there are four separate victims from the seven sets of remains that have been found.

And that's bringing closure to people like Tina Bushman and her brother. History has really come to life.

“And I think that's one thing that we need to keep in mind with everything that's recovered”

from the lake is these are stories, these are human stories. The mysterious man in the barrel, his story has yet to be written. But there are major developments. The two of Lake Meads most recent discoveries.

We now know the identity of a body sound at Lake Mead.

And will it bring renewed hope to other families? They were in the water being pounded by the wind and the waves. One of them was not going to make it. So as much of an absolute wonder as this region is, especially when it's seen from overhead,

it was human need not nature's grace that created Lake Mead 90 years ago. Where today there's a cross to honor a missing man named Kenneth Funk who dove in to save his wife's life on a day in 2004. He knew without a doubt that one of them was not going to make it. He tried to water for long as he could, but he knew he even told her,

honey, do not hold on to me. You hold on to me. I'm just going to drag you down with me. When three sets of remains from the same decision we're found in 2022, Jessica Condon hoped it was her late father

and gave a DNA sample to the coroner. So we did do a evaluation and determined that an individual that we were following up on as a potential lead was not a blood relative to our decision. What we have found out is so far,

none of the remains are coming up as my father. If the lake doesn't give up his body, we're still okay with that. That cross, paying him tribute at the site of his passing 19 years ago. This was our way of giving us a place to go and have him remembered. Ultimate success ends when Ray will put clothes on that case and solve it.

It would be very big deal for anybody's family. That was their loved one. The Clark County coroner's office able to put a name to two more deceased people, announcing that the remains which Hazu's Kotalan found at Boulder Beach have been identified as 52-year-old Claude Russell Pensinger,

who disappeared into a lie of 1998. Another body found at Calville Bay, determined by the coroner's office in late March to the man who had last been seen more than 50 years ago. This individual was reported as a drowning

and it was a witness to that that was very well documented. Donald Smith and he was 39 years of age at the time of his disappearance.

“I think looking at Lake Mead now definitely should cause people some concern”

and should cause them to think about how we should be using water effectively in a very dry part of the country. The transformation of this lake, allowing Tina Bushman the chance to say a final farewell to her father Tom. I hope that he's proud when he looks down.

It was really hard, but I'd learned a lot, and I've grown a lot, and we're doing great. I remember the lake being full 20 years ago,

and now you look at the lake and you don't even recognize it.

“Tina, able to have a family ceremony here to celebrate his life”

at the waters he loved so much. I tell people I don't give up, don't give up hope.

You don't know if they'll be found, but if they are,

“I'll be really nice, but until then, don't give up hope.”

Cause you never know. As you just saw tonight, the lake continues to give up its secrets

and with that resolution for some families.

We'll continue to follow developments in this investigation. In the meantime, that is our program for tonight. Thank you for watching. I'm David Yor and from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. Goodnight.

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