Mobsters who end up sleeping with the fishes are usually never seen again, but climate change has a way of messing even with the mafia, and a watery grave outside Las Vegas is starting to cough up Sin City’s darkest secrets.
Lake Mead, which can be reached from the Las Vegas Strip by a short ride in the trunk of a car with your hands and feet bound, is drying up in a grueling decades-long drought.
Its receding waters are leaving behind the usual flotsam and jetsam of a lake heavily trafficked by weekend boaters — but also bodies.
Photo: AFP
One particular find caught the attention of mob-watchers: the skeletal remains of a man who had been shot in the head, stuffed in a barrel and tossed in the lake four decades ago.
“The mob had a propensity to put people in barrels, whether they are burying them in a lake, or dumping them out in the field,” said Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, which is officially known as the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.
“That’s number one. Number two, the person was shot in the head, typical mob hit style, and third, we know that this happened in the late ’70s, early ’80s [when] the mob was very prominent in Las Vegas,” Schumacher said.
An improbable oasis of hotels, casinos and vice sprouted in the baking Nevada desert in the 20th century.
Las Vegas had been founded in 1905, but it was not until work began on the nearby Hoover Dam in the 1930s that its population swelled.
The influx of construction workers — mostly single men — created a market for entertainment, which was filled by sex workers, showgirls and legalized gambling, and where there is flesh, casinos and booze, organized crime is lurking in the background.
“The mob played a pretty big role in the development of Las Vegas from the 1940s through the 1980s,” Schumacher said.
“There was a lot of behind-the-scenes activity where the mob was controlling the management of the casinos, but also building and expanding the casinos, using in many cases, Teamsters union money,” he said.
The city grew rich in the post-World War II boom that fueled the American dream, becoming the global capital of gambling, and for every US$100 that a hapless tourist lost at the blackjack table in a fug of free booze, a mafia boss in Chicago or New York wanted his cut.
The skimming, which doubtless cost the city millions of dollars in lost taxes, was a double-edged sword.
“They also sort of created this mystique about Las Vegas,” Schumacher said. “People wanted to come to Las Vegas, on the idea that ‘oh, maybe when I sit down at the bar, there’s going to be a mob guy sitting next to me.’”
Yet it was not all glamor.
“The reality was that these guys were cold-blooded killers; they were thieves. If you were to cross the mob in some way ... there definitely were consequences,” Schumacher said.
Las Vegas police are still investigating the body found in the barrel at Lake Mead earlier this year, and would only say that there is an ongoing probe, but Schumacher has his theories about the identity of the dead man.
One suggestion is that he was Jay Vandermark, who worked at the Stardust Hotel, an operation run by Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal on behalf of the Chicago mob.
Rosenthal — who was played by Robert de Niro in the movie Casino — was funneling cash back to his bosses, until the scheme drew the attention of local authorities.
Vandermark disappeared shortly thereafter.
However, a more likely candidate for the body in the barrel is a man named Harry Pappas who was also connected to the Chicago mob.
“One of the extra perks for visitors to Las Vegas, if you were a high roller ... was they would take you out on the boat at Lake Mead,” Schumacher said.
“The Stardust had a boat out there and Harry Pappas was in charge of that whole operation,” he said. “Right before he disappeared, he told his wife he was going to lunch with someone who was interested in buying his boat. We’ve never seen Harry Pappas again.”
Lake Mead is a massive reservoir on the Colorado River created by the Hoover Dam. It is now just one-quarter full — the result of a drought and warming temperatures fueled by climate change — and shows no sign of stabilizing.
As its shoreline retreats, revealing more of the lake bed, it might yield more mob secrets, Schumacher said.
“I don’t know if we find another body in a barrel, but I have to believe that there could very well be a second murder victim out there,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in