Secrets of the Lake (Rebroadcast)

[0:01] Wow. [0:03] It's bad luck for the bride to see the roommate before the wedding. [0:06] Yeah, you're fine. [0:07] Is Dr. Wilson single or did she just say that because I was dying? [0:12] She said that. [0:13] Don't you think it's inappropriate to tell a patient that you're single? [0:18] Either of you ever seen an abdominal aortic aneurysm? [0:20] Sorry, Dr. Altman. [0:21] We can't do this today. [0:22] What are we supposed to do now? [0:23] Run after him. [0:24] A mystery when this glitz and glamour playground is the likely first stop before a watery grave. [0:40] Lake Mead was famous for wanting to get rid of bodies or guns. [0:46] You just go out in the middle of a lake and toss it. [0:49] The Las Vegas of old and the dead bodies being revealed now. [0:56] Authorities are trying to identify a fifth set of skeletal remains. [1:01] Where was the body in the barrel found? [1:03] I thought maybe it's my uncle. [1:05] That sounds like a mob hit. [1:08] Friends of mine actually call Lake Mead Lake Mafia. [1:12] The body was found in a corroded barrel. [1:14] The people are just all talking about this. [1:16] It's all over TikTok. [1:17] We believe it's a murder investigation at this point in time. [1:20] People started realizing, oh, they're going to start finding more stuff in the lake as it gets lower and lower. [1:25] What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas. [1:28] Stay secret. [1:29] But nobody counted on the lake giving up those secrets. [1:33] The bodies haven't come to the surface. The surface has come to the bodies. [1:37] Maybe giving answers. [1:38] A young girl who saw her father disappear. [1:42] We could hear him say, help, you better hurry. That was it. [1:45] Somebody out there is sweating. [1:48] Because they know that we've got the body, we've got the evidence. [1:50] And it's only a matter of time before we find out who it is. [1:53] Well, isn't it? [2:06] Welcome to one of the deadliest lakes in America. [2:08] Lake Mead, the vast reservoir and national recreation area created not by nature but by engineers. [2:17] The Durban and Colorado River has been harnessed. All that remains now is addition of finishing touches. [2:24] Who decades ago tamed the Colorado River and built the Hoover Dam. [2:30] Just a ricochet from the Las Vegas Strip. [2:34] For Mark Hamill in 1978's Corvette Summer, it was a cautionary tale. [2:39] You ought to be careful. You run up against a car thief, you're liable to wind up at the bottom of Lake Mead. [2:44] The infamous Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson videos were shot on those right there. [2:52] For Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee in their 90s video, Stolen Honeymoon, it was a watery playground. [2:58] That's where they were carrying on. [3:01] There must be a million stories about Lake Mead. [3:09] This one begins with a scream. [3:13] It was a scream from the shoreline overheard by a couple tying up their boat. [3:19] May 1st, 2022. [3:22] They raced to the site to discover a 55-gallon oil drum. [3:28] It was eroded by the elements, but inside they found a body. A dead body. [3:32] Well, a shocking discovery at Lake Mead. A barrel on shore containing a body. [3:38] Since the 1930s, according to Park Service officials, more than 300 people have drowned in Lake Mead. [3:46] In fact, it is consistently the deadliest recreation area in the whole national park system. [3:54] But the body in the barrel did not drown. [3:58] Perhaps the bullet in the front of his skull was a giveaway. [4:01] That decedent was determined to be a male who died from a gunshot wound. [4:08] And his manner of death was determined to be homicide. [4:11] If only there was a bullet in that barrel. [4:15] There is no bullet found in the barrel, no. [4:17] There is items of evidence that we collected from the barrel, but not specifically a bullet. [4:21] Enter Lieutenant Jason Johanson. [4:24] He's the head of Las Vegas Metro's homicide division leading the investigation. [4:29] The barrel would have been located right in this general area, right over this way. [4:32] Between where we are and where the pier is. [4:35] This would have been the middle of the water. [4:37] And from Johanson's cold case unit, Detective Phil Ramos is among those investigating the body in the barrel. [4:47] When we have a murder victim left in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, it's usually in a gully or a ravine. [4:55] It's not very often that you find a murder victim actually in the lake itself. [4:59] That's just it. See, the victim hadn't been found in the lake. [5:04] And that barrel hadn't washed up on shore either. [5:07] Because the hundred feet of water that once covered it? Gone. [5:11] So right there, there was an oil drum that was all of a sudden revealed just because the water had gone down. [5:21] Right. And all this was underwater. [5:23] Not anymore. As water levels at Lake Mead have plummeted more than an astonishing 150 feet since the year 2000. [5:33] Large parts of the southwest have been getting warmer for quite a long time. [5:39] And over the last couple of decades have also had a number of years with lower than normal rain and snow. [5:45] And so as a result, those reservoir levels have been dropping slowly over time. [5:51] So here, dry, empty shells now litter the arid shore where creatures once thrived beneath the depths. [5:59] Marinas have pulled up stakes to chase the ever-lowering lakefront. [6:04] We have to adjust our thinking, you know, when we talk about the body in the barrel. [6:11] It didn't wash up on shore. [6:12] No. It stayed where it had been for years and years. [6:16] Just the water receded and reveals some of the secrets of the lake. [6:21] Bathtub ring around the lake's walls tells the story. But there are other tales, too. [6:30] Breaking news. A second set of skeletal remains have been found. [6:34] This is the third body uncovered. [6:36] The fourth set of human remains. [6:38] Now, with the lake receding, other bodies have been appearing, each with its own untold story. [6:47] 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. [6:55] Well, the bodies haven't come to the surface. The surface has come to the bodies. [6:59] 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. [7:07] Leaving some families hoping for the answers they've waited decades for. [7:13] And then they find a body in a barrel with a hole in his head. I thought, maybe it's my uncle. [7:28] One day in 1976, he disappeared and it became a mystery. [7:33] His car was found on the strip, but he was never found. [7:37] And I made a promise that I would do whatever I could do and I would find him. [7:45] You know, it's pretty unusual for law enforcement to talk about active investigations. [7:51] But Las Vegas police, they have a 90 percent solve rate on cold cases. [7:55] In this case, they gave us access. [7:57] They wanted to talk about the priority they place on cold cases. [8:00] And honestly, with a case this old, they wanted the public's help. [8:04] And when it comes to the case of the body in the barrel, it isn't just a whodunit, but equally important, who is it? [8:12] The coroner's office, along with Metro, have been searching for answers through the use of DNA. [8:18] How much organic material do you need to be able to perform some sort of DNA assessment? [8:26] In the different remains, obviously blood would be the most ideal specimen. [8:30] But in most of these cases, we may not have that. [8:33] So then we're looking at doing other specimens such as bone and teeth. [8:37] When we're looking at bone for DNA preservation compared to soft tissue, you can look at bone as a little package. [8:45] So when you're doing DNA extraction, you want to get once living cells. [8:49] And that's where the DNA is encased. [8:52] One of the things that we noticed right away at autopsy was the body was slightly preserved [8:57] because of the wet conditions that it was in, in what we call adipocere, [9:01] which is a waxy tissue that occurs during the breakdown of the body and during decomposition. [9:07] Which can also be a source for DNA. [9:10] But in this case, it might answer, who killed this man? [9:15] Where they put him, it was pretty deep. [9:17] It was a good 100, 120 feet under the water level. [9:19] So they thought, man, this will never be found. [9:22] And yet he was. [9:23] As probing into that investigation continues. [9:26] Somebody out there is sweating. [9:28] Because they know that we've got the body, we've got the evidence, [9:30] and it's only a matter of time before we find out who it is. [9:32] And once we find out who it is, it'll kick into high gear. [9:35] A long hidden secret emerging from the lake. [9:46] A body in a barrel. [9:51] And immediately, everyone wants to know, who is this person? [9:54] When we're looking at a skeletal model of a male, [9:58] we're going to look for the different indicators that are secondary sex characteristics. [10:03] The pelvis is the most reliable indicator for determining assigned sex at birth. [10:08] So with DNA still pending, Las Vegas Metro is able to glean a little more about that mysterious body discovered at Lake Mead. [10:18] The clothing is able to give you a size. [10:20] There's a belt, there's pants and shirts, so you can tell the person was not a small person. [10:25] Inside that rusty barrel, there's a forensic time capsule of well-preserved clues. [10:30] There's a watch, Kmart clothes and sneakers. [10:34] You know, it turns out you can learn a lot from an old pair of kicks. [10:37] We can determine that this person likely became a victim somewhere in the area between 1975 and 1985. [10:44] Mysteries abound here, and so do theories. [10:51] That guy in the oil drum, who was he? [10:55] How did he wind up 100 feet below the water here at Lake Mead? [10:59] And who wanted him dead decades ago? [11:02] An enemy, a gang, or the mob? [11:05] When I first heard that the body in the barrel had been found, [11:10] my first thought was, that sounds like a mob hit. [11:14] When you're investigating cold cases, especially the really old cases, [11:17] it's almost like going back in time. [11:19] Las Vegas, 1970. [11:24] With a simple, excuse me while I disappear, Frank Sinatra begins the decade in retirement. [11:30] So now Elvis is on top instead of the Rat Pack. [11:33] But with the mafia on the big screen and in the back room, [11:36] wise guys on the wrong side of the law didn't just go to the tables to get even. [11:41] Just like it had always been in Las Vegas. [11:45] We would not have the Las Vegas Strip if it was not for organized crime. [11:53] They were sort of the quiet operators and owners of the casinos. [11:58] They're considered the founding fathers of Las Vegas. [12:00] They'd be popularized in films like The Godfather, [12:03] its fictional character Mo Green, inspired by the Vegas pioneer Bugsy Siegel. [12:08] Do you know who I am? I'm Mo Green. [12:10] I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders. [12:13] I was a mayor for 12 years, and I would go to every groundbreaking, [12:17] and I'd start sweating. I'm scared there was going to be an arm coming out of the desert. [12:23] And so if a leaky pipe needed to be tightened permanently, [12:28] just 30 miles away was Lake Mead, which could make things disappear [12:32] even more efficiently than David Copperfield. [12:35] Some friends of mine actually called Lake Mead Lake Mafia. [12:38] The .22 shot in the back of the head and placed into an oil drum [12:43] is definitely all signatures of the mob. [12:47] So who was the Vic? Well, mob-savvy citizens of Speculation Nation [12:53] have their own ideas. Could it be the long-gone Jay Vandermark, [12:57] alleged to have skimmed from the Stardust Casino slots? [13:00] Or Vegas businessman Frank Rosano, who mysteriously vanished in 1988? [13:06] Or was it this dapper gent standing next to Liberace? [13:12] The most likely person is a man named Johnny Pappas. [13:16] What did you know about your uncle? [13:17] He was bigger than life. He did a lot of working with stars [13:22] and he was one of those people that everybody just loved. [13:26] Patricia Haas grew up hearing that her charming Uncle Johnny, [13:30] her mother's brother from Youngstown, Ohio, had moved to Nevada [13:34] and was rubbing elbows with the Vegas showbiz elite. [13:38] Oh, that's Sinatra and Dean Martin and that's Sammy Davis Jr. [13:41] Sammy Davis Jr. [13:42] But Patricia didn't know what a big shot Johnny Pappas really was [13:46] until she visited Vegas in the mid-70s. [13:50] Like the Copacabana scene in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, [13:53] where Ray Liotta's Henry Hill gets respect from all who encounter him, [13:57] Patricia saw that everyone was eager to treat Johnny just right. [14:01] He was just that kind of uncle. You know, he'd take you around, show you things. [14:05] Everybody was like, you know, hi Johnny, hi Johnny, hi Johnny. [14:08] You could just feel that everybody, you know, really respected him. [14:12] By 1976, he was working out at Echo Bay Marina and Pappas was in charge of that operation. [14:19] It was known that organized crime people would associate with that marina. [14:24] Before the retreating waters forced its closure, Echo Bay was the gem of Lake Mead. [14:29] And Margaret was said to have been a regular there after finding the marina during the filming of Viva Las Vegas. [14:35] And during the Ballad of Cable Hogue, it housed stars Jason Robards and Stella Stevens, [14:42] who in the film would be called upon to portray a very different body in a very different barrel. [14:48] Now Patricia says her entire family was actually planning to move to Vegas and work for Johnny at the Echo Bay. [14:56] But it was not to be. [14:57] So what happened then? [14:59] We got a phone call on my birthday that he was missing. [15:04] His wife Cheryl told you that they tried to force him off the road as he drove back from Lake Mead. [15:11] Yeah, and they didn't hear from him again. [15:14] And all they knew was that there was a boat involved, which had turned out to be my uncle's boat. [15:20] At the time of his disappearance, he was contemplating becoming a government witness. [15:27] And that was just, you don't do that. [15:29] That's like signing a death warrant in 1970s Las Vegas. [15:32] When I heard about a body in a barrel being found in Lake Mead, my first thought was that it more than likely was done by Tony Spalatro. [15:41] The reputed hot-headed hitman Tony Spalatro, along with his La Cosa Nostra connected frenemy Frank Rosenthal, [15:49] were the ever so slightly fictionalized lead characters in Scorsese's Vegas epic, Casino. [15:55] And the film's mercurial Nicky Santoro was inspired by Spalatro. [16:00] You only exist out here because of me! [16:03] Tony Spalatro was an enforcer and a murderer. [16:06] And if they wanted somebody killed or murdered, he was the guy. [16:10] He was a part of everything at that time that my uncle was a part of. [16:13] And his job was to eliminate. [16:16] Everybody says Tony did it, referring to Mr. Spalatro. [16:19] I think we're trying a case in Milwaukee or something at the time it took place. [16:24] In 1986, Anthony Spalatro met his demise, buried in an Indiana cornfield. [16:32] Tony Spalatro, as you know, wound up in a ditch. [16:35] Yes, he did. [16:36] You seem pretty busted up about that. [16:38] You know what? I'm just heartbroken over here over that. [16:40] Organized crime and the mob are so much in the folklore of Vegas. [16:44] The minute you hear body in a barrel, your mind instantly goes to, [16:48] wow, I wonder if this is connected to any type of organized crime or mob. [16:52] The fact of the matter is, we're not going to know until the day that the remains are identified. [16:57] And in recent days, new clues have emerged from Lake Mead that could alter the course of the case. [17:04] Suddenly in the sand, we saw this gun. [17:07] Was this in fact a murder weapon? Could this solve this crime? [17:12] This is where I'll sink the boat. They'll search and search for us for months, but they'll never find us. [17:22] Val Kilmer's character in the 1989 film noir, Kill Me Again, figured that Lake Mead's then unfathomable depths were just the thing for a cover up. [17:31] I think people have this illusion that when things sink into a lake, it evaporates into the universe and it's just gone forever. [17:43] Whoever dropped that body in the barrel into Lake Mead must have thought exactly that. [17:48] The subsequent discovery of a nearby gun on the shore? That got pulses racing. [17:53] Metro police saying tonight that a journalist found the gun near the area where a body inside a barrel was found. [17:59] But cops don't believe the two are connected. [18:02] Right now, the gun doesn't appear to be from the proper time period. [18:06] Investigators were also able to rule out rumors that a .22 caliber handgun had been used in the homicide. [18:12] That rumor had been fueling speculation that this was a mob hit. [18:17] But officials familiar with the case tell ABC News that a .22 was not used. [18:22] Yet all the talk of murder and mobsters has fueled the fervor of others. [18:30] After the body of the barrel was recovered, 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. [18:38] One of my subscribers messaged me on social media and said, you gotta go to Lake Mead. [18:43] We could find some pretty crazy stuff. Who knows what we're gonna find, but it's gonna be an adventure. [18:48] Some people even have the belief that there may be money buried in some of these barrels. [18:53] It looks like it's an empty barrel, thankfully. [18:56] The body was found in a corroded barrel. [18:58] The people are just all talking about this. It's all over TikTok. [19:03] Today we want to talk about what's going on in Lake Mead. [19:06] Didn't they find the second barrel? [19:07] It was stuck in the mud. The barrel looked the same as the other barrel. [19:10] Retired cops turned podcasters David Kohlmeyer and Danny Minor are even offering a reward for the discovery of new remains at Lake Mead. [19:18] Specifically, if we can get some closure for people and get some justice. [19:21] We're not telling people to touch anything. It's identify the location, notify the police. [19:26] Or you could tell this guy. A Vegas attorney soliciting business by asking injured while searching for dead bodies at Lake Mead. [19:34] Also making no bones about it, this local shop owner selling a semi-macabre tchotchka spoofing the body parts tourist market. [19:45] I thought that with the lake having corpses in it, that it might be some dark humor to make Lake Mead corpse water. [19:55] I developed a little mixture that looked great in a bottle. [19:59] I developed the label which has two skeletons dancing around a barrel. [20:04] It was just a dark joke that has now gone viral. [20:12] My hope is that it garners attention so more people will know about what's going on with our lake. [20:17] Apart from the human remains of the day, drought and climate change have left much of this oasis with an unmade lake bed. [20:26] Revealing long lost artifacts, attracting treasure hunters and social media stars. [20:33] You get to do things that a lot of people either watch in the movies or they can only dream about. [20:38] And we get to do that right here in Lake Mead. [20:41] Look at that piece of history. [20:43] That is a perfect anchor. [20:45] We spent two full days out on Lake Mead. [20:47] We found a lot of stuff. [20:51] Lots and lots of boat wrecks. [20:53] Oh, it's a boat! [20:54] Just everywhere. [20:57] It was like a post-apocalyptic scene from some sci-fi movie. [21:01] The button still pushes. [21:03] Look at this. [21:05] Ready to see the craziest boat we've seen all day? [21:07] Man, that's a cigarette boat. [21:08] That thing can go so fast. [21:10] It was eerie. [21:11] Very eerie to look around and see that. [21:13] These days, no one knows this lake like DJ Jenner, a boat captain and pro diver. [21:20] My personal lake tour features a relic newly unveiled by receding waters. [21:25] First place we're going to stop is the houseboat that everybody's talking about. [21:29] This stuff is extraordinary. [21:32] Like, what is this over here? [21:34] And just a sense of huge devastation amid it all too. [21:37] Total ruin. [21:38] Because this was underwater for decades probably, right? [21:43] Yeah, this was somebody's boat they probably loved at one point and then just sank. [21:51] DJ, if I saw Gilligan and Mary Ann coming over the horizon right now, it wouldn't surprise me. [21:56] Relics like this ruined houseboat draw treasure hunters from far and near. [22:03] But the National Park's rules and regulations will tell you, you can look, but you better not take. [22:09] Let's see what else we can find up here, guys. [22:12] Just to make sure that we're not going to be taking anything away from their opportunities [22:16] to close cases and find important artifacts. [22:20] One of these artifacts isn't resting on Lake Mead's dry shore. [22:24] It's still submerged and frozen in time. [22:27] The one that I find the most fascinating is that there's a 1948 bomber, a military plane that sunk in the lake. [22:37] They carry more bombs farther and faster than any other plane in the world. [22:41] How did a B-29 bomber wind up in Lake Mead? [22:44] They just got too low and then hit the water, skipped across. [22:48] There was five guys in it. Everybody got out. [22:51] What's it like to see a bomber underwater? [22:54] It's amazing. It's so big, it's really super cool. [22:57] It's a bucket list dive for a lot of people that love diving. [23:01] What other kinds of things have you discovered or that you were aware of underwater that might attract our interest? [23:07] There's a big historical site. It's just relics from the Hoover Dam build, construction materials and such. [23:15] If the water level keeps going down, more barrels are going to just start popping up. [23:21] Do you expect that we're going to find a guy with a bullet hole somewhere in one of those drums? [23:25] They found one already, so who knows? [23:28] But at the lake these days, inside a barrel isn't the only place you can find a body. [23:35] The first thing that caught my eye was a very stark white rock that looked abnormal from the other rocks that we typically find out here. [23:42] A big part of me did think, what if this is a human? [23:45] How a shocking find brings a stunning revelation. [23:56] 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. [24:07] Johnny Roselli, the guy, the Chicago's representative in Las Vegas before Spolatro, was killed, put into a barrel and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. [24:18] And in his case, the barrel bobbed back to the surface outside of Miami. [24:23] And this was a memo that was used. [24:26] It stands to reason that maybe this was catching on. [24:29] And let's do the same thing here in Las Vegas. [24:32] Here, the barrel didn't bob up because the water it had been under wasn't there anymore. [24:38] Environmental crises like drought, the warming temperatures, and pressure on water supplies because of population growth. [24:44] They've all shrunk a man-made lake so mighty, it once made an entire town vanish. [24:50] I knew as a little kid there was an old town that kind of got covered up by the lake. [24:54] And so growing up you were always interested in like would that town ever kind of come back up. [24:59] The town of St. Thomas, Nevada, wiped from the map in the 1930s by the very creation of the lake. [25:06] And now taking a kind of revenge, re-emerging as Mead recedes. [25:12] Well, these shells indicate that there used to be a lot of water here, a lot of water life. [25:23] For all the frolicsome fun taking place across its 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. [25:36] So when St. Thomas was officially established in 1865, there's no lake at all. [25:44] It was just a few dozen families. [25:46] Right over there was the school and it doesn't look like it now, of course, but it used to be a thriving community. [25:53] The Hotel Gentry was a pretty stately building. It held some pretty interesting guests, including President Calvin Coolidge. [26:02] Right now we're at the Hannig Ice Cream Parlor in St. Thomas, built by my great-grandfather, Reinhold Hannig. [26:10] 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. [26:20] Ice cream was a real luxury for any city, but to make it out here in the desert would be especially wonderful and nice. [26:30] But the town's innocent existence would not last much longer. [26:34] In 1928, the federal government signs the Boulder Canyon Project Act. [26:38] President Calvin Coolidge is the man who signed the act, so that then seals the fate for what later happens. [26:45] I'm sure the residents afterwards were like, why did we let that guy stay in our nice hotel? [26:52] The dam was built, and the waters were rising. It wasn't negotiable. There was no workaround. [26:58] 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. [27:06] And so he gets in his rowboat, he sets fire to his house, and he literally rose off into the sunset in this blaze of glory. [27:13] But the ghosts of St. Thomas are not the only ones coming back. [27:20] Breaking news, a second set of skeletal remains have been found at Lake Mead. [27:25] Less than a week after the Body in the Barrel's appearance in May 2022, sisters Lynette and Lindsay Melvin went out to the lake to paddleboard, and they stumbled on something in the sand. [27:36] So right over here, just probably right there next to the water, we stumbled upon the white rock that appeared to be like bone. [27:46] Actually, I think that's a scapula. 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. [27:59] Another body being found at Lake Mead, this one at Boulder Beach. [28:04] In July, another discovery, this time made by a man swimming with his 11-year-old daughter. [28:09] She came to me and said, Dad, there's something in the water floating. It looks like a body. [28:18] 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. [28:27] The fourth set of human remains have been found at Lake Mead today. [28:31] A little over a week after Jesus Catalan's first discovery, he says he felt the lake calling him back. [28:37] So right back to Boulder Beach is where he went. [28:40] 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. [28:51] Oh my goodness. Wow. [28:54] Finding and discovering remains that have been there for several years is not an uncommon situation for us. [29:00] As the climate changes and areas become more active with human population responding to those areas, [29:08] you're going to come across remains that haven't been seen or recovered in many years. [29:13] We're talking about the 1970s and on. [29:16] This is the third time in just two months that remains have been found here at Lake Mead. [29:20] Discoveries like these becoming more and more common. [29:24] By October 19th, 2022, the tally of human remains found at Lake Mead has risen to seven sets in just six months. [29:32] No one expected that Lake Mead would recede the way it has, almost as revealing ghosts of the past, not all of them victims of foul play. [29:42] As a kid, Tina Bushman spent idyllic days on the water here on the family boat with her beloved father, Tom Ernst, before tragedy struck. [29:51] For a long time, I was just angry. I was like, why my dad? Like, how come you couldn't find him? [29:55] How big a role did Lake Mead play in your life when you were growing up like that with your dad and your brother? [30:02] I think we spent every weekend that we could there. So it was my dad's favorite place ever. [30:07] What do you remember about that day in 2002? [30:10] We called it a midnight jump, even though it wasn't really midnight, but it was really dark at the lake. [30:15] And so we used to take our boat kind of in that middle of Paulville Bay and we used to jump off of it because it's really cool to jump into water that's totally dark, you know? [30:24] And my dad just thought it was fun and silly. That's what we did this night. [30:28] For some reason, the waves were a little bit choppier than they usually were. And so my dad was saying, you know, nobody, nobody jump in. [30:36] The next thing we know, he jumps in the water and we're like, what the heck? [30:41] And he's messing around like splashing, you know, and he's like joking around, just kind of laughing. [30:47] And as he was trying to swim back to the boat, he was like, hey, the boat's moving too fast. [30:52] You could see his hand on the ladder. I remember his like hand hitting it, like barely hitting the ladder. [30:58] That was like one of my biggest memories that I like was so sad about for a long time was that like he barely, barely made it. [31:09] Just that close. Yeah. Yeah. [31:14] 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. [31:22] Until years after her father's disappearance, when Tina got a phone call. [31:27] What emotions come over you as you deal with news like that? [31:30] We were all in shock. It had been 20 years. [31:33] Who was Johnny Pappas? One of those people that everybody just loved. [31:48] My mom spent the rest of her life wondering what happened to him. [31:55] She would never even change her phone number so that just in case he could ever call, he would have the number. [32:02] And then they find a body in a barrel. Oh, my gosh. Talk about hitting somebody across the head. You know, that's such a shock. [32:11] So Patricia even reached out to the Clark County coroner's office, eager to provide her own DNA to see if it might help to ID that mysterious body in the barrel. [32:21] You were ready to give your DNA to see if there was a match. Oh, anything. Anything I could do. [32:25] What did they tell you when you offered to give your DNA? [32:27] Oh, they said they put it, you know, put the notes down and that was it. [32:30] 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 person's reported information, at that time then we would certainly ask for a submission. [32:48] 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. [33:06] The coroner called me and was like, are you Tina? And I was like, I haven't heard that name in a really long time. [33:13] After their father disappeared into the waters here on that tragic night in 2002, his body unrecovered, Tina and her brother's lives were turned upside down, sent to live with relatives in another state. [33:27] But they still imagine that someday their father would come home again. [33:32] 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. [33:47] For years, the scars of that night, the uncertainty surrounding their father's final resting place, it gnawed at Tina and her younger brother Tom, who has a passion for mechanics just like his dad. [34:00] He never got to the point where he felt like he got any closure. [34:04] I looked at one of his Facebook postings and he said, I just wish I knew where you were. [34:09] I think maybe he just always had hoped maybe that he was still out there. [34:13] Then that phone call asking for a sample of their DNA. [34:24] So weird. She was like two, you know, ladies there on the beach and stumbled upon some remains. We think that this could be your father. [34:35] 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 decedent. [34:50] What happened next? [34:52] She calls me and she's like, Tina, it's a match. We were all in shock. [34:57] What emotions come over you as you deal with news like this? [35:00] I'm sad for me, you know, that like, man, this really, this really happened. [35:07] Like he's really gone. That's really hard. But just to know that he was there, like gives me so much peace. [35:16] If he could have died anywhere, he would have chosen that because I mean that, that was his happy place. [35:22] A lot of families out there who are desperate to know what happened to my relative in the 70s. [35:34] What happened to this guy I knew in the 80s? Are they reaching out to you and get and saying, can't you take another look? [35:40] Right. Yeah, they absolutely do. Just because a case is 30 years old and there's little evidence doesn't mean we're not going to be able to solve it. [35:48] That's Uncle John. It was probably the last time that we got to see him. [35:51] It's been nearly half a century since alleged mob whistleblower Johnny Pappas vanished and his niece Patricia is still troubled by her uncle's unresolved case. [36:02] 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 cremated and put next to my mother. [36:17] At least I fulfilled the promise that I made to her before she died that I would continue to try to find out whatever happened. [36:25] One of the most important things to me ultimately is that we solve our investigations. [36:31] If there's a way for us to forensically solve that investigation using the DNA lab, we will do it. [36:37] You have a 90% solve rate for a reason. [36:39] So far, investigators have been able to determine that there are four separate victims from the seven sets of remains that have been found. [36:48] And that's bringing closure to people like Tina Bushman and her brother. [36:52] History has really come to life. [36:54] 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. [37:01] These are human stories. [37:03] The mysterious man in the barrel. [37:06] His story has yet to be written, but there are major developments in two of Lake Mead's most recent discoveries. [37:17] We now know the identity of a body found at Lake Mead. [37:20] And will it bring renewed hope to other families? [37:24] They were in the water, being pounded by the wind and the waves. [37:28] One of them was not going to make it. [37:30] So as much of an absolute wonder as this region is, especially when it's seen from overhead, [37:41] it was human need, not nature's grace, that created Lake Mead 90 years ago. [37:49] For 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. [37:57] He knew without a doubt that one of them was not going to make it. [38:03] He traded water for as long as he could. [38:05] But he knew he even told her, honey, do not hold on to me. [38:08] You hold on to me. [38:09] I'm just going to drag you down with me. [38:12] When three sets of remains from the same decedent were found in 2022, [38:18] Jessica Condon hoped it was her late father and gave a DNA sample to the coroner. [38:24] So we did do an evaluation and determined that an individual that we were following up on as a potential lead [38:32] was not a blood relative to our decedent. [38:35] What we have found out is so far none of the remains are coming up as my father. [38:42] If the lake doesn't give up his body, we're still okay with that. [38:46] That cross paying him tribute at the sight of his passing 19 years ago. [38:52] This was our way of giving us a place to go and have him remembered. [39:00] Ultimate success ends when we're able to put closed on that case and solve it. [39:05] It would be very big deal for anybody's family if that was their loved one. [39:10] The Clark County Coroner's Office able to put a name to two more deceased people, [39:16] announcing that the remains which Jesus Catalan found at Boulder Beach have been identified as 52-year-old [39:23] Claude Russell Penzinger, who disappeared in July of 1998. [39:28] Another body found at Calville Bay, determined by the coroner's office in late March, [39:35] to be a man who had last been seen more than 50 years ago. [39:42] This individual was reported as a drowning and it was a witnessed event that was very well documented. [39:48] Donald Smith and he was 39 years of age at the time of his disappearance. [39:54] Looking at Lake Mead now, definitely should cause people some concern. [39:59] And should cause them to think about how we should be using water effectively in a very dry part of the country. [40:06] Transformation of this lake, allowing Tina Bushman the chance to say a final farewell to her father Tom. [40:16] I hope that he's proud when he looks down. [40:19] It was really hard, but I've learned a lot and I've grown a lot and we're doing great. [40:27] I remember the lake being full 20 years ago and as we drove down there was no water. [40:33] And now you look at the lake and you don't even recognize it. [40:35] Tina, able to have a family ceremony here to celebrate his life at the waters he loved so much. [40:43] Tell people I'm like, don't give up. Don't give up hope. [40:48] You know, like we you don't know if they'll be found, but if they are, I'll be really nice. [40:53] But until then, you know, don't give up hope because you never know. [40:56] Well, as you just saw tonight, the lake continues to give up its secrets. [41:06] And with that resolution for some families will continue to follow developments in this investigation. [41:12] In the meantime, that is our program for tonight. [41:15] Thank you for watching. [41:16] I'm David Muir and from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. [41:20] Good night.