Mafia mysteries may be solved as bodies found in drought-hit lake

LAS VEGAS is being flooded with tales about organised crime after a second set of human remains emerged from the depths of a drought-stricken Colorado river reservoir just a 30-minute drive from the notoriously mob-founded Strip.

“There’s no telling what we’ll find in Lake Mead,” former Las

Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman said.“It’s not a bad place to dump a body.”

Mr Goodman, as a lawyer, represented mob figures including the ill-fated Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro before serving three terms as a Martini-toting mayor making public appearances with a showgirl on each arm.

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

But he said a lot of his former clients seemed interested in “climate control” – mob speak for keeping the lake level up and bodies down in their watery graves.

Instead, the world now has climate change and the surface of Lake Mead has dropped more than 170 feet since 1983.

“If the lake goes down much farther, it’s very possible we’re going to have some very interesting things surface,” said Michael Green, a University of Nevada history professor whose father dealt blackjack for decades at casinos including the Stardust and the Showboat.

“I wouldn’t bet the mortgage that we’re going to solve who killed Bugsy Siegel,” Mr Green said, referring to the infamous gangster who opened the Flamingo in 1946 on what would become the Strip.

Siegel was shot dead in 1947 in Beverly Hills, California. His assassin has never been identified.

The first corpse to be found has not been identified but Las Vegas police say he was shot, probably between the mid-1970s and the early ‘80s according to the shoes found with him. The death is being investigated as murder.