Las Vegas’ Lake Mead coughing up rogues gallery of dead mobsters

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About 48 kilometres southeast and a world away from the gaudy Las Vegas Strip is one of the Mafia’s favourite body dump sites.

Lake Mead is the largest man-made reservoir in the U.S., sitting on the border of Nevada and Arizona and has been a playground for desert denizens for decades.

In recent years, law enforcement has recovered a slew of bodies from the lake. One of the mob earmarks has been the recovered remains stuffed in ancient barrels.

Vegas cops finally ID victim

Now, Vegas cops say they have finally identified a murder victim likely iced in the early 1980s. Boaters discovered the remains in May 2022.

Arkansas native Edward Lelburian Jackson, who was in his 50s, was murdered execution-style by a single gunshot to the head. And he too was discovered stuffed in a rusted barrel that had been dumped in the lake.

“We were able to confirm that the remains were, in fact, Edward Jackson,” said Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse.

According to cops, Jackson, a.k.a. Buddy, was a player in the Salt Lake City criminal underworld. Still, cops were hesitant to peg his murder as a gangland settling of accounts but have not ruled it out.

Jackson’s sojourn to Sin City was unusual

At the time of the slaying, the victim was wearing a short-sleeve button-down shirt, light blue jeans, a silver wristwatch and blue-and-white sneakers.

While his family told cold case detectives that Jackson loved to travel, his sojourn to Sin City was unusual.

“They knew that he had travelled the country, would show up when he showed up, just to say hi,”  LVMPD homicide chief Lt. Robert Price told reporters, adding he wasn’t reported missing at the time. “But they didn’t think anything other than that. They just figured he was out and about.”

According to cops, the murder of Jackson remains a cold case, but detectives have vowed to close it.

Las Vegas’s Mob Museum had suspected the body could be gambling cheat George “Jay” Vandermark, drug trafficker turned rat William Crespo, or casino insider Johnny Pappas, who actually kept his boat on Lake Mead. The trio all vanished into thin air and their bodies have never been recovered.

The discovery of the mob’s graveyard in recent years has been tied to the lake’s water level hitting historic lows. Experts expect that more bodies will emerge from the lake’s depths.

While Jackson’s demise has all the traits of mafia machinations, one expert said that mobsters have more often buried the bodies of their victims in remote desert areas.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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