Kmart Clothes a Clue to Body Found in Barrel at Lake Mead

Update: Police have shared details about the body found inside a barrel that was discovered on the newly exposed bottom of Nevada's Lake Mead, saying the remains belong to a person who'd been shot. Investigators are dating the crime to the late 1970s or early '80s, with KLAS quoting Las Vegas Lt. Ray Spencer as saying, "The victim's clothes and shoes were sold at Kmart in the mid-to-late 1970s." Police have teamed up with UNLV researchers who are trying to date the barrel based on its metal and corrosion, reports the New York Times. Our original story from Monday follows:

A body inside a barrel was found over the weekend on the newly exposed bottom of Nevada's Lake Mead as drought depletes one of the largest US reservoirs—and officials predicted the discovery could be just the first of more grim finds, the AP reports. "I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains," Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV on Monday. The lake's level has dropped so much that the uppermost water intake at drought-stricken Lake Mead became visible last week.

Personal items found inside the barrel indicated the person died more than 40 years ago, in the 1980s, Spencer said. He declined to discuss a cause of death and declined to describe the items found, saying the investigation is ongoing. Police plan to reach out to experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to analyze when the barrel started eroding. The Clark County coroner's office will try to determine the person's identity. Boaters spotted the barrel Sunday afternoon. National Park Service rangers searched an area near the lake's Hemenway Harbor and found the barrel containing skeletal remains.

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Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the US, part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, and across the southern border in Mexico. The reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has become so depleted that Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead, which also stretches into Arizona. (More Lake Mead stories.)