LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A mob museum historian weighed in on the discovery of a body that was found in a barrel at Lake Mead.
The Clark County Coroner’s Office is still trying to identify the victim. 8 News Now spoke to a historian at the Mob Museum who said he has plenty of questions about who the victim is.
Historian Geoff Schumacher said it’s very possible this was the work of the mob.
“It’s of interest to us at the Mob Museum, we’d love to know more about this,” Schumacher said. “This is probably not the last body in a barrel we’ll see in Las Vegas.”
According to police, the victim in the barrel was likely shot in the 70s or 80s.
“Killing somebody and putting them in a barrel and dumping them in water is actually a common mob tactic dating back to the 1800s,” Schumacher said. “This is something that is almost common if you look at it over a long period of time.”
He noted that many mobsters were killed in the same way throughout history.
“It may not be a mob hit, it could be someone who copied the tactics of the mob, but when we’re talking about the era, you know, the 1970s and 1980s, the mob was pretty prominent in Vegas at that time. It was a time of conflict as well, so there were people who went missing,” he said.
He said that regardless of who committed the crime, the circumstances around the case could provide answers for a decades-old mystery.
“I’m going to watch this very closely, I think we’re going to try and obtain the medical reports and learn as much as we can and see if we can be helpful to authorities to see if we can solve this crime,” he said.
