♪ ♪ >> a mystery when this glitz and glamour playground is the likely first stop before a watery clay grave. >> lake mead was famous for wanting to get rid of bodies or guns. you just go out in the middle of the lake and toss it. >> the las vegas of old and the dead bodies being revealed now. >> authorities are trying to identify a fifth set of skeletal remains. >> where was the body in the barrel found? >> i thought maybe it is my uncle. >> that sounds like a mob hit. >> friends of mine called lake mead "lake mafia." >> at the body was found in a corroded barrel. >> people are just all talking

about this all over tiktok. point in time. >> people start realizing they're going to find more stuff in the lake over time as it gets lower and lower. >> chris: what happens in vegas is supposed to stay in vegas, but nobody counted on the lake giving up those secrets. >> the bodies haven't come to the surface. the surface has come to the bodies. >> they've been giving answers. a young girl who saw her father disappear. >> we could see hear him say, help, you'd better hurry. that was it. >> somebody out there is sweating. 'cause they know we've got the body, the evidence, only a matter of time before we find out who it is. ♪ ♪ >> chris: beautiful, isn't it? welcome to one of the deadliest lakes in america. lake mead. the vast reservoir and national.

>> the turbulent colorado river has been harnessed. all that rtional finishing touc. >> chris: who decades ago tamed the colorado river and built the hoover dam. just a ricochet away from the las vegas strip. for mark hamill in 1978's "corvette summer," it was a cautionary tale. >> you wanna be careful. you run up against a car thief, you're liable to wind up at the bottom of lake mead. >> the infamous tommy lee and pam anderson videos were shot on those right there. >> chris: for pamela anderson and tommy lee in their '90s video "stolen honeymoon," it was a watery playground. >> that's where they were carrying on. ♪ ♪ >> chris: there must be a million stories about lake mead. this one begins with a scream. it was a scream from the shoreline overheard by a couple tying up their boat may 1st,

2022. >> they raced to the site to discover a 55-gallon oil drum. it was eroded by the elements. but inside they found a body -- a dead body. >> well, a shocking discovery at lake mead. a barrel on shore containing a body. >> chris: since the 1930s, according to park service officials, more than 300 people have drowned in lake mead. >> in fact, it is consistently the deadliest recreation area in the whole national park system. >> chris: but the body in the barrel did not drown. perhaps the bullet in the front of his skull was a giveaway. >> that decedent was determined to be a male who died from a gunshot wound, and his manner of death was determined to be homicide. >> chris: if only there was a bullet in that barrel. >> there's no bullet found in the barrel, no. there is items of evidence that we collected from the barrel,

ly >> chris: enter lt. jason johansson. he's the head of las vegas metro's homicide division, leading the investigation. >> the barrel would've been located right in this general area, right over this way, between where we are and where the pier is. this would've been the middle of the water. >> chris: and from johansson's cold case unit, detective phil ramos is among those investigating the body in the barrel. >> when we have a murder victim left in the lake mead national recreation area, it's usually in a gully or a ravine. it's not very often that you find a murder victim actually in the lake itself. >> chris: that's just it. see, the victim hadn't been found in the lake. and that barrel had not washed up on shore either. because the 100 feet of water that once covered it? gone. >> so right there there was an oil drum that was all of a sudden revealed just because the

water had gone down? >> right. and all this was underwater. >> chris: not anymore, as water levels at lake mead have plummeted more than an astonishing 150 feet since the year 2000. >> large parts of the southwest have been getting warmer for quite a long time. and over the last couple of decades have also had a number of years with lower-than-normal rain and snow. and so as a result, those reservoir levels have been dropping slowly over time. >> chris: so here, dry empty shells now litter the arid shore where creatures once thrived beneath the depths. marinas have pulled up stakes to chase the ever-lowering lakefront. >> we have to adjust our thinking when we talk about the body in the barrel. it didn't wash up on shore. >> no. it stayed where it had been for years and years, just the water receded and revealed some of the secrets of the lake.

>> chris: the bathtub ring around the lake's walls tells the story, but there are other tales too. >> breaking news: a second set of skeletal remains have been found. >> this is the third body uncovered. >> a fourth set of human remains. >> chris: now, with the lake receding, other bodies have been appearing, each with their own untold story. >> one of the aspects of this water disappearing is the mysteries that this lake held for many decades revealed to the world for the first time. >> well, the bodies haven't come to the surface; the surface has come to the bodies. >> 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." >> chris: leaving some families hoping for the answers they've >> and then they find a body in a barrel with a hole in his

head. i thought maybe it's my uncle. >> one day in 1976, he disappeared, and it became a mystery. his car was found on the strip, but he was never found. >> and i made a promise that i would do whatever i could do and i would find him. >> you know, it's pretty unusual for law enforcement to talk about active investigations, but las vegas police, they have a 90% solve rate on cold cases. in this case, they gave us access. they wanted to talk about the priority they place on cold cases and honestly, with a case this old, they wanted the public's help. >> chris: 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? the coroner's office along with metro have been searching for answers through the use of dna.

>> how much organic material do you need to be able to perform some sort of dna assessment? >> in the different remains obviously blood would be the most ideal specimen, but in most of these cases, we may not have that. so then we're looking at doing other specimens such as bone and teeth. >> when we are looking at bone for dna preservation compared to soft tissue, you can look at bone as a little package. so when you're doing dna extraction, you want to get once-living cells, and that's where the dna is encased. >> one of the things that we noticed right away at autopsy was, the body was slightly preserved because of the wet conditions that it was in, what we call adipocere, which is a waxy tissue that occurs during the breakdown of the body during decomposition. >> which can also be a source for dna. but in this case it might answer, who killed this man? >> where they put him, it was pretty deep. it was a good 100, 120 feet

under the water level. so they thought, "man, he'll never be found." >> chris: and yet he was. as probing into that investigation continues... >> somebody out there is sweating because they know that we've got the body, we've got the evidence, and it's only a matter of time before we find out who it is. and once we find out who it is, it'll kick into high gear. ♪ ♪ bipolar 1, i got help to push back. i got help to push back. we got help to push back - with lybalvi. once-daily prescription lybalvi is proven to treat manic or mixed episodes of bipolar 1 in adults to help you push back. elderly patients with dementia have an increased risk of death or stroke. do not take lybalvi if you are taking opioids or are in opioid withdrawal. the samidorphan in lybalvi can cause severe opioid withdrawal that can lead to hospitalization or increase risk of life-threatening overdose. get emergency help if you have trouble breathing, become very drowsy with slowed or shallow breathing, or feel faint, very dizzy, or confused; or if you have fever, stiff muscles,

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>> chris: a long-hidden secret emerging from the lake -- a body in a barrel -- and immediately everyone wants to know... >> who is this person? >> when we're looking at a skeletal model of a male, we're going to look for the different indicators that are secondary sex characteristics. the pelvis is the most reliable indicator for determining assigned sex at birth. >> chris: so with dna still pending, las vegas metro is able

to glean a little more about that mysterious body discovered at lake mead. >> his clothing is able to give you a size. there's a belt, there's pants and shirt. so you can tell that the person was not a small person. >> chris: inside that rusty barrel, a forensic time capsule of well-preserved clues. there's a watch, kmart clothes and sneakers. turns out, you can learn a lot from an old pair of kicks. >> we can determine that this person likely became a victim somewhere in the area between of 1975 and 1985. >> chris: mysteries abound here. and so do theories. that guy in the oil drum. who was he? how did he wind up 100 feet below the water here at lake mead? and who wanted him dead decades ago? an enemy? a gang? or the mob? >> when i first heard that the body in the barrel had been found, my first thought was "that sounds like a mob hit." >> when you're investigating cold cases, especially the really old cases, it's almost

like going back in time. >> chris: las vegas, 1970s. with a simple "'scuse me while i disappear," frank sinatra begins the decade in retirement, so now elvis is on top instead of the rat pack. but with the mafia on the big screen and in the backroom, wise guys on the wrong side of the law didn't just go to the tables to get even, just like it had always been in las vegas. ♪ ♪ >> we would not have the las vegas strip if it was not for organized crime. >> they were sort of the quiet operators and owners of the casinos. >> they're considered the founding fathers of las vegas. >> chris: they'd be popularized in films like "the godfather," its fictional character moe green inspired by the vegas pioneer bugsy siegel. >> do you know who i am? i'm moe green. i made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders. >> i was the mayor for 12 years, and i would go to every

groundbreaking, and i'd start sweating. i'm scared that there's going to be an arm coming out of the desert. >> chris: and so if a leaky pipe needed to be tightened permanently, just 30 miles away was lake mead, which could make things disappear even more efficiently than david copperfield could. >> some friends of mine actually called lake mead "lake mafia." >> the .22, shot in the back of the head, and placed into an oil drum is definitely all signatures of the mob. >> chris: so who was the vic? well, mob-savvy citizens of speculation nation spoke out. and have their own ideas. could it be the long-gone jay vandermark, alleged to have skimmed from the stardust casino slots? or vegas businessman frank rossana, who mysteriously vanished in 1988? or was it this dapper gent standing next to liberace? >> the most likely person is a man named johnny pappas. >> chris: what did you know about your uncle?

>> he was bigger than life. he did a lot of work with the stars, and he was one of those people that everybody just loved. >> chris: patricia haas grew up hearing that her charming uncle johnny, her mother's brother from youngstown, ohio, had moved to nevada and was rubbing elbows with the vegas showbiz elite. >> chris: oh, that's sinatra and dean martin. and that's sammy davis jr. >> sammy davis jr. >> chris: but patricia didn't know what a big shot johnny pappas really was until she visited vegas in the mid-'70s. like the copacabana scene from martin scorsese's "goodfellas," where ray liotta's henry gets respect from all who encounter him, patricia saw that everyone was eager to treat johnny just right. >> he was just that kind of uncle. you know, he'd take you around, show you things. everybody was, "hi, johnny, hi, johnny, hi, johnny." you could just feel that everybody really respected him. >> by 1976, he was working out at echo bay marina. and pappas was in charge of that

operation. >> it was known that organized crime people would associate with that marina. >> chris: before the retreating waters forced its closure, echo bay was the gem of lake mead. anne-margret was said to have been a regular there after finding the marina during the filming of "viva las vegas." and during "the ballad of cable hogue," it housed stars jason robards and stella stevens who, in the film, would be called upon to portray a very different body in a very different barrel. now, patricia says her entire family was actually planning to move to vegas and work for johnny at the echo bay. but it was not to be. >> so what happened then? >> we got a phone call on my birthday that he was missing. >> his wife, cheryl, told you that they tried to force him off the road as he drove back from lake mead? >> yeah. and they didn't hear from him again and all they knew was that

there was a boat involved, which it turned out to be my uncle's boat. >> at the time of his disappearance, he was contemplating becoming a government witness. >> and that was just a -- you don't do that. >> that's like signing a death warrant in 1970s las vegas. >> when i heard about a body in a barrel bein' found in lake mead, my first thought was that it more than likely was done by tony spilotro. >> chris: the reputed hot-headed hitman tony spilotro, along with his la cosa nostra-connected frenemy frank rosenthal, were the ever-so-slightly fictionalized lead characters in scorsese's vegas epic "casino." and the film's mercurial nicky santoro was inspired by spilotro. >> you only exist out here because of me! >> tony spilotro was an enforcer and a murderer. and if they wanted somebody killed or murdered, he was the guy. >> he was a part of everything, at that time, that my uncle was a part of, and his job was to eliminate. >> everybody says, "tony did

it," referring to mr. spilotro. i think we were trying a case in milwaukee or something at the time it took place. >> chris: in 1986, anthony spilotro met his demise buried in an indiana cornfield. >> tony spilotro, as you know, wound up in a ditch. >> yes, he did. >> you seem pretty busted up about that. >> i'm just heartbroken over here over that. >> organized crime and the mob are so much in the folklore of vegas. the minute you hear "body in the barrel," your mind instantly goes to, "wow. i wonder if this is connected to any type of organized crime or mob." the fact of the matter is, we're not going to know until the day that the remains are identified. >> chris: and in recent days, new clues have emerged from lake mead that could alter the course of the case. >> suddenly in the sand we saw this gun. was this in fact the murder weapon? could this solve this crime? ♪ ♪

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>> this is where i'll sink the boat. they'll search for us for months, but they'll never find us. >> chris: 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 coverup. >> i think people have this illusion that when things sink

into a lake, it evaporates into the universe and it's just gone forever. >> chris: whoever dropped that body in the barrel into lake mead must have thought exactly that. the subsequent discovery of a nearby gun on the shore got pulses racing. >> metro police saying tonight that a journalist found the gun near the area where a body inside a barrel was found. >> chris: but cops don't believe the two are connected. >> right now, the gun doesn't appear to be from the proper time period. >> investigators were also able to rule out rumors that a .22 caliber handgun was used in the homicide. that rumor had been fueling speculation this was a mob hit. but officials familiar with the case tell abc news that a .22 was not used. >> chris: yet all the talk of murder and mobsters has fueled the fervor of others. >> after the body in the barrel was recovered, it immediately prompted many people to go out to the lake because they all wanted to see if there was other human remains they could find.

>> one of my subscribers messaged me on social media and said, "you got to go to lake mead." >> we could find some pretty crazy stuff. who knows what we're going to find but it's going to be an adventure! >> people even have the belief there may be money buried in some of these barrels. >> looks like it's an empty barrel, thankfully. >> a body was found in a corroded barrel. >> the people are just all talking about this. it's all over tiktok. >> today we want to talk about what's going on at lake mead. >> didn't they find the second barrel? >> it was stuck in the mud. the barrel looked the same as the other barrel. >> chris: retired cops turned podcasters david kohlmeier and danny minor are even offering a reward for the discovery of new remains at lake mead. >> specifically, if we can get some closure for people and get some justice. we're not telling people to touch anything. it's identify the location, notify the police. >> chris: or you could tell this guy: a vegas attorney soliciting business by asking "injured while searching for dead bodies at lake mead?" also making no bones about it, this local shop owner selling a

semi-macabre tchotchke spoofing the body parts tourist market. >> i thought that with the lake having corpses in it that it might be some dark humor to make lake mead corpse water. i developed a little mixture that looked great in a bottle. i developed the label, which has two skeletons dancing around a barrel. and it was just a dark joke that has now gone viral. my hope is that it garners attention so more people will know about what's going on with our lake. >> chris: apart from the human remains of the day, drought and climate change have left much of this oasis with an unmade lakebed revealing long-lost artifacts, attracting treasure hunters and social media stars. >> you get to do things that a lot of people either watch in the movies or they can only dream about, and we get to do

that right here in lake mead. >> look at that piece of history. that is a perfect anchor. i spent two full days out on lake mead. we found a lot of stuff. lots and lots of boat wrecks. ooh, it's a boat! just everywhere. it was like a post-apocalyptic scene from some sci-fi movie. and the button still pushes, look at this. ready to see the craziest thing we've seen all day? man, it's a cigarette boat, that thing can go so fast. it was eerie -- very eerie to look around and see that. >> chris: these days, no one knows this lake like d.j. jenner, a boat captain and pro diver. my personal lake tour features a relic newly unveiled by receding waters. >> first place we're going to stop is the houseboat that everybody's talking about. >> chris: this stuff is extraordinary. like, what is this over here? and just a sense of huge devastation amid it all too, total ruin. because this was underwater for

decades probably, right? >> yeah. this was somebody's boat they probably loved at one point and then just sank. >> d.j., if i saw gilligan and mary ann coming over the horizon right now, it wouldn't surprise me. >> chris: relics like this ruined houseboat draw treasure hunters from far and near, but the national parks rules and regulations will tell you, "you can look, but you better not take." >> see what else we can find out here, guys. >> just to make sure that we're not going to be taking anything away from their opportunities to close cases and find important artifacts. >> chris: one of those artifacts isn't resting on lake mead's dry shore. it's still submerged and frozen in time. >> the one that i find the most fascinating is that there's a 1948 bomber, a military plane that sunk in the lake.

>> they carry more bombs farther and faster than any other plan in the world. >> how did a b-29 bomber wind up in lake mead? >> and they just got too low and then hit the water, skipped across. there was five guys in it. everybody got out. >> what's it like to see a bomber underwater? >> its amazing, it's so big. it's really super cool. it's a bucket list dive for a lot of people that love diving. >> what other kinds of things have you discovered or that you were aware of underwater that might attract our interest? >> there's a big historical site. it's just relics from the hoover dam build, construction materials and such. if the water level keeps going down, there's more barrels that are going to just start popping up. >> do you expect that we're going to find a guy with a bullet hole somewhere in one of those drums? >> they found one already, so who knows? >> chris: but at the lake these days, inside a barrel isn't the only place you can find a body. >> the first thing that caught my eye was a very stark white rock that looked abnormal from

the other rocks we typically find out here. a big part of me did think, what if this is a human? >> chris: how a shocking find brings a stunning revelation. ♪ ♪ - you like that bone? i got a great price on it. - did you see my tail when that chewy box showed up? - oh, i saw it. - sorry about the vase. - can we just say vase like normal people? - fine. - i always wondered what it would be like to have a tail. - maybe you did one time. and maybe a thousand years from now, i'll be tail-less using that chewy app to get you great prices on treats. - i'm pretty sure it takes more than a thousand years- - vase. - pets aren't just pets. they're more. - vase! - [announcer] save more on what they love with everyday great prices at chewy. (air whooshing) (box thudding) ♪ ♪

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>> 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. >> johnny roselli, the chicago's representative in las vegas before spilotro, was killed, put into a barrel, and dumped into the atlantic ocean. in his case, the barrel bobbed back up outside of miami. this was an m.o. that was used. it stands to reason that maybe this was catching on and let's do the same thing here in las vegas. >> chris: here, the barrel

didn't bob up, because the water it had been under wasn't there anymore. environmental crises like drought, warming temperatures, and pressure on water supplies because of population growth have all shrunk a man-made lake so mighty it once made an entire town vanish. >> i knew as a little kid there was an old town that got covered up by the lake. and so growing up you were always interested in, would that town ever come back up? >> chris: the town of st. thomas, nevada, wiped from the map in the 1930s by the very creation of the lake and now taking a kind of revenge, re-emerging as mead recedes. >> well, these shells indicate that there used to be a lot of water here, a lot of water life. >> chris: for all the frolicsome fun taking place across its 2,300 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.

>> so when st. thomas was officially established in 1865, there's no lake at all. it was just a few dozen families. >> right over there was the school, and it doesn't look like it now, of course, but it used to be a thriving community. >> the hotel gentry was pretty stately building. it held some pretty interesting guests, including president calvin coolidge >> right now we're at the hannig ice cream parlor in st. thomas built by my great-grandfather, reinhold hannig. >> 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. >> ice cream was a real luxury for any city, but to make it out here in the desert would be especially wonderful and nice. >> chris: but the town's innocent existence would not last much longer. >> in 1928, the federal

government signs the boulder canyon project act. president calvin coolidge is the man who signed the act that then seals the fate for what later happens. i'm sure the residents afterwards were like, "why'd we let that guy stay in our nice hotel?" >> the dam was built and the waters were rising. it wasn't negotiable. there was no workaround. >> 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. and so he gets in his rowboat, he sets fire to his house, and he literally rows off into the sunset in this blaze of glory. >> chris: but the ghosts of st. thomas are not the only ones coming back. less than a week later,

lynette and lyndsey melvin went out to the lake to paddleboard when they stumbled on something in the sand. >> so right over here, just probably right there next to the water, we stumble upon the white rock that appeared to be like bone. >> actually, i think that is 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. >> another body being found at lake mead lake mead, boulder beach. >> chris: in july, another discovery, made by a man swimming with his 11-year-old daughter. >> she came to me and said, "dad, there's something in the water floating, it looks like a body." 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. >> the fourth set of human remains have been found at lake mead today. >> chris: a little over a week after jesus catalan's first

discovery, he says he felt the lake calling him back, so right back to boulder beach he went. >> 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. oh, my goodness. i go, wow. >> finding and discovering remains that have been there for several years is not an uncommon situation for us. as the climate changes and areas become more active with human population responding to those areas, you're going to come across remains that haven't been seen or recovered in many years. we're talking about the 1970s and on. >> this is the third time in two months that remains have been found here at lake mead. discoveries like these becoming more and more common. >> chris: by october 19, 2022, the tally of human remains found at lake mead has risen to seven sets in just six months. >> no one expected that

lake mead would recede the way it has, and it almost is revealing, um, ghosts of the past, not all of them victims of foul play. >> chris: as a kid, tina bushman spent idyllic days on the water here on the family boat with her beloved father, tom erndt, before tragedy struck. >> for a long time, i angry come out why my dad, why couldn't you find him? >> how big a role did lake mead play in your life when you were growing up like that with your dad and your brother? >> i think we spent every weekend that we could there. so it was my dad's favorite place ever. >> what do you remember about that day in 2002? >> we called it a midnight jump, even though it wasn't really midnight, but it was really dark at the lake. and so we used to take our boat kind of in that middle of callville bay, and we used to jump off of it because it's really cool to jump into water that's totally dark. and my dad just thought it was fun and silly. and that's what we did this night. for some reason, the waves were a little bit choppier than they usually were.

and so my dad was saying, "nobody jump in." and the next thing we know, he jumps in the water, and we're like, "what the heck?" and he's messing around, splashing, and he's joking around, just kind of laughing. and as he was trying to swim back to the boat, he was like, "hey, the boat's moving too fast." >> you could see his hand on the ladder? >> i remember his hand hitting it, barely hitting the ladder. that was one of my biggest memories that i was so sad about for a long time was that he barely, barely made it. >> just that close. >> yeah. yeah. 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. like, that was it. >> chris: until years after her father's disappearance, when tina got a phone call. >> chris: what emotions come over you as you deal with news like this? >> so we were all in shock. it had been 20 years. ♪ ♪

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>> my uncle was johnny pappas. one of those people that him. she would never even change her phone number. just in case he could ever call, he would have the number. 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. >> chris: so patricia even reached out directly to the clark county coroners' office, eager to provide her own dna to see if it might help to i.d. that mysterious body in the barrel. >> chris: you were ready to give your dna to see if there was a match. >> anything i could do. >> what did they tell you when you offered to give your dna? >> oh, they said they put the notes down and that was it. >> 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 persons reported information, at that time we

would certainly ask for a submission. >> chris: 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. >> the coroner called me and was like, "are you tina erndt?" and i was like, i haven't heard that name in a really long time. >> chris: after their father disappeared into the waters here % his body unrecovered, tina and her brother's lives were turned upside down, sent to live with relatives in another state. but they still imagined that someday their father would come home again. >> i really did think 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 hopeful.

>> chris: 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. >> he never got to the point where he felt like he got any closure. >> i looked at one of his facebook postings and he said, "i just wish i knew where you were." >> i think maybe he just always had hoped maybe that he was still out ther >> chris: then that phone call asking for a sample of their dna. >> it was so weird. she was like, "two ladies there on the beach stumbled upon some remains. we think that this could be your father." >> 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 blood relative to the decedent. >> what happened next? >> she calls me and she's like, "tina, it's a match." we were all in shock. >> what emotions come over you as you deal with news like this? >> i'm sad for me. you know, like, "man, th really -- this really happened. like, he's really gone." and that's really hard. but just to know that he was there gives me so much peace. if he could have died anywhere, he would've chosen that. because, i mean, that was his happy place. >> there are a lot of families out there who are desperate to know, what happened to my relative in the '70s? what happened to this guy i knew in the '80s? are they reaching out to you and saying, "can't you take another look?" >> 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. >> that's uncle john. it was probably the last time that we got to see him. >> chris: 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. >> 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, 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. >> one of the most important things to me ultimately is that we solve our investigations. if there's a way for us to forensically solve that investigation using the dna lab, we will do it. we have a 90% solve rate for a reason. >> so far, investigators have been able to determine that there are four separate victims from the seven sets of remains

that have been found. and that's bringing closure to people like tina bushman and her brother. >> history has really come to life. 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, these are human stories. >> chris: the mysterious victim in the barrel -- his story has yet to be written. but there are major developments in two of lake mead's most recent discoveries... >> we now know the identity of a body found at lake mead. >> chris: and will it bring renewe

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>> chris: so as much of an absolute wonder as this region is, especially when it's seen from overhead, it was human need, not nature's grace that created lake mead 90 years ago. where 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.

>> he knew without a doubt that one of them was not going to make it. he treaded water for as long as he could, but he knew. he even told her, "honey, do not hold onto me. you hold onto me, i'm just going to drag you down with me." >> chris: when three sets of remains from the same decedent were found in 2022, jessica condon hoped it was her late father and gave a dna sample to the coroner. >> so we did do an evaluation and determined that an individual that we were following up on as a potential lead was not a blood relative to our decedent. >> what we have found out is, so far, none of the remains are coming up as my father. if the lake doesn't give up his body, we're still okay with that. >> chris: that cross paying him tribute at the site of his passing 19 years ago. >> this was our way of giving us a place to go and have him

remembered. >> ultimate success ends when we're able to put "closed" on that case and solve it. it would be very big deal for anybody's family if that was their loved one. >> chris: the clark county coroner's office able to put a name to two more deceased people, announcing that the remains which jesus catalan found at boulder beach have been identified as 52-year-old claude russell pensinger, who disappeared in july of 1998. another body found at callville bay determined by the coroner's office in late march to be a man who had last been seen more than 50 years ago. >> this individual was reported as a drowning. it was a witnessed event that was very well documented. donald smith, and he was 39 years of age at the time of his disappearance. >> i think looking at lake mead now definitely should cause people some concern and should

cae themo ink about how should be using water effectively in a very dry part of the country. >> chris: the transformation of this lake allowing tina bushman the chance to say a final farewell to her father tom. >> i hope that he's proud when he looks down. it was really hard, but i've learned a lot and i've grown a lot and we're doing great. i remember the lake being full 20 years. and as we drove down, there was no water. and now you look at the lake and you don't even recognize it. >> chris: tina able to have a family ceremony here to celebrate his life at the waters he loved so much. >> i tell people, i'm like, "don't give up hope. you don't know if they'll be found, but if they are, it'll be really nice. but until then, don't give up hope because you never know.

>> as you just saw tonight, the lake continues to give up its secrets, with that, resolution for some families. we'll continue development in this investigation. in the meantime, that is our program for tonight. thank you for watching. i met david muir, and from all of us here at "20/20" and abc news, good night.

>> building a better bay area, moving forward, finding solutions. this is abc7news. dan: the search is over for suspected serial stab or who sought out his victims on the campus of u.c. davis. we are tracing his path back home to oakland. arrested their man. dan: he stabbed three people in total, two of whom died. ama: tim johns is in the newsroom tonight hearing from those who knew him here in oakland. reporter: he is originally from the east bay. he attended castle mott high school and spent some time at laney college. i spoke with several people who knew him and they say they are shocked. relief after the arrest of a man investigators believe is behind three stabbings near the uc davis campus. >> i'm hoping that this is the person and davis can be done

with this. rert