Gangster bodies rarely surface, but climate change has its ways of affecting the mafia too… The chronic drought that has hit Las Vegas is beginning to reveal the city’s darkest secrets.
Lake Mead, very close to the Las Vegas casino district, has dropped to an all-time high, revealing a pile of debris… and corpses. But one of the bodies caught the attention of the gang’s experts: the skeleton of a man who had been shot through the head, stuffed into a barrel and dumped in a lake four decades ago. “Gangs tended to put people in barrels, whether they were going to throw them in a lake or a field,” said Jeff Schumacher of the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. “This is the first. Second, the person gets shot in the head, which is a traditional gang killing technique. And thirdly, we know that this happened between the late 70s and early 80s (when) gangs were very strong in Las Vegas. .”
oasis
An oasis of hotels, casinos and brothels arose in the scorching desert of 20th-century Nevada. Las Vegas was built in 1905, but work on the nearby Hoover Dam did not begin until the 1930s, when its population skyrocketed. The influx of builders, mostly unmarried men, created an entertainment market that included sex workers and dancers with facilitator game legislation. Where there is sex, casinos and alcohol, there is organized crime. “Gangs played a huge role in the development of Las Vegas from the 1940s to the 1980s,” Schumacher said. The city prospered in the post-war period and became the gambling and nightlife capital of the world. “People would come to Las Vegas and think, ‘Maybe if I go to a bar, there will be a gangster next to me,’” Schumacher added.
“cold-blooded killers”
But “the truth was that these guys were cold-blooded killers. They were thieves. If you had to get around the gangs somehow… there were definitely consequences.” Las Vegas police are still investigating a body found in a barrel on Lake Mead earlier this year, and in response to inquiries, AFP said only that an investigation was ongoing. But Schumacher has his own theories about the identity of the victim.
One of these theories is that it was Jay Vandermark who worked at the Stardust Hotel, which at the time was run by Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal on behalf of the Chicago gang. Rosenthal, played by Robert De Niro in the movie Casino, transferred some of his organization’s proceeds until the scheme came to the attention of the authorities. Shortly thereafter, Vandermark disappeared. However, it remains more likely that the body found in the barrel belonged to Harry Pappas, who was also associated with the Chicago gang. “One of the added benefits of visiting Las Vegas is that if you are a professional player… you will be taken by boat to Lake Mead,” Schumacher said. He continued: “Stardust had a boat and Harry Pappas was in charge of arranging Lake Mead tours for the hotel’s wealthy clients. Shortly before his disappearance, he told his wife that he was going to have lunch with someone who was interested in buying a boat. “We never saw Harry Pappas again.”
Lake Mead is a huge reservoir on the Colorado River formed by the Hoover Dam, but is currently only a quarter full due to drought and high temperatures caused by climate change. While this trend won’t stabilize anytime soon, the drop in water levels could reveal new Mafia-related mysteries.