Human remains found by divers at Lake Mead

The National Park Service confirmed Wednesday the recovery of human skeletal remains from Lake Mead by a park service dive team following a thorough search in a section of Calville Bay on Oct. 18.

The divers scanned the underwater area after a commercial diver operating at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area discovered what appeared to be a human bone on Oct. 17, according to Park Service spokesperson Stefani Dawn.

“At this time, no foul play is suspected,” Dawn said in a statement. “The Clark County coroner’s office has been contacted to confirm the identity of the deceased.”

Clark County Public Affairs Officer Stacey Welling said the initial evidence of the human remains this month emerged as divers performed contract work at the marina in Calville Bay.

Meanwhile, on the Arizona side of the lake, the Mohave County Medical Examiner’s Office in Lake Havasu is investigating a human femur bone recovered at the recreation area and delivered by the Park Service on Sept. 29, investigative supervisor Veronica Dennis said.

The findings are the latest in a series of human bone matter found submerged or exposed on the shore of the lake, which has been receding for months amid a yearslong drought and a decline in the amount of melting snow from the Colorado Rockies that flows into the lake from the Colorado River.

The Clark County coroner’s office is still investigating several specimens of human bones found at the lake since May.

Back on Aug. 16, a park visitor found some remains beneath the water in the Boulder Beach area, Welling said.

A group of tourists also located a set of remains in the same area close to the shoreline on Aug. 6, after parts of a skeleton were discovered nearby on July 25.

The remains have not been identiifed. Authorites are trying to determine whether any of the bones belong to the same person.

Still other bones that turned up in the Calville Bay area on May 7 were determined to have been those of 46-year-old Thomas Erndt of Las Vegas, who was presumed drowned on Aug. 2, 2002. Coroner investigators made the identification based on previous reports about Erndt and by analyzing his DNA, although the exact cause of his death remains unknown.

On May 1, a passerby was shocked to see the dressed and almost intact skeleton of a murdered man, shot in the head, within a corroded metal barrel on the just-receded shoreline at Hemenway Harbor.

Las Vegas police detectives are investigating the homicide, and the coroner’s office is still attempting to identify the victim. The story attracted worldwide attention and speculation that the man may have been killed by organized criminals.

Identifying the dead through DNA sampling is complicated by the deterioration of the bones by the lake’s waters and the passage of time. Investigators have been reviewing databases of DNA provided by various people to find out if the remains rank among those on a list of potential biological relatives of the victim.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com.