Man Found in a Barrel at Lake Mead Is Identified After Four Years

Las Vegas authorities on Thursday named the man whose body was found in a rusted barrel at Lake Mead in 2022. He was Edward Lelburian Jackson, an Arkansas man who was shot once in the head and killed in the early 1980s, officials said.

Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse said Jackson was in his mid to late 50s when he died. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide Lt. Robert Price said the case is still an unsolved murder, and detectives are asking anyone with information to come forward.

Found as the water fell

Boaters found the barrel on May 1, 2022, near Hemenway Harbor, as drought and heavy water use pulled Lake Mead down and exposed shoreline that had been underwater for decades. The barrel was badly corroded. Inside were the remains of a man wearing light blue jeans, a striped short sleeve button-down shirt, sneakers and a silver Timex watch.

Police estimated at the time that he had been killed between the mid 1970s and the early 1980s, based in part on his clothes and shoes. Where the barrel came to rest would once have been well offshore, back when the reservoir was far fuller.

The barrel was the first of four sets of human remains found at Lake Mead in 2022. The other three were identified earlier. Jackson was the last of the four to get his name back.

DNA, genealogy and a long wait

Naming him took more than four years. A body kept in water for decades is hard to identify, and Jackson's DNA was not on file. The FBI lab in Quantico built a composite face from his remains, and officials released it to the public in 2023.

In early 2024, a bone sample sent for genealogy profiling came back with a possible match that was close to his family but not strong enough to confirm. The break came earlier this year, when forensic scientists at Oklahoma State University pointed investigators to a strong lead. A DNA packet sent to a person believed to be a relative then matched Jackson, Rouse said.

Price called the identification a "piece of the puzzle" and said detectives will keep digging as more pieces come in.

A man who moved around

Jackson, known to family as Buddy, was believed to be from Hot Springs, Arkansas. His family last saw him in Arkansas in the early 1980s. They never reported him missing. He traveled the country, Price said, and would show up when he showed up, so relatives assumed he was out and about.

Records place him in California, where he lived with his wife in the early 1970s, and in Utah. In Salt Lake City in the early 1980s he faced charges of aggravated arson and conspiracy to commit fraud, Price said. He was married for a short time and had no known children.

Investigators found no ties between Jackson and Las Vegas, and they still do not know why he was there.

Mob talk, no proof

The find set off years of talk about the mob. Las Vegas was built in part by organized crime, and a body in a barrel is a method long linked to mob killings. Price addressed that head on. Police have no information to support the organized crime theories, he said, though they have not ruled a connection out.

For now, the known facts are narrower. A man who liked to travel was shot, sealed in a barrel and left in a reservoir that kept his secret until the water fell. Police say the case will stay open until it is solved.