Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3: Name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined as
Speaker 3: always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are you. You are here. That makes this the
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know and what will
Speaker 3: probably be the last of our sort of Hoover Dam phase.
Speaker 3: So apologies to everybody who is saying, Okay, we get it.
Speaker 3: You guys like the damn Along with Lake Mead, Hoover
Speaker 3: Dam is one of the coolest parts of Vegas. If
Speaker 3: you want the history of the Hoover Dam, check out
Speaker 3: our two parts reason it in our peer podcast Ridiculous History.
Speaker 3: And we talked a little bit about today's show in
Speaker 3: I Think a listener mail, so thanks to Jasmine out
Speaker 3: in Vegas. We we mentioned a darker phenomenon at play
Speaker 3: in this amazing place, a strange unforeseen consequence of ongoing
Speaker 3: drought and climate change. As conspirators or as investigators, he
Speaker 3: could say, because it turns out Lake Mead is a
Speaker 3: tourist attraction with some disturbing secrets. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Mafia. Sorry, I mean, that's that's true.
Speaker 3: That's that is a fact. The mafia. Especially in decades past,
Speaker 3: the Mafia was nearly synonymous with Las Vegas and the Strip,
Speaker 3: and it was kind of Authorities always downplayed it, but
Speaker 3: it was pretty much an open secret. And yeah, we'll
Speaker 3: keep the cat in.
Speaker 2: He gets it, just that joke of we where did
Speaker 2: that person disappear to? Well, you should check the lake. Well,
Speaker 2: we're gonna get to it, but let's start off by
Speaker 2: talking about the lake itself and that amazing dam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yes, and keep me honest here. We don't
Speaker 3: want too much ranting about the astonishing nature of the
Speaker 3: Hoover Dam. You can again learn about it in depth,
Speaker 3: get it in those ridiculous history episodes. But I think
Speaker 3: we have to say, if you do get a chance
Speaker 3: visit the dam, be careful around the lake and shout
Speaker 3: out to our favorite damn historian, Hoover Matt. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 3: how can we forget whover? Matt? What a lovely fellow
Speaker 3: and excellent tour guy he was, Yes, yes, and sorry,
Speaker 3: we cornered you and interviewed you on the fly there man.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Lake Meat it is huge. It's human made,
Speaker 3: it's a reservoir. It's a consequence of the dam's construction,
Speaker 3: and it's well, it's not an unforeseen consequence. They built
Speaker 3: the dam to make the lake and it's just a
Speaker 3: few miles outside of Vegas. Lake Mead is huge. It
Speaker 3: can be one hundred and twelve miles long, and it
Speaker 3: gets pretty deep when it's at full capacity. And that's
Speaker 3: a fact that's going to be important later. It's it
Speaker 3: is the reason American civilization exists the way it does.
Speaker 3: In California, Arizona, and Nevada. Millions and millions of thirsty
Speaker 3: people depend on the lake for their source of water,
Speaker 3: and a lot of farms depend on the lake as well.
Speaker 3: It's weird when you think about it. If you live
Speaker 3: in the United States, you have probably eaten something from
Speaker 3: one of those farms that depend on Lake Mead at
Speaker 3: some point in your life. So even if you never visit,
Speaker 3: you have it interacted with Lake Mead in some way,
Speaker 3: oh for sure.
Speaker 4: And the lake is in fact named after a gentleman
Speaker 4: named Elwood.
Speaker 3: Mead Shout out. Elwood is a real.
Speaker 4: Gentlemanly named Ellwood. He was the Commissioner of the US
Speaker 4: Bureau of Reclamation from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 4: Self was created in that time frame. Nowadays it is
Speaker 4: a kind of a chill place to take the kids
Speaker 4: of an afternoon to get out on the water, do
Speaker 4: a little water ski. And remember actually in the videos
Speaker 4: we saw at the Hoover Dam, they were really promoting
Speaker 4: this Lake Mead situation as lake you know.
Speaker 5: Fun in the sun with the family, get out on
Speaker 5: the water and have a good old time, play frisbee,
Speaker 5: cast you real, reel in some fish, all that good stuff.
Speaker 5: But of course, like many things that project an image
Speaker 5: of squeaky cleanliness, there is of course the dark underbelly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lakes are deep and dark the water.
Speaker 3: But before these are literally a cover up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, before you even get to that, let's talk
Speaker 2: about the dark side of that little bureau that we
Speaker 2: just mentioned, the Bureau of Reclamation that we talked about
Speaker 2: a little while back on another episode where you're talking
Speaker 2: about land rights and reclaiming, reclaiming the land really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, manifests claim from what about nature itself?
Speaker 2: We claimed this land he is ours now.
Speaker 3: Yes, then he did an old thing that for us.
Speaker 2: I don't know it was Arnold.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought that was Elwood.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's crazy to think that. You know, that bureau
Speaker 2: went across the United State what was not the United States,
Speaker 2: what was the land of North America, what we called
Speaker 2: North America, and said, hey, this this hours now and
Speaker 2: uh we we're going to drown this entire area in
Speaker 2: water splash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's seeius the communities that live there for thousands
Speaker 3: of years. Yeah, and that's not like a that's not
Speaker 3: a hot take, that's not a political ideology, and you
Speaker 3: sort of that's exactly what happened. And you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of lakes do have these darker stories. For comparison,
Speaker 3: here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, or near
Speaker 3: the city, there's a man made lake called Lake Lanier,
Speaker 3: and we mentioned it on the show in the past. Matt,
Speaker 3: I think you probably have the most familiarity with it
Speaker 3: because of where you grew up. You're a little closer
Speaker 3: to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my neighborhood had a doc I would go chill
Speaker 2: on that lake like every time, and he survived, of
Speaker 2: course I did.
Speaker 4: I cross over it on the way back to my
Speaker 4: hometown of Augusta. It's almost like the not the midway point,
Speaker 4: but it's how you kind of know you're you're you're
Speaker 4: out of a city.
Speaker 3: You know, you're sort of.
Speaker 4: Like on the way when you cross over that bridge
Speaker 4: and you see Lake Lanier on either side and it
Speaker 4: is beautiful once again, idyllic. During the summer, tons of
Speaker 4: you know, personal watercrafts were all of a sudden, like
Speaker 4: a boat salesman out there. But yeah, big time. The
Speaker 4: whole city was flooded and people lost their lives, and
Speaker 4: you know, we're they're down there still.
Speaker 2: Perhaps well, people were buried there when it got flooded, right,
Speaker 2: so like those bodies are certainly there. And then people
Speaker 2: go missing in Lake Lanier all the time.
Speaker 3: Every single year. Yeah, especially when the weather gets nicer
Speaker 3: and there are more people out because we can often
Speaker 3: you know, people, I think know the ocean can be dangerous,
Speaker 3: but I think we can sometimes underestimate the dangers posed
Speaker 3: by anybody of water, including a lake, including a river
Speaker 3: or a creek. There's one in I want to say,
Speaker 3: in the United Kingdom one of the most dangerous creeks.
Speaker 3: It looks it looks like you could just get a
Speaker 3: running start and jump over it. But it's a very
Speaker 3: deep cleft of land and uh like it's got such
Speaker 3: a pull to it that if you stick your foot in,
Speaker 3: it will be as if the water has grabbed your
Speaker 3: ankle and pulls you down.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll show you a picture.
Speaker 2: Well, I but the water is a rodent, like the
Speaker 2: edges on the like you know below where you could
Speaker 2: literally get stuck under the rock. Yeah, so be careful
Speaker 2: out there on the lake.
Speaker 3: Have fun. We don't want to be the fun police.
Speaker 3: But it is true that, just like Lake Lanier, the
Speaker 3: creation of Lake Mead to your point in No literally
Speaker 3: drowned parts of history. The Anasazi ruins were there because
Speaker 3: those communities have been in that area for thousands of years,
Speaker 3: right before the concept of America was a thing.
Speaker 2: Well so when there's this thing called the Colorado River,
Speaker 2: huge very important snake of water.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it wiggles around, Yeah it does.
Speaker 2: But it was there the whole time, right that water
Speaker 2: was constantly flowing and then you know, some humans decided
Speaker 2: to dam it up to create this lake thing. But
Speaker 2: they've been using that sorts of water that river for
Speaker 2: thousands of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it makes sense because you look at the
Speaker 3: surrounding environment pre dam and it's a little mad MAXI
Speaker 3: it's I mean, it's beautiful, but it's it's kind of arid,
Speaker 3: so you would naturally congregate towards the water. A lot
Speaker 3: of these ruins left by these ancient peoples were submerged,
Speaker 3: were drowned by the creation of Lake Mead, And the
Speaker 3: most famous is something with the cool name the Lost City.
Speaker 4: Oh Lost City. The National Park Service puts it nicely.
Speaker 4: Not all sites were drowned by the lake, but the
Speaker 4: most representative, Pueblo Grande den Nevada. The Lost City was Luckily,
Speaker 4: hundreds of sites remained above water and various artifacts were
Speaker 4: saved from the Lost City to be housed in the
Speaker 4: Lost City Museum of Archaeology in Overtent, Nevada. But for
Speaker 4: every discovery saved, myriad others were lost.
Speaker 2: Dude, the National Park Service is so funny.
Speaker 3: It's cool.
Speaker 2: It's talking about this guy who discovered it again, not
Speaker 2: discovered it. I think they put it well like that.
Speaker 2: They say it was documented in History in eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: seven by Jebediah Smith to diet. But you know, but
Speaker 2: it does say it was first seen by whites in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty side flats. Well, but it's just yeah again,
Speaker 2: it's that thing. It's that same thing. Goes back to
Speaker 2: the reclamation stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. And there's also first off, we can't say
Speaker 3: enough good stuff about the National Park Service. We're the
Speaker 3: current iteration of it. We're big fans of the work
Speaker 3: they do, and and you know, I think it speaks
Speaker 3: to the organization's credit that they're not trying to cover
Speaker 3: up some of the nastier sides of history. And then
Speaker 3: there were other more recent communities that had to be
Speaker 3: evacuated as the watchers rose. One of the most notable
Speaker 3: is Saint Thomas, Nevada. Saint Thomas, Nevada, excuse me, it
Speaker 3: went under. And this is the first controversy about lake meat.
Speaker 3: It's the controversy on the erasure of history. It's unfortunately
Speaker 3: all too familiar to those of us in the US.
Speaker 3: But this is not, by any means the only issue
Speaker 3: facing the lake. Environmental problems we talked about earlier. The
Speaker 3: lake is huge. When it's at full capacity a surface
Speaker 3: area of two hundred and forty seven square miles, but
Speaker 3: it hasn't been at full capacity for like more than
Speaker 3: forty years.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, let's let's go through some of these numbers.
Speaker 2: So early, early on, in February nineteen thirty five, when
Speaker 2: the lake first begins to fill up at its highest point,
Speaker 2: according to the National Park Service, it is at seven
Speaker 2: hundred and eight point seven feet highest point in all
Speaker 2: of Lake Mead, and it fills and fills and fills,
Speaker 2: and then it gets up to its highest point in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, so almost fifty years later, and the
Speaker 2: height is one thy two hundred and twenty five point
Speaker 2: four to four feet. That is the highest it ever got.
Speaker 3: And we don't know when it will return to that
Speaker 3: point because in the intervening decades the lake has struggled
Speaker 3: against increasingly disturbing drought conditions. The water kept going down
Speaker 3: because you know, it's a source of water for a
Speaker 3: lot of very thirsty people. And right now it's about
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty feet lower than it was in
Speaker 3: the year two thousand. The shoreline is shifting, just like
Speaker 3: the Colorado River used to do. It still does, and
Speaker 3: this meant the lake's secrets were slowly revealed. In fact,
Speaker 3: in recent years, how creepy is this? You could see
Speaker 3: this submerged the once submerged ruins of Saint Thomas, and
Speaker 3: as those waters continue to fall, we started finding bodies.
Speaker 3: We'll pause for a word from our sponsor, then dive in.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe not. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: Let's go back to the summer of twenty twenty two. Wow, yes,
Speaker 3: it was a good year.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about just the height there we were
Speaker 2: talking about. You know, two hundred and twenty five feet
Speaker 2: is the highest. Then in the summer of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: the lake is at about one thousand and forty feet,
Speaker 2: like roughly around there. So just that difference in height,
Speaker 2: think about really, think about that one hundred feet difference.
Speaker 2: What could be hidden in a hundred feet.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of feet. That's a cetipede's worth of feet.
Speaker 2: Well do you guys, do you guys remember Agrophobia I
Speaker 2: think is the name of the ride at six Flags.
Speaker 2: Oh take you, yeah, But for me, it stands two
Speaker 2: hundred feet tall and if you imagine half of that ride,
Speaker 2: and it's massive. When you look at it. Imagine half
Speaker 2: of that ride being submerged in water, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden it comes down like just for me,
Speaker 2: visualizing it like that blows my mind exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this also finds me of an episode we
Speaker 3: did years ago on car Stuff, which was entirely about
Speaker 3: cars being found in lakes and rivers as as water recedes,
Speaker 3: because as empty as those things may look, you know,
Speaker 3: the still waters literally do run deep. And people who
Speaker 3: visited the lake around this time, this summer of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, they were doing the you know, they were
Speaker 3: having a picnic, they were fishing, they were doing some
Speaker 3: water sports and along the shore they started finding skeletal remains.
Speaker 3: And when they started finding them, they found a lot
Speaker 3: in quick succession. These were not one off incidents by
Speaker 3: any means, and The Guardian. The Guardian has a great
Speaker 3: description of how this started happening. Beginning last spring.
Speaker 4: They say human remains surfaced at Lake Meat in quick succession,
Speaker 4: a body with a gunshot wound in a barrel in May,
Speaker 4: jawbone in the sand the following week, and in July,
Speaker 4: partial skeletal remains encased in mud along the shorelines. Like
Speaker 4: what you were talking about ben. In October, contractors working
Speaker 4: near a marine found more remains, and then they offer
Speaker 4: a quick timeline. The first body, being pretty much the
Speaker 4: most sinister and ominous of these, was discovered on May first,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two, the second just six days later on
Speaker 4: May seventh, Another July twenty fifth, and then another on
Speaker 4: August sixth, pretty quick succession, and one final one well
Speaker 4: not final but for this run another on August fifteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when people are hearing this is important to remember.
Speaker 3: When people are hearing about this, locals in the area,
Speaker 3: they are not getting a lot of information. They don't
Speaker 3: know if these bodies are recent, and that, you know,
Speaker 3: that sparks public concern and the population is asking is
Speaker 3: there a crime wave? Are there you know, a real
Speaker 3: killers or something active here? And police move quickly to
Speaker 3: shut down that speculation, and they quote in a public
Speaker 3: statement they say the back to back discoveries are not
Speaker 3: an indication of a serial killer, but rather the consequences
Speaker 3: of the environmental disaster, draining the lake and uncovering bodies
Speaker 3: that have been lost to the water. Most are suspected
Speaker 3: to be accidental deaths, but one case, the remains found
Speaker 3: in a barrel. That case is being investigated as a homicide,
Speaker 3: and it should. It sounds downright ghoulish, doesn't it. I mean,
Speaker 3: the only the only times, the only times people consensually
Speaker 3: die in barrels in the water is when they're trying
Speaker 3: to do that Niagara falls stunt you know, which is illegal,
Speaker 3: by the way, don't do it.
Speaker 4: Or that scene from the Hobbit. Isn't that a thing
Speaker 4: where they're flowing down the barrels? Yeah, they survived, but
Speaker 4: they were also you know, I think a good size for.
Speaker 3: It, Yes, they were the Hobbits or barrel size.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. In general, people don't take firearms into a
Speaker 2: barrel they're being encased in.
Speaker 3: No, well, I mean, you know, we wouldn't recommend it, right.
Speaker 2: No, probably a bad idea.
Speaker 3: There are other things. Go to an amusement park instead
Speaker 3: if you're if you're trying to get out and do stunts.
Speaker 3: But uh yeah, it shows us a fact that people
Speaker 3: don't really acknowledge. We talked about at the top. Lakes
Speaker 3: can be very dangerous. It's easy to fall from a boat,
Speaker 3: to miscalculate a swim, to injure yourself somewhere beyond the
Speaker 3: reach of help. And so people can just disappear in
Speaker 3: these large lakes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a real danger. And just going back to
Speaker 2: lake linear of people who are just hanging out, playing
Speaker 2: right off, swimming off a boat. But then there's this
Speaker 2: desire to like touch the bottom. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you guys had that when you're a kid.
Speaker 4: Thank you, No kid, I get it, but the bottom
Speaker 4: freaks me out. I always found it slimy and gross,
Speaker 4: and I would do anything I could to avoid touching
Speaker 4: the bottom.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is mean speak off the top of the
Speaker 2: dome here, but I think there's a real problem where
Speaker 2: people underestimate the depth of some of these lakes. They
Speaker 2: would try and go down and you can either get
Speaker 2: caught on something down there, or you've just overestimate. You
Speaker 2: thought you were gonna be able to push up from
Speaker 2: the bottom and get this tremendous amount of force going
Speaker 2: back up, but you're unable to breach the bottom, so
Speaker 2: you can't and it's and then it's it's over. It's
Speaker 2: just ra god, it's it's scary.
Speaker 3: Oh. Now I remember the name of that name, that
Speaker 3: creepy river I was talking about the United Kingdom. It's
Speaker 3: called the strid If anybody wants to look that up too.
Speaker 3: It's st r I D And everything that we just
Speaker 3: said about lakes applies to that thing too, so be careful. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's misleading because the lake can look calm and
Speaker 3: as we said, sedate, but unfortunately, unfortunately people made some
Speaker 3: fatal mistakes. The first corpse discovered, the first remains. As
Speaker 3: you said, no, they're by far the most ominous. It's
Speaker 3: a corpse in a metal barrel, think like an oil drum,
Speaker 3: and you can see photographs of this online. The person
Speaker 3: inside was not a recent death. They had been murdered
Speaker 3: with a gunshot to the head forty years ago, and
Speaker 3: authorities knew that. The only way they found this person,
Speaker 3: who remains unidentified, it's due to the ongoing drought because
Speaker 3: water levels were lower. Yeah, And Lieutenant Ray Spencer spoke
Speaker 3: with the public and with the press about this. He
Speaker 3: is a part of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department,
Speaker 3: and speaking to the New York Times, he said, it's
Speaker 3: really odd in the sense that had the lake never receded,
Speaker 3: we would never have discovered this body. The killers would
Speaker 3: have gotten away.
Speaker 2: Wow. And that would have been around the time like
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four, right nineteen eighty three, that's when the
Speaker 2: lake was at its highest. So it does make sense
Speaker 2: that whoever killed this person put him in a barrel
Speaker 2: and then put the barrel in the lake would have
Speaker 2: felt super confident that that body's gone forever.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there were a couple of things that in
Speaker 3: a murder mystery might be considered almost red herrings too,
Speaker 3: because shortly after the discovery of that body in the barrel,
Speaker 3: some other people found a barrel, but it was empty,
Speaker 3: so we don't know if, like the there was a
Speaker 3: body in it or if it's just a random barrel.
Speaker 3: And then a journalist later found I was reading this
Speaker 3: on the police department's twitter a journalist found a gun
Speaker 3: near where the barrel with a body was discovered. And
Speaker 3: then they said something weird that stood out to me.
Speaker 3: I think it's just a strange side note, the police said, hey,
Speaker 3: firearms are often found at the lake, so we don't
Speaker 3: know whether this one's related to the murder or any murders.
Speaker 3: How often are people leaving guns at the lake?
Speaker 2: Ah, dude, I bet it's way more often than.
Speaker 3: Am I a sucker for guns? Should I just like
Speaker 3: go to a lake?
Speaker 4: And wait, well, you do often hear and see people
Speaker 4: throwing guns into rivers and lakes off of bridges, and
Speaker 4: it's a pretty popular way of getting rid of a gun.
Speaker 4: The chances are if you drag a lake or a river,
Speaker 4: you're gonna find some firearms, probably that have some bodies
Speaker 4: on them.
Speaker 2: Well, if we've talked before, one of the yeah that's grizzly,
Speaker 2: one of the ways to get rid of evidence is
Speaker 2: to have water interact with it.
Speaker 3: Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's up pretty high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially anything that has an organic component to it.
Speaker 2: But even with a gun, if you're talking about fingerprints
Speaker 2: or you know, it's rust developing on something that's metal,
Speaker 2: waters probably a smart way to go.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I think you're right. Yeah, it makes me we
Speaker 3: haven't talked about this on air, but I've been deep
Speaker 3: into a lot of the weird stuff that happens in
Speaker 3: Hurricane Katrina. To your point, there's a lot of opportunity
Speaker 3: for chaos there, you know, and crime. Maybe a story
Speaker 3: for another day, but I think you're I think you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right. I mean, it is grizzly, but it's also honest.
Speaker 3: And Spencer acknowledges this. He makes a chilling prediction. In
Speaker 3: his conversations with The New York Times and other members
Speaker 3: of the press. He says, look, the drop in the
Speaker 3: lake's water level is going to continue, which means we're
Speaker 3: going to find other bodies. And he was on the
Speaker 3: money with it.
Speaker 4: And dude, I'm sorry, added back to the firearm thing.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's a ton of guns in.
Speaker 3: Lake me It's the perfect place.
Speaker 4: You know, people do a crime in the desert and
Speaker 4: they tossed the gun. That's exactly what happens. I bet
Speaker 4: you they would.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for a long time you could drive You
Speaker 3: could just drive right by Lake met right, we drive
Speaker 3: over the Hoover Dam. You don't even have to stop
Speaker 3: the car.
Speaker 4: Ben, I'm I think I've mentioned Ben and Matt. I'm
Speaker 4: taking a trip where I'm doing a driving thing from
Speaker 4: Vegas to l A, going through Joshua Tree.
Speaker 5: Is that on the way?
Speaker 4: Is am I going to pass Lake Mead on that journey.
Speaker 3: If you're leaving Las Vegas? Hah, I think it'd be
Speaker 3: worth it if you have time, just a little detour
Speaker 3: and do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going through Joshua Tree and then all the
Speaker 4: way to La so Joshua Tree is on the on
Speaker 4: the way, but we can there's a couple of little detours.
Speaker 3: We can make.
Speaker 4: We're actually not in a rush, So I rented as
Speaker 4: a Mini Cooper convertible, y'all.
Speaker 3: Isn't that the y thing? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Lake Mead is just so you know, to the east
Speaker 2: and then you're headed like southwest. Basically, Yeah, sour got it.
Speaker 3: Well, detour, I think so.
Speaker 4: I remember, guys, when we saw the Hoover Dam, just
Speaker 4: when we came up on it from a distance, it
Speaker 4: was like, you know, genuinely quite breathtaking.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ok, what did my dad called it? The audacity
Speaker 3: or something. It's like it's as if we spat in
Speaker 3: the face of God or something like that. It's a dramatic, dude,
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's also there's another chilling thing that Spencer
Speaker 3: mentions at the conclusion of his interview. He said that
Speaker 3: the National Park Service finds one or two bodies at
Speaker 3: Lake Mead every year minimum, and so it's not uncommon
Speaker 3: to work a homicide out by the lake. And this
Speaker 3: is something the locals of the town are all aware of,
Speaker 3: right and given the timeframe of the disappearance of the
Speaker 3: body and the barrel. It's not implausible to imagine that
Speaker 3: this person may have been murdered by the mob, or
Speaker 3: may have been murdered by another kind of organized crime,
Speaker 3: like a motorcycle gang. We really don't know. We do
Speaker 3: know the mob had a lot of influence over Vegas
Speaker 3: at the time. According to the police. This person's clothing
Speaker 3: and footwear it looks to be from the seventies or
Speaker 3: the early nineteen eighties. And that's at this point, that's
Speaker 3: one of our best clues, just because it helps us
Speaker 3: figure out, you know, who the who the murderers might
Speaker 3: have been, who was an active murderer at that time.
Speaker 3: And this puts the Vagus Mob Museum in a really
Speaker 3: intriguing position because it turns out they're the perfect resource
Speaker 3: on mob murders and they they actually know the truth,
Speaker 3: you know, pass the fiction and past the the tropes. Right,
Speaker 3: Like the old idea of giving someone cement shoes, it's
Speaker 3: very dramatic, It looks great on film, it has happened
Speaker 3: in real life, but it's not as good as putting
Speaker 3: someone in a container.
Speaker 2: Especially you put other stuff in that container, you know,
Speaker 2: like some cement or something to make it super heavy,
Speaker 2: or something that dissolves bodies.
Speaker 3: M yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the problem logically, and
Speaker 3: this is a bit grulish, but the problem with putting
Speaker 3: concrete on people's feet and tie them up and dropping
Speaker 3: them in water is that as the body decays, limbs
Speaker 3: will start to separate and they will float the surface,
Speaker 3: right right right. So the body in a barrel is
Speaker 3: a good it's a container method, you know, and it
Speaker 3: lengthens your window of time before the decay sets in
Speaker 3: and the barrel erodes and you start to see things
Speaker 3: float to the surface. So the more you know, I guess. Also,
Speaker 3: don't they bury a lot of people in the desert
Speaker 3: in Vegas are didn't they during this time? Yeah?
Speaker 2: They did all I don't know. I don't know if
Speaker 2: they did or not, but sure it makes sense. I
Speaker 2: imagine the wildlife that you know isn't isn't super plentiful
Speaker 2: out in the desert or or eat you know, in
Speaker 2: the lake even probably, But scavengers will help get the
Speaker 2: job done as well.
Speaker 3: That's true. That's true. And we know that this person
Speaker 3: found in a barrel is a peak example of the
Speaker 3: problems with identifying bodies recovered this way, especially at Lake Mead.
Speaker 3: Lake Mead is a more difficult environment than a lot
Speaker 3: of other lakes, and we learned this from a forensic anthropologist,
Speaker 3: doctor Jennifer Burns. Burns says, the reservoir is so large
Speaker 3: that it had you know, has currents, so it can
Speaker 3: move a body from where it was drowned or dumped
Speaker 3: and then cause it to break apart. So at least
Speaker 3: some of the bodies that were in the lake are
Speaker 3: never going to be found because they were essentially like
Speaker 3: dismembered than disintegrated by the natural motions of the water.
Speaker 3: And then, like you said, Matt, scavengers. Scavengers will feed
Speaker 3: on a body and it will make it very difficult
Speaker 3: to determine an identity, right because fingerprints are going to
Speaker 3: be out. You can't always rely on dental records, and
Speaker 3: if someone has died before the advent of DNA testing,
Speaker 3: then you don't really have a way to conduct those tests,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is creeping out, guys, It's it's creepy stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is ominous and creepy again, chilling, But we
Speaker 3: do have somewhat good news. We don't want to have
Speaker 3: it all be a march into the dark. So we're
Speaker 3: gonna pause for a word from our sponsors, and we'll
Speaker 3: return with a little bit of good news, and we're back, guys.
Speaker 4: Is part of the creepiness of this, the act of
Speaker 4: kind of imagine yourself being under there, being eaten by.
Speaker 3: Crabs, sort of. I don't know, just like there's something
Speaker 3: there's there's something about a watery grave.
Speaker 4: I think in general that is just very unsettling and
Speaker 4: very Edgar Allan Poe esque or something, you know, very
Speaker 4: uh yeah, goth.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, we all have such tremendous imaginations.
Speaker 2: Some people are listening to this imagining that right drowning.
Speaker 2: Some people are imagining, uh, you know, hiding a body there.
Speaker 2: It just depends on I guess.
Speaker 3: We're all gonna have weird dreams tonight, I think, uh,
Speaker 3: and tell us about yours, fellow conspiracy realist. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it is. There is something haunting about the concept, right
Speaker 3: that this tourist attraction, this local hangout spot, this source
Speaker 3: of economy and life for so many people, is also
Speaker 3: essentially a graveyard, a watery graveyard. Okay, we said good news,
Speaker 3: we promised something like good news. Thankfully, despite all the
Speaker 3: difficulties some of the bodies recovered from Lake Mead over
Speaker 3: time have been identified. One is like folks like Donald Smith,
Speaker 3: who drowned in nineteen seventy four when he's thirty nine
Speaker 3: years old, or Thomas Earned, a forty two year old
Speaker 3: who disappeared at the lake in August of two thousand
Speaker 3: and two, and then Claude Russell Pensinger who disappeared in
Speaker 3: July of nineteen ninety eight. Those last three, all those
Speaker 3: identifications were made using DNA analysis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and while it's still tragic, at the very least,
Speaker 4: it is a closing of the loop for loved ones
Speaker 4: who know at least know what happened.
Speaker 3: To these people. Yeah, Yeah, and I think that's really
Speaker 3: important thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think more more important, more important than anyone
Speaker 4: who has never been through something like this might ever realize.
Speaker 4: You know, just have knowing what happened. You see it
Speaker 4: all the time, you know, and stories are people just
Speaker 4: you know, what's the word, carrying a torch for somebody
Speaker 4: for the rest of their life because they had no
Speaker 4: I have no idea what actually happened to them. And
Speaker 4: it can be something that haunts you daily and can
Speaker 4: like really ruin your quality of life. So just the
Speaker 4: knowing sometimes at the very least, allows people to move on.
Speaker 3: And we see that the police are not the only
Speaker 3: folks who are investigating. They're not the only folks who
Speaker 3: are making predictions here. Steve Schaeffer is a longtime local
Speaker 3: resident and owns an environmental services company called Earth Resource Group.
Speaker 3: He spoke to the press his company is working to
Speaker 3: uncover bodies and he predicts there will definitely be more
Speaker 3: as the water continues to fall.
Speaker 2: Well, and the question is is it going to continue
Speaker 2: to fall? We were by some of the reporting we
Speaker 2: were looking at back in twenty twenty three was projecting,
Speaker 2: or at least the research and people, i'm sure like
Speaker 2: Steve Schaeffer who's looking at water levels and monitoring them
Speaker 2: very closely along with the National Park Service, they were
Speaker 2: projecting that the lake is just going to continue to
Speaker 2: fall and fall and fall. But thankfully, since some of
Speaker 2: these bodies have been discovered, though, lake has risen a bit.
Speaker 2: Back in Gosh it was twenty twenty two. In the
Speaker 2: summer of twenty twenty two, projections were that in July
Speaker 2: of this year twenty twenty four, Lake Mead would be
Speaker 2: way down to one thy thirteen feet, but thankfully in March.
Speaker 2: As of March eighteenth, lake Mead was at one thousand
Speaker 2: and seventy six feet roughly, which is again not the
Speaker 2: height that anyone really wants it to be. They want
Speaker 2: it to be quite a bit higher than that, but
Speaker 2: it is better. And when summertime comes around, the snow
Speaker 2: melt is one of the major things that actually fills
Speaker 2: Lake Mead because it increases flow from the Colorado River
Speaker 2: heading into the lake. So hopefully it's actually gonna build
Speaker 2: itself back up a little bit. Hopefully.
Speaker 3: Hopefully we'll see because the big question, for the big
Speaker 3: question for all the experts now is something like is
Speaker 3: that a one step forward, two steps back situation, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Like, will the will it fill
Speaker 3: up the way it does with the snow melt as
Speaker 3: you mentioned, and then will we still have the same
Speaker 3: amount of snowfall year over year as the years continue.
Speaker 2: But there was also a record rainfall for quite a
Speaker 2: bit at the beginning of twenty twenty four where they
Speaker 2: were getting like zero point three point four inches of rain,
Speaker 2: which is big, way higher, way higher than they usually get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there are two concepts of play here. One
Speaker 3: is that when the waters rise, it's better for the communities,
Speaker 3: right as water becomes an increasingly precious resource in the Southwest.
Speaker 3: And then the problem with that is as waters rise,
Speaker 3: it becomes increasingly impossible to find the bodies of these victims.
Speaker 3: So sometimes there are conflicting interest you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, guys, did you read about the bomber.
Speaker 3: That yeah, yeah, yeah, like a plane strata fortress?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what are the super fortress what they call
Speaker 2: super fortres, Yeah, is a B twenty nine bomber. This huge.
Speaker 2: If you've ever watched a World War two movie that
Speaker 2: gets out in especially into the Pacific conflict out there,
Speaker 2: you know, by Japan and all of that, you have
Speaker 2: seen this airplane or depictions of this airplane iconic. It's huge.
Speaker 2: It's a huge bomber that's supposed to fly at pretty
Speaker 2: crazy altitudes. And one of these is just sitting in
Speaker 2: Lake Mead and as the waters went down, you could
Speaker 2: the dang things sticking.
Speaker 3: Out, Yeah, crashed into the lake. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is this is, by the way, the plane that
Speaker 2: dropped the only it's the only vehicle that's ever dropped
Speaker 2: atomic bombs in the history of mankind, at least on
Speaker 2: as an attack rather than.
Speaker 3: A test, and it got buried. It got it got
Speaker 3: a watery grave. It got buried in the lake. Yep,
Speaker 3: so this is a graveyard that accepts more than just humans.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but the humans who were flying that thing
Speaker 2: did survive all five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the plane that was the fatality there. And look,
Speaker 3: there's something else. There is a larger issue at play
Speaker 3: because Lake Meat is not the only place where the
Speaker 3: water has been dropping. Elephant well, we'll say Elephant Button
Speaker 3: Reservoir in New Mexico. These guys were having a bachelor
Speaker 3: party and they walked past the shoreline of the reservoir
Speaker 3: and they found a fossilized mastodon skull. It's like millions
Speaker 3: of years old. What a cool bachelor party.
Speaker 2: How did they get it back to their apartment?
Speaker 3: No? I think they were like, it belongs in the
Speaker 3: museum type dudes.
Speaker 2: You really?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they didn't do a mastodon heist. But then
Speaker 3: we saw in Utah in twenty twenty one Lake Powell
Speaker 3: the waters receded and scientists were able to access these
Speaker 3: newly emerged indigenous dwellings that are ancient. And then they
Speaker 3: also found a car that had plunged off a cliff earlier,
Speaker 3: and people thought it disappeared.
Speaker 2: WHOA.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of abandoned vehicles and rivers and
Speaker 3: lakes across the US, and most of these are the
Speaker 3: result of purposeful abandonment or accidents, but statistically speaking, some
Speaker 3: of them are also the result of foul play. If
Speaker 3: you think about it, the car is working like a
Speaker 3: bigger barrel, which is also pretty gruesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, should we tell anybody what are the strategies if
Speaker 2: your vehicle ever gets in the water.
Speaker 3: First thing you should do is have one of those
Speaker 3: handy little devices. You can buy them anywhere, like you
Speaker 3: probably find them on Amazon, and you're looking for something
Speaker 3: that has a small blade in the handle so that
Speaker 3: you can cut the seat belt and break the window right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they'll have a little metal nubbin on there and
Speaker 3: you can use that to crack the glass.
Speaker 2: Yep, because you will get stuck in that pressurized you know.
Speaker 4: You can't just open the door, and that glass is
Speaker 4: kind of breakaway. It's not going to like slice you
Speaker 4: up if you're careful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's also not a situation you ever want
Speaker 3: to be in. It's startling, and it's the stuff of nightmares,
Speaker 3: right to realize just how how many cars in particular
Speaker 3: out there under the water. And this leads us to
Speaker 3: ask a question we asked a few years back with
Speaker 3: the South Pole, right, what's under the Antarctic ice? What
Speaker 3: else is going to emerge from the water in the
Speaker 3: coming years? And speaking of haunting images, I can't get
Speaker 3: it out of my head, you guys. The barrel gets discovered,
Speaker 3: and then there's you know, a nice enough gentleman retired,
Speaker 3: still lives in Vegas, a quiet life as a businessman.
Speaker 3: You know, he probably has grandkids. He hears the news
Speaker 3: and he starts to lose sleep because the past returns
Speaker 3: to us, you know what I mean, Like what if
Speaker 3: the killers are still out there? And this is where
Speaker 3: we leave it. As investigations continue, the authorities are cooperating
Speaker 3: with multiple academics and experts to try to figure out
Speaker 3: the identity of so many of these people, and public
Speaker 3: speculation is increasingly verging into the realm of conspiracy. But
Speaker 3: everyone seems to agree on at least one thing. More
Speaker 3: bodies are on the way, their identities, ander of their deaths,
Speaker 3: and the motives behind those deaths. That's the stuff that
Speaker 3: someone doesn't want you to know, and we at this point,
Speaker 3: you know, I think here's a good question we could
Speaker 3: ask our fellow listeners today, guys, for people who hike
Speaker 3: a lot, who have traveled out in the wild, what's
Speaker 3: the weirdest random thing you've seen in the woods. You know,
Speaker 3: like remember the stories about someone just finding staircases in
Speaker 3: the woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's okay, whoa, Yeah that is greedy. Found little
Speaker 2: kids shoes one time on a hike, and again you
Speaker 2: know it's probably family went camping or something and like
Speaker 2: was moving their stuff and kid left it. But man,
Speaker 2: that was an uncomfortable moment.
Speaker 4: Well, this is a location where you're gonna find this stuff,
Speaker 4: and we've talked about it on the show, but there's
Speaker 4: a very weird walking trail here in Atlanta called Doll's
Speaker 4: Head Trail, and it is decorated with like super pet cemetery.
Speaker 3: We ask creepy.
Speaker 4: Dismembered dolls and children's you know toys, you know, vintage
Speaker 4: kind of stuff, and it's all exposed to the element,
Speaker 4: so they're all kind of rotted and like one eyed,
Speaker 4: and it's yeah, I wouldn't necessarily take that hike at night,
Speaker 4: but it's a really cool one during the day.
Speaker 2: I'll give you one more weird example of a thing
Speaker 2: I found at the river. This time, I was hiking
Speaker 2: with a buddy of mine and just to go meet
Speaker 2: out for a little bit. Had my son with me,
Speaker 2: he had his daughters with him, and we were just
Speaker 2: walking along the river and we stumbled upon I guess
Speaker 2: it was a couple doing a photo shoot that was
Speaker 2: very risky while waiting in the river, and we were
Speaker 2: all very confused and couldn't figure out why it was
Speaker 2: happening out in the open, just with a bunch of
Speaker 2: families walking around that risk Well, okay, it was risky
Speaker 2: for me maybe.
Speaker 4: Okay, dude, do you guys remember the band Toady's or
Speaker 4: the Toady's.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: Actually, they had one kind of radio song. It was
Speaker 4: called Possum Kingdom, which I always thought was a really
Speaker 4: creepy and unsettling name, And in the video it depicts
Speaker 4: a dude like dragging a body to a lake and
Speaker 4: the lyrics are like behind the boat house, I will
Speaker 4: show you my dark secret, and then it goes to
Speaker 4: at the end, do.
Speaker 3: You want to die? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Do you want to die? It's like totally about murdering
Speaker 4: somebody and Barry and and dumping their body.
Speaker 3: In a lake.
Speaker 4: But I just googled it because I just have this
Speaker 4: nostalgia blast. And it's named after a state park in
Speaker 4: Texas called Possum Kingdom Lake State Park. What a name
Speaker 4: for a place, The idea of a possum kingdom that
Speaker 4: just sounds so sinister to me.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm proud of them. More rights for the possums, indeed. Good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and uh oh man, I've seen some strange things out there,
Speaker 3: but I probably wouldn't sitting on air just weird stuff.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I found a body one time, like like, uh yeah.
Speaker 2: Just just say kind of where.
Speaker 3: Okay, No, but if you do want to see bodies
Speaker 3: in the woods, you can go to the Tennessee Body Farm.
Speaker 3: That's still there, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Josh and Chuck having a Stuff you should know
Speaker 2: rather has an episode on that, and I think we've
Speaker 2: talked about it quite a bit at least the Old
Speaker 2: House of Work todays we were all about bodies and
Speaker 2: how they decay at the Old Body Farm.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we've had We've had quite a few interests
Speaker 3: over the course of our careers. We want you to
Speaker 3: share your interest with us. What's the strangest thing you've
Speaker 3: seen out there in the wild. We try to be
Speaker 3: easy to find online.
Speaker 4: Indeed, you'd find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
Speaker 4: we exist, on Facebook, on Twitter, fka X no other
Speaker 4: way around, you know the one, and also on YouTube,
Speaker 4: where you can find a new video content of fabulous
Speaker 4: second addition to the George Washington Time travel series is
Speaker 4: out now. Check it out, share it with your friends.
Speaker 4: Get Maddie's song stuck in your head, and get Ben's
Speaker 4: shrieking existentially horrified George Washington haunting your dreams.
Speaker 2: Oh but this one, this one's all about No, you're right.
Speaker 4: It is the joy of why this one is like, Oh,
Speaker 4: that's what makes me smile.
Speaker 3: You're right. Check it out. Just just be surprised the
Speaker 3: emotional roller coaster.
Speaker 4: Indeed, you can also find into the handle Conspiracy Stuff
Speaker 4: show on Instagram and TikTok.
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