Lindsey Melvin's invitation to go paddleboarding at Lake Mead last May began with a morbid joke.
“I texted my sister, and I said, ‘Sister, do you want to go to the lake and look for bodies?’” Melvin said.
Just days earlier, on May 1, 2022, someone had discovered a metal drum with a dead man inside. He had been murdered.
Ravaged by drought, the nation's largest reservoir is currently filled to less than 30% of its capacity. Land that hasn't been seen in decades is now exposed all around Lake Mead, which is on the Arizona-Nevada border.
This brings to light the lake's secrets with discoveries of the missing and the murdered.
During her trip, Melvin said she and her sister were walking on the sand for just minutes before they found a skull.
“We dug around a little bit - just trying to move the sand away from the bones,” Melvin said. “It was when we saw the jawbone. That's when we knew for sure that this was a human.”
Two other sets of human remains were found last year. All four discoveries happened in popular tourist areas: Hemenway Harbor, Boulder Beach, and Callville Bay.
Authorities say it’s likely more skeletal remains will be found. Lake Mead's depth dropped nearly 60 feet from early 2020 to summer 2022, which created miles of new shoreline.
“It's a natural place to get rid of a body quickly,” said Northern Arizona University Professor Sharon Kay Moses. “I would imagine in just about any large body of water, that underwent something similar like this, you would find the same thing.”
Prof. Moses teaches forensic anthropology. She explained the process to go from a skeletal discovery to identifying who died and how.
“It's all like putting together a puzzle,” Moses said.
The first step, she said, is to dig around the area and take samples. Buttons, shoes and jewelry could still be around the body stuck in the mud. An examination of the bones can determine the deceased's sex, approximate age, and sometimes the cause of death.
The federal government keeps a database of more than 23,000 active missing person cases in the United States. With such a large group of possible victims, other small clues, like a broken bone that healed, dental work, or screws or metal plates from surgery, can help narrow down the identity.
“Once that is exhausted, then you turn to the DNA profiles to see what you can possibly match up that way,” Moses said.
In Texas, Tina Bushman received that request for DNA. Her dad, Thomas Erndt, drowned in Lake Mead more than 20 years ago during a late-night swim with his family.
“He really was in his favorite place,” Bushman said. “He wanted to be cremated and thrown in the lake which is kind of ironic."
Bushman’s DNA matched with the skeletal remains that the Melvin sisters had discovered. In an interview last November, she wanted other families of missing persons to “have hope.”
In the past few weeks, Lake Mead's water level rose several feet. Some of what the drought exposed is now going back underwater. The lake slowly claws back its secrets of the deep.
Contact ABC15 investigator Melissa with news tips at Melissa.Blasius@abc15.com or 602-685-6362. You can also connect on Twitter and Facebook.
