Remains found in Lake Mead identified as Las Vegas man missing for 25 years

Nevada officials have identified remains found in Lake Mead as those of a Las Vegas man missing for 25 years, the latest development in a quest to identify a series of bodies discovered in America’s largest reservoir last year.

On three different days last summer, visitors at a beach on the lake discovered skeletal remains along the shoreline. The Clark county coroner’s office announced on Thursday that those remains belonged to the same person, now identified as as Claude Russell Pensinger, who disappeared on 14 July 1998 at the age of 52.

Pensinger is the third person the office has identified after several sets of remains emerged from the lake amid a devastating drought that has severely depleted the reservoir.

Water levels at Lake Mead, a popular recreation site that hosted more than 7 million visitors last year, have been at record lows due to a drought that has gripped the region for nearly two decades. The dry spell in the Colorado River basin, along with overextraction, extreme heat and decreased snowmelt, has uncovered large swaths of the lake bed.

Beginning last spring, human remains surfaced at Lake Mead in quick succession: a body with a gunshot wound in a barrel in May, a jawbone in the sand the following week, and in July, partial skeletal remains encased in mud along the shoreline. In October, contractors working near a marina found more remains.

The back-to-back discoveries were not an indication of a serial killer, experts cautioned, but rather the consequence of the environmental disaster draining the lake and uncovering bodies that had once been lost to the water. Most are suspected to be accidental deaths but one case, the remains found in a barrel, is being investigated as a homicide. The local mob museum said a barrel was historically a mob method for disposing of bodies.

The coroner’s office team have identified two other sets of remains, both Las Vegas-area men who are believed to have drowned – Donald P Smith, a 39-year-old last seen in April 1974, and Thomas Erndt, a 42-year-old last seen at the lake in August 2002. All three identifications were made using DNA analysis.

The cause and manner of Pensinger’s death is undetermined, the coroner’s office said. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Pensinger was fishing on the lake when he disappeared and his boat was later found running in circles in the water.

Pensinger’s brother said the pair were fishing together on the lake that day, in separate boats, when Pensinger failed to show up at a meeting point later, 8NewsNow reported. His brother reportedly described him as a good swimmer and a navy and coast guard veteran.

The remains of a man who died of a gunshot wound discovered in a barrel have not yet been identified.

Dealing with skeletal remains is particularly challenging, Melanie Rouse, the Clark county coroner, told the Guardian last year, due to the delay from the time of death to the time of recovery and the lack of key physical identifiers. But the office remains dedicated to investigating the cases and providing answers to families, she said.

“That’s one of the reasons why we continue to do what we do – being able to provide closure and being able to return these unidentified individuals back to their families and provide them with a name,” she said.