Quest to identify man found in barrel at Lake Mead takes new turn

The Clark County coroner’s office is trying to use DNA to identify the man whose body was found in a barrel in Lake Mead two years ago, but the agency faces challenges.

The body, discovered in May 2022 at Hemenway Harbor, had a gunshot wound, and the Clark County coroner’s office has said the man’s death was a homicide. There has been speculation that he could have been killed by the mob.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Coroner Melanie Rouse said the agency now has a DNA profile, but that the profile is only as good as what it can be compared to.

The profile was uploaded to a federal government database called CODIS on Dec. 8, 2022. CODIS is an acronym for Combined DNA Index System and maintains databases of DNA from criminals, crime scenes and missing people.

If the profile matches someone, the coroner’s office will find out, Rouse said. It was created “directly from the human remains,” according to Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for the coroner’s office.

The office has gotten leads, including from people with missing relatives, Rouse said, but some of them have been ruled out.

Bradley Malin, a Vanderbilt University professor who has done research on DNA and related privacy issues, said CODIS is filled with people who have been accused or convicted of crimes.

“It’s a bit of a limited resource as a result,” he said, and also overrepresents minorities.

Private DNA testing companies, like 23andMe, overrepresent white people in or above the middle class, he said. And it can be hard for law enforcement to use those sites.

In a case like this, he said, an agency can try to identify the person through their family if they don’t find an exact match. But there’s a potential authorities won’t be able to identify someone if they had little family and people whose DNA is available for comparison are not close relatives, he said.

Wheatley said the next step is for the office to meet with a genealogist, but that an appointment hasn’t been set.

On the website of NamUs, a federal program that tries to solve missing person cases, information is still scant. The site says the mysterious man might have been between 27 and 61 years old, between 5 feet, 6 inches and 6 feet, 1 inch tall and that it is not possible to estimate his weight.

Photos have been released on that site of the mysterious man’s sneakers, a dirty Idle Time button-down shirt, jeans and a battered digital Timex watch that’s been separated from its metal wristband.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.