Lake Mead has retreated due to drought, exposing decades of hidden secrets... and several bodies feared to be linked to Mafia hits, including suspected victim of gangster who inspired Joe Pesci's terrifying turn in Casino

• Skeletal remains are being found at Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, due to drought
• Four bodies have been found, one in barrel, as treasure hunters flock to the area
• A theory is the mafia, who operated in casinos nearby, used to hide bodies there 
• The first body was discovered in May. The skeletal remains of a man were found crammed inside a rusting metal barrel on Lake Mead’s muddy shore. Police said he had been shot in the head, Mob-style, sometime in the 1970s or 1980s.

  Since then, the corpses have kept coming out of America’s biggest reservoir, which is giving up its decades-old secrets.

  Recently, a new set of human remains proved the fourth such find.

  The waters of the 112-mile-long lake on the Nevada-Arizona border are retreating in the wake of a drought, exacerbated by heavy water use by surrounding states.

  Treasure hunters have flocked to the area, drawn by reports of what may be revealed: including several ghost towns, an ancient Native American ‘lost city’, a crashed World War II B-29 Superfortress bomber and the buried loot of a notorious gangster.

  The lake is notable for being just 20 miles from Las Vegas at its nearest point. So perhaps unsurprisingly, while other drying reservoirs in America’s parched Southwest have revealed wonders such as a fossilised mastodon skull and ancient Native American dwellings, the one closest to Sin City is throwing up more gruesome surprises.

  In its early years, the casino town was so tightly controlled by the Chicago Mafia — the so-called Outfit — and other clans in the Midwest that it was said every other person there claimed to be connected to the Mob. And with so much money to be made by the unscrupulous — not to mention so much potential for them to rip each other off — there were inevitably a lot of casualties.

• Although Lake Mead had obvious attractions as a place to dispose of those fatalities, local Mafia experts have long argued that mobsters preferred to bury bodies in the Nevada desert, as they feared that floating corpses in the reservoir would alarm tourists and discourage them from visiting Vegas. 
• The latest discoveries, particularly the unfortunate man in the barrel, suggest that assessment may have been wide of the mark. 
• ‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Travis Heggie, a former National Park Service official who has studied deaths at Lake Mead Recreation Area. ‘I’m expecting all sorts of criminal things to show up — and I mean a lot.’ 
• The 86-year-old reservoir is formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and provides drinking water to California, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Mexico. It is currently filled to less than 30 per cent of its capacity.