On 1 May 2022, boaters at Hemenway Harbor on Lake Mead, Nevada, found a rusted steel barrel in mud exposed by two decades of drought. Inside were the remains of a man who had died from a gunshot wound. Police said the barrel had not drifted; it sank where it was dropped, far out on what was then open water. “Someone had to have a boat,” a homicide lieutenant said.
His clothes and shoes had been sold at Kmart in the mid-to-late 1970s, so police put his death between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The first DNA test matched no one, and an FBI facial approximation released in 2023 brought no calls. A 2024 genealogy match was “close and within the same family, but not close enough.”
In October 2026, after new work by an Oklahoma State University lab, police named him: Edward “Buddy” Lelburian Jackson, from Arkansas. His family had last seen him in the early 1980s and never reported him missing, because he “would show up when he showed up.”
Still unknown: why he was in Las Vegas, and who had the boat. Police say it remains an open homicide.
I wrote a longer case file with a timeline and sources (link above). What I keep wondering: how does a family wait 40 years without filing a report?
The Website, the images, the audio narration all scream pure AI-slop to me.
AI-generated illustration based on the documented record. Not a photograph.
Just don’t include it. An AI illustration is worse than no photo at all. I gave the first one a pass but I bowed out at the second one
Fair point, and thanks for saying it directly. I’ll keep future posts here text-only, with sources, and skip the illustrations.
Did we try asking him?
Ha. Honestly the barrel has told investigators more than any person has so far. Whoever put him there has never been identified.
While I know this is a real story the AI slop on this website is awful.
What I keep wondering: how does a family wait 40 years without filing a report?
I’ve got family members I haven’t heard from in decades. It doesn’t seem that odd to me.
That’s fair, and it matches what his family said: he’d drift off and turn up again, so nobody thought to report him. In the early 80s, with no phones in pockets, losing touch for years probably didn’t look like a disappearance at all.
