Body in Lake Mead barrel identified as Edward ‘Buddy’ Jackson

After years of mystery, the Clark County coroner’s office revealed the identity of a slain man found in a barrel in 2022 at Hemenway Harbor at Lake Mead.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse identified the man as Edward Lelburian Jackson, who was believed to be in his 50s at the time of his death decades ago.

In the course of the investigation, officials from the Metropolitan Police Department learned that Jackson, who went by the name “Buddy,” was originally from Arkansas and had ties to California and Utah.

The mystery surrounding the identity of the body, which was found with a gunshot wound to the head on May 1, 2022, had breathed life into theories that his death could have been mob-related. While homicide detectives have not ruled those theories out completely, there has been no evidence to lead to that conclusion, police said.

“I know there’s been speculation in the past that the homicide had ties to organized criminal groups,” Metro Lt. Robert Price said Thursday. “However, at this point of our investigation, we don’t have any information to support those theories. With these new developments, homicide detectives will continue to work diligently to solve this crime.”

The identification process

The grim find was aided by Lake Mead’s declining water levels, Metro officials said in 2022. Before Thursday, the identity of the body had remained unknown to the public since it was first discovered by boaters.

The coroner’s office had ruled the man’s death a homicide as he was found with a gunshot wound to the head.

Price said that during the investigation, police learned that the clothing Jackson was wearing likely came from the late 1970s to early 1980s.

Rouse said the coroner’s office sought the help of the FBI in September 2022 to create three composite angles of Jackson’s face.

Those images and photos of clothing Jackson was wearing when his body was found were then uploaded into NamUs — a nationwide missing and identified persons database, she said. The database had described Jackson as standing between 5 feet, 6 inches and 6 feet, 1 inch tall and between 27 and 61 years of age.

Rouse said that in 2024, a bone sample was sent for genealogy profiling, where it received a close match. Help was enlisted from forensic scientists at Oklahoma State University. After its scientists found a compelling match to Jackson’s family earlier this year, the coroner’s office was able to confirm his identity, she said.

The coroner declined to say which family member’s DNA matched to Jackson, citing privacy concerns.

Authorities said Thursday that they did not believe anyone had reported Jackson missing, which Rouse said was generally an important piece to help solve unidentified person cases.

“We can have the best DNA profile on a decedent, but if we don’t have anything to compare it to, it’s not in the national database,” she said.

Who was Edward Jackson?

There remained many unknowns about Jackson, including his actual age.

“We believe he was in his mid-to-late 50s at the time of his death,” Rouse said. “We do not have an exact time. We have a rough timeline based on when he was last known alive.”

Price said Jackson was originally from Arkansas, with family ties to the Hot Springs area, before he spent time in the Los Angeles area and Utah.

Records police have been able to put together show he was married and living with a wife in California in the early 1970s and had a criminal record from the early ’80s for aggravated arson and conspiracy to commit fraud in Salt Lake City, Price said.

Price added that Metro had not uncovered any previous ties to Las Vegas, but Jackson’s family members said they knew he liked to travel across the country.

“The relatives we spoke to were several relatives removed, so they only knew about him being ‘Uncle Buddy,’ so it was very limited information in reference to what he did as far as work and what kind of personality he was,” Price said.

He said family members recalled Jackson visiting them in Arkansas in the early 1980s, “which aligns with our belief that the homicide occurred sometime in the early ’80s.”

With Jackson’s identity now known, Price encouraged anyone with information to come forward to homicide detectives or Crime Stoppers.

“It’ll never be closed until we solve it,” Price said. “I would just say that it’s a piece in the puzzle, and as we get more and more pieces, we’ll be able to keep on digging deeper.”

Contact Devan Patel at dpatel@reviewjournal.com.