Sunday 7 August 2022 03:13 PM FOURTH set of human remains found in drought-hit Lake Mead as man says second ... trends now
A fourth set of human remains has been found at Lake Mead, as the water levels at their lowest level in over 80 years continue to reveal long-hidden secrets.
News of the fourth set - found on Saturday at Swim Beach, and now being assessed by Clark County Coroner - came as a man living in Spain said he is increasingly confident the second set of remains is that of his father.
Todd Kolod was three years old when his father Daniel, aged 22, drowned in Callville Bay in 1958.
He was on a speed boat with a friend when they hit a wake, and both men were thrown from the boat - with only one surviving.
The body was never recovered.
A set of remains was found on May 7 at Callville Bay, and DNA samples were taken.
Todd Kolod, pictured here with his father Daniel, was born in 1956, two years before his father died in Callville Bay
According to NASA, water levels in Lake Mead are their lowest level since 1937. As of July 18, 2022, the lake was filled to 27 percent capacity
On Wednesday the coroner said the person is believed to have been aged between 23 and 38 years old at his or her time of death, leading Kolod to believe it is in all probability his father.
'With each clue, I always expect in my mind that it's going to put us farther away from our goal, but consistently each clue is putting us closer, and this is like a bullseye,' he told 8 News Now.
Kolod had hoped to identify his father by his teeth.
Daniel was in a car crash a few years before he drowned and lost his front teeth, so wore dentures.
Todd Kolod thinks the second body may be that of his father Daniel Kolod, who fell from a speedboat that flipped when it struck by a wake during a fishing trip with a friend 64 years ago
A second body (pictured) was discovered in drought-hit Lake Mead reservoir a week after corpse was found in barrel exposed by lowest water levels
Teeth from a second body were discovered in drought-hit Lake Mead were discovered just a week after another body turned up in the reservoir
Journalists from 8 News Now took photos of the remains to Dr Deborah Staten, owner and dentist at Desert Hills Dental, who is certified in helping identify remains from dental records.
She said it is clear the skeleton is missing its front teeth, but she believes the person was missing other teeth before their death, suspecting some were recently removed.
Dental records have likely been destroyed in the intervening 60 years.
Kolod said he is keen to give a DNA sample as quickly as possible, to solve the mystery, but was frustrated at how long it was taking.
'The pace of being contacted about a DNA sample – I'm starting to lose hope a little bit,' he said.
'Maybe this new finding lights something up.'
None of the four sets of remains have been identified yet.
The first emerged on May 1, when a man's body was found in a rusted barrel in the Hemenway Harbor area.
The first body was discovered in a barrel (pictured). The coroner said her office was continuing work to identify the man whose body
