LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A woman has been positively identified after her remains were found at Lake Mead in May 1987.
Carol Ann Riley, born Dec. 13, 1943, was identified as the remains found near Bonelli Landing on May 16, 1987. According to the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, a person rounding up steers found a human skull. As the search continued, a shallow grave was discovered containing remains wrapped in a yellow blanket.
The sheriff’s office said the remains were believed to be of a person between 20 and 40 years old, 5-foot-3 to 5-foot-7, and 105 to 120 pounds, with light brown hair. Attempts to immediately identify her were unsuccessful, but her dental report was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
Between 2011 and 2024, multiple attempts were made to identify the remains, but these proved unsuccessful due to sample degradation. The sheriff’s office Special Investigations Unit provided clothing and the blanket she was found in to a Department of Public Safety lab in Flagstaff in February 2025, but that attempt was also unsuccessful.
The investigation narrowed after investigators learned her skeletal remains were cremated in 2016 and her ashes were scattered at an unknown location.
In July, investigators were contacted by the county medical examiner’s office. An email said a forensic odontologist from the California Department of Justice’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit had conducted a dental comparison of the victim and a woman who went missing from San Diego: Carol Ann Riley.
As a result of the comparison, Riley was positively identified.
The sheriff’s office said Riley was a nurse who worked at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego. Around the time she disappeared, investigators said she was dating a man she knew as Robert Howard Smith. She had a dinner date scheduled with him, during which she planned to break up.
When Smith was interviewed, he said she had canceled the date. Two days later, the sheriff’s office said he left town and disappeared.
Investigators later learned Smith used false names. His real name was Robert Dean Weeks. Police said he was convicted of killing his ex-wife, Patricia Weeks of Clark County, and another woman he dated, Cynthia Jabour, a real estate agent.
According to the sheriff’s office, Jabour was also about to break up with him during a dinner date. The bodies of Weeks and Jabour were not found.
Weeks was arrested in Tucson, Arizona, and was convicted in April 1988 of the two murders. He was not convicted in the deaths of Riley or one of his business associates, James Shaw, who was last seen May 5, 1971. Police said Shaw disappeared after an argument with Weeks.
Weeks was sentenced to life in prison in Nevada and died Sept. 20, 1996.
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