Free Republic

<p>Investigators pulled a third body from New Melones Lake on Monday, the latest apparent victim of what authorities say is the work of a mysterious organized crime ring that is believed to have used the deep lakes of the foothills as a dump site.</p>

New Melones yields 2 bodies, more sought March 18, 2002 Posted: 05:00:05 AM PST By JOHN HOLLAND BEE STAFF WRITER NEW MELONES RESERVOIR -- Divers recovered the bodies of two apparent victims of organized crime here Sunday, and they planned to look for more today. One body was recovered about 2 p.m. under the Highway 49 bridge over the reservoir, said agent Nick Rossi of the FBI's Sacramento field office. The other was removed about 5:15 p.m. in about the same location about 300 feet deep, he said. Investigators said the first body appeared to be male, but they did...

LOS ANGELES (AP) Federal investigators are again searching a Northern California reservoir where investigators several years ago found the bodies of five Los Angeles-area victims of an alleged Russian mob scheme, authorities said Wednesday. The murders in 2001 and 2002 were tied to an apparent kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Five men and one woman with roots in the former Soviet Union were arrested on federal charges in the case and a seventh suspect remains at large, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. The FBI has been searching the New Melones Reservoir in the central Sierra Nevada...