Family confronts feds in Lake Mead runaround

WASHINGTON — A family that was stymied for almost a year trying to recover the remains of their murdered brother from the grounds of Lake Mead took their frustrations straight to the top on Wednesday.

The brother of slain Las Vegas cabdriver Keith Goldberg confronted one of the senior leaders of the National Park Service in a Senate hallway, demanding in an emotional exchange to know why it took so long “to get my brother’s bones back.

“I got partial bones back,” Jeffrey Goldberg told Dean Ross, Park Service deputy chief. “I got rib bones, a piece of a leg. I never got his whole body back.”

Managers of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area required the family to apply for permits and take out a $1 million insurance policy before allowing a private recovery team to search for Goldberg’s body. Nine months later, after the family secured entry, a team from Red Rock Search and Rescue on April 14, 2013, found his remains within two hours.

“We waited so long to get access,” Goldberg told Ross, his hands gesturing in the air. “You know what that is like for a family member? I’m his brother. His mother was 80 years old at the time, her health was deteriorating.

“If it happened to you, if you had a family and you had a missing family member and there was a good possibility that person was over in that area, was murdered, and you can’t get there, what would you do?”

Members of Congress who heard the family’s story last year had called on the Park Service to apologize. Goldberg told Ross the family has heard nothing.

“Nobody even called us, nobody said anything, nobody cared. It’s like we were nonexistent and that’s the part that hurts so bad, to have a murder in our family but then to go through all the bureaucracy. It’s crazy! It’s really crazy!

“I’m sorry but I have to let it out,” Goldberg said.

The Park Service leaves it to the discretion of local superintendents whether to grant waivers to allow search access to land in their jurisdiction.

A bill by Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., that was reviewed Wednesday by the Senate public lands subcommittee would require federal land agencies to grant them to qualified organizations. A similar bill by Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., passed the House earlier this year.

“Apologies on my end. I don’t have line authority over those superintendents. My best effort is to educate them,” Ross told Goldberg, who was at the subcommittee hearing with his sister, Joni Goldberg, and her husband, Paul Thompson.

Jeffrey Goldberg lives in New Jersey while his sister and brother-in-law live in Alexandria, Va. They said they visited Keith Goldberg often in Las Vegas.

Keith Goldberg’s girlfriend, Georgene Ross, and her estranged husband, Christopher Ross, have been charged with murder.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Contact Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. Find him on Twitter: @STetreaultDC.