Lake Mead remains found in 1987 identified as California nurse

An Arizona sheriff’s department has announced that the remains of a California woman reported missing nearly four decades ago have been identified after being found at Lake Mead.

The granddaughter of a woman who went missing nearly two decades before that thinks the remains of her grandmother might still be in Lake Mead.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said the remains of Carol Ann Riley, who disappeared in 1986, have been positively identified.

Riley, a 42-year-old nurse who worked in San Diego at the time of her disappearance, was known to be dating a man she knew as Robert Howard Smith.

According to the Sheriff’s Office, she had a date scheduled with the man the day she disappeared. Years later, investigators learned the man’s real name was Robert Dean Weeks.

In 1988, Weeks was convicted in the murders of his wife, Patricia Weeks, who disappeared in Southern Nevada on April 25, 1968, and a woman named Cynthia Jabour, though their bodies were never found. Jabour disappeared in 1980.

Weeks was never charged with Riley’s murder. He died Sept. 20, 1996, while incarcerated at Southern Desert Correctional Center, according to Nevada Department of Corrections records.

A trail of murder

Nearly two decades before Riley went missing, Patricia Weeks vanished. According to published reports in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Robert Weeks told his four daughters that their mother had deserted them.

But that explanation was never accepted by the woman’s family.

To this day, Sarah Bowie, Weeks’ 43-year-old granddaughter, believes her grandmother’s remains could still be in Lake Mead. Weeks went missing when Bowie’s mother, Jill, was just 10.

Decades later, it’s something that still affects Weeks’ descendants. Bowie, who grew up in Las Vegas but lives in Chicago, now works as a trauma therapist. She said she still lights a candle for her grandmother every day.

“When I saw that Carol Ann Riley’s remains were positively identified, it gave me hope that my grandmother’s remains could one day be found,” Bowie said. “My theory is that she’s in the lake. This idea of closure has always been elusive in my family.”

David Syzdek, a Las Vegas resident, is Patricia Weeks’ nephew. Syzdek, 53, wasn’t alive when his aunt went missing, but he said the pain of her disappearance — and the eventual knowledge of what really happened to her — has stayed with the family for generations.

“We know she was a good mother and that she wouldn’t have left her kids,” Syzdek said. “We’re pleased that Carol’s family is hopefully getting some closure with this news. Even though these murders were so long ago, the trauma goes on for generations.”

Robert Weeks was interrogated by police, according to past reports, but later fled the country. He later surfaced in Arizona as “Charles Stolzenberg.”

After a segment on Robert Weeks was broadcast on the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1987, neighbors were able to identify him. According to reports, he worked at different times as a mortician, a parachute stuntman, and even, for a time, as the owner of a limousine service in Las Vegas.

In April 1988, Robert Weeks was convicted in a Las Vegas courtroom for the murders of his wife and Jabour. He also was long suspected in Riley’s disappearance.

In 1990, the Nevada Supreme Court upheld Robert Weeks’ life sentence after he had appealed on the grounds that the bodies of the women he was convicted of murdering were never found. Patricia Weeks went missing just before her divorce from Robert Weeks was set to become final.

Syzdek said he and his siblings are close with Patricia Weeks’ daughters now. At the time of the disappearance, Syzdek said, his parents and siblings were living in Japan because his father was in the Air Force.

“Our family, we’ve been talking about this since the news came out this week,” Syzdek said. “It was a surprise that Carol’s identity was confirmed, but we also know that technology has come a long way from where it was decades ago.”

A grim discovery

In 1987, a cattle rancher found a human skull at Bonelli Landing on the Arizona side of Lake Mead, according to the social media post from the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office.

Additional remains were found near the skull.

“A further search of the area resulted in the discovery of additional remains buried in a shallow grave, wrapped in a yellow blanket,” the Facebook post said.

After a series of forensic tests over the years, it was confirmed last month that the skull, and other remains found in 1987, belonged to Riley. The road to the confirmation was long and winding, however.

In 2011, according to Mohave County officials, investigators out of Austin, Texas, believed the remains found at Lake Mead in 1987 could be a missing woman from the Lone Star State, though dental records eventually proved otherwise.

On July 15, according to Mohave County officials, representatives from the California Department of Justice missing persons unit were able to match the dental records of the Lake Mead remains to Riley’s.

In addition to the other disappearances, Robert Weeks’ business associate, James Shaw, went missing in 1971. His vehicle, according to officials, was found abandoned in a Las Vegas parking lot shortly after he vanished.

A Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson declined to comment for this story. Syzdek said he applauds all law enforcement agencies who worked on the cases related to Robert Weeks over the years.

He said he was impressed by Metro’s commitment to the Patricia Weeks’ case, partly because detectives came to his mother’s home shortly before her death to collect a DNA sample in 2023.

Phyllis Mae Powers Syzdek, Patricia’s sister, died in Las Vegas at age 96 on Nov. 1, 2023.

“We were contacted when Mom was in hospice care,” Syzdek said. “The detectives were very professional, and we had a good visit. They wanted to get a DNA swab for their database. We were very appreciative that they were continuing to look into the case, even though the murderer was dead.”

Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.