January 10, 2008
UPRR Workers Unearth Coffin

By Dave Maxwell

On January 5, Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee reported that contract construction workers doing rehab work with a backhoe near a railroad siding in Rainbow Canyon, about 10 miles south of Carp, dug into an unmarked shallow grave and found a coffin. The unearthed coffin may contain partial human remains over a century old.

Sheriff Lee said when officers went to the scene “they recovered some bones that look like they are human remains, it could be a legitimate burial, but now that the bones have been exposed, we have got to do an investigation and see if it was a legitimate burial and what to do with the bones.” The Clark County Coroner’s office might be asked to examine the remains. Lee said the bones, probably an adult, “look very old.”

“Many years ago there were a lot of little, isolated farms and ranches that dotted the area all the way to the Moapa Valley, but all of these were from way back, probably even the early 1900s,” Lee said. The Sheriff’s Department needs to talk to the state vital statistics office, “To determine if there is a record of a legitimate burial there. There is no head stone, no marker, and no identification in the coffin.” The entire skeleton was not in the coffin when found. The skull was not there. But Lee thought that it would probably not be too far away.

Sheriff Lee asked if the public has any information about anyone who may have died, and been buried in the area between 1900 - 1950, please contact their office at 775-962-5151.

Another body was found November 8, 2007 only about 5 miles from Carp. Lee said deputies responded to a call from the UPRR about the sighting of a body along the tracks. Deputies found the body of a white, male adult, identified as 50-year-old Russell Howard Molloy of Salt Lake City. Lee said the man had only been dead about “six to eight hours” and he speculated Molloy was “a homeless man who was riding the freight train, fell off and died.”