By Ron DeLacy
The Modesto Bee
(Published Tuesday, March, 12, 2002 8:35AM)
MOCCASIN -- More than 20 divers from five Mother Lode counties searched a section of Don Pedro Reservoir Monday as part of an FBI organized-crime investigation. They were looking for bodies, but they didn't find any.
"Information suggested that one or more bodies may have been dumped in Lake Don Pedro by members of an organized-crime group," FBI agent Nick Rossi said at the Moccasin Point Marina. "Our effort today has been to try to corroborate that information."
The divers searched at the base of the Jacksonville Bridge on a northern fringe of the reservoir. Rossi said the investigation had led them to that area, and that a search by sonar equipment last week produced several promising images. Those images turned out to be debris.
Rossi would not say where the information had come from, but he did say it wasn't from his Sacramento field office. A different FBI office contacted the bureau in Sacramento, and the state Office of Emergency Services recruited boats and divers from Tuolumne, Calaveras, Mariposa, El Dorado and Placer counties.
They gathered at the marina for a 6 a.m. briefing Monday, then went to work, the divers searching in water up to 140 feet deep at points marked by buoys the sonar teams had left.
Rossi said the divers would not return today, but sonar work would continue and the investigation might progress to other lakes and reservoirs in Tuolumne County. The largest of them, New Melones Reservoir northwest of Columbia, turned up a body in October -- a man with a plastic bag tied over his head and his hands tied in front of him.
The identity of that person has never been made public. Rossi said officials believe they know who it was, but relatives had not been notified so he could not release the name.
But he acknowledged investigators are trying to find out whether the New Melones body is connected to the case that brought divers here Monday.